What’s more, I believe that I am unduly influenced by Fujikura, even as I oppose him. My nervous breakdown might well be called “Fujikura’s neurasthenia.” When, on occasion, I find myself in good spirits, possessed of a forthright warrior’s disposition, Fujikura’s voice inevitably intrudes upon me. Of course, he sometimes does come and talk to me in person, but for the most part, it is his words—what he has said and is likely to say—that haunt me, shattering my resolve.
“‘A forthright warrior’s disposition’? What does that mean?”
“Doesn’t it ever occur to you to doubt a war that militarists, capitalists, and politicians started on a gamble? Do you really consider it an honor to sacrifice your life in such a war?”
“No, you don’t really believe it. You’re just obsessed with the notion and too scared to question it.”
“Why don’t you take a good hard look, a patient look, at your innermost self, and at the condition of the war?”
And I offer my weak reply, closing my eyes. “Yes, I understand. I understand what you’re saying.”
Then an instructor’s voice displaces Fujikura’s. “What’s eating you, Cadet Yoshino?” And not one of those bitter old maids who hang on in the training units, but my favorite instructor, the gentle, plain-spoken, clear-eyed chief flight officer whom we all call “the long-nosed goblin of Kurama.” “You look depressed,” he says. “Open your eyes and examine the situation. Things have come to such a pass that no one can say the tragedy in Saipan won’t be repeated scene for scene on mainland Japan. If we don’t want to see our country destroyed, we have to pitch in hard. We have no alternative. I know it’s difficult, but you must follow me without qualms. You can’t grip the control stick while casting a backward glance.”
“I understand, sir,” I reply, snapping to attention in my daydream. Can there be such a spineless attack bomber pilot as I am, a man who understands a little of this and a little of that, a man who is half-assed in everything?
My energy drains away into fancies of an old hermit’s life (and here I am, a mere twenty-four years of age!), and then the reverie absorbs me utterly. . . . Alongside a mountain stream, deep in the hills and bathed by the sun, there stands a forlorn cottage. Bestowed with the blessings of birdsong and abundant fruit, and with a few books to read and a good country wifi to talk to, I will consign my feckless self to the vicissitudes of nature, like the grasses that grow silently and wither silently, locking all the old agitations away in my heart, and close my life in solitude and peace. . . . At other times I summon up as my ideal something rather more concrete. In this scenario, I’m pushing along a wheelbarrow of tomatoes on a farm of my own, or capering about with puppyish children at a district school, on some small island of terraced fields…. But then the whistle sounds beyond the deck, “Hoa-hi-hoa! Cease work in five minutes,” and I pull out of my stupor.
Speaking of Saipan, I heard the following tale from a PO in the mess hall. The POs there are generally a realistic, hedonistic lot, fat and flabby—not at all the “gallant” type. Anyhow, this officer said that on a small island off Guadalcanal two navy signalers, men who had been left behind all but dead, somehow managed to filch a canoe and make their escape. Open wounds festered on their legs, streaming with bloody pus, and they had nothing at all to eat. For several days they drifted with the tide, gnawing their leather belts. Finally they made shore on a strange island. Human voices were audible just beyond a cliff draped with grasses and tree branches. The men couldn’t tell whether the voices belonged to friend or to foe, but still they ventured to land. It turned out to be a Japanese army unit, and the two signalers were safely packed off to Saipan. From there, one of them was shipped back to Yokosuka, but the other, whose infection was not so severe, stayed on at Saipan, and when his health recovered, he was assigned to the island’s signal unit. On the fortieth day after his rescue the American troops started landing, and this signaler, aware now that he would not survive, despite having made such a harrowing escape, rapped out a message in plain language to all navy units as he went to his death: “Damn the Imperial Navy.
“It might be true, the PO said. I just don’t know how credible the story is.
We hear of three successive uprisings in Korea recently. Once I might have dismissed the rioters as a nuisance, but now I believe their actions may spring from a perfectly natural impulse. Japan talks about a lasting peace in East Asia, a peace on whose terms every nation can agree, but Japan has never said she will grant Korea her independence. What could be more reasonable than that Koreans should resent being asked to bow at shrines consecrated to the Japanese dead? No wonder they don’t share our concerns as to the outcome of the war, no wonder they resist conscription in a war that promises them no future. As for me, my fighting spirit burns when I recall the abuses that America, Britain, and all the other so-called “industrial” nations of the West have committed all over Asia for a hundred years, but I’ve rather indifferently tolerated our own nation’s actions in China and Korea. At the time of my birth, Korea was already our possession, and we have harbored no doubts about it, but apparently the question is not so simple. I understand why the Koreans believe they will be liberated should Japan lose this war, and if, capitalizing on Japan’s deteriorating military position, they take to the streets rather than be drafted before that day of liberation comes, I can understand that, too. Perhaps my weak heart sympathizes with a weak and oppressed people. I have no idea whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.
August 26
Insects sing constantly, and it’s quite cool, morning and evening. The tadpoles that once swarmed in the gutters at the barracks vanished before I noticed. My heart sinks deep, deep as it ever has. I received a severe reprimand from the division officer.
The fledgling sparrows, now barely able to fly, leap in flurries from the gutters to the eaves of the panoptic auditorium. The lecture on the science of war fades from view as I watch them, vacantly. Timidly the siblings launch desperately into flight. Nevertheless, they fly in order to live.
We are allowed considerable freedom now during solo flights, so I flew over Minamata the other day, where I could easily make out the Fukais’ place. The lines of the earthen wall enclosing it to the southwest looked lovely from the air. I dove twice in salutation. Neither Fukiko nor anybody else came out, though I flew so close to the ground that the roar of the plane shook the pine tree in the garden. It was a disappointment. In a field, children threw up their arms at me. I replied with a waggle of the wings and headed back. I wasn’t upbraided for any of this, as they didn’t find out about it, but today I flew out to sea and spotted a fleet of ships steaming along some twelve nautical miles south-southwest of Ushibuka, a town on the main island of Amakusa. The fleet consisted of an enormous battleship, escorted by two destroyers and two heavy cruisers. The ships dominated the seascape, leaving behind them five snowy wakes as they cruised over rough blue waters ruffled with whitecaps. Stirred by a tender pride, I set a course for the battleship, and, at an altitude 700 meters, whizzed by. No sooner had I passed over the ship, however, than her antiaircraft machine guns and high-angle canon opened up on me simultaneously, emitting sharp flashes of light. I was stunned and wheeled about in haste. At first I thought they mistook me for an enemy aircraft, but then I realized that they had in fact been firing blanks. I couldn’t figure out why they opened fire, though, and could only conclude that I had inadvertently served as a target for antiaircraft fire training. As soon as I landed at Izumi, I was called in by the division officer.