I thought I knew, in a general sense, who the Kamikaze pilots were. This tiny slice of my worldview went up in flames when I saw Memoirs of a Kamikaze on the shelf at the main library in Matsumoto, Japan.
On the cover was an image that didn’t fit at all my idea of what a kamikaze fighter would look like. He was just a kid; a child, dressed up like a World War II pilot for Halloween. He was probably too young to get a driver’s license.
This
was not the face of a suicide bomber. This was a kid trying to figure out where
he was and how he got there, and what the hell was going to happen to him.
His name is Kazuo Odachi. He joined the Imperial Japanese Navy at 16 as a pilot trainee. His story is worth telling.
Unfortunately, Tuttle Publishing doesn’t like it when people copy their stuff so I have to put into my own words all the passages that made me stop and think and wonder and close my eyes against the unsettled feeling blowing up in slow-motion in my gut. My apologies in advance to Mr. Odachi.
Introduction to a Survivor’s Memoir
A
year after joining the Imperial Japanese Navy Kazuo Odachi was assigned – without
being told until after the fact – to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps. Their
mission was simple and, to us outsiders, horrifying. Everyone is familiar with
the basics.
Yet the story involves so much more than pilots being sent out to sea to destroy things and people in acts of self-annihilation. That there exists a memoir of a former Kamikaze pilot tells us that things were not so straightforward.
Odachi went out on eight Kamikaze missions all told. Eight times he failed to spot an American ship to crash his plane into and returned to base to find that others – his fellow airmen, his friends – had succeeded.
From a certain, perhaps arguable, mindset they were the lucky ones; the honored; the ones giving everything for their country while others continued living unaccomplished lives. The author seems to share this mindset at times, but ultimately he reviles the way he and so many pilots were “volunteered” to commit suicide, and at a point when it all seemed so futile.
Odachi kept his life and experiences as a Kamikaze pilot secret for decades, even from his wife. At 95 years of age, long-retired from a career in law enforcement, he still practices the Japanese martial art of kendo, conveying to those who listen the discipline inherent in the practice.
Only through luck and fate did Mr. Odachi survive the war.
Only through his experiences might we understand, to some small degree, the story of the famed and feared Kamikaze.
To Fight in the Sky for Japan
Kazuo Odachi and his friends were barely out of elementary school when they became enamored with the idea of flying. Sneaking through a hole in the barbed wire fence surrounding the nearby Tokorozawa Airbase a short distance west of Tokyo, they’d watch “the giant mechanical birds” take off and soar in circles high above their heads.
Still just 14 years old when Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, Odachi decided to apply to enter the "Yokaren" – the elite Naval Aviator Preparatory Course, a preliminary training program for navy pilots.
“I wanted to fight for Japan in the sky,” he writes.
His mother objected, but tearfully gave in when young Kazuo explained that the family would lose face if at least one of their sons didn’t fight for the emperor. His father, he says, remained silent.
The Yokaren entrance examination consisted of high-level Japanese, mathematics, and science. Applicants also had to memorize the "Imperial Rescript to Japanese Soldiers and Sailors". Odachi describes this as “an introduction to the martial spirit of Japan”. Read that however you will.
Odachi traveled to Mie Prefecture, just east of Nagoya, and took the exam with hundreds of young men – boys, really – from all over the country. He passed, as did Kinzo Kasuya and Hiroshi Toyoda, two of his friends from school.
Those two friends would not survive the war.
Truncated Training
Odachi was given an elaborate send-off by the people of his village as their first-ever home-grown Yokaren trainee. A big party was held at his house the evening before his departure. A parade accompanied him the next morning to the local shrine; young children at the front carried a huge flag reading “Congratulations Kazuo Odachi, Yokaren Trainee!” Trumpets and drums played military tunes. Town officials and school teachers walked behind him, all the way to the shrine where he was given a blessing by the waiting Shinto priest.
All the way back through town to the train station adults and children cheered and waved and displayed flags of “Congratulations” and Good Luck”. At the station everyone turned to bow in the direction of the Imperial Palace. The mayor launched into a speech - “Allow me to offer a few words of encouragement to our brave young Mr. Odachi who is about to embark on his adventure to fight for Japan...” – and Kazuo Odachi answered with a few words of his own. “Thank you all for this send-off. I will do my best to serve with honor and repay your kindness with dedication to duty.”
