In person, he looked like a lackluster middle-aged fellow. But once he flew off into the sky he and his aircraft sparkled. He called himself “a penniless ronin of the big wide world.” An oddball.
Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, too. When the pilot of a Gekkou, a new-model night fighter, downed a B-17 and was presented a saber to commemorate his exploit, Nishizawa is said to have audibly wisecracked, “I wonder how many kills it’d take for me to get one of those.” Nishizawa was a quiet man, but he exuded an indescribable vibe. He wasn’t the type to ever brag about his kill number. I think he made that remark because he was frustrated that the Zero pilots, constantly on the front lines, were rarely rewarded for their service. He was indeed another fine blade in the IJN’s arsenal. Yet they shipped him off to the Philippines on a troop transport and let that precious gem slip through their fingers. So stupid!
I didn’t mark up my plane to record my kills, but I remembered every single aircraft that I’d downed. I didn’t care if no one else knew, so long as I did. I kept a mental tally of each time I shot down an aircraft. I meant to eventually reach a hundred, even two hundred. They said back then that Nishizawa and Iwamoto each had over a hundred kills, and I wanted to rival them. They were stalwarts who had served since the Sino-Japanese War. They had spent years building up their kill records. I was a total greenhorn. But I always thought, Someday I’ll catch up to them…
Since there were no official records at that time, the only way to confirm someone’s kill number was to hear it from the pilot himself. The numbers that Nishizawa and Iwamoto mentioned to close friends spread from person to person. Since everyone accepted that those two aces could have easily made so many kills, the rumored numbers grew legs. You could try to exaggerate, but everyone knew your skill level. Lies didn’t pass in that world.
I loved to dogfight. It was in the skies that I felt the most alive. If an enemy shot me down, I’d have no regrets.
After the war I became a yakuza. Not that I looked up to them. In fact, I looked down on men who ganged up and relied on violence, more than anything else. But after the war, my fast living resulted in me getting dragged into that world. After roaming about in search of a place to hang it all up, I found that I had become an outlaw.
I’ve committed murder, too. I was sent to prison many times. My life was threatened many times. Yet by the devil’s luck, I’ve survived to this age. Compared to the battles we waged in the skies back then, giving and taking lives down here is like child’s play. Some issues can be resolved with money, and some lives can be saved with bodyguards.
There were no compromises in the sky, though. The tiniest mistake could get you killed. But if the enemy’s skills exceeded my own, I was willing to go down like a man.
To be sure, the other side had superior fighters, but they used simple hit-and-run tactics when attacking. So long as you could dodge their first strike, there wasn’t much left to fear. They rarely engaged in one-on-one dogfights. While the Zero was getting on in years, they were well aware of its terrifying fighting prowess.
I would lure the enemy into dogfights. If one of them attacked, I would purposely flee downwards, which was the more dangerous route, and get him to give chase. In that scenario, it was important to get him to shift his longitudinal axis line—the direction the nose of the plane is pointing towards. Machine guns fire along that trajectory. So if that line is angled away from you, no matter how many bullets are fired they won’t strike you. Just when he thinks he can lock onto you and shoot you down, he’s right where you want him. Pull your nose up, and then drag him into a contest of lateral turns. By the time he thinks, Oh, shit, it’s already too late. After the first turn, I’m up right on his tail and open fire with my machine guns. I downed dozens of planes that way.
I think there were very few Zero pilots who did things like that. Iwamoto, for instance, almost never engaged in dogfights. He was a hit-and-run genius. He’d spot an unfriendly before anyone else, sneak up behind him, deal him a blow from diagonally above, and then make a clean getaway, just like the Americans preferred to do. He also made a habit of targeting solo aircraft. In an ambush, instead of engaging right away he would wait until they drew back, and then cut them down from behind. It was like he was a master of the quick draw. He was the mirror opposite of Nishizawa, who was adept at orthodox dogfighting. Come to think of it, Iwamoto was like a man possessed by the spirit of aerial battle. He dedicated his life to sending enemy aircraft to oblivion. I, too, gave my all to air battles, but I didn’t become a fighter pilot until 1943. By that point, Iwamoto had already seen five years of combat.
If Nishizawa was a fine Masamune sword, then Iwamoto was the enchanted blade Muramasa. Of course, this is my own interpretation, but I don’t think it’s far off the mark.
Legend has it that wielding the enchanted Muramasa transforms you into a terrifying slaughterer. Perhaps the Zero was Iwamoto’s Muramasa. He was never able to blend into postwar society, and people eventually forgot him. I hear he died in obscurity of complications from battle injuries. Maybe postwar Japan was no longer a world where flying aces could live.
I didn’t fight for the sake of my country or for my fellow countrymen. Not even for my family. And certainly not for the Emperor—no, absolutely not.
I have no relatives, so I was never fighting for anyone else’s sake.
I was born a bastard. My mother was some guy’s mistress. She’d lost her own mother when she was a child. Her father died when she was fifteen. She probably became a kept woman just to survive. Her keeper, my father, was an up-and-coming trader. My mother died the year I started middle school, and he took me in.
In his large home lived his wife and my older half-brothers. They always looked at me as if I was a piece of filth. My father never gave me any affection, either, or even his surname. If anything, he made it clear that he considered me a parasite. He, himself, had been adopted into his wife’s family and was totally spineless, never able to stand up to his wife. He deserved nothing but scorn.
The attack on Pearl Harbor took place when I was in my fifth year of middle school. The following year, when I graduated, I sat for the Preparatory Flight Training Program. It had begun accepting large numbers of applicants since the start of hostilities with the U.S., which is why a bad student like me passed.
From that point, I never saw my family again. Well, they weren’t my family to begin with.
Once I became a pilot, I decided to live my life as a bushi, a warrior. It was my mother’s word. Her grandfather had been a vassal of the Nagaoka Clan and had died in the Boshin War. His son had been branded a traitor after the Meiji Restoration and had endured terrible hardship. He died destitute, leaving behind a fifteen-year-old daughter.
When I was a child my mother often said to me, “Samurai blood flows through your veins. Live proudly as a bushi.”
So for me, that war existed for my sake. I never fought for anyone else. It was for myself that I fought.
Just as Musashi Miyamoto fought purely for the sake of his swordsmanship, I fought as a mere fighter pilot.
I didn’t have any friends, either. I’d been friendless ever since I was little. What is friendship, anyways? Huddling together? Friendship in our society just means you hang out or go drinking together. I’ve never felt that I wanted such a relationship, not once.
My wife? I don’t have one. Never been married, not in my whole life. Of course, I don’t have any kids.