Burial in the Clouds (16 page)

During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the 1st Air Fleet deployed an extraordinary unit called the Shinpu Special Attack Force (a.k.a., the “Kamikaze”). It seems the fighters were fitted out with special bombs, and the crews hurled themselves, planes and all, into enemy targets. Well, I suppose we won't get anywhere in this war unless we resort to drastic measures like that. Any man who wants to drop out, let him do it now. For my part, I no longer have any reservations about this kind of tactic. My only worry now is that I can't get up in the air. Who knows when I will fly the Type-97 solo.

They say the commander of the special attack force, a Lieutenant S., got his training in the carrier-based bomber unit here, and that he left Usa shortly before we arrived. The women at Senbiki-ya in Beppu wept at the news of the kamikaze attacks, remembering what the lieutenant had told them only a few days earlier: “If I die, lay out an offering of
shiruko
and fruit.” So I'm told anyway.

November 5

Finally, after a long hiatus, we resumed training, starting with formation flights. From 500 meters up, I saw clearly just how bad this airfield is. Basically, it is nothing but a stretch of swamp. “Why don't we let the Yanks occupy the field for a while?” someone joked.

Flying in formation is hazardous. These aircraft don't shed their momentum as quickly as the intermediate trainers, and it's hard get a sense of space. I took three blows to the jaw for landing at seventy-five knots. I was fined one yen and fifty sen as well. M. had to cough up ten fifty-sen silver coins for damaging the tail of his plane as he taxied onto the apron. Failing to erase the blackboard neatly costs you two fifty-sen pieces. They will rack up a considerable sum of money by the time we graduate, so long as we continue to fly. From the previous class they collected two thousand yen.

When we land, we tend to the aircraft. The undersides of the wings and fuselages are liable to be caked with dirt, especially if you glide in over the mud. It's quite a chore to wipe it all off.

Sunshine soon fanned out through the clouds, revealing a clear autumn sky. Young trainee pilots engaged in dive-bombing drills. Now and again they plunged, with an almighty roar, down over the field headquarters, almost to the point of crashing into it. Their planes dropped headlong, generating clouds at the wingtips. One came in especially low, scattering willy-nilly a flock of birds perched on the roof. If the pilot had pulled out just half a second later, he would have been a goner. When you're up in the air, you tend to be so preoccupied with precision, lest you get a dressing down, that the danger tends to escape your mind.

“Reading the personal remarks you submit,” the chief flight officer commented, “I often come across such phrases as “I must cultivate my character.' Indeed, it is important to cultivate your character. But what we want now are men who can win the war. We will welcome any miscreant at all, so long as he can hurt the enemy. Do the very best you can to cultivate
your skills
.” He makes perfect sense, of course, but it's not so easy to cultivate our skills when flights are canceled, day after day.

Flight rations were distributed again, all manner of new goodies, like wine, black tea, “energy food,” an instant cinnamon drink.

November 10

As the sumo match set for the 14th approaches, the conflict between the recon students from the Naval Academy and us student reserves has been bursting to the surface. In any naval unit there is always considerable friction between Academy graduates and student reserves. On this particular occasion, however, we have a remarkably powerful lineup, including former collegiate sumo wrestlers, and the recon students have little chance of winning. The situation so frustrates them that they seize every possible occasion to pick at us, and deliver their corrections in the most spiteful of ways.

“Student reserves shall remain after everyone is dismissed,” declared a recon student (a deck officer probationer, to be specific) at morning assembly today. Unfortunately, someone had left a book on military intelligence, strictly confidential material, on a desk during the special gymnastics course yesterday, and the recon students confiscated it. First, we endured a round of blows. These men aren't experienced at the business, but they certainly throw themselves into it, pounding away heavily. It is awfully painful.

