Hiroyuki Agawa - Burial in the Clouds

We learned today that the Koiso Cabinet has resigned en masse. That incompetent, do-nothing government collapsed in a dither without achieving anything. What’s more, they had the nerve to say things like, “We resign with high hopes for the new cabinet,” or “The war hasn’t gone according to our wishes.” What are they thinking? Is anything at all, given the present circumstances, going “according to our wishes”? For the men at the front, a single mistake means death. How is it acceptable for the prime minister simply to resign, alive, all the while publicly admitting that his deficient policies steered the nation into this crisis? Not that I mind being rid of him, of course. But he is far too selfish and irresponsible, both in his thinking and in his behavior. I can’t begin to express my sorrow for the young men who fell victim to the incompetence of these politicians, young men whose deaths they rendered pointless.

Lieutenant Fujii cursed the Naval Academy graduates, egotistical men who always scurry to cover their own asses, but I hear that once he went into the battle, he fought honorably. He was making a run at a battleship when a Grumman intercepted him. He turned and, for an hour and a half, fought tenaciously to escape, until at last he was able again to home in on another battleship. He made three tries at it before plunging instead into an enemy carrier. Our fellow pilot Nagasawa radioed back with details as, one by one, the young trainees struck their targets, spitting fire. Finally he simply said, “Now I will go,” and flung himself straight into a battleship. Not one of these pilots was a so-called “career” military man. I can’t help comparing them, as they die, to General Koiso and his lot, and the comparison fills me with indignation.

In the early evening, six men who hadn’t flown since mid-March, including Togawa, Watanabe, and Shibuya, were suddenly called out. They are to be incorporated into a special attack force at another base. They set out overland a scant twenty minutes after being asked, “Are you ready?” and only five minutes after the decision itself had been finalized. They left the base quite literally “without a moment’s delay.”

At around three o’clock in the morning a handful of B-29s penetrated our airspace. I assume they were coming in low, as I heard an oppressive whine. We were simply too sleepy, though. And none of us bothered to get out of bed, taking solace in the idea that, anyway, we were all in the same boat.

Carrier bombers embarked on a special attack mission at eight twenty this morning. They are to take off from Kushira at around one in the afternoon, and, together with some carrier attack bombers, dive into enemy ships. And with this, the carrier bomber ensigns serving their duty-under-instruction are all gone. As for the carrier attack bombers, there is not a single flight-worthy aircraft left at Usa Air Station. It looks like I have survived again. I don’t say I am glad or happy, but still, I can’t help experiencing a certain emotion.

Finally it is a nice spring day again today. The sky is hazy but cloudless. The cherry blossoms have begun to fall at last, as fresh green leaves appear to take their places. I don’t know if it’s a characteristic of the cherry trees in Kyushu, but they have certainly been in bloom for a long period of time. The feeling of the wind on my skin reminds me of the evenings along the canal in Kyoto in May or June. Trifoliate oranges and lily magnolias. Broad beans, rapes, daikon radishes, lotus flowers, violets. Gazing at the fields, and at the flowers that cover them, makes me feel keenly how alive I am.

After seeing off the carrier bomber squadron, we moved, the cadets to the shelter on the other side of the Yakkan River, and we to the girls’ school. As we left the barracks, I noticed Fujikura’s military cap where it lay on a shelf, covered with dust. Obviously we had forgotten to give it to his family. We are all excited to be bunking in the large room of a school building, as if we were at a training camp. We laid tatami mats out on the floor, put up some shelves, organized our trunks and flight jackets, and hung up a calendar. We even arranged some flowers, exercising a great deal of organizational spirit. A forty-tatami room for fifty men. What with all our gear cluttering up the space, three men will have to share two tatami mats when we sleep.

Rumor has it that Usa Air Station will be disbanded as of May 1. We’ll be dispersed to bases all around the country. Some of us may undergo training in ground combat, though, again, probably as a part of a special attack force. It doesn’t really matter, but still I want to die in the sky, if possible. It seems our recent military gains are far too small, given the number of radio messages that come into the base. What’s more, considering what we do hear, the enemy force doesn’t seem to be at all weakened. Their landing force has advanced up to four kilometers on Shuri. Why is this happening? When special attack aircraft target a battleship or an aircraft carrier and shift into position for a charge, they send out a coded message such as “I will now attack.” Some speculate that many of the planes are downed by antiaircraft fire between the time they send this message and the time they actually reach the target, and that’s why the results are disappointing. I don’t know what to think. It just makes me anxious.

From one of the classrooms echoed the chorus of “Der Leiermann.”

We were raided twice by B-29s.

I was assistant officer of the day today. At one point I left the OD’s room and stepped into the gun room to have breakfast. The moment my chopsticks touched the rice bowl the desk heaved upwards and thrashed me in the face. Before I knew it, I was crawling on the floor amid the clay debris of the walls. As I made my way out of the room, I noticed a man off to my side, already dead. I still don’t know who it was.

We had received word early on that some B-29s had left their base in the Marianas, but the Kure Naval District stood down to Defense Condition 2 at around eight twenty, and, following suit, our base issued the “all clear.” So we were taken by surprise. Ten B-29s attacked at eight thirty, and twelve more came in at eight forty-five, dropping one bomb right in front of the OD’s room, and another onto the telegraph room next to it. If I hadn’t left the OD’s room to have breakfast, I would, to say the very least, have been seriously injured. During the second raid, the sentry at the gate, a veteran in his mid-forties, lost his head. He kept running around and screaming, neglecting to take shelter. We had to punch him to get him to lie down on the ground. My eardrums had had it, and for a while I lived in a mute world. It was a trifling raid, but it inflicted enormous casualties, and the death toll neared two hundred. That figure includes seven carrier attack bomber students and two carrier bomber students. It was unfortunate that many of the men were gathered at the breakfast table at the time of bombing, since the alarm had been called off. The biggest mistake was that Usa Air Station had been under the jurisdiction of Kure Naval Station, when it should naturally have been under Sasebo.

A body without a head, an arm without a body, and what looked like a lump of guts. In addition, agonizing howls from the medical ward, as surgeons amputate legs without anesthetic.

Time bombs scattered about the airfield have put it totally out of commission. We have difficulty communicating orders, and make little progress recovering bodies. I go out with a pail to pick up stray hands, or legs with the shoes still on. A brain bisected by shards from a bomb looks like a cross section taken along a fault line. As was the case with Fujikura, men who die from injuries like this shed very little blood.