Because I felt like he still held my life in his hands.
And what was that damn maneuver he had pulled?
The answer came to me immediately: a left-turn corkscrew loop, a move considered a secret technique among the Imperial Navy’s fighter pilots. With an aircraft locked on your tail, you quickly kicked in hard left rudder at the peak of your loop and got on the other aircraft’s tail.
I’d heard about it a number of times back in training, but none of our instructors could do it. One of them had seen it just once, though. A seasoned pilot serving since the Sino-Japanese War had pulled it off in a mock battle. “His plane vanished into thin air. It was like a magic trick.” The instructor had also said, “Virtually none of the Naval Air Corps’ surviving pilots can do it.”
Miyabe had pulled that very same maneuver on me. The technique was truly divine. I could scarcely believe airplanes could actually move in such a way.
But what surprised me even more was what had happened next. I’d had him squarely in my sights, yet my bullets had missed. Again, I soon figured out why—my plane had been slipping.
It’s difficult to explain. Basically, he wasn’t flying straight forward.
The first thing we pilots learn is how to fly straight and level. Beginners will typically have their aircraft inadvertently angled to one side. That’s referred to as “slipping,” and it gets thoroughly hammered out of flight students before anything else. It’s a basic part of flying. If your aircraft is slipping, then there’s no way your bullets will strike their target. A bomber’s bombs will absolutely miss, too, and so will a torpedo attacker’s torpedo. So straight and level flight is drilled into your head.
When he had cut ahead of me, Miyabe had purposely made his aircraft slip. I’d instinctively jumped on his tail. But when I chased directly after him, inadvertently I was slipping as well.
Do you see? My plane is right behind his. Two Zeros lined up one behind the other as they fly. Yet in fact both aircraft are sliding together. I opened fire under such conditions. And of course, the bullets arced away.
He hadn’t gone in front of me by accident. He’d tested me.
I realized then how he had managed to survive from Pearl Harbor up to that point. There was no way the Americans could shoot down a pilot with such skills. It was as though he was an Asura, a fighting demon.
I was knocked flat by an immense sense of defeat. Not only had I lost the dogfight, I had failed his test, too. When I put it all together, a black rage swirled within my heart. I swore that one day I would shoot him down. That night, in the pitch darkness of my room, I envisioned his aircraft spewing flames and falling from the sky.
America, Japan, none of that mattered to me. My enemies were each and every fighter pilot. I wanted to become a pilot who was second to none. That was my dream, my deepest desire. I know I’ve already said this, but I was not afraid of death at all. If I exhausted every effort in combat and then was shot down, that’d be sheer joy, far cleaner than dying in an air-raid shelter or from an illness like malaria or dengue fever. And I certainly didn’t want to grow old and become decrepit. Wouldn’t you agree?
And yet I wasn’t able to die in the sky. After the war, I found myself fighting for my life numerous times. I never once feared death. My body is covered in scars from sword cuts and bullets. Perhaps the Grim Reaper forsook me, and I wasn’t able to die. I never thought I’d live to such an old age.
This young man here with me was sent by the syndicate brass as a form of training and also, apparently, to act as my bodyguard. I wish they’d just mind their own business. I’m ready to give up my life anytime. But if I did, there’d be another unnecessary conflict. That’s why I keep him by my side.
I lost to Miyabe once. But it wasn’t a true defeat because he didn’t shoot me down. I didn’t really lose. Do you think that’s just a convenient rationalization? If so, you’d be incorrect. This isn’t about logic. He didn’t have it in him to kill me.
From that day on, my life became dear to me. I was afraid of dying in vain. That was the only time in my many years that I valued my own life. Until the day that I could shoot down Miyabe’s aircraft, I absolutely had to live. I couldn’t go off and die with that business left unfinished. My dream was to fight Miyabe and turn his fuselage into Swiss cheese with my guns and swat him down.
I couldn’t actually do that, of course. So instead, I wished to outlive Miyabe. I was determined to hear one day that he’d been shot down by unfriendlies, and then I would laugh at him. That would be my moment of victory.
He died. I won.
Does saying that make you hate me? If you do, you’ve got it all wrong. He died a kamikaze. It’s not like I killed him.
The aviators of the Rabaul Air Corps were soon called back to the interior. All of us were being reassigned. I was separated from Miyabe.
This sounds strange, but I thought to myself, Don’t die yet, Miyabe. He had to die before my eyes. And I had to survive until that day.
I became an instructor at Iwakuni Base. I was to teach the huge influx of student reservists.
Our job as instructors was so boring it made me sick. The reserves were given only one year of flight training. There’s no way anyone can become a competent pilot in a year. The students were passionate and very good, but even so, a year’s training was totally insufficient. What’s the point of producing such a vast number of useless pilots? I thought. As it turned out, the military was planning on using them as kamikazes from the very start.
I begged the flight commander repeatedly to send me back to the front, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.
In October of 1944, I brought the greenhorns with me to Wonsan, Korea, where I had to keep on teaching.
It was there that I heard of Shikishima Unit.
I had absolutely no interest in becoming a kamikaze. I had no issue with falling to enemy fire during combat, but I hated the idea of dying in a special attack. I wanted to die as a fighter pilot. I wanted to be cut down by a master whose skills outclassed my own.
In time, in Wonsan too, HQ recruited kamikaze volunteers. Everyone was given an envelope with a slip of paper inside. On the paper were three choices: “I strongly wish to volunteer,” “I wish to volunteer,” and “I do not volunteer.” We were supposed to mark one of the three options.
The commander said, “It’s entirely up to each of you. I don’t care if you choose not to volunteer. Consider well before you reply.”
I marked “I strongly wish to volunteer.” If I made any other choice, there was no telling what they might do to me. The military was that sort of place. I didn’t mind being shipped off to the front, but I couldn’t tolerate having my wings taken away and joining some island’s garrison.
—What if I’d been ordered to become a kamikaze?
I’d have crossed that bridge when I came to it. Even if I only started thinking about it then, it wouldn’t be too late. But I definitely wouldn’t have said, “Oh, all right then,” and gone off to my death.
The following January, a special attack unit was abruptly formed within the Wonsan Air Unit.
My name was not listed among those assigned to the first group. There were a dozen or so pilots that were selected, mostly student reserve officers, and they took off for the interior. They were to sortie from a special attack base on Kyushu.
Then a second and a third wave of kamikaze units were formed and sent off to the interior for their missions.