“There is a reason why you are so careless with confidential material,” said this deck officer probationer. “Namely, your spirit is more degraded than that of a common conscript, and you will receive a correction commensurate with that fact.” He then proceeded to place conscripts' caps on each of us (they'd gathered them up from the barracks), ordering us all to “hold a push-up” for twenty straight minutes. It was mortifying. The eyes of some among us brimmed with tears. These Academy men are happy precisely insofar as they manage to bully us in the most humiliating way they can devise. It has nothing whatsoever to do with maintaining military discipline, or with “guiding” their junior comrades. Only six or seven of the ensigns among the recon students ever initiate this sort of conduct, with ten or so more chiming in. Many others adopt a courteous attitude toward us, but it is always the ruder fellows who take the lead on occasions like this. And we can't defy them head-on because a wall of rank stands between us.

When the second half of the 13th Class (our immediate predecessors) arrived at this base with their commissions, the recon students were still uncommissioned midshipmen. The reserve students actually outranked them. Even so, there was endless trouble, or so I hear. One day a recon student failed to salute a student reserve officer who happened to be an ensign, and the ensign struck him. That night the entire 13th Class was summoned to the lecture hall. “Student reserve officers are strictly subsidiary to men from the Naval Academy,” they were informed. “It is absolutely outrageous for a student reserve to strike a graduate of the Naval Academy. You have sullied our illustrious tradition.” At that absurd declaration, a bunch of lieu-tenants and lieutenants junior grade (instructors assigned to the recon students) ganged up to pommel the 13th Class. No doubt pent-up anger toward our predecessors is making the situation all the more difficult for us.

Let yourself be seen folding your arms, or whistling, or simply placing your hands in your pockets—not to mention inadvertently failing to salute—and a recon student will descend on you. However, he will not administer his correction on the spot. “Come see me at eight tonight,” he will say, or “Come by after the special course,” leaving you to spend hours in fear. And when you finally report to his quarters, he and his fellows all fall in just for the fun of a good thrashing. Sometimes they beat you right in the middle of the airfield so all the enlisted men can see. But for the moment we student reserves hold back our emotions, finding consolation in a sort of motto: “Exercise caution each day, and get satisfaction in the sumo match.” The wrestlers' countenances change when they set in to practice. They look touchingly heroic.

The guidelines for the sumo match were announced yesterday. Each side is to field two teams of seven wrestlers, who will compete in a tournament. However, the recon students have been observing our practice sessions, and obviously they have concluded that they won't fare well against us. This afternoon they made a proposal: “Let's make it nine wrestlers each.” When we declined, they came back with yet another proposal: “Then let's make it a round robin of fifteen wrestlers from each side.” We asked why, but their reasoning was obscure. They are brewing something up, some way to pull rank on us so as to change the guidelines to their advantage. We once competed intercollegiately, in the catch-as-catch-can world of university students, but never once did we resort to such dirty tricks as these, no matter how desperately we wanted to win.

The recon students are all aged nineteen or twenty. They smoke and drink, some are already whoring around, and yet they are regarded by the public as the noblest of our warriors, as the very salt of the earth. The student reserves, “undermined by liberal education,” are nothing more than an annoying, impure, and perfectly tiresome lot in the eyes of these recon students. How distorted and peculiar their pride is!

My mother has a younger brother in Kobe and years ago his second son Sadayuki got it into his head to attend a military prep school. His parents opposed the idea, but he persevered. The boy wasn't at home when my mother and I visited the family to congratulate them on his graduation, and I remember my uncle saying, with a wry grin, “Don't know, but it seems we've got something of a freak on our hands.”

Only four days remain until the match. It appears that our instructors, Lieutenants Junior Grade S. and N. (both from the Naval Academy), are harboring mixed feelings.

November 13

Fujikura landed us in hot water again. Fine, let him stick to that defeatist attitude of his. The problem is that sometimes he goes too far. So long as he thinks and talks seriously, we give him an honest hearing, even when we disagree with him. But what he did today is inexcusable, as it entailed a good deal of trouble for others.

