Category KAMIKAZE

t seven that morning I awakened. Toyoko was sleeping serenely, and I dressed quietly. Before departing I knelt beside her, gaz­ing into her countenance. They say love blinds one to the defects of the beloved. Perhaps so, but I had never, from our first encounter, recognized any defects with Toyoko, inwardly or outwardly. To me, she was very near perfection.

She was wearing her white nightgown, one with delicate lace on the neck, throat, and hemline, and those high burnished cheek bones were glowing more strongly as the morning light expanded. I had never real­ized how long and thick her eyelashes were, how intensely black, yet the growing light was turning her hair to tints of auburn. Her breasts rose and fell gently with each breath, but now I only felt an ineffable tenderness.

Lying there in the lap of slumber, she looked very much like a mere teenager. Only the very faintest lines at the sides of her lips and outer corners of her eyes belied that illusion. In that final moment, I could hear the sound of her breathing, the soft, slow inhalation and exhala­tion. Even the sound of her breath was perfect. Suddenly it seemed very

important that I imprint her entire image within my soul, etch it deeply there forever.

Bending over her, I placed my cheek ever so gently against her own, barely traced my lips across her brow. For an instant Toyoko stirred, her own lips forming the faintest smile, happiness and sadness, wistfulness and mischief, secret things woven from the depths of a dream. Then I arose with infinite caution and left, casting a final backward glance. Sliding the door shut carefully behind me, I descended the stairs with utmost stealth to keep them from creaking.

The streets and lanes were quiet at that hour, largely untraveled, and clouds were digesting the eastern sky, gradually excluding the light. In the fields and between the houses, tiny whirlwinds captured dust, dried leaves, and bits of paper. A cold front was moving in from the ocean, bearing the odor of dead kelp and fish along a stretch of backwater. It was one of those rare summer mornings, those curious reminders, even in the midst of heat and greenery, that winter will come again.

Nearing the base, I felt the empty tingling in my loins, that inchoate sense of excitement and dread that marked the onset of another mission. Once again, the escort flight, fighter protection and monitor to the demise of my companions. It was a strange calling, and with the completion of each fateful journey, my spirit inflated more fully with apprehension, indeed, with a sense of doom. Fate would play its unassailable hand, and I was caught up in it, along with my companions, like bubbles on the incoming tide.

Who would it be this time? I wondered. Another fifteen or twenty men, but lately I hadn’t been checking the names. It seemed better that way. Somehow, I had convinced myself that as long as I did not view a name on the roster, it did not exist, just as people tell themselves they are not ill until condemned by a doctor’s diagnosis. In any event, I had no close friends there at Oita except for Tatsuno and Nakamura. It was better that way.

At the base entrance, I held out my pass to the MP, a mere formality now, and he waved me on with barely a glance. The place was beginning to vibrate, and overhead, almost out of sight, a plane cried. I walked faster. It was almost time for formation.

The formation was over promptly with the usual, now sometimes suspicious, “all present or accounted for” reports from our flight leaders to the commanding officer. Next, I hastened to the chow hall, planning to eat quickly and give my fighter a final inspection. I was more cautious in this regard than most, almost punctilious, always wanting to be sure that the mechanics had left nothing undone. At least I was confident by now in my own flying ability and was determined not to leave this world because of some trivial oversight. When I left the world it would count for something.

Months of grueling practice were behind me—a series of dog fights, mostly hit and run affairs on our part, but several battles worthy of the name. No longer was I the green and timorous pilot of that first encounter. I now had two enemy planes to my credit, and at Oita I had been promoted to corporal, a rank not easily attained then by Japanese enlisted men. Now, grim though the task might be, I was an escort, lead­ing and protecting our Kamikaze, defending them against the enemy to that final, fateful dive, then returning to give my report. That was my job. Who else, I asked myself, had a more important one?

And at night. . . there would be Toyoko. Toyoko had said she loved me, and that was enough. She had promised me that the war would end before it was too late, and I took refuge in those words. Never mind that they were tendered in the crucible of emotion, in a moment of desperation. Still, I clung to them, strongly immured in the household of denial.

That was the only way by now that I could survive psychologically. Yes, yes—something would happen to save me. Not only would the war end in time but something highly extraordinary would occur. Occasion­ally, in fact, the feeling pulsed strangely at unexpected moments, even within the onset of my dreams. It was a kind of prescience that gener­ated a strange effervescence throughout my veins, my entire epithelium. Even now, though, my moods fluctuated. Doom still hovered and often overflowed the boundaries of my little sanctuary.

Today, in fact, it was encroaching strongly. Today Nakamura and I were flying together. I had spotted him in the chow hall, ahead of me in line and followed him to a table.

“Yai, tomadachi" I said and roughed his head playfully. Simply an infor­mal greeting, an effort to release tension. “Seen Tatsuno this morning."

Nakamura glanced up at me, but the familiar grin was gone. “Yes, I’ve seen Tatsuno,” he said.

“Well, what’s the matter? Where is he?”

“Getting ready,” he answered.

I felt the sudden chill but hoped for the best. “Going with us? Escort now?”

“Going with us—yes. Escort-no.”

Something filled my chest like cold sludge. “He’s lucky,” Nakamura said. “No more worries, not after noon today. You and I. . . we’re still waiting, still on the tines of a pitchfork.”

I placed my chop sticks on the table very carefully as if that simple act were of utmost importance. “When did he find out? Why didn’t someone tell me earlier so I could have at least been with him?”

“It only happened yesterday,” Namamura said coldly. “And you haven’t exactly been the most available man in the world this past month. You should try reading the orders sometime, Kuwahara. You don’t want to miss your own.”

“Really?” I retorted, angry over my very guilt. “So what are they going to do? Shoot me?” Then, riddled with contrition, I bowed my head, eyelids clenched and locked my hands together. “You’re right. I haven’t been a friend to him at all lately. Not to you or anybody else.” Fiercely I bit my knuckle. That was the only thing I could tolerate for the moment, my teeth cutting into the skin and bone.

“I did try to tell you, incidentally,” Nakamura said. “Went to your girl’s apartment about ten, but you weren’t there.”

“We were down at the beach “

“Nice! Lots nicer than being with—”

“Stop it!” I banged my fists on the table and grated my chair back, igniting glances of surprise from those nearby. Then I stood, leaving my food untouched, and blundered my way out of the chow hall. Everyone, it seemed, was staring at me. Where was Tatsuno? I had to find him, tell him we’d go down together. To hell with waiting for orders. I’d cover him all the way, end this madness together. My dearest friend would not go alone.

