Even after we had graduated and been commissioned as officers, we were put through continued drills. At that time, though, while there were enough warm bodies for the kamikaze units, there weren’t enough aircraft. And not just aircraft—we didn’t have enough fuel, either, which interfered with our training.
It was around that time that the Okinawa Special Attack Operation began.
From March of 1945, kamikaze planes took off from bases in Kyushu almost every day to strike against the U.S. fleet in the seas around Okinawa. There was a media blitz concerning those attacks.
One day in April, there was an announcement: sixteen members of my 14th class of reserve officers had been named as special attack personnel. I was not on the list. Those selected were all our class’s top pilots.
My best friend, Yoshio Takahashi, was among those called up. We had been in the same year at Keio University. He loved literature and hoped to become a scholar of Japanese lit. He was also a third-rank judo wrestler of the Kodokan School. He cut a stately figure, standing nearly six feet, the very picture of excellence in both mind and body.
There was one incident between us that I’ll never forget.
Once, when he was over at my house for a visit, my sister came home in tears. According to a girl from the neighborhood who was with her, some middle schoolers had teased her, called her “retard,” and then slapped her about the face until she started crying. Even before then, she’d been laughed at and teased for her disability, to my great irritation, but this time I’d had enough. Getting slapped around because she was mentally disabled?
I asked the neighbor girl which school those kids were from.
Then, when I turned around, I saw something that floored me. Takahashi was petting my sister’s head and sobbing himself.
“You poor thing, you poor thing, Kazuko-chan. You didn’t do anything to deserve that,” he said, tears streaming down his face.
Takahashi’s kindness towards her pierced my heart. I felt like I could do anything for the man.
And now, he’d been called up to be a kamikaze.
“Trade places with me,” I begged him.
“Don’t be stupid, Okabe,” Takahashi laughed.
“Please, let me go in your place.”
“Nope.”
“Trade with me, damn it!” I yelled, grabbing him by the lapels.
“Hell no!” he bellowed right back.
“Trade with me, Takahashi,” I said, trying to push him over.
“Like I would,” he said, then sent me sprawling.
I got up and wrapped my arms around his waist, but he had no trouble flinging me off. As I stood up and tackled him again, I was crying. Seeing me in such a state was making him cry, too, but he continued to fling me away.
At long last I had used up all my strength and lay prone, weeping.
“Okabe, you survive. For Kazuko’s sake, you can’t die,” Takahashi said, embracing me about the shoulders. He was still in tears.
We weren’t the only men to cry that day. At night, after getting drunk, those who hadn’t been selected wailed aloud and begged those who’d been chosen to let them go in their stead, though it wasn’t an option. Some guys even went and pled with the flight commander in tears to be allowed to go on a special attack.
Both the chosen and the unchosen cried that night.
Starting the next day, the chosen sixteen began flight training with high-octane aviation fuel, the type used in actual combat. They were, quite literally, training to die.
Even so, Takahashi and the other reserve officers were magnificent.
Being selected for a kamikaze unit was akin to being handed a death warrant. But those men never betrayed any hint of fear to the rest of us. They never even looked gloomy. If anything, they acted downright cheerful.
Of course, that couldn’t have been a reflection of their true states. It was for us that they showed us smiles. Facing death and still considering the feelings of friends they’d be leaving behind—how amazing those men were.
Their instructing officer was Miyabe-san. Of course, he was aware that Takahashi and others had been selected for special attack units.
One day, in reference to Instructor Miyabe, Takahashi said to me, “He actually has a real heart, you know.”
I asked him what he meant by that.
“It’s just too painful for him to teach us, I can tell. It pains him to send us off to die.”
“Really?”
“And it’s painful for me to see him look so pained.”
I told him what Instructor Miyabe had once said to me. Takahashi nodded in understanding. “That’s the sort of person he is,” my friend mumbled.
Then he added, “It’s just a rumor, but I heard that he refused to become a kamikaze back in the Philippines.”
That came as a surprise to me.
“It’s probably true, too,” Takahashi said. “I really have a lot of respect for him.”
There was nothing I could say.
It was with a sad expression that my friend declared, “We’re wimps.”
At the beginning of May, Takahashi and others headed to Kokubu Airfield in Kyushu. There weren’t enough planes, so of the sixteen chosen pilots, only eleven took off in Zero fighters. Instructor Miyabe would guide the formation.
Before leaving, Takahashi told me, “So I’m off.” When I couldn’t manage a reply, he said, “Wipe that look off your face,” and gave me a big smile. His sunny expression was almost dazzling.
Then he ran off towards the airstrip.
I later learned that all eleven of the pilots who took off that day were dead within a month.
Instructor Miyabe stayed at Kokubu and apparently sortied numerous times, as a fighter escort to special attack units. I’ve heard that he, himself, died as a kamikaze right before the end of the war.
After that, I was transferred to Konoike Air Base in Ibaraki Prefecture where I became an Ohka pilot.
Do you know about the Ohka, written with the characters for “sakura” and “flower”? They were rocket bombs piloted by humans.
No, these weren’t airplanes. They were bombs, pure and simple. They couldn’t take off on their own, nor could they land. They couldn’t even turn, they just glided straight through the air. The Ohkas would be suspended underneath a Type 1 land-based attack bomber and then released towards a hostile ship—as human rockets.
Amazing, isn’t it, that such inhumane weapons were even built.
For the training, all we did was practice nose-dives. Swooping straight down towards the target from a high altitude was all there was to it. We used Zeros to practice diving.
We got just one practice flight in an Ohka. Since they didn’t come equipped with landing gear, they were fitted with skids instead. After diving at a terrifying speed from a high altitude, you leveled out close to the ground then touched down on the runway. If you successfully landed, you were given an “A” grade, listed as an Ohka pilot, and shipped off to Kyushu with no time to spare.
Hm? What if you failed to land properly? You died.
Many pilots met that fate. Some couldn’t pull out of the dive and go into level flight, some overshot the runway and crashed into the embankment, some had broken skids and burst into flames from the friction, some simply crashed because the rocket propulsion mechanism had malfunctioned…
That training was beyond terrifying. I went through it. I’ll never forget the fear.
I went weak at the knees when I had to transfer from the mother plane to the Ohka. The Type 1’s belly opened up, and in the face of wind pressure strong enough to blow me away, I had to jump into the cockpit of the Ohka suspended underneath. Of course, there was no lifeline or anything like that. If some accident or malfunction occurred and the Ohka fell, I would be a goner.