Amid a flurry of red and white flags Kazuo boarded his train, thinking to himself that everyone probably thought he’d be dead before long.
Kinzo Kasuya and Hiroshi Toyoda got on the train at the next station. For them, it really was their final goodbye.
First Time in a Zero
Some among the 60 fighter pilot trainees arriving in Nagoya were quickly weeded out. The rest were rushed through basic training in three months instead of the scheduled four. Odachi was then sent to Oita, on the southwest Japanese island of Kyushu, for fighter pilot training. There he would learn to fly the Model 32 “Zero” fighter plane. After a month the instructors began shouting, screaming at the trainees that there was no more time to waste, they needed to dispatch and join the fighting.
Soon it would become painfully clear why, after barely one month of their four-month training regimen, they were suddenly sent off, to join operations across the Pacific.
As Odachi put it: “The war was not going well…Japan needed Zero pilots in battle theaters ASAP.”
Nowhere is it stated, but the thought is inescapable: by this time, was the idea of a Kamikaze Corps already taking shape?
The Zero
Designed as a carrier-based fighter for the Navy, the Zero became a part of the Japanese forces in 1940 which, according to the Imperial Calendar, was the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of Japan. The Zero was commemoratively named after the last number of this year.
First proven as a capable fighter plane in the air battles over China, the Zero became a constant in dogfights with American planes in the skies over the Pacific. Initially outperforming enemy aircraft, the Zero would by 1944 gain a reputation as obsolete compared to the advances in the planes of their adversaries. Modified versions included, over 10,000 Zeros were produced.
As Japan grew increasingly desperate, the Zero was given one final feature: the capacity to carry a single bomb under its belly, for detonation upon impact.
Cockpit Lunches
Odachi and his fellow airmen flew long distances in the course of their missions, even before the darkness of the Kamikaze Forces fell over them. It seemed almost as if they were going on a field trip with their classmates as they all brought lunch along with them: rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves, to be eaten in the cockpit.
Interesting, Odachi notes, is that they were not in the habit of bringing anything to drink. The Zero, after all, was not equipped with a lavatory. If absolutely necessary, he says, they would relieve themselves right there in the cockpit, with the one consolation – besides the relief – that the heat from the engine would quickly dry everything out.
Formosa Air Battle
Odachi describes the October 1944 Formosa Air Battle as his first real taste of combat. American forces were attempting to wipe out Japanese installations on Taiwan while Japanese planes tried to shoot them down before they had a chance. Significant aircraft losses for Japan would deprive them of their ability to protect their surface fleet in future operations.
Flying over the water at 350 kilometers per hour Odachi spotted an American F6F Hellcat up ahead. Closing in on each other at a speed of 200 meters per second, Odachi could think only of timing his shots: firing first at a distance of 500-600 meters then veering off at the last second to avoid a collision. He’d get him in the belly if he could.
They both fired, passing each other so close Odachi thought the Hellcat’s propellers might slice right through his neck. As the Hellcats flew faster than the Zeros, giving chase was of no use and Odachi returned to base along with those in his formation that remained.
50 planes had gone out on that sortie. 17 never returned. Back at base Odachi and his mates sat in their half-burned barracks quietly drinking sake, seventeen empty coffins covered in white cloth lying nearby. He had no idea if any American planes had been shot down in the fighting, but he did know one thing: they had little chance competing with the Hellcats.
The "No.1 Rapid Mission" and the Kamikaze Special Attack Initiation
Ten days after Formosa came the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, a confrontation which, many understood, would have a heavy hand in directing the outcome of the war. If General MacArthur and the US Forces could retake control of the Philippines, Japan would be cut off from its supplies in the southern Pacific, making a defense of their homeland a dire proposition.
"No.1 Rapid Mission" was Japan’s strategy of using the Imperial Japanese Navy's last four carriers to lure the U.S. fleet toward the Northern Sea. The twin Japanese battleships, the Yamato and the Musashi, would enter Leyte Bay from the west and attack the convoy transporting American troops while Japan’s fighter pilots would attack US carriers defending the convoy.