Without realizing it, I was running, hearing Nakamura’s voice yet not hearing it. Three hundred yards to Tatsano’s barracks, and I was

running at top speed, feeling the blood pound in my temples, hearing my breath rasp in my lungs, vaguely aware that the intense physical con­ditioning of basic training had diminished somewhat. Then, abruptly, I stopped. Tatsuno and his company of the damned would not be in their barracks now; they would be undergoing their final briefing.

Bleakly I turned and shambled off toward my own barracks. Two hours before takeoff time—an hour before my own briefing. Nothing to do but wait. I wouldn’t even check my Hayabusa now, not until time to go. It would either fly or it wouldn’t. All was in the hands of fate.

Nakamura was waiting when I entered the barracks, lying back on one of the bunks, hands locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He sat up at my approach, and I settled down beside him, hearing the springs squeak. “Don’t feel bad, Yasbei,” he mumbled. “I apologize for what I said because Tatsuno wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise. Not for you. You’ve found somebody worth spending time with, all the time you’ve got left. I was just envious.”

“But I haven’t even seen him for a week,” I said. “Do you know how long he and I have known each other?”

He nodded. “Ever since you were about four years old—Tats told me. But what good could you have done him hanging around here? None of us know when its coming. We’d probably just be getting on each other’s nerves.” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him that much myself. He’s been up to the mountain, visiting that priest you told us about.”

For a long time we remained there. Silence, except for a faint and constant ringing in my ears like the sound of a distant locust. “I have a strange feeling about today,” Nakamura mused. His words were scarcely audible. “Today maybe we’ll all go down, one way or another. Pay our debt to the Emperor.”

Somehow the remaining time passed, more as though it had suddenly evaporated. A blank space, a void without dimension or recollection. Then Nakamura and I were there on the airfield, suited up, ready to fly. Sixteen pilots all told—four of us escorts, the remaining dozen never to return. They had grouped now for final directions before an officer holding a large map of the Pacific.

Minutes later it was time for the last formation, and we all stood at attention, hearing the parting words of our commanding officer. From the corner of my eye I could see Tatsuno, but he didn’t look quite real, more like a pallid facsimile of the person he had once been. His spirit had perhaps already gone like the wind among the lanterns.

Around the shaved skull of each Kamikaze was bound a small flag, the crimson rising sun directly over his forehead. These departures were never conducted in a perfunctory manner. Instead, there was much ceremony, toasts, valiant speeches—most of which I had already almost learned by rote.

Boys and girls, drafted from school to work on the base, were permitted to assemble with the squadron on these occasions. Among the fringe of onlookers several girls began to cry then grew quiet as our commanding officer, Yoshiro Tsubaki prepared to address us. His voice commenced in a kind of nasal whine, droning on and on, mingling with the heat waves, occasionally descending to somber guttural tones. . . then, at last, reached its conclusion: “And so, valiant comrades, smile as you go. . . There is a place prepared for you in the glorious and esteemed presence of your ancestors, where you will attain unto everlasting honor. Samurai of the skies. . . guardian warriors, we bid you sayonara"

Now, at last, it was time to sing the parting battle song:

“The airman’s color is the color of the cherry blossom.

See, oh see, how the blossoms fall on the hills of Yoshino.

If we are born proud sons of the Yamato race, let us die,

Let us die with triumph, fighting in the sky.”

So now, at last, the final toast, the sake glasses raised and the resurgent cry: “Tennoheika Banazai! Long live the Emperor!"

Our Kamikaze are saying sayonara now, laughing and joking ner­vously like student athletes before a race. Climbing into their obsolete aircraft—antiquated fighters, even trainers. The old planes don’t matter greatly. After all, it is their final trip as well.

The smiles? Perhaps they will remain on some of those faces to the very last. For others, the smiles will die as they settle into their cockpits. Perhaps for some, very few, the serpents of fear won’t strike until the en­emy ships appeared. And what is courage? A question I have never fully resolved. Who, in fact, is the most courageous—the man who feels the least fear or the man who feels the most and still fulfills his obligation?

But now, there is only one man, a very young one, little more than a boy. Yes, now with Nakamura, the two of them walking toward me. He does not look real, his face pallid, almost transparent. Yes, yes—the spirit has gone ahead. His body will mechanically but faithfully fulfill its duty. What a strange and haunting smile carved upon that waxen visage, the secret perhaps to some immense enigma that the rest of us have yet to fathom.

Tell him! Tell him! Tell him you’ll cover him all the way, that you will die together! But no, that is not what he seeks, and something strangles any words. Your time will come soon enough, Yasuo Kuwahara, the time that fate has ordained. That is right. By repeating those words, I retreat from the groundswell, the sorrow and the guilt. I am no friend, though; I haven’t been for weeks. No friend. And never once has he presumed to tell me the truth.

The lead in my chest is solid now, crushing. The words emerge pain­fully under much pressure. “Tatsuno. . . I—” We reach out, and our hands clasp fiercely, but despite the heat of the sun his fingers are cold. Of course, of course; the spirit is elsewhere. Nakamura, a better friend than I, accords us this final moment.

“Remember, Yasbei. . . .” the words came, almost subliminally it seemed. “How we always dreamed of flying together?”

“Yes,” I said. Our gazes had blended inseparably for the moment. The ultimate searching of souls.

“Well,” he murmured, and the smile increased. “It has come to pass. We fly together today.”

“Yes.” Muscles on one side of my face were twitching. “I will follow you soon, all the way. Perhaps this very afternoon.”

Then, unexpectedly, he extended the other hand. It was wrapped in a meager bandage, and the bandage was turning red. “Here, Yasuo—take care of this for me. It is not much to send, but you know what to do.”

Swiftly, I looked away. Tatsuno had just given me the little finger of his left hand.

Our Kamikaze almost always left a part of themselves behind—a lock of hair, fingernails, an entire finger—for cremation. The ashes were then sent home to repose in the family shrine. There in a special alcove with the pictures of their ancestors. Once yearly, a priest would enter that room to pray.

The first motors were beginning to cough and rev, and suddenly I flung my arms around Tatsuno crushingly as though somehow I might preserve him. Preserve, at least, all that had gone before, all that we had meant to each other. For that instant we clung together on the edge of a great chasm. Then we broke apart, and somehow, following another blank space, I was seated in my Hayabusa, fastening the safety belt, feeling the controls, adjusting the goggles on my forehead. The entire base was grumbling now on the brink of departure.

