Kamikaze
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John Caine's Kamikaze "Love School" Ordeal
by Hal C. North
Sir!, March 1961, pp. 14-5, 88-90, 92-4, 96-7

Introductory Comments

This obviously fictional story about a kamikaze school in Tokyo perpetuates many popular kamikaze pilot myths that first arose among Allied military personnel during WWII. This story, although supposedly based on real history according to the editor's note at the end, includes outlandish claims such as kamikaze pilots' being locked in the cockpit without a parachute, piloting planes with wheels that dropped off after takeoff, having their faces daubed with rice powder to simulate the pallor of death, wearing gloomy black robes, and having women available to them each day for their sexual desires.

Notes have been added to the story in order to provide comments on a few of the inaccuracies. Click on the note number to go to the note at the bottom of the web page, and then click on the note number to return to the same place in the story.

The Japs Forced John Caine to Live in a Kamikaze School and Instruct Their Suicide Pilots. How This American Airman Used His Position to Help the U.S. Is One of the Most Incredible and Heroic Stories of World War II.

It was well into the morning when the man in the Mae West life jacket regained consciousness. The sea, though still choppy, had lost some of the paralyzing cold which had eaten into John Caine's marrow.

He licked scaly lips which tasted of cold brine and squinted against the sun, hoping to see an American vessel or airplane. But Caine knew it was a vain hope. He was several hundred miles away from any area where a destroyer or pig boat might pick him up.

His legs felt wooden and useless from the long immersion. Once he thought he saw land, but it was just a low spread of dark clouds on the horizon.

He wondered if any other crewmen had survived. There were no other life jackets or human specks on the expanse of water. Nor was there any wreckage visible of his B-29, the Lottie Carroll [1], which had gone into the drink eleven hours earlier after a port engine caught fire.

Now, far off, the sick and exhausted airman saw a tiny black object. Though rigid with cold, he felt a current of fear move up his stiff legs and become a hard knot in his stomach.

Maybe it was a Nip sub. Even now they might be scanning the sea with binoculars. He'd be picked off like a fish in a barrel; or, equally bad, would be taken aboard and sent to some hellish prison.

Caine was drifting helplessly toward the object, which grew larger. In vain he tried to paddle away. A half-hour later he blinked his sun-dazzled eyes and hit his ear with his gloved hand.

"I hear birds. I'm damned if I don't hear birds!" he mumbled incredulously.

He wondered if immersion, hunger and thirst had addled his brain. But no, there was a babbling, cawing sound near by, and he made out a dozen huge black birds tethered on a rocking sampan; they made loud, angry noises. Shrill voices, speaking Japanese, wafted to him on a spanking sea breeze.

"Nani! There is something out there It looks like a man in the water."

"You may be right, Yamai [2] my daughter. We will change course; I want a better look at the object."

John Caine, who had been born in the village of Onimichi [3], Japan, the son of missionary parents, reached into a half-forgotten part of his mind for some words of Japanese.

Weakly he called out: "Ohayo gozaimasu–I come as a friend. Help, please. Take me aboard!"

Upon hearing words in their native tongue spoken by the man in the sea, the people on the fishing sampan were startled. Caine saw that their birds were fishing cormorants–beady-eyed creatures tethered by silk ropes, with rings encircling their throats so they could not swallow their catch.

A Japanese man of about 45, with beetling eyebrows and a scowl, peered over the side of the craft. He wore the traditional grass skirt of a cormorant fisherman and the kazore, the bird master's hat.

"Although you speak our language you are a white man, and must be one of the accursed American airmen who have spread death in our country. I shall teach you a lesson, bakiyaro [4]," the fisherman said, accenting the final insulting word.

The cormorants cawed wildly as the sampan neared Caine. The skipper raised an oar, swinging it viciously at the bobbing, helpless airman. The broad wooden paddle caught Caine on the right cheek and ripped it open; warm blood mingled with the salt taste on his lips.