Things didn’t go well for Japan. With the destruction of most of Japan's carriers and battleships, and with few ships and aircraft left, Japan found itself in desperate circumstances.
Invited to Volunteer to Die
The moon and the stars in the Philippine sky provided enough light for Odachi to see what was going on there at Clark Air Base. It was just unclear what it meant.
Under a canvas sheet hanging from bamboo poles a dozen-odd high-ranking officers were gathered. Odachi and his men stood in rows, watching and waiting.
A mid-level officer shouted at the airmen to step forward. Then the highest-ranking officer under the tarp stood up and, without giving his name, began to speak.
The situation was dire, and Japan was running out of aircraft not to mention men who could fly them. The only path to victory, the officer explained, was for each remaining plane to be loaded with a bomb, and for each pilot to fly off and “become one” with his plane. In line with the burden of duty and loyalty, Odachi and the teenage boys around him were being asked to fly themselves headlong into the enemy’s ships as part of the special attack force.
“I trust you understand the solemnity of this calling,” the officer said, adding that all who agree to this undertaking should raise their hands. It was not, he said, an ultimatum, but a personal decision. But Odachi saw it for what it was: a demand to volunteer to commit suicide.
For a silent moment no one raised his hand. Then one of the officers shouted at them to raise their hands if they agreed. Slowly, one boy raised his hand. Then another, then some, then some more until all had their hands in the air. Odachi looked up at his own hand, the stars of the Southern Cross far beyond his reach, and wondered to himself how many days he had left on this Earth.
He was 17.
Silence Before (and After) the Storm
Pilots – Kamikazes – were told of their assignments the night before. Odachi describes how they would hear footsteps around 9pm, then would all sit and listen as the orders were read: First bomber this pilot, second bomber that pilot, escorted by so-and-so…” And then those whose names had been called and those whose hadn’t would be left to ponder it all together.
“You go tomorrow. I’ll probably follow you the next day.” This, Odachi writes, was the only thing those whose names were not called could say to those whose names had.
After each sortie the mood was equally somber, though in a different way. Odachi tells of how, when someone returned from a suicide mission the others around would say things like “Oh, you’re back?” and “You still here?” They’d sit and burn incense and drink sake, all of them knowing it could be any of them any day. He also describes, as best as one can, their mental state through it all: with the line between life and death becoming almost non-existent there was a permeating serenity among him and his fellow airmen. Facing their own mortality every day, every moment, brought with it a sense of poise, even a lightness of mood, at least for one who may be called to die at any time.
Odachi says he was sure he would die in his plane, and wanted to just get it over and done with so he could join those who had perished before him, adding that there was no way he could ever shoot down 80 American planes, but if he could fly his Zero down the elevator shaft of an aircraft carrier he could take out 80 planes, thousands of men, and one massive ship, all at once.
That, he believed, would be “a life well spent.”
Such is the state of mind that war creates, I guess.
Dance of the Fireflies
The summer of 1945 saw a temporary halt to Kamikaze missions. Then in August a new order came for Odachi and the other volunteers who made up the 24th Taigi-tai (“Great Cause Corps”): employ all operational aircraft in a suicide attack on enemy shipping around Okinawa, two days hence.
Odachi writes of the strange suddenness of the order, coming after two months of silence. Stranger was the lack of intelligence indicating there were carriers in the region. Regardless, Odachi thought that this would surely prove to be his last mission.
The night before their sortie Odachi and three of his fellow designated airmen were walking past an area of rice fields on their way to a tavern in a small nearby village. In the darkness fireflies lit up the air over the rice plants. They swarmed around the four men, crashing again and again into their heads and faces and bodies.
Odachi noted that these fireflies were much smaller than the variety he knew from home. Watching them flit and dart, leaving trails of light that quickly disappeared behind them, Odachi thought of both their beauty and their collective fleeting existence – as well as of his own, as he was sure that after tonight he would never see fireflies again.
August 15, 1945
The primary goal of the pilots of the Taigi-tai was to inflict as much damage as possible on the US Pacific fleet, with special attention given to carriers and destroyers. Sacrificing a Zero – and a life – on a mere convoy ship was not a priority. But on this day Odachi and the others were given a simple order: find something to target – anything – and die destroying it.