I checked the prop mixture, pressed the starter button, and one cylin­der caught in a high coughing explosion, then another and another. The motor surged ravenously then adjusted in a steady, powerful roar. One by one, we were moving out—lethargic, winged beasts awakened from their lairs. Uno, a veteran of five kills, was in the lead, and I was close behind— signals coming laconically from the control tower. Already the onlookers were in another world, withdrawn. A ring of sad faces and waving hands, fading as the prop blasts hurled sand, bits of straw and paper.

The commanding officer, the remaining pilots, the students, the mechanics come to bid farewell to the ships they had nurtured for a season. . . all shrinking now as the air field fell away beneath us.

espite the constant behests to forget our past, after two weeks our families were permitted to pay us a brief visit. Only fourteen days since I had said goodbye, and it seemed ages. As the visiting hour approached I began to tremble. So much had happened, home seemed years into the past, a thousand miles away.

At four p. m. I was waiting in the visiting room where a counter separated the trainees as if they were convicts from their families. I watched people enter, observed how each trainee’s eyes lit in recognition. Some of them seemed almost embarrassed, strangely hesitant. The bar hampered them from the intimacies of a normal greeting, and the best they could do was clasp hands.

Twenty minutes passed. . . thirty, and no sign of my own family. I was beginning to fret and fidget. Where were they? What could have possibly happened to them? Didn’t they realize that we had only this one fleeting hour together? Maybe they wouldn’t arrive until too late—if they arrived at all. Soon I was growing angry. If they never got to see me it would serve them right.

On the other hand, maybe they had misunderstood the visiting date. Maybe I had somehow written it down wrong in my letter. Yes, that was probably it. What a hopeless idiot! I cracked my knuckles and

stared bleakly at the floor.

Then, furtively, even superstitiously, I glanced toward the door. There, miraculously, was my father in his gray business suit, its conser­vative shade blending with the two drab, wartime kimono behind him. Mother and Tomika. “Oh, my Yasuo, my Yasuo!” Mother murmured. “We were caught in a terrible traffic jam!” Simultaneously, Tomika was saying something about a bomb crater, but it barely registered. They were here. That was all that mattered.

Now we were clasping hands, looking into each other’s eyes. Mother and Tomika made no effort to disguise their feelings, and their tears glistened conspicuously despite the smiles. For a moment I couldn’t speak because I was struggling to restrain tears of my own, actually biting my lower lip to avoid displaying any weakness, especially before my father.

Father was even wearing one of his rare smiles. In fact, I had never seen it so warm: “How is your new life, my son?” he inquired.

“Oh. . .” I faltered. “it is fine, Father. Very. . . .” I groped for the right words. “Very educational.” But something writhed inside me, and the real words in my mind pounded: “Why do you lie? Tell the truth! Tell of the unbelievable brutality, the awful injustice! Tell him that you can’t stand this place a day longer! Maybe he can do something!”

I knew full well, however, that my father had received similar treatment in the army. Surely he realized what I was going through. The thought spawned feelings of incredulity. How had he managed to survive so well? Survive at all? Father squinted one eye, raising the op­posite brow as though reading each thought. “Do your hancho love you? Are they kind and gentle like your mother and sister?” I groped for an appropriate reply, but he continued. “You look very well. Your face has even filled out a little from all the delicious food—right?”

Truly my face had “filled out”—swollen from being slammed against the barracks and the previous night’s binta. “It’s not from—” I began and caught myself. Father’s eyes held mine, and his head gave an abrupt, little shake of warning. “Are they treating you well, Yasuo?” he demanded.

I forced a pallid smile. “Yes, thank you, Father, quite well.” His

expression remained stern, uncompromising. “I mean very well.”

“Good,” he replied. “There is nothing like military discipline to bring out the best in a man.”

For a few seconds none of us spoke. Then Tomika bent forward, her brow wrinkled, gazing into my face as though it were a mirror. “How did you get all those cuts?” she asked, looking highly distressed.

“Yasuo-chan, your eyes are black!” Mother exclaimed. “You’ve been injured!” It was that appealing tone of concern with which I had be­come so familiar, and again I battled inwardly. The childish part of me took comfort, wanted to be coddled, yet I also felt irritation. “They’ve been cruel to you, absolutely brutal!” She spoke so loudly I flushed and glanced in chagrin at the people nearest us. But they were all absorbed in their own conversations. “And your nose is swollen!”

“Yasuo is all right,” Father said.

“But his eyes” Mother persisted. “His poor, dear—”

“He is perfectly all right!” Father said. This time his tone allowed no opposition.

“It’s nothing, Mother, nothing at all!” My voice cracked embarrass­ingly, partly because it was still changing. “I just. . . I just ran into. . . a tree branch.” I held my hand over my eyes as though shading them from the sun, breathing jerkily in the silence. All the while my mother’s hand pressed mine so warmly I could actually feel her pulse. At that moment I loved her more than at any time in my life, more than any­thing else in the world.

Quietly Father was saying, “My son can take care of himself. A few little bruises are inevitable. They are helping to make a man of him. A

samurai!”

I looked up, massaging the lower half of my face with one hand to keep the muscles from twitching. Then I smiled, nodding. “Hai.” That was all I could say.

“Your sister and I have made some sushi cakes,” Mother said. “Will they permit you to have them?” Both Mother and Tomika had concealed food under the cloth obi about their waists. Their sushi cakes had long been a favorite with me.

“Well, we’re not supposed to,” I answered reluctantly, “but they’ll never know anything about it—if you can just hand it to me without anyone seeing.” Mother and Tomika both looked worried. “Did you bring the shirts and towels?” I asked. Mother nodded and placed a bundle tied in a redfuroshiki on the counter. “Just put the cakes inside,” I urged. “No one will ever find out.”

Reluctantly, very surreptitiously, Mother complied, but ironically, only moments later, there was a commotion. We glanced about startled to see a hancho cuffing one of the trainees. “Beat me! Beat me!” his mother wailed. “It wasn’t my son’s fault! He didn’t ask us to bring him anything – —it’s my fault!” The cuffing wasn’t severe, but it was mortifying to all of us, especially the trainee’s family.

Sunday was the one day in the week when we were supposed to receive decent treatment. This was to have been our brief interlude, this visitors’ day in particular. A fleeting, precious moment in time when all could be serene. The hancho himself was only eighteen or nineteen with a long neck and shiny, arrogant face. He could easily have punished the recruit later. How I hated him, literally would have rejoiced to kill him.