Seated beside the cigarette tray after lunch, Sakai was reading from the
Hagakure
when Fujikura stuck his nose into it. Written on the page were the four pledges of the samurai:

1. Thou shalt not fall behind in the Way of the Warrior

2. Thou shalt be of good service to thy lord

3. Thou shalt practice filial piety

4. Thou shalt be merciful and benevolent

Fujikura turned it all into a joke, rewording each entry:

1. Thou shalt not fall behind in the Realm of Famished Ghosts (a riff on the Buddhist Hell)

2. Thou shalt be of good service to thyself

3. Thou must understand that getting yourself killed is no way to practice filial piety

A recon student, Ensign Y., happened to be nearby making arrangements for tomorrow's sumo match, and he overheard Fujikura. Bloodthirsty as the atmosphere was, the recon students called him in at once. Fujikura returned some thirty minutes later, his face swollen up like a rock. The matter seems to have been referred first to the division officer, and then to the executive officer. Word soon spread that the blows might not fall on Fujikura alone, that the rest of us might be in for a correction, too, or else that Fujikura would take the blows and the rest of us be confined to barracks. Some reproached Fujikura, and others comforted him, but we were all apprehensive. However, toward evening, and rather more easily than we had expected, the affair was brought to a resolution. Only Fujikura and one other senior student were brought up before the executive officer.

“You've all got big mouths,” the XO told Fujikura. “An officer has to learn how to rein in his tongue. And by the way, never confuse the
Hagakure
with ‘Imperial Instructions to the Military.' The two things have nothing in common. There will be no need to pursue the matter any further. The recon students exceeded their authority. They overreached themselves, and I intend to admonish them. So don't worry, just put it out of your mind.” That was an uncommonly fair decision. It turns out that the XO plays a pretty nice game. One fellow advanced a theory that he is a descendant of the masterless samurai who was
expelled, during the so-called “cat-monster disturbance,” from the Nabeshima clan and was later to produce the
Hagakure.

Mr. Wang Ching-wei
*
has died in a hospital in Nagoya.

November 14

The day of the sumo match.

Purple curtains stretched around two sumo rings out behind the drill hall, and navy blankets, emblazoned with anchors, covered the four pillars. Facing the rings, seats were set up for the commander, the wardroom officers, and the officers of the first and the second gun rooms. To the left and right of these were seats for the recon students and the student reserves. Petty officers and enlisted men filled the seats further down.

The match was conducted as a tournament, according to the initial plans. From 1300 hours, the seamen divisions had their match. Once they had completed their semi-final bout, it was our turn to hold preliminaries. The bustle that had surrounded the rings gave way at once to complete silence, suffused with a kind of mute truculence. To a man, the wrestlers' adopted a fair-and-square attitude. Team 1 on our side won its match by a single point, but Team 2 lost, also by a point. This meant that Team 1 of the student reserves would compete with the recon students' Team 2 in the finals. Before that, however, the seamen had their final match, and the victory went to the carrier-based bomber trainees. But we took hardly any interest in anyone else's competition.

Finally, our spearhead wrestler, Cadet Murase, faced off against Ensign K. The instant they rose from their crouches, they threw themselves into it, heaving against one another fiercely. Presently they moved into belt grips. First, Murase was pushed outward, his body arching back. My heart pounded, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I thought he was done for. But not for nothing had Murase earned his reputation in sumo back at Waseda University. With a wrapping maneuver, he freed himself, and, in a flash, he pushed his opponent out of the ring. A loud cheer went up. Our second wrestler brought us another win. We lost the third and the fourth bouts, won the fifth, and then lost the sixth. In the end, the contest came down to a match between the two team captains. Never have I witnessed a more exciting fight. Deafening cheers rang out from both sides. Our captain was Shirozaki, a Ritsumei-kan graduate weighing in at seventy-three kilograms. We had firm faith in him, but nonetheless our faces flushed, and all of us, without being aware of it, leaned forward in anticipation. Shirozaki himself, however, approached the ring with an air of perfect composure, stood up, and, without a hint of shakiness, easily dispatched his opponent with an overarm throw. For a moment we were struck dumb, but then came the applause. At last we had won, and our fortnight-long grudge was satisfied. It was a load off my mind. I felt as if I myself had been in the ring.