"Papa-san, no, do not hit him again! Bring him aboard and we will take him to Atami."

The speaker was a girl. Caine felt a spurt of hope.

"Be quiet, my daughter. He is a vile American, the enemy. We must kill him."

"But papa-san, there is a reward for such men. Did you not see the notice posted at the Atami prefecture last week? The Imperial Government pays 5,000 yen for each flyer found in the sea."

The master of the boat rested his oar and considered this news. Caine saw that the girl was about 19, a young woman with dark hair secured by a scarf, wearing a heavy leather vest, wool trousers and red rubber boots. Even this ungainly attire could not conceal the soft lines of her body or the swell of her bosom.

Her father spoke again, "You are wise, Yamai. I shall collect the reward and buy new nets and two more birds. And you, my daughter, shall have fifty yen to spend as you please."

Caine now noticed a third crew member aboard the fishing boat. This was a boy of about 20, with high cheekbones and a sullen, angry look in his dark eyes.

The boat owner spoke sharply to the other man, who showed irritation as he tossed a rope to John Caine. The American tried to grab it with hands numbed by cold. He lost the life line twice before he wound it around his wrist and the young Jap pulled him in.

The girl leaned over the boat's side and helped lift him aboard. She pressed against him solicitously as she placed him in the gunwale of the boat and covered him with a tarp.

John Caine, at 27, was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 215 pounds. He was constructed like one of the muscle merchants whose spectacular torsos are seen in the advertising pages of magazines.

"Warm him, do not let him sicken and die, Yamai," ordered her father.

He turned his attention to the cormorants, who had spotted a school of ayu fish. One bird jumped into the sea, seized a fish, flew back and tried to swallow it. But the ring around its throat prevented this.

Yamai extracted the fish from the cormorant's mouth. She bit its head off, then extended the scaly silver body to Caine, saying softly: "Eat, American, you must be starved."

He was too weak to retch, but averted his head. The girl gulped the rest of the ayu fish and pulled Caine's tarpaulin back, slipping under it herself and nestling close to the bone-weary survivor of the downed B-29.

Though ill from the pitching and rolling of the sampan, John Caine found the warmth and closeness of Yamai's body not unpleasant as he drifted off to sleep. Oto, the fisherman, eyed his daughter and the exhausted American with a calculating eye.

The fishing port of Atami, Japan, was forty nautical miles away. By staying at sea another day Oto might earn 500 additional yen. But this man plucked from the sea was worth many more yen to the Imperial Government.

He said sharply: "Take the helm, Hosui. We are returning to Atami. Enough of fishing. We have a much bigger catch aboard. My daughter is wise as well as beautiful, and you are a lucky fellow to take her as a wife next spring."

Oto untied the collars from the hungry birds and gave them scraps of fish. The wind was picking up and dark clouds were scudding in from the southwest. It was time to head for home and collect the 5,000 yen which would be paid for this large and rugged American fiend he had found in the sea.

In the years before World War II a small and dedicated band of American missionaries often struggling against hostility and great odds, did yeoman work in Japan, bringing Christianity to that feudal nation and introducing the white man's techniques of sanitation, agriculture and communication.

John Caine's father, the Rev. Simeon Caine, a gentle, rawboned giant who was assigned by his church to Japan in 1904, was one of the men who labored selflessly to help the sick, the ignorant and the hungry natives of the rural prefecture of Kiirun [5].

John was born in the village of Onimichi on October 4, 1917, and there he spent the first ten years of his life. He flew kites, chased birds and engaged in mock battles with his boyhood friends, using wooden swords and cardboard shields.

Kindly Simeon Caine had broken up the fights when they became too rough. But John, always able to hold his own, had developed genuine admiration for the wiry strength and cunning of the Japanese boys who took fierce delight in whacking at him with staves and makeshift swords.

In May, 1927 there occurred the first of many food riots in Kiirun, where disastrous floods followed by drought had brought illness, malnutrition and starvation to thousands in the district.