Mother and Tomika, of course, were now greatly alarmed, implor­ing me in hushed, urgent tones to return my contraband the instant it appeared safe to do so. For an instant I wavered. Then my fear gave way to rebellion. “No! Those. . . you and Tomika made them for me, and I’m going to keep them.”

Both Mother and Tomika were still murmuring anxiously, their eyes haunted. “Let him have his sushi,” Father muttered. “They cannot hurt a Kuwahara. Let him keep them.”

The matter was settled, and soon the visiting hour was over, our women again becoming tearful. “Stop that!” Father ordered. Reach­ing across the counter, he clasped my arm. “We shall see you in a short while, once your training is over, hai?”

I nodded. “We get two day’s leave.”

“So, you see?” Father said. “He gets two day’s leave. We will all have a splendid celebration and hear of his experiences. Meanwhile, Yasuo will make the most of his opportunity. He will make us all proud of him.” His gaze coalesced with my own. “Make us proud of you, my son.”

I merely nodded, fearing that my voice might betray me. Seconds later they were leaving. Father strode out of the door without a backward glance. Mother followed, covering her mouth with one hand, but Tomika turned briefly, eyes large and limpid like those of a fawn. She waved and tried to smile, but the smile collapsed piteously. Then they were gone.

Later in the barracks, most of us relaxed on our cots, a privilege ac­corded only on Sunday, and stared at the ceiling. The visit hadn’t elevated our spirits greatly. Nakamura was hunched on the edge of his cot, chin in his hands. Strolling over, I stood eyeing him, but he failed to notice. Reluctant to intrude, I paced slowly about the room, then stopped by his cot once more. “Yai, Nakamura!” I whispered. “You like sushi cakes?”

Grinning faintly, he glanced up. “You have some too?”

I nodded. “Yes, I’ve hidden them under my blankets.”

Still grinning, he patted a spot next to him by the foot of his cot. “Me too.”

Soon we discovered that nearly everyone had received food of one kind or another—cake, candy, or cookies. Oka and Yamamoto had secreted items in their shirts and were becoming a bit boisterous. “We’ll all have a party!” Oka exclaimed. “Tonight after Shoto Rappa!” The thought filled us all with glee, and there was much hearty laughter for the first time in two weeks.

Unfortunately, our happy interlude was short lived. Upon returning from our evening meal, one held in the chow hall on Sundays, we found our beds ransacked. Several of us were whispering nervously when The Pig made an abrupt entrance.

“Oh!” Oka exclaimed. The word had escaped his lips of its own ac­cord.

“Oh?” The Pig raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean, ‘Oh’?” Gently, very disarmingly, he laid a hand on Oka’s shoulder. “Is something wrong? Something missing?”

Oka stiffened. “No, honorable hancho dono.”

“Hmmm. . . well then, I’m afraid I don’t understand.” As usual, he was relishing the situation. “Why, did you say, ‘Oh’?”

Oka stammered incoherently. “Hmmm, very strange—most mysterious.” The Pig stroked hisjowl, and began his usual pacing back and forth. “I simply don’t understand this at all. Could it be that I’m not welcome here? Come now, gentlemen—I sense a strange restraint. What, oh what, is wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, honorable hancho dono,” Nakamura bravely volunteered.

“Ah so!” Suddenly The Pig whirled, jabbing his finger at the tip of Yamamoto’s nose. “Why, then, is your bed all torn up?” Yamamoto gagged. “Very curious indeed,” The Pig muttered and struck a melo­dramatic stance, one hand on his hip, the other massaging his brow. “I come here. . .” he said slowly, “hoping for a little courtesy and friendship, but instead, what do I get? Not one kind word, only coldness. I merely ask a simple, decent question, yet people barely speak to me.”

He flounced down on my cot, nearly collapsing it, gazing at me with a stricken expression. Then he buried his face in his hands, faking ridiculous sobs. “Kuwahara, what can this all mean?”

I. . . I don’t know, honorable—”

“I’m a stranger in my own family! Children! My children, don’t you even recognize your mother?” Then he reverted to his weeping. An incredible performance, and several of us laughed nervously but knew that it presaged something unpleasant.

And indeed it did. Eventually, tiring of such antics, The Pig in­formed us in a rather bored manner that we would have to be chastised for attempting to fool him. We were herded outside, and our faces were slammed against the barracks. By now most of us had learned to take much of the force with upper rounded area of our foreheads acquiring some fine bumps and bruises in the process, but it helped minimize the number of broken noses and split lips. That particular treatment, however, was only a preliminary.

Afterward, we were forced to crawl around the barracks with our combat boots tied together by the laces and dangling from our necks. In this manner we traveled down the halls to visit the hancho in their various rooms. It was much like certain college initiation ceremonies, I suppose, though a bit more harsh than most. Each man was required to knock on one of the closed doors, entering—still upon his hands and knees, to apologize.

I was one of those to have an audience with The Pig himself. As I entered he was seated under a bright light, no doubt for theatrical ef­fect, legs crossed and an arm hooked over the back of his chair. He was also smoking a large cigar. Sighing and blowing a jet of smoke toward the light bulb above, he inquired, “Aren’t you well enough fed here, Kuwahara?”

“Yes, honorable—”

“Then why did you bring food into your quarters, unhealthy food, in fact, when you knew perfectly well that it was forbidden?”

I had never considered sushi cakes unhealthy, but perhaps he was referring to our group in general. It was scarcely a point for argument under the circumstances, however. “I am sorry, honorable hancho donor Rarely had I felt more contrite. It was abundantly clear now that I had committed a grievous sin.

“Well, Kuwahara—look at me, not at the floor. I am afraid that ‘sorry’ is not adequate.” Meanwhile he kept blowing billows of rancid cigar smoke into my face. When I began to gag from the effects, he asked, “What in the world’s the matter with you? Are you ill? Do I disgust you?”

I fumbled hopelessly for a reply, but he continued. “As I was saying, Kuwahara, we wouldn’t accomplish much at this base—as a matter of fact, we’d actually lose the entire war if every man in the military could break the rules then simply say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Do you understand what I’m getting at? Or have you already forgotten my inspirational lecture last week on the virtues of obedience?”

“Yes, honorable. . . I mean no, honorable hancho dono—I have not forgotten.”

