“Thank you very much. That puts my mind at ease,” the ensign’s father said. But the mother, still crouching, let out a sob. “He was our only son,” the man told me unbidden. Then he wrapped his arms around his wife’s shoulders and hauled her up, bowed once more to me, and walked away from the base.
This was not an uncommon sight at Kokubu Base.
Pilots were forbidden from telling their families that they were departing on a kamikaze mission. Friends of the selected pilots would ask someone outside the base to send letters to the soon-to-be-bereaved families. But it was very rare for them to make it to the base before the pilots sortied. Many family members would arrive after the mission only to have to return home in grief.
I also saw young wives who learned of their husband’s death at the base. I saw this over and over again at both Kokubu and Usa. Some were so grief-stricken and devastated that their legs failed them. When I saw them, I was thankful that I hadn’t gotten married myself. At the same time, I felt sorry for myself since I’d be dying without ever having found a woman’s love.
At Usa, I was once again assigned to the special attack pool. Those who were called up were sent to their deaths.
How did I feel back then? I’m sure I was terrified, but I don’t really remember anything much.
But I do remember quite clearly the heartbreaking sorrow at having to say farewell to my friends. No matter how hard I try, I can’t manage to forget that sadness.
I never saw Instructor Miyabe again, at either Kokubu or Usa.
Silence filled the room for some time.
Mrs. Takeda was the first to speak. “This is the first time I’ve heard you talk about the special attacks.”
Takeda nodded deeply. “I never spoke to anyone about these experiences. I figured that even if I told someone they wouldn’t understand. And the thought of unnecessary misunderstandings arising due to my not having a way with words was unbearable.”
“Did you think that about me, too?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to try talking about it many times, but I wasn’t able to, not until today. While I wanted you to understand my pain and sadness, on the other hand I never wanted you of all people to learn such horrible things.”
“I, too, kept something from you all these years,” Mrs. Takeda said, looking her husband in the eye. “It was in 1950, wasn’t it, that we met through work and married. There was some talk that you had been a kamikaze, but I couldn’t even imagine it to be true. You were always so cheerful and full of smiles at work.”
Takeda nodded.
“You didn’t tell me about the special attack units before we married. And once we were married, I was surprised to discover that you had nightmares every night. You would suddenly groan in torment, your face looking ghastly, like nothing I ever saw during your waking hours… And occasionally you would scream out. When I saw you like that, I wondered, What horrible things has my man gone through? And I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from crying.”
“I didn’t know that,” Takeda said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“What good would it have done to tell you? There was no way for me to help carry your burden. You did that for more than ten years, until it finally subsided around the time our eldest was in middle school. It was only when I saw you sleeping peacefully that I thought you’d come home from the front at last.”
“Thank you, dear,” Takeda said in a small voice, placing his hand over his wife’s.
Just before we parted, Takeda said, “Miyabe-san was a wonderful man. I only spent a few months in his presence, but I think he was a truly phenomenal person.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“He’s the one who really should have survived the war.”
“It is very kind of you to say that.”
Takeda’s expression became stiff. “As he was climbing into the cockpit of the Zero to fly to Kyushu, I wished him good luck.”
“Yes?”
“He suddenly got this terrifying look on his face and said, ‘I absolutely will not die.’ I saw this tremendous obsession with life in his eyes. I thought there was no way he would ever die.”
“But the war wouldn’t let him live,” I said.
“Not the war,” Keiko said sharply. “Our grandfather was killed by the Navy.”
Takeda nodded. “You might be correct. It probably was the Navy that killed him.”
Chapter 10
Fighting Demon
“That guy was doomed to die,” former Flight Chief Petty Officer Kaizan Kageura said, his eyes boring into mine. “I know that he wanted to come out of the war alive. But it was he, himself, who cut off any chance of that wish being fulfilled.”
My heart pounded violently. I tried to glean Kageura’s feelings from his face, but he was expressionless, unreadable.
Kaizan Kageura was a former yakuza gangster. He lived in Nakano, a quiet residential district a little west of Shinjuku, but there was no nameplate on the front gate, and the wall surrounding the property was dotted with numerous security cameras. He claimed to be retired, but even so, I felt trepidation over visiting him at home. Keiko had said that she wanted to come with me, but I wasn’t keen on the idea of bringing her to the home of someone whose criminal record included murder.
When I pressed the buzzer on the intercom, a young man with a shaved head appeared. His speech was very polite, but his eyes were hawk-like. After I stated my name and the purpose of my visit, he led me through to a sitting room.
The sitting room was decidedly not extravagant, but the walls and ceiling appeared to be made from fine materials. The room lacked any sort of furnishings.
Kageura was a tall man. He was supposed to be seventy-nine, but he looked younger than his years. His hair was thinning, but his complexion and poise made him appear to be around sixty.
The young man who had answered the door remained standing behind Kageura. Perhaps he was something like a bodyguard.
“So you’re Miyabe’s grandkid,” Kageura said without a trace of a smile. His voice was low and subdued, yet imposing.
Feeling a bit overawed, I repeated the purpose of my visit.
After I had gone over everything, Kageura said, “I despised him.”
I nodded wordlessly. I had sensed as much when we spoke on the phone. Since I no longer found it baffling that some of his former comrades might hate my grandfather, having someone tell me as much to my face didn’t faze me anymore.
“The war is over sixty years in the past. I’ve forgotten about most of the people I met back then. Yet I can recall that guy very well. Hmm, how strange.”
I hated Miyabe’s guts. I thought he was entirely disgusting.
I vividly remember when he departed as a kamikaze. I was one of the fighter escorts that day.
Sorry to say I didn’t witness his last moments. After the Battle of Okinawa, most kamikazes failed to reach the American fleet because there were squadrons of enemy fighters three layers deep lying in wait far ahead of their task force. There was no way planes loaded down with heavy ordnance could make it to the enemy’s fleet. On many occasions, even the nimble escorting fighters failed to return to base from their missions. Most were probably taken out by the other side’s fighters.
As I’ve been saying, I loathed him from the bottom of my heart.
Why? No particular reason. There must be people in your own life that you just don’t get along with. Someone whose very presence you find exceedingly aggravating. For me, that guy was Miyabe.