Rev. Caine, his wife Clara, and little John had gone hungry, too, for the missionary had divided his food parcels from America with Japanese families. But desperate people can turn on their friends. One Sunday morning after church services a knife-wielding farmer, crazed because his children were dying of hunger, had shouted insults at the Yankee preacher and had plunged his blade into Simeon Caine's heart. The horrified boy and his mother watched as the clergyman died.

The arrival of soldiers averted further bloodshed; John and his widowed mother returned to America by ship and went to Emporia, Kansas, Mrs. Caine's home town.

Here the boy grew to manhood–large for his age, always winning athletic contests, but easygoing and good-humored–while his mother clerked in local stores. Enrolling in the State Teachers' College at Emporia, John did brilliantly and became a high school instructor in geometry and trigonometry following his graduation.

In August, 1942 John, then 24, notified the school board in Leavenworth, Kansas that he no longer would be teaching in the local high school. He had enlisted in the Army Air Force.

"Your skill in math should make you a natural as a navigator," he was told. "You're a mighty big fellow to fit in an airplane but we're glad to have you."

He went through officers' school in a breeze for he was an excellent student and top-drawer officer material.

In the Pacific Theater he made 26 raids in B-29's as a navigator, including five in the ill-fated Lottie Carroll. It was while returning from a strike at the Kure Navy Post, which was left a smoking ruin, that Caine's bomber developed motor trouble, caught fire, and became a huge smoking cinder in the sky. He had been blown clear in the ensuing blast and had no recollection of having pulled his ripcord and floating down to the sea.

When the fishing sampan which saved him tied up at the jetty in Atami, John Caine was just waking after his long slumber in the arms of pretty Yamai.

Yamai's face was flushed with excitement. Her betrothed, Hosui, scowled and averted his gaze as the girl fumbled for her leather vest and slipped it back on.

Caine swallowed hard and reddened. She had lain practically nude against him, imparting the full warmth of her vibrant young body against his cold flesh.

The American smiled wanly and allowed the girl and her sullen boy friend to lift him to his feet. After such a long immersion in the cold sea, he found that he was as weak as a child and needed support to reach the black police car which had drawn up to the pier.

Inside the auto were two Japanese police officers. The fisherman, Oto, said in a whine: "Honorable sirs, when do I get my reward money? Here is the American I have plucked from the water. I am a poor man and need new nets. And my boat could use caulking."

One of the cops scribbled a note and said coldly: "Enough of your pleading, fisherman. Go to this address tomorrow and ask for Maj. Ituri. I will take the American there now. If the major approves, you will get your money."

At the prefecture building Maj. Haruna Ituri sat importantly behind a paper-stacked desk.

John Caine said in Japanese: "Kampai [6], Major. May I sit down? I am still very weak."

Maj. Ituri's owlish eyes, behind thick lenses, bored into the American. He waved a hand toward a seat. "So. You speak our language? This is interesting; we do not often find an American familiar with our tongue."

For three hours Maj. Ituri questioned John Caine intensively, while a male stenographer in uniform took down the American's replies. The Jap officer was especially interested in Caine's boyhood in Japan, his schooling, his proficiency in mathematics.

Finally he said politely: "Have some tea and soshi cakes, Lieut. Caine. Excuse me, I must make a telephone call to Tokyo about you."

Caine found he was ravenous and wolfed down the delicate pastries and hot tea which the wooden-faced stenographer brewed for him on a hibachi in the major's office. The Jap officer returned fifteen minutes later with the air of a man who had wonderful news to impart.

"Caine-san, you are not going to be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, as is customary with enemy flyers who are found at sea. We have other plans for you."

"Maybe I won't like those other plans, Maj. Ituri."

The officer shrugged. "That is up to you. I can always order you shot. But let me tell you briefly what we have in mind. You have heard of our kamikaze squads no doubt?"