Bombs were strapped, in some cases with rope or wire, to the bellies of their planes. This was a one-way mission. Their last.
On August 13th, 1945, Odachi and his fellow pilots were prepared for annihilation. The weather, however, kept them grounded until the 15th, giving them another two days to live and prepare to die.
Thirty-odd Zeros were to depart in teams of four. Odachi was positioned on the front line of the first section, off the back of the leader’s left wing. The engines roared as they sat on the runway, prepared to leave the Earth one last time. Dust and dirt swirled and circled the planes. The lead pilot stretched his arms out, hands open, a signal to the ground crews to pull the stoppers from out under the wheels of the planes. As the leader’s Zero started to crawl forward, Odachi let his own plane lurch forward.
In the tumult of impending oblivion a vehicle came hurtling toward the roaring aircraft. A soldier in the vehicle was shouting, but his words were swallowed up by the deafening noise of the planes. He then crossed his arms over his head, a sign that something was wrong.
The leader, Odachi, and the entire formation stood still. The vehicle slid to a stop in front of the leading plane – and it was then the order could be heard: “Abort!”
Kazuo Odachi says without a shred of doubt that had that vehicle come any later, even a minute, he would not have lived to tell his story.
The Order of Nightmares
Decades later, Odachi says he still has nightmares about that one last order to sortie. It made no sense to have a squadron of fighter pilots attack a bunch of convoy ships sitting in the waters off Okinawa. Surely it was known that Japan was headed for complete surrender under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. What could have been the rationale for sending those remaining airmen to their deaths? And in a mission that in itself was basically useless?
Odachi does not mince words in his accusations that the brass cared little about their lives. He writes that he wants to believe his superiors “were in the fight with us, if not in body then at least in spirit, and would not sacrifice us lightly if there was any other way.” His only conclusion is that it was wished to be stated to the Americans that every last one of Japan’s Kamikaze pilots had died, and thus the danger they presented was no more.
To this day it remains unknown who ordered that final, meaningless sortie, or who the mind was behind the whole idea of the Kamikaze Corps.
The Allure of Taiwan
After all Zeros were surrendered Odachi and his fellow former Kamikaze pilots were sent to a village among the mountains of central Taiwan. Among rich green rice fields three straw-thatched houses were built for them, by order of the village mayor. They were taught by the locals how to farm, using the tools and implements provided.
As the days passed in this place, a world away from life in the Kamikaze Corps, Odachi felt the ever-present specter of death finally begin to lift and dissipate. Working the fields in peace and bare feet, he and the others felt like they had returned to their childhoods. It was a completely foreign world, a distant planet, when compared to what they had experienced in the Kamikaze Corps.
They cultivated vegetables and sugar cane in the oppressive late summer heat. They harvested their crops in November. In this climate crops grew faster than in Japan, and could be grown twice a year at least. All kinds of fruit grew here as well; 500 meters above sea level even apples could be grown. By all accounts, Taiwan was a wonderfully idyllic place to live.
They got on well with the villagers, chatting in the evenings, many of the adults and children able to speak Japanese to some degree. Odachi and his friends began talking about staying here permanently, anxious as they were about the future of Japan and their own fortunes as former Kamikaze pilots walking among the occupying American forces.
The village mayor offered to give Odachi and his men land, and even promised to find them wives in an endeavor to get them to stay. After many days of deliberation, Odachi and about 15 others decided they would stay in the mountains of Taiwan, convinced they would be happy living out their days there.
Then in December the American troops arrived. Odachi and all the rest were forced to return to Japan.
The Return Home
They were told they would be sailing for Kagoshima, at the southwestern tip of the Japanese archipelago, on a Japanese vessel. On the prescribed day they discovered they were being loaded onto an American ship instead. Odachi describes vague fears of being taken to America, or simply being killed and having their bodies dumped into the Pacific.
On board the ship, Odachi says, was the first time they had any direct contact with American forces. They wanted nothing to do with them; hated them. Both sides kept their distance, the Americans thinking, in Odachi’s mind, that these suicide pilots were a crazed, maniacal bunch. The whole idea of the Kamikaze Corps had to be a completely insane concept to them. “They must have reckoned us,” Odachi writes, “to be a bunch of insane freaks who despised life.”
