The Divine Storm

I

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.