The general public seems to think that only the bravest men, the men who have unswerving loyalty, ever volunteer for the special attack force, but that was only at the earliest stage. Now that headquarters has fully adopted the tactic, they use our superior officers to recruit volunteers. “Will you step forward?” the officers ask, or “Will you raise your hand?” And at last even a man like me feels compelled to raise his hand, heavy as lead. Ostensibly the decision is voluntary, but psychologically speaking, it’s downright coercion. And with that, we give them free rein to choose whomever they want to choose. I will have very little chance of survival if I simply continue to drift along. So I am contemplating some extreme measure to save my life, and my life alone. It is all I ever think about, night and day. Professor, please do not reproach me for being selfish, unless you really do want me to crash into the enemy alongside my comrades. I shall be content if you only consider me an impossible fellow. I have no power to save Sakai and Yoshino. We are already too far apart in our thinking. All I could ever do is make them angry; I could never make them listen. Even Kashima, the man we all would have thought furthest from being a fighter, routinely sends in from the torpedo boat camp in Kawatana (though never, of course, to me) lines like: “You guys come in from the air, I will come in on the water,” or “Be that as it may, we must set about preparing for our journey to the other world.”
I have thought of various methods. One option is to get myself badly injured in an “accident,” to the extent that I won’t be able to fly again. But as I observed the results of the accidents on our base, I had to conclude that this plan simply offers too little chance of survival. My second idea supposes that enemy troops land on Formosa or in southern China and build a base. When it is time to make my sortie, I will fly to that base and desert, giving myself up as a prisoner. If I succeed, my survival will be all but guaranteed, and I assume I would be able to return safely to Japan once the war ends. The problem is that unless I have some way to inform the other side of my plan in advance, I will naturally be shot down by their fighters or antiaircraft guns before I ever reach the base. This plan, therefore, has little chance of success. So, I started to give shape to what has been vaguely on my mind ever since I dared choose to be a pilot back at Tsuchiura Naval Air Station. Namely, I am thinking of crash-landing on some island while engaged in a special attack mission. From now on, our sorties should be directed mainly at the Ryukyu Islands or the area around Formosa. As you know, there are a lot of handy little islands along the way, islands with few inhabitants, small garrisons, and poor communications. Or, I started to think, maybe a desert island would do, depending on the circumstances. So I have been collecting maps of the Ryukyu Islands and reading “castaway” stories like Robinson Crusoe, studying all the parts that may prove helpful. I will take off, proceeding as usual until we near the island I have chosen, at which point I will feign engine trouble or something like that. First, I will stray from my formation and release the bomb. Then I’ll take the thick cushion from the seat and apply it to the instrument panel so as to protect my head on impact. Finally, my belt securely fastened, I will close the throttle and ditch the plane tail first into the water, with landing gear pulled in. Needless to say, the aircraft will go to pieces, and it might end up nose down in the water. But in any case, it will not sink immediately, giving me enough time to unfasten the belt and escape. After that, I should be able to swim to the island. Judging from the present situation, they won’t be in any hurry to rescue me (!), even if they do learn about the accident, and nobody will ever know whether or not my plane really had trouble in the air.
I still have some problems to solve, food, for example. But my plan is taking shape quite sensibly along the lines laid out above, and about ninety percent of it is now in place. However, one thing is strange. As the blueprint of my escape plan comes into focus, a certain indefinable emptiness sweeps through my mind. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but suppose I somehow manage to survive on the island. There I am, spending my days fishing or whatever, when all of sudden I spot a detachment of the special attack force overhead—my comrades, roaring atop the clouds and heading south. And after they are gone there remains only the sky, absurdly bright and tranquil, and that hollow tint of it vividly strikes my eyes. So far as I can tell, it’s not that my conscience is bothering me because what I intend to do is cowardly, and it’s not exactly a fear of solitude, either. I fully intend to dodge the pointless death marked out for me here, but when I picture the color of that sky, the prospect of survival also begins to seem dreary. I can do nothing with this strange, empty, enervating void, so I will simply have to root out this feeling.
Actually, we occasionally hear that among the many who make their “Will Die, Will Kill” sorties, there are some who ditch their planes more or less in the way I have in mind, and they survive, marooned on an island somewhere. These men didn’t follow a deliberate course of action, or so it seems anyway. They just fell into a funk along the way, and desperately ditched their planes on an impulse. But mine is a calculated move, planned far in advance, and this is doubtless what makes me feel so hollowed out. And now I’m thinking: Setting off in such a frame of mind, I might be impelled by the opposite kind of impulse, an impulse that says, “Maybe it’s actually easier just to go ahead and die.” And thus I may end up meeting Fate with all my comrades, which is not impossible. I expect I will have to suppress that impulse by sheer willpower. I used to be a diffident student. I had my doubts about the value of studying the Manyoshu as it was, and now I can’t possibly make it my mission to survive in order to work on it further for my comrades. Maybe that partly accounts for the emptiness I feel. I close my eyes, I strain my ears, but from nowhere do I hear a voice saying: “You must live. Don’t think about the others. It’s all right. You deserve to survive.” Needless to say, I am certainly not trying to coax any such words out of you. When you cannot accept this war, when you are poised to take a different path and watch your friends die before your very eyes, it is agony.
However, Professor, I intend to sustain myself and to endure the ordeal of this strange void, and if I am to suffer unspoken accusations, then I will endure them, too. When Japan stages its next big operation, and you hear that I made a sortie and am missing, please conclude that I’m probably alive on some southern island where I ditched my plane. I will wait for the war to end, and surely I will return to Kyoto. Would you welcome me? And if my attempt fails, and you get news that I “died in the line of duty” (?!), then please remember, from time to time, that there was one naval ensign among the men who came under your tutelage who just could not approve of this war, and that he died, rejecting it to the end.
When I write, I always end up producing a long, incoherent letter. I’m sorry about that. But setting aside our struggles, you yourself must be leading a terribly hard life. This might be the last letter I send you till the very day I make my sortie, but please take good care of yourself. And finally, I have a favor to ask of you. When we were stationed in Izumi, we visited, on every outing, a family in Minamata by the name of Fukai. They were very kind to us. The head of the household is Mr. Nobunori Fukai, and he has a daughter called Fukiko. I have already explained my plans, but in our situation nobody knows what the future holds, and if I die and Yoshino survives, I would like you to act as a go-between for Yoshino and this girl.