For two days the ship was tossed around by an angry ocean. Odachi and his men spent most of that time throwing up over the side. Eventually though the sea and the skies grew calm, and presently the unmistakable conical silhouette of Kaimon-dake, a mountain at the southern tip of Kyushu’s Satsuma Peninsula, came drifting into view. This was a sight Odachi and his men knew well, for they had seen this mountain almost every day during their Yokaren training that seemed ages ago but in reality was barely two years removed.
Air raids had turned the city of Kagoshima into a burned-out wasteland. Odachi and his buddies were directed into a classroom in an elementary school building that seemed barely able to stand. They were told by an American officer to go home and find work. Drifters, he said, would be locked up. Odachi writes that he thought the officer was being a bit dramatic, but still, none of them knew what state they would find their hometowns in.
After a night in Kagoshima Odachi and the others were put on a train for Tokyo, each of them holding a ticket to their respective hometowns. Along the way they saw many more cities and towns burned to ashes much like Kagoshima. Then they rolled into Hiroshima. Odachi writes that at that horrific sight it sunk in that Japan had been defeated.
Kagawa-san, one of Odachi’s mates, was getting off. Odachi asked him if he had anywhere to go. “I don’t know,” was his only reply. “Well, see you,” was all Odachi could say in return.
New Year's Eve Homecoming
The train rolled into Tokyo Station around 7pm on New Year's Eve, 1945. It was almost ten when Kazuo Odachi, still a teenager, walked through the front door of his home. “Tadaima!” he called out. "I'm home!"
Family and relatives who happened to be visiting all stood in stunned silence before finally erupting in relief and joy. “Kazu-san! Kazu-san!” they shouted as they rushed toward him. His mother stood motionless behind them, tears slowly welling up in her shocked, disbelieving eyes. It had been ten months since the last time he’d written. No one knew what had happened after that.
Kazuo had to excuse himself and go back outside, to the garden where he would strip off his lice-ridden clothes. His mother fed the fire as Kazuo soaked in the warm water of the tub. He writes that he doesn’t remember what they talked about, but it wasn’t the war.
Strength From His Departed Brothers
Despite his concerns of finding work – all his buddies harbored the same worries; what would they do once back home? – Kazuo Odachi fell into employment with the Tokyo Police Department. It was tough, challenging work, he writes. Surviving in post-war Japan was not easy. In those difficult times Odachi says he would see the faces of his deceased friends, hear their voices chiding him for getting down on himself. In his mind, in his memory, they were all still teenagers – as they would forever be. Odachi, however, was still around. He was one of the few who still had the gift of life, and it was his duty, as he saw it, to live not merely for himself but for his all buddies who would never return home, never have a career, or a wife, or children.
Keeping A Lid on the Past
From the time he joined the police force, Odachi never said a word to anyone about his former life as a Kamikaze. He was in the Naval Air Service, he told his friends, family, acquaintances, and the Police Department when he applied for work. Even some of those he was closest with would not find out for decades that he was part of that Great Cause Corps. Telling them would be useless, he believed, if not personally destructive. He may have gotten an elaborate send-off back when he was seventeen and on his way to fight in the sky for Japan, but now he would not be applauded but sneered at and despised.
Of course, Odachi and the others entered the Yokaren as normal cadet pilots. They weren’t signing up for any sort of suicide mission. But that is where they were eventually sent, by military leaders who, blinded by fervent, zealous, irrational loyalty to the emperor, thought nothing of their young lives.
Those teenage boys weren’t fanatical extremists. They were not driven to martyrdom by some crazed ideology. They were, in essence, volunteered by their superiors to die.
These are merely the bones of the story Kazuo Odachi has to tell. A story that, though seventy-five years old, remains important. A story that, through a series of miraculous turns of events, could be told by the man who lived it.
Mr. Odachi describes his thoughts, and the thoughts of his fellow pilots, throughout the book. He offers his take on what others at certain points might have been thinking. But he leaves it at that. He doesn’t venture to tell the reader what to think.
Therein lies, I believe, the most powerful part of his story.
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