John stiffened. Everybody in his outfit had heard about the Japanese suicide flyers in this autumn of 1944. Some Yank pilots called them crazy men. Others who had watched the fanatical Nip pilots crash their planes onto the decks of cruisers and battleships, causing very great damage and death, grudgingly praised the kamikazes for their iron nerves and flying proficiency.

"I've heard about the kamikazes. Spill it, Maj. Ituri. What's on your mind?"

The major said: "We in Japan honor our teachers, Caine-san, whether they instruct us in flower-arranging or judo. In your case, Tokyo feels that our kamikaze pilots could benefit from learning American flying techniques, navigation procedures and other details. One like yourself, who speaks Japanese and who has been a teacher in the school system will have a very definite usefulness in the kamikaze school in Tokyo."

Caine began to be angry. They had no right to ask this of him–to instruct their own airmen! It was a violation of the rules of war, of the Geneva Convention. He'd be damned if he'd help train the Nips to kill his own countrymen!

Still, John Caine was a cautious man and a thinker; he held his tongue and reflected on his situation. The Japanese paid little attention to the rules of war in these desperate months when they were retreating to the home islands after a series of shattering blows by American airmen and the U.S. Navy.

Perhaps Maj. Ituri would order him shot. A lot of good it would do to protest. Up here in this remote northern fishing village [7] who would care or listen to his pleas? If he wanted to live, he had no alternative but to go along.

Besides, Caine thought, maybe I can serve my country better by getting into their damned kamikaze school and seeing what's doing there than by being a stiff-necked fool and getting myself killed.

He said: "I don't seem to have much choice, Major. Very well, I will be a sensai, a teacher, in your school. Now will you please call a doctor and have him look at this right leg? It's throbbing like the devil after all those hours in the water. And he can patch up my face while he's at it; that fisherman swung a mean paddle.

The word kamikaze means "The Divine Storm." It was first used in the 16th Century when a small band of Nipponese patriots sailed forth in fragile boats to repel the mighty Genghis Khan. A sudden, violent storm which buffeted the invaders' ships helped the Japanese to rout the Mongols [8].

Since then the deeds of these earliest kamikazes have been recounted in Japanese schools, in patriotic societies, and by the priests of the Shinto shrines. But it remained for the Jap war lords of the 20th Century, when that nation's position became desperate in the final months of World War II, to resurrect the ancient kamikaze spirit and relentlessly instill it in 5,000 hand-picked suicide flyers who were soon converted into human bombs.

As Caine was to find out, it took mysticism and salesmanship to inflame young men with the desire to crash to their own deaths in order to cripple or destroy our warships.

Boys as young as 16 were pressed into kamikaze service. Special medals and scrolls of tribute were prepared by the Japanese government and sent to the proud families of men who volunteered to die in airplanes which were literally flaming coffins.

The suicide pilots were impressed each day with their obligation to the spirit of Jimmu Tenno, the first emperor, descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu-Omikami, who preached that every man should be eager to sacrifice his life for his nation.

At the great military shrine in Hilo [9], delegations of wide-eyed kamikaze volunteers were taken in buses to view the sacred tablets, the swords and battle shields of the samurai, the bronze casks containing venerated bones of feudal warriors. They were told they would be similarly worshiped after their deaths as suicide pilots.

As the Allies grew stronger, with larger fleets of B-29 Superfortresses and newer and speedier fighters, the officials in charge of the kamikaze program found it increasingly difficult to recruit men to die in a single suicidal dive at American shipping.

Regularly the Daihonei (the High Command) sent orders to key air installations throughout the main Japanese islands, assigning quotas of kamikazes to be filled from the ranks. After training at four schools scattered throughout the country, kamikazes were assigned to special suicide bases, including the principal one at Kagoshima on the southern islet of Kyushu.

On Tuesday morning, January 16, 1945, a curtained Daimler drew up in front of a four-story building at the intersection of Chinzanso Street and 14th Avenue in Tokyo. This was the former warehouse of F. Nujira & Sons, cotton exporters, now used as one of the four kamikaze training schools which had been opened throughout the country three months before. The other three were at Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Hiro [10].

