At one-forty, in the middle of the night, the Yokosuka group folded their hammocks and left the barracks en masse. Will the day come, I wondered, when we meet again under that blue oak tree, as Kashima said in his poem, given that we can’t assume we shall live even to see tomorrow? Following navy custom, we simply raised our hands in salute and waved our caps, without shaking hands or patting each other on the shoulders. A lump rose in my throat, but with no opportunity to speak to Kashima, I just continuously saw the men off as they marched in their long line across the dark wintry grounds, all in their identical seaman’s uniform. With some of these men, I had kicked a ball about on the field, sung, and debated philosophy, until just two months ago. I will probably never see them again.
Kashima is rather bohemian. He acquainted himself once with the proprietress of a certain “tea house” in Miyagawa-cho. He hung out there all the time—all but boarded there. On another occasion he simply cut his classes and military drills, sojourning for a month at a hot spring in Aomori. Like Fujikura, he has been either harshly critical of the war, or else indifferent to it. But now I suppose he, too, has but one choice—namely, to bear his fate with courage, and fight battles. I wanted to say a word of farewell to thank him for the dried persimmons, but it was too dark for me to make him out in the long procession.
Fujikura and Sakai have also been assigned to the aviation branch. That means they will go to Tsuchiura with me. After the Yokosuka group left, the long row of hammocks looked like a set of gums with teeth missing. It was ominous. We were given travel expenses and briefed on the journey in the afternoon. We set forth tomorrow morning.
Tsuchiura Naval Air Station
February 20
It’s Sunday, but it looks like we won’t be allowed to leave the base for a while.
The chief instructor gave us a sermon after morning assembly. He said the reputation of student reservists like us is absolutely rotten, not merely in each operational unit, but at headquarters too. Our general slipshoddiness, he said, and our deficiencies as to loyalty, have drawn severe fire within the military establishment. Some even ventured to suggest that we student reservists are little better than monkeys dolled up in officers’ uniforms. So he wondered: Had we ever really made up our minds to devote ourselves to the navy? Didn’t some of us still regard navy life as a kind of interim arrangement? We should never entertain thoughts of visiting home, not even if our parents die. Each one of us shall perish in the decisive engagements of the war by this coming summer. Continue to be off guard, he admonished, and we would sully the tradition of the Imperial Navy. If we should ever find ourselves of two minds, suspended between the possibilities of life and death, we should without hesitation choose death. Etc. etc.
It’s not that we must prepare ourselves to die by summer. No, he is telling us simply to die. They never miss an opportunity to tell us to die. What, in the name of heaven, is their goal? Is it to carry the war through to completion, or merely to kill us all? If we really can save our country by dying, then by all means let us do precisely that. Since February 1, the day of the ceremony marking the assignment of the 14th Class of student reserves to the aviation branch, we have known that we must confront death. We are trying hard, lame though we may be, to brace ourselves for it, yet I cannot for the life of me believe that dying is itself the goal. It is pointless, no matter how you look at it, to rush headlong and heedless into the grave, and if I follow the chief instructor’s dictates to the letter, wouldn’t it qualify as “disloyalty” even to seek shelter during an air raid? I’m not a rebel like Fujikura, but even I took offense at the chief instructor’s words. After all, who made us give up our academic work? Who rounded up these “monkeys” and put them in uniform?
Our life at Tsuchiura Naval Air Station is simply inhumane. Cigarettes are strictly rationed. Not because we don’t have a sufficient supply, it is just that we should not in any degree be comfortable. So I seldom smoke, and when I smoke I feel dizzy.
As for correspondence, we are permitted only one postcard a week. But then the one postcard I wrote last week, to Kashima at Takeyama Naval Barracks, was returned to me because the censor said my handwriting was too small! I was instructed to write in a large hand, with characters the size of my thumb. I’d like to believe that all this bother actually contributes to my training. Anyway, I’ve grown used to treating a postcard on my desk as a treasure, and to debating whom I should send that treasure to each week until I’m quite at a loss, and I can’t say that there isn’t a kind of condensed pleasure in all this. Still, I don’t want to be such easy game as to consider it a meaningful exercise to sum up in just four lines of stamp-sized characters what is overflowing in my mind.
I told Fujikura that I think this war has historical significance, that, to say the least, Japan is obviously in a fateful crisis, that we do wish to give our all to save her, but that I can’t countenance entrusting our lives wholesale to a bunch of hysterical, fat-headed career officers—to men who regard us as monkeys undermined by “liberal education.” Fujikura said it is all too late. He opposes war on general principles, but he has always felt that there is something fundamentally wrong with this war in particular. He can’t say what exactly, but of this much he is certain: The war is essentially an extension of the so-called China Incident.[2] And what about the China Incident? As a matter of fact, he has given much thought to the matter, and cannot conclude, no matter how he looks at it, that justice was on our side. Japan should not have fought to begin with. We should have sought to settle the China Incident in such a way as to save face on both sides. Anyway, he said, that is all water under the bridge now. He may be destined to die before long, and there is nothing he can do. But, he added, not once has he ever wished to offer up his every effort, as I do. I’d very much like to discuss all this further with Fujikura if the opportunity arises. Strange to say, I noticed that, somewhere along the way, even he has ceased to use worldly terms like kimi and boku.[3]
We cleaned our quarters in the morning.
Those who needed a haircut visited the barber’s next to the canteen after the cleanup. It takes two minutes per head and costs fifteen sen. It’s certainly cheap, but what’s more amazing is the speed. The barber’s clipper makes three or four round trips on the scalp, and it’s done. We all ran back, with bits of soapy foam clinging to our ears. Then we had our pictures taken, one group at a time. We posed with our caps, on which our names had been chalked, in front of our chests. Our heads were all shiny, and we looked just like a group of convicts.
Sang martial songs from 1600, including “Lord Kusunoki and His Son,” “Death Squad,” and “The Brave Fight of the Akagi.” The sun was setting, and as we sang, marching around the drill ground in double loops, I was moved by the sheer vitality that young men like us possess.
Took a bath after dinner. It was a nice hot bath, and I had a good stretch for the first time in what seems like years. I emptied my bowels twice during the night. And thus my Sunday wound to a close.
February 22
On the 17th and 18th an enemy task force attacked the Truk Islands, and today’s papers reveal the results. We lost two cruisers, three destroyers, thirteen transport vessels, and one hundred twenty aircraft. The sinking of a single ship is major news in times of peace, and detailed accounts of the incident and any number of harrowing stories fill the pages of the newspapers. But all I see in front of me today is a set of cold figures, bluntly presented. For our part, we have learned, over time, to look at the figures alone, and to give no thought to the brutal realities that have unfolded behind them.
2
The China Incident is a reference to the fighting between Japanese forces and nationalist Chinese forces in July of 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge (near Beijing), which sparked the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45).
3
These words all have either slightly feminine or informal connotations, hence their disuse in military contexts.