Naoki Hyakuta - The Eternal Zero

“So is the research over now?” she asked.

“Actually, not quite yet. A few days ago, I got a call from the veterans’ group for the first time in a while. There’s a man who was a Navy communications specialist at Kanoya, and apparently he remembers a few things about our grandfather. But not much, it seems. Like it’s just at the edges of his memory.”

“So are you not going to go?”

“Well actually, I want to see the place grandfather took off from for the last time. And I figure while I’m there, I’ll go see the man. After that, the journey to learn about Grandfather Miyabe will be over.”

“When are you going?”

“This weekend.”

Keiko thought for a moment then said, in a firm tone, “Can I come too? No, I mean, take me with you.”

The old Kanoya Navy Base was currently used by the Self-Defense Force. It was right near the center of the Osumi Peninsula, and Mt. Kaimondake lay to the southwest.

From Kirishima-ga-oka, a nearby hill, we had a sweeping view of the runway. We learned that they were still using the same one. Bunkers built sixty years ago still remained, too.

I felt very sentimental when I realized I was gazing out over the same scenery my grandfather had so many years ago.

There was a museum adjacent to the SDF base with various materials related to the Naval Air Corps on display. I saw a real Zero for the first time, too. It was far smaller than I had imagined. Some of the wills left by pilots were also on display, but I couldn’t bring myself to read them.

I felt I had to get out of there as quickly as possible, and left. Keiko stayed behind, reading some of the wills, but soon after came out with red, weepy eyes. I didn’t ask what she thought about them, and she didn’t volunteer any thoughts. The kamikazes’ sorrow and suffering was something of a common understanding between us.

We paid our respects to the Special Attack Force Memorial, and then left Kanoya city.

Former Petty Officer 1st Class Yasuhiko Onishi lived in Kagoshima city, on the opposite side from Kanoya across Kagoshima Bay. It was a three-hour trek via bus and ferry from one city to the other.

Onishi ran a small inn. Or rather, his son ran it while he enjoyed his retired life.

Keiko and I were shown to the inn’s drawing room. It was a sunny one that looked south over a small garden.

The most surprising thing we learned about Onishi upon meeting him was that he spoke the standard form of Japanese. When Keiko commented, “You don’t speak in the Kagoshima dialect,” Onishi laughed and said, “That’s because I’m originally from Tokyo.”

He spread open a large notebook on the desk. The pages were yellowed and the cover was falling apart. “I wrote down what I remembered of the war after it ended,” Onishi explained as he flipped through the notebook. “I’d written down the names of every one of the kamikazes that took off from Kanoya Base.”

I was sent to Kanoya in 1944—that’s sixty years ago now. I still can’t speak in the local dialect very well, but speaking standard Japanese is useful if you’re running an inn.

After the war ended, I thought about returning to Tokyo. But it had been ravaged by fires after the many air raids, my family had evacuated to our relatives’ place in Chiba, and there wasn’t much to return to. My wife and I were seeing each other here at that point, so I decided to stay put. She’d worked in the bomb shelters at Kanoya as part of the women’s volunteer corps. We never spoke to each other during the war, though. We only had our first conversation after the war came to a close.

Her family had run this inn. She had two older brothers who both died in the war. So I was adopted into the family and ultimately took over running the place. Yes, we get along fine.

My job at Kanoya was communications.

Comm specialists did a whole bunch of things, communicating with other units as well as with attack forces. But starting in the spring of 1945, a major part of the job was to receive wires from the kamikaze flights. This was very difficult, heartbreaking work.

By that time, confirming the results of a special attack had become a tall order. Even if a kamikaze successfully rammed himself into a ship, if there was no one out there to witness and report back, we had no way of knowing what had happened.

During the Philippines operation, the formations all had monitoring aircraft to report results, but by the Battle of Okinawa the monitors would be shot down if they sortied with the kamikazes, so none were deployed at all.

The promise that Vice Admiral Onishi made when he spoke to Shikishima Unit, that word of their achievements in battle would be delivered to the Emperor, had long been abrogated. The kamikazes died all alone without anyone knowing their last moments. How sorrowful that is.

So, how to confirm the results of kamikaze missions? Make the pilots themselves do it. Their aircraft were outfitted with radiotelegraphs so that they could make a dispatch right at the moment of the attack. Back then, the wireless phones of the Navy were plagued by static and noise, which made them useless. We had to rely on Morse code transmissions. Those dots and dashes.

A kamikaze pilot reporting “a sighting of enemy fighters” would repeatedly transmit a dot. If he was about to crash into an aircraft carrier, he would send a dash. A very long dash meant “I am about to make my final assault.” The pilot would hold down the telegraph key until the moment of impact.

When we heard that tone, our spines froze. It meant that at that very moment a pilot was about to lose his life in an attack. And the instant the tone stopped was the moment their life was snuffed out. But we didn’t have the luxury to grow sentimental and grieve their deaths. We had to measure the length of time from the start of the long tone to its expiration in order to gauge whether the pilot had successfully struck his intended target or been taken out my anti-aircraft fire. If the tone ended too quickly, we would judge that the pilot had been shot down by AA fire. If the tone went on for a while, we assumed the pilot had made a successful attack. Basically, it was up to us comm guys to listen to the transmissions and confirm the results of the attack.

The transmissions were the final messages the special attack pilots left in this world, and their way of conveying the results of their mission to HQ. From today’s perspective, that’s quite cruel to say the least, isn’t it? There should have been someone else present to confirm their achievements so the pilots could put aside all distractions and focus on striking the enemy ship. Yet they also had to send out a signal until their last breath in the way of a battle report. I can’t think of anything more heartless.

All the kamikaze pilots were truly fine young men. Most of them dutifully sent out long dash tones before their attacks. Even moments before their deaths, they were devoted to every aspect of their mission. They had to dodge terrifying ambushes by enemy fighters, wind their way through a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, then right before diving into an enemy warship, remember to send out a telegraph… Hard to even imagine. The transmitter was attached to their thigh, and in order to press the key they had to switch over and use their left hand on the control stick. To have such presence of mind even in such an extreme situation… On top of which, they hadn’t acquired the nerve through experience. It was a once-in-a-lifetime situation, and they still managed to pull it off.

I didn’t realize all this at the time. Now I can look back and appreciate how strong they were. None of them panicked in the face of death or lost his head.