Onishi ended his comments, stepped down from the platform, and shook hands with each of the members.
The special attack force was named the “Shinpu Special Attack Force.” The characters meaning “divine wind” were officially pronounced that way instead of kamikaze, though we came to use the latter reading. The units were named Shikishima (an old poetic name for Japan), Yamato (from “Yamato spirit” or the Japanese spirit), Asahi (morning sun), and Yamazakura (wild cherry blossoms).
These came from a tanka poem by the Edo-period classical scholar Norinaga Motoori:
Around the same time, the Combined Fleet announced Operation Victory One, an all-out attempt to stop the Americans from invading the Philippines.
Japan’s back was to the wall.
After capturing Saipan, the Americans’ next target was the Philippines. If they managed to occupy the Philippines, our link to the southern territories would be completely severed. Petroleum and other resources would become unavailable. Hence the Imperial Army and Navy were prepared to defend the Philippines to the last.
The Combined Fleet deployed to strike at the American landing forces, with orders to wipe out the enemy’s convoy of transports. To this end, the Combined Fleet hatched a daring plan: they would use the Mobile Fleet as a decoy to lure away the American carrier task force; a surface fleet headed by the battleships Yamato and Musashi would then charge into the Gulf of Leyte and send the American transport convoy to oblivion in one fell swoop. It was a desperate plan as in the proverb, “Let him slice your flesh while you sever his bone.”
At the time, however, we base crew knew nothing about the overall situation and merely fought each battle as commanded.
The special attack was to provide support to the surface fleet as they stormed into Leyte Gulf. If the kamikazes managed to demolish the flight decks of American carriers, the enemy wouldn’t be able to launch their ship-based aircraft. This would reduce the number of aerial attacks our fleet might face and facilitate its entry into the gulf.
If we’d had sufficient numbers of planes, land-based air corps could support the surface fleet or make a direct strike on the American task force. By then, however, our diminished strength in the air precluded any large-scale attacks.
It was under such circumstances that the kamikaze attack force was born.
The Shikishima Unit led by Lieutenant Yukio Seki first sortied on October 21st. But failing to discover the enemy, it returned to base. The unit sortied again the next day, yet returned once again after failing to make contact with the enemy.
I thought this was terribly cruel.
Lieutenant Seki was a newlywed. How heart-wrenching it must have been for him to leave her behind. Before his first sortie he’d told someone who was close to him, “I’m not dying for my country. I’m dying for my dear wife.” I understand how he must have felt. I’m sure that all the other members, looking death in the eye, also considered what death meant to them, and departed on their mission having found peace only after a profound internal struggle.
Imagine how they must have felt returning to base. Having failed to spot their target, they were granted a short stay of execution—how that must have merely tormented them. How painful it must have been to live another night, when they’d sworn never to see a new day. Yet none of them, from Lieutenant Seki on down, betrayed even a hint of their anguish. Such men they were.
Then finally on their fourth sortie, they didn’t return.
That day, the Shikishima Unit was escorted by four Zeros led by Flight Chief Petty Officer Nishizawa, who had been called up from Clark Air Base the day before. Yes, that Nishizawa, the famous ace of Rabaul. In addition to protecting the kamikaze unit, he was probably called up to assist in finding the enemy.
Lieutenant Seki’s unit of five aircraft all succeeded in striking their targets, severely damaging three American escort carriers. We learned of the results of their mission by telegraph from the base on Cebu. The first kamikaze attack in history was a resounding success. CPO Nishizawa was the one to make the report, and it was very accurate. After the war, the U.S. stated that one ship was sunk and two others suffered heavy damage.
CPO Nishizawa hadn’t just defended Shikishima Unit from hostile fighters and seen it dive through raging anti-aircraft fire. He’d also gunned down two Grumman F6Fs that were hot on his heels before making his way back to Cebu.
I heard this afterwards from aircrew stationed on Cebu, but when CPO Nishizawa stepped out of the cockpit of his Zero, he had such an inordinately murderous aura about him that no one dared speak to him.
By the way, while the kamikaze attacks continued up to the end of the war, this first mission was the most successful. The element of surprise was probably the main reason, but I’m sure that having the greatest fighter pilot in the Navy providing support was immensely helpful as well. Ironically, it was the success of this mission that convinced the General Staff that kamikazes were its trump card.
Apparently, that night, Nishizawa muttered to a friend, “I will soon be following them to the other side.”
He had lost his wingman to anti-aircraft fire during the mission—the very first time he’d lost anyone from his flight, we’re told. He had sortied on hundreds of combat missions and gunned down more than a hundred enemy aircraft, and yet, never having lost anyone under his command was his greatest badge of honor. Only Saburo Sakai shared the distinction. Actually, since Nishizawa had served for over a year in that hellish place, Rabaul, without losing a single wingman, you could say he was even greater than Sakai.
Nishizawa’s comment that he was soon to follow was probably in reference to Lieutenant Seki’s Shikishima Unit, but perhaps he also had his fallen wingman in mind. And his premonition would come true.
The next day, as CPO Nishizawa made to return to Mabalacat, the base commander at Cebu told him to leave his Zero behind. Nishizawa and the two other pilots boarded an old Douglas transport plane bound for Mabalacat. It was shot down by an enemy fighter. It was an all-too-anticlimactic end for the man the American pilots feared as “the Devil of Rabaul.”
How Nishizawa must have gnashed his teeth. The last flight of a man who’d never have been shot down flying a Zero was aboard a sluggish, unarmed transport plane.
And thus the greatest flying ace that the Imperial Navy produced died the day after the first kamikaze attack. He was just twenty-four years old.
Lieutenant Seki was heralded throughout Japan as a war hero. He had been the only child of a single mother. His bereaved mother was lionized as the woman who’d given birth to a god of war. But after the war, public opinion shifted and she was ostracized as the mother of a war criminal. She was forced into poverty, scraping by as a peddler, eventually finding employment as a cleaning woman at a grade school. She passed away one day in 1953, alone, in the janitor’s room. They say her last words were, “At least allow Yukio a grave.” That was the mood of postwar democracy: kamikazes who had perished for the country were like war criminals, and even erecting a stone for them was unforgivable. I’ve heard that the lieutenant’s wife remarried after the war.