“I devoutly hope so,” he replied, rolling his eyes melodramatically. Under less threatening circumstances, in fact, his response would have seemed ludicrous. “But in view of your temporary lapse of memory, I trust that you will appreciate my need to underscore the problem in this manner.” He studied me thoughtfully, exhaling more cigar smoke. “Be­sides,” he added wearily, “I resent not being invited to the party you were planning after Shoto Rappa. I was a recruit once myself, you know.”

He then kicked me in the face nearly breaking my cheekbone and called out pleasantly, “Next, please!”

“Thank you very much, honorable hancho dono” I mumbled and crawled blindly for the door, face numb, boots swinging.

t was good flying weather. The seasonal rains had at last subsided leaving the skies a splendid morning glory blue. Within moments we were over the mountains, and more than ever it seemed to me that Japan itself was essentially an endless conglomeration of mountains – great, rolling remnants from the past when islands reared volcanically like stricken monsters, when fires burst from nature’s hidden furnaces to be quenched at last by time and the sea.

We left the ancient shores, the shores of our four islands, the clangor­ous cities and quiet rural villages that were home to more than seventy million people.

Thirty minutes after take off we landed to refuel at Kagoshima on the island of Kyushu— for twelve men, most of them still mere boys chronologically—the final glimpse of their homeland. For twelve men the three-hour flight onward to Okinawa would be all that remained, their last short hours upon the earth. Oka and Yamamoto had departed three weeks ago, gone forever, blazing their way into history and the infinite regions of oblivion. Mere dream figures now, their eyes, their

forms, their voices fading, fading. . . etherizing, echoing ever more faintly into the past.

Minutes from Kagoshima we spotted a flight of B-29’s escorted by Grummans, traveling toward Shikoku. Altering our course slightly, we faded into a skein of wispy cirrus clouds then continued steadily, steadily onward into the day. Far below, rolled the Pacific. . . an immense, ever – wrinkling green, brilliant and dazzling under the sun in places like a billion holiday sparklers.

My mind was teeming with memory now. Home, like my vanished friends, was a poignant fantasy that pulsed and subsided, pulsed and subsided. And always, irresistibly, the face of Toyoko. As the minutes fled I saw her countless times in countless ways. Occasionally merely the face of a phantom tinged with subtle tones of silver and ivy in the shadows, ethereal in the garden moonlight, or softly luminescent be­neath the red-orange glow of a lantern gateway. Sometimes her clear dark eyes flowing with inquiry or sweet appraisal, the inevitable tint of loving mischief, of motherly empathy and amusement.

At times our glances had locked so closely and unwaveringly that I could descry tiny replicas of my own face within her pupils. How often I had found myself entranced by the phenomenal, dance-like fluidity of Toyoko’s movements as her fingers traced the strings of a samisen or lilted back her long and fragrant hair from the nape of her neck. How I cherished the way she walked in her tight kimono—such precise and exquisitely dainty steps, one foot placed directly before the other.

Yet always, there was the great expanding void within me, and increas­ingly, at last to the point of obsession, the words of Nakamura, his fateful augury only a short time earlier in another world: “Today, maybe we will all go down. . . pay our debt to the Emperor.” Once despite all, I shook my head half smiling. Kenji Nakamura! What an irrepressible spirit! Nakamura, the recruit who had first befriended me during those soul-ravaging days of basic when it seemed as though our entrails were being wrenched from our throats with grappling hooks. Nakamura, my loquacious comrade—faith­ful and highly practical in many ways, but who also lived with remarkable abandon.

Even more, increasingly, I thought about Tatsuno. I remembered a day long ago when we had run laughing through the streets of Onomichi swatting at each other with our school caps. How young, how childlike and innocent, back then, two years into the past. Tatsuno, forever my best friend—sometimes playful, a prankster, yet loyal unto death, often introspec­tive, harboring deep and stirring thoughts. “Tatsuno. . . Tatsuno. . . .” I repeated his name many times, shaking my head and fleetingly closing my eyes. . . droning, droning onward, ever more entranced by an unyielding sense of immensity.

Clouds were forming intermittently now just beneath us, whiter than the purest snow, casting shadows of dun and olive on the waters twenty- thousand feet below. Suddenly my radio receiver issued a sharp ream­ing, startling me from my reverie. A blare of static that pained my ear drums. “One hour remaining,” the words crackled. Ahead and slightly below at a fifty-foot diagonal to my right wing tip was our flight leader, Sgt. Motoharu Uno. His head slowly pivoted, constantly surveying our surroundings, and upon catching his glance I held up my gloved fist, responding with a single nod.

Age twenty-six, Uno was one of the old men in our squadron. Squat and sinewy, he had known little except rice farming until the war, but he was highly intelligent with remarkable strength and coordination. Awesome courage. He also possessed uncanny vision and was known by his friends as Washi—Eagle. Soon, if Uno survived what lay beyond, perhaps because of it, he would become an ace.

Ahead the clouds were enlarging, darkening slightly like dirty cotton along their undersides, extinguishing the sun-dazzled expanses below. Our Kamikaze were traveling in sections of three—each a lethal arrow slicing undeviatingly onward toward the enemy. On and on and on. . . the harsh, strangely comforting vibrato of my motor rising and falling, rising and falling, against the gathering afternoon.

Miraculously, time itself had faded like vapor on an immense mir­ror. As we neared our destination the dry-plaster feeling in my mouth increased, a feeling that inevitably occurred at such moments. And, as always, my head began to throb, an aching throughout my upper eye sockets and brow, gradually asserting itself within the base of my skull as well. My gloved hands clenched the controls, and I opened them flexing my fingers. Beneath my leather aviator cap a drop of sweat trickled slyly down my temple. . . then another.

“Too tense, Kuwahara,” I warned, “too taut!” Ironically, the words came with great intensity. Again the finger flexing followed by the mas­saging of the back of my neck and scalp with one hand, the rotating of my head. “Loosen up, Kuwahara, loosen up.” Shoulders rising, rotat­ing along with my head, falling. Swift painful glimpses of my past, my home and family. . . of Toyoko. Toyoko embraced in slumber, Toyoko in her white nightgown with the lacy fringes. Her brow and cheek bones graced with light, lips touched with their faint entrancing dream smile, impossibly far away and long ago now, in some lost dimension.

Strange how so many thoughts, all irrelevant to the question at hand, continued to beset me. Perhaps they were a part of my defense mechanism, sedatives against the rat-like gnawings of fear. Soon, though, very soon, those sedatives would wear off completely.

Long ago it seemed (or was it only moments?) we had passed the tiny islands of Yaku and Togara, and now with Amami dissolving in our wake, we saw the first dim outlines of our fate. Okinawa! An electric shock in my right neck cord, a fierce burning that nearly welled beyond containment. Yes, Okinawa, sprawling there on the ocean’s bosom like an immense and slowly writhing sea monster.

Then came another jolt as Uno waggled his wings. Far off I saw their faint silvery wakes. . . and now. . . the first American ships. Ichi, ni, san, shi. . . . I kept counting. Twenty five in all, and there no larger than cucumber seeds at first, directly in the center of the task force, was our quarry—four aircraft carriers, closely attended by battle ships and a wider perimeter of cruisers and destroyers.

Again Uno waggled his wings, and we began our descent. At ten thousand feet we leveled off, and our twelve Kamikaze forged ahead of us at full power. Now time was suddenly in ruthless acceleration, the ships growing. . . growing. . . growing at a rate that was literally stupefy­ing. Now they were opening fire! A great, spasmodic concatenation of reflex actions from their giant guns, each followed by explosive puffs of black smoke and spouts of dull orange from the ships engulfed in cloud shadow.

So at last the waiting was over. I even welcomed the fear, for with it came the wild rush of adrenaline and sense of inevitability. Whatever our skills might be, however valiantly and cunningly we might perform, we had now entered the portals of Fate, and there was no turning back. Simultaneously, the strange yet familiar voice inside, continued to as­sure me that death happened only to other people. Soon, somehow, it would all be past. I would returned unharmed and make my report as always.

Ahead, the first suicide formation is diving now at forty-five degrees, followed methodically by the next. . . and the next. Tatsuno is leading the final section in an ancient navy aircraft, ready to fall apart long before its last take-off, a Mitsubishi, Type 96. Now the fated twelve are opening their cockpits and their silken scarves are fluttering in the wind, a symbol of their willingness to die for the Emperor, their final acknowledgment of that grand and ultimate honor. Always the wind, the Divine Wind.

The American fleet is less than a mile ahead, and I am sweating profusely, watching, watching, my mind roaring, and the sound within is somehow far greater than that of my Hayabusa. The lead Kamikaze plummets, screaming almost vertically into the flak. He’ll never reach the carriers; that seems certain. Instead, he levels and veers sharply to the right making for a cruiser near the convoy’s perimeter. And for a moment it looks as if he’ll succeed. But no—he’s hit, virtually wrenched apart, all in the fraction of a second. Only a yellow flare remains, rapidly disintegrating. . . fading, fading to ashes, to nothing.

Everything is a blur now—a mixture of motion, sound, and color— the variegated green of the ocean, the stark, hard gray of the ships, the unremitting belches of black as their five-inch rifles fire deadly bursts of shrapnel, periodic flashes of orange from the shadows, and a virtual maze of white-hot red from the tracer bullets leaving their 20 and 40 millimeter anti aircraft guns. . . tracers that seem to arch almost lan­guorously. Two more planes explode simultaneously, but a fourth wails unscathed through the entire barrage, leveling beneath the flak umbrella only twenty feet above the surface. . . .

A hit! He has struck a destroyer directly above its water line. It shud­ders as if assaulted by an immense battering ram, and I actually seem to hear the bellowing explosion, then another and another, above the endless roar of my motor. It’s good! It’s good! The vessel is already in its death throes. Water gushing in through a monstrous hole that has nearly torn it apart, surging and plunging over the bow. As I follow my flight leader, climbing and arching along the battle’s perimeter, the destroyer up-ends, stern black and ominous in a curious state of suspension as though attesting to its own demise. Then, almost instantaneously, it is gone. . . swallowed. . . non-existent.

Already I have lost track of the flights. They have been scattered like dragonflies before a gale. The two trailing formations are knifing downward through the lethal blossoms of flak. Everywhere, incredible violence and confusion. One of our planes is roaring low across the wa­ter, machine guns kicking up countless spouts all around him. Headed straight for a carrier, closing the gap at tremendous speed with less than two hundred yards remaining. Straight in. . . he’ll score a direct hit! My entire body surges with an awful jubilation. But no-no, they stop him, blowing off a wing and most of his tail section. Veering lamely, he collides with the ship’s bow inflicting little damage.

The enemy defense is almost impregnable; only a gnat can penetrate that fire screen. Two more suicides lance at the second carrier, and one disintegrates fairly splattering the water with its remains. The other bursts into flame like a monstrous blow torch, makes a half roll and arches into the ocean upside down.

So far, I am certain, we have sunk only one ship, and already, within mere minutes, we have few aircraft left. Hard to know where they are now, even discern them because of the swelling murkiness of the horizon, but at least two planes have temporarily secluded themselves there—and now, unexpectedly, they materialize a mile to our left. We circle high above, watching. . . . Two planes, an advanced trainer and a Mitsubishi fighter are completing a wide turn, heading swiftly back toward us. I squint, and the realization seizes my innards. That Mit­subishi, it’s Tatsuno! Yes, definitely! Tatsuno was in the last section—our only navy plane.

The two of them climb at full throttle then begin their dive, charg­ing toward the convoy’s heart. The trainer, however, is rapidly falling behind, and seconds later he is ripped from the sky by enemy fighters.

His wings are savagely torn away, the entire plane almost rent in half, and he corkscrews insanely downward leaving a silver-gold waterspout in a brilliant patch of sunlight.

Tatsuno is alone now, still unscathed, making a perfect run, better than anything they ever taught us in school. Tatsuno! Tatsuno! Fire spouts along his tail section, but he remains on course. A tanker wallows just ahead like a vast, sullen whale. The orange tatters along Tatuno’s fuselage extend with devilish exultation, and his plane is an all-devour­ing flame. Tatsuno! He’s closing! A hit! A HIT!

An enormous explosion bellows upward, rocking the sky, vomiting thick, black smoke that momentarily seems to swallow the very flames generating it. Then comes a staccato series of smaller bursts, stupendous eruptions of brilliant orange, and one last, mighty blast that seems to shake the sea like canvas in a wind. The tanker is going down along with my dearest friend.

No trace now but the widening shroud of oil.

Our Kamikaze were gone now—all twelve to another world. We had sunk one destroyer and one tanker, wounded a cruiser, also severely damaged a battleship, something I didn’t learn until later. But there was no time then to ponder our success or to mourn our loss. The fighter fifty yards ahead and to my left waggled its wings in warning. My friend Nakamura, and he was jabbing with his finger toward a flight of Grum – man Hellcats swarming in above us at four o’clock.

I had spotted them fleetingly earlier, streaking from the carri – ers—hornets angered at having their nests invaded—then lost sight of them in the melee. Now, fantastically, three Hellcats were on my tail with startling speed and determination, firing savage bursts from only three hundred yards. Two more behind them, slightly lower and about half a mile to the right, were veering my way, maneuvering into firing position.

Lead chewed my stabilizer, sheared off the tip of my rudder, and a fifty-caliber slug pierced the canopy only six inches above my head. Simultaneously I spotted Uno, emerging from a skein of clouds just beyond. He was easing into a tight right curve, and I followed, rotating in a half roll and banking into a radical turn.

Now, within seconds, I had reversed positions with my enemy and I was on his tail, trying desperately to center him in my gun sights.

Momentarily we seemed to be on opposite ends of a teetering balance scale. Then it adjusted, and I was tracking him, blasting away with my nose cannon. . . missing! Angrily I opened up with my machine guns but in my eagerness failed to aim with precision.

Only two Hellcats discernible now, and they flared frantically in opposite directions, my quarry swerving to the right. The other bore strongly to the left only to draw fire from a Hayabusa coming at him head on. Nakamura! The two planes screamed past each other almost collid­ing, the Hellcat taking lead, and I glanced fleetingly over my shoulder to see it casting slender streamers of flame as it distanced against the sun.

Meanwhile my own foe was climbing rapidly, and I roared after him firing a series of short, rapid bursts. Realizing his predicament, the Hell­cat angled off to the left, dropping away, spiraling nose over wing tip, into a shallow dive. I had anticipated him, however, and followed doggedly, opening up again with my guns. This time smoke began to billow from beneath his engine cowling, so thickly, I barely saw the cockpit open as the pilot struggled free and rolled off the wing next to the fuselage. He then plummeted downward like a rock for some distance before pulling his chute, and the canopy popped, blossoming white, drifting against the deep blue of the water.

Only seconds later an enemy plane was attacking me broadside from about two hundred yards. I could see the lethal sparkling of his fifty calibers against a large soot-colored cloud. Then, incredibly, the Hellcat disintegrated in a blinding starburst the color of the sun. One of our Hayabusa was cutting a high, wailing arch along the cloud’s up­per border, etched triumphantly against the dazzling sky beyond. The contrasting light was so intense it hurt my eyes, and I squinted painfully just as the Hayabusa vanished into the mounting darkness ahead. Not, however, before I had glimpsed the pilot’s profile through the glint of sunlight on his goggles, the fierce, determined tightness of his lips.

Uno! I shook my head in admiration and amazement. He had blasted it directly in the fuel tank with his 25 mm cannons. His wartime total now tallied six confirmed kills and at least three or four probables. My own score now stood at three as did Nakamura’s.

“Run for it!” His words crackled in my headphones. “Too many— head for home!” Abruptly now, the enemy was materializing from almost all directions. Everywhere. . . blue wings, white stars and blunt, bel­ligerent snouts—all avidly bent on revenge. My friends were nowhere in sight, and I slammed the throttle to the firewall, roaring north toward home and the secrecy of the clouds. Several Hellcats were still streaking after me, diving head on. Instinctively, I hit the stick pivoting left, and all of them overshot me but one flying higher in the rear.

Torquing radically the opposite direction, I descended in a gar­gantuan, groaning barrel roll, feeling my entire airframe shuddering as the G-force slammed, squeezing the blood from my head and eyes. My enemy followed with fiendish tenacity only a hundred yards or so behind, somehow actually closing the distance. Sledge hammer sounds, and I flinched, feeling my heart lurch. I’d been hit. . . but for the mo­ment no discernible damage, and it was time for even more desperate measures.

Again I rolled, angling now into a steep vertical dive. . . down, down, down. . . the air shrieking past my cockpit, gradually spiraling, spiraling downward, seeming to rotate with the very earth. . . then roll­ing more widely. Ships growing amid the broadening sprawls of smoke, revolving as if the ocean itself had become a vast, cosmic whirlpool. Long hours of suicide practice had honed my skill in such maneuvers, but soon I was in reach of the surface fire again. A battleship along the convoy’s periphery was opening up with his heavy rifles, and the flack was collecting close about me.

I pulled from my dive in a monstrous, shuddering, gut-wrenching groan, barely above the water, feeling as if the flesh would rip from my bones, losing my vision and sense of direction, blacking out, as though my head had been dragged into my shoulders. The tenacious Grumman Hellcat, however, was less fortunate—accidentally blasted apart by his own ships at the very nadir of his descent. Glancing wildly at my waver­ing compass needle and trembling gryo horizon, I somehow reoriented myself and hurtled on north scrambling for altitude.

The American ships were still salvoing at long range while one remaining fighter plane continued to fire at me from several hundred yards away. For an instant I felt a smug sense of triumph. Simultaneously I heard a series of feral pinging noises followed by a clank. My heart squirmed, pounding, and my throat constricted as I waited for the flames, the smoke. . . the explosion. For several agonizing seconds the motor faltered then blessedly caught hold as the Hellcat swiftly drew closer.

Ahead, a short distance to the northwest, the clouds were mounting to awesome heights in gray-black anvils—cumulonimbus, and I headed for them full throttle, blending my will with that of my plane, uniting all our remaining strength in a final bid for emancipation. Faster Ku – wahara, faster. . . holes appearing supernaturally in my right wing. . . more pinging. . . . Then I was engulfed in darkness.

I grinned triumphantly into the gloom, convinced now that I had made it. The enemy had battled ferociously—every thing in his power, everything upon the face of the ocean, everything that he could hurl into the sky. The enemy had failed. Our own forces, on the other hand, had inflicted substantial damage.

Not far ahead, lightning crackled lividly fracturing the walls of darkness which reunited almost instantly with an ominous concussion more powerful than all the guns below combined. Close, very close. But at least, I told myself, the elements were impersonal. Now, though, my cockpit had filled with the odor of burning rubber and super-heated metal, and the anxiety soon returned. No way of knowing how much damage I had sustained earlier, and I was also faced with another prob­lem. Rain was slashing my wings and cockpit, mounting gusts that often left me blindfolded except for the incessant flashes of lightning, each accompanied by a stunning jar as if truck loads of lumber were being dumped against me from every side.