An American officer clad in prison denims, his eyes tightly sealed by a white linen mask, was ushered into the building by three soldiers and a captain.

John Caine was taken directly to the office of Col. Senjii Homuru, the school superintendent, who was joined a few minutes later by Dr. Matamuru Nimoro, the resident physician at the school.

The American's blindfold was removed and the big airman, his rugged face mottled from the tightly-tied cloth, stood like an oak tree in a grove of human saplings. Little Dr. Nimoro eyed the big man with hostility. The physician was 48 years old and had a skin like yellow parchment. Women had avoided him most of his life.

Col. Homuru was a slab-featured man who had worked his way up through the ranks. A peasant's son, he envied the wealthy and the well-born and professed great admiration for the samurai tradition. He surrounded himself with swords, bows and arrows, suits of armor, bronze mirrors, folding screens, masks and banners–examples of the Japanese culture of twelve centuries ago.

He said in a harsh voice: "I shall talk in Japanese to you, sensai. You know our language. If you co-operate and perform your duties, things will go well with you."

"And if I don't?"

Col. Homuru toyed with an ancient pewter dish on his desk. He said evenly: "Then we will have to kill you, Caine-san. This would be deplorable. No, I think you will co-operate–and stay alive."

At this moment a young woman entered the doctor's office carrying a tray of cakes. A former geisha in Yokohama, Minyama Suko was tall for a Japanese female, a willowy girl of 22 or 23, graceful as a lily undulating in the breeze. Her glossy blue-black hair, piled high, was held in place with a series of jeweled combs.

The geisha's bow-shaped lips were moist and promising. She looked at John Caine with almond eyes which telegraphed the delights this experienced courtesan was ready to purvey. The flyer hadn't seen a woman for a month. The sight of the statuesque geisha overwhelmed John Caine.

At this school the kamikazes were encouraged to indulge themselves with drink and women after their day's lessons were completed. Geishas, girl friends, prostitutes and women from respectable families who wished to honor the kamikazes were permitted to take up residence in the building for as long as they were willing to serve the men and preserve their attractiveness.

It was the custom of the suicide pilots to ceremoniously dispose of all their worldly assets on their last night in the school, prior to leaving for the airfield and their appointment with death. They would give their things to the women who had caught their fancy. Thus, in a few weeks' time, an industrious harlot or skillful geisha could amass a small fortune, by Japanese standards.

Col. Homuru was a shrewd psychologist. He smiled affably and said: "This is Minyama, who has been on our staff since the school opened. She will show you to your quarters, sensai. She is a very hospitable girl."

The geisha led Caine to a self-service elevator and they ascended to the fourth floor, which had been fixed up so that each kamikaze pilot in training at the school had his own room, small though it might be.

At one door Caine paused. He heard a boyish voice, high-pitched and tremulous, as if the owner were a high school student of tender years.

A woman's voice, coarse and grating, filtered through the door: "Yai! Come over to mama-san's bed, pretty boy."

"No, you disgust me, Watuni. Go away. Clothe yourself and leave."

The woman's voice became a file rasp as she cursed the boy in the room. "Konchikusyo! Bakayoro! Gake! Bah, you are not a man yet; you are only a child! Too bad you shall die, but I doubt if you have the courage to be a kamikaze."

The door flew open and a lad of 16, his face ashen and contorted, raced from the room which resounded with the drunken woman's jeers and laughter. He was nude except for his fundoshi, the loincloth.

The skinny teenager had been drinking raw whisky. His glazed eyes, terrified at the thought of love-making with the bawd inside, were wild and unseeing.

"Arigato! No courage? I shall know her. I am a man . . . Tuduo Kito shall die like one right now. . . ."