I had encountered storms before but never one like this. Clouds converged about me like a herd of angry elephants, transforming to monstrous proportions and colors from gray to India ink. . . roiling, incessantly roiling, in an ominous maelstrom. The winds and rain lashed savagely, slicing through the jagged holes in my greenhouse.

Again my motor coughed, windmilling, and I held my breath, prac­tically igniting with tension. Yet once again it caught, and the burning smell was abating, probably because of the deluge. Temples throbbing, I squinted painfully, praying for the return of day. Off somewhere lay the afternoon, yet there near the storm’s gullet it was fast approaching midnight. Each flash of lightning spawned crashes of thunder reverber­ating off in stupendous chain reactions, numbing the very atmosphere. My sense of direction was gone, decimated, and with each concussion my compass needle gyrated erratically. My turn and bank indicator was useless, stunned! No matter what awaited me out there in the daylight, I had to escape fast.

But where? Far off to my left was a pallid smear of yellow-gray, and instinctively I headed toward it like a moth to lamplight. The glow was increasing when suddenly the belly of my plane, seemed to collapse. It was like a blow to the sternum, and I clutched in desperation at the controls as my Hayabusa dropped a hundred feet within the next second, prop claw­ing helplessly. The motor rattled as if it would tear loose, and the entire frame vibrated frantically.

Then the pressure subsided, and I was blasted upward, shaken and tumbled hopelessly. Dazed, head spinning, I battled for equilibrium, some semblance of control, yet there was none. Slam my rudder to the left, and I could as easily be hurled to the right. Wrench my elevator upward, and I might be rammed toward the sea.

Instruments battered and dying, my motor steadily becoming more asthmatic, I was desperately tired, both body and soul. Minutes before, I had welcomed the storm, all but laughed in its face. Now I was growing numb, arms nearly paralyzed. Even the inside of my plane was revolving dizzily, my vision so blurred I could no longer even tell whether it was raining or not. Again, time had ceased to exist. Once, strangely, the winds abated, and I found myself drifting in a kind of vacuum, blinking at the blue flashes and hearing the reverberations with strange curiosity. Like an automaton, I was flying with only one purpose—to continue. . . on and on until the great light was born again.

Then the winds came raving back. The flashes illumined a vast cloud with magnificent tones of peach and rose, its countenance forming a diabolical leer as greater darkness ensued. No longer were the elements impersonal. The lightning was not crackling; it was laughing maliciously, and the thunder bellowed, hammering with its fists. The wind, above all, hated me—cursing, buffeting, wrenching, and now I knew that I had been betrayed with the promise of sanctuary to my destruction. Even nature was with the enemy.

An abrupt volcanic eruption of air and cloud confirmed the fact, catch­ing my right wing tip and hurling me in a series of huge, erratic gyrations as agonized groanings burst from the bowels of my aircraft. . . down . . . down an endless cone of blackness to my doom. Death. . . death. . . all very swiftly now. Oblivion.

Yet even then, far off down that final passage, something willed the battered, shuddering entity that had been my fighter back to life, exerted effort against alien controls.

Astoundingly, I was flying level, waves the color of molasses curling at my belly, scudding with froth, and I was once more in command. As from some remote distance, sounds of the motor rose and fell, and my aircraft actually seemed to be skimming the very wave crests. Momentarily I had recollections of my first glider competition, being towed for that first breath-stifling takeoff across the turf at Onomichi High School.

So low now, so very low! The mere, slight tilting of one wing, only a few degrees, and the ocean would have me forever. And why fight it? The great waters had taken my friends, taken Tatsuno, always taken whatever they wanted. Only a few slight ridiculous degrees. . . But my fear had evaporated, giving way to perversity.

Yes, now I would taunt the ocean, making it wait, tantalizing the endless, hypnotic waves, dipping my wing tips boldly. . . but never quite close enough. . . not until the appropriate moment. No doubt they would have me in time but on my own terms—not until I had laughed and humiliated them as the lightning and thunder had laughed and roared, humiliating me.

Suddenly the water flashed green! An instant later it transformed to the color of white-hot slag temporarily blinding me. First by the darkness and now by the light. I squinted painfully, blinking, seeing only strange, amoeboid forms that welled in blend of dark maroon and irregular, ever – melting fringes of saffron. And gradually the pain eased. Gradually, sight was restored. I was in a world of dazzling green and gold. The heavens above and beyond were completely cloudless, supernally blue.

Cautiously, very gradually, I ascended to a thousand feet as my body and mind, my very spirit, relaxed. No ships, no planes, only the endless water and the endless sky as I droned steadily onward alone, the only living soul in the world—lost amid the lonely reaches of sun and sea.

The motor sputtered, and I glanced at my fuel gauge: a mere twenty- five gallons—little time left. Apprehensively, fearing the American ears listening somewhere beyond the horizon, I began to signal. No answer. I waited, holding my breath, tried again. Still no reply. My fighter was winging onward, staunch and true once more. Wonderful creature! How I loved and admired it! But now. . . after everything, to run out of fuel—to expire helplessly like a strong man whose wrists were slashed. What a grand and ridiculous irony!

Hopeless. . . but I had an obligation to do my best. Like my samurai ancestors, I might ultimately die yet never be vanquished. I adjusted the fuel control to its thinnest mixture, cut the propeller cycles down to the minimum—below 1,500 rpm’s. Any less and my plane would stall.

Again I signaled, caught my breath and waited. . . static. . . then a voice! Faint and dry initially, the buzzing of a wasp trapped in a jar, a voice from the regions of the dead. But a voice—an answer! China! “This is Nanking. . . .” I had made connections!

A few degrees to my left and straight ahead was the island of For­mosa, and at last I could discern its outlines—like a mere translucent watermark at first, the faintest lineation on a broad pastel of gray and green. Soon, though, it became more substantial, seeming to rise and fall on its gathering tides like an immense ship—a ship. . . a carrier of colossal dimension unlike all others, one that offered hope. Sanctuary.

My Hayabusa purred steadily onward, constant and true, and once I looked back. Something warned me not to, a profound sense of su­perstition, that even the subtlest glance might welcome the tentacles of fate. Nevertheless, I looked. Somewhere off in that golden afternoon lay Okinawa and the enemy task force. Only twenty-three ships instead of twenty-five. Somewhere drifted the remains of our twelve Kamikaze, the remains of my friend Tatsuno.

And there—hanging slumberous now—far behind, lurked the storm. The Divine Storm had saved me as it had saved my people centuries before.