Before John Caine could stop him, Tuduo dashed under the big American's outstretched arms and headed straight for a blacked-out window on the stair landing. With a shrill cry of despair, the boy leaped out the window. Glass showered on the stairs. There was a terrified wail from Tuduo Kito as his body somersaulted four flights down.

Minyama closed her eyes; her oval face was chalk-white. Caine felt a tight ball in his stomach. There was a plop far below in the courtyard.

A soldier on guard duty at the rear of the building shouted in alarm: "Honorable Captain, kudasai–come quickly! Man has fallen!"

"He must be dead," Caine murmured dully. "Just a boy, not old enough to shave. They've made kamikazes out of kids."

The bawd who had taunted the dead youth lurched to the doorway. She was somewhat older than Minyama; a beefy woman who had been an inmate of the Yoshiwara, Tokyo's infamous prostitute sector. Oblivious of her sagging bare bosom, the prostitute clutched the doorpost for support and swigged from a bottle.

She said thickly to Minyama: "Ah, the high-and-mighty geisha, one who chooses her own lovers. We Yoshiwara women are too low to spit on, eh, Minyama? Who is this ox of a man you have found, this white giant? He should let an experienced woman like myself show him the ropes."

In a shocked, reproving tone, Minyama said: "You are mad, Watuni! You have caused a boy, a child, to kill himself. Your punishment will be severe. You've been warned about taunting the men. It was a mistake to bring creatures like you here."

The woman from the Yoshiwara district lifted her right fist threateningly and lunged at the dignified geisha girl. John Caine saw a metallic knife gleam in her upraised fist. Watuni swung her arm in a vicious downward arc. Caine interposed his stiff forearm. It jarred the woman to the bone and she yelped with pain. The knife clattered down the stone stairs. Watuni massaged her bruised flesh and cursed in the rich argot of the Yoshiwara.

"You are a white bastard, a vile bakayoro. I'll fix you!"       

Caine's hand shot out to stop the
Yoshiwara prostitute from lunging at the geisha girl.

Two guards raced up the stairs and seized the raging Watuni. They threw a cotton bathrobe over her and took her away at bayonet point.

Minyama clutched Caine's arm and said in a wistful voice: "That boy was so young, so innocent. She had no right to corrupt him, to jeer at him about his manliness. His death was pitiful. She murdered poor Tuduo Kito."

Minyama fanned herself rapidly and led the American down the hall. She paused at a door and said: "This is Room 422. It is to be your own, sensai-san. Go inside and be comfortable."

"Are you coming in, too?"

The geisha smiled and inclined her blue-black hair respectfully. "It is both my duty and my pleasure to serve you, Caine-san. In Japan a teacher is revered and Col. Homuru says you are to be a sensai here. And you are a most attractive man, even though an enemy."

Four hours later Caine ate dinner in the school's mess hall. The food was anything but army chow. About forty kamikaze pilots, none older than 24, sat cross-legged on the floor drinking and eating. About half of them had girls as dining companions.

White-uniformed chefs had prepared unusual meats–sugared beef slices dipped in shoyu sauce, hot bowls of savory ocha, sukiyaki, chicken livers, and bits of tofu; raw fish seasoned with quartered onions; bean curd and rice cakes; and glasses of the sweet but heady spirit called mirin.

"Now that we have finished dining, Caine-san, we will have some agreeable entertainment," said Col. Homuru, the superintendent. He belched appreciatively. "It is time for the game of taiko binta [11]. Few Western men have seen it."

Four noncoms were pulling tables aside and setting up a canvas-covered, raised wooden platform in the center of the dining hall. It looked like a boxing ring.

There was loud whistling and applause in the rear of the hall as a bugler appeared, blowing lustily and followed by two women. Caine half-rose from his cushion on the floor. The first girl was the harlot Watuni, sober now and manacled. She wore a soiled robe which flopped open to reveal her gross figure. Behind her walked Minyama, sad-eyed but resolute, also dressed in a loose-fitting cotton garment.

The nearest kamikaze pilots sucked in their breath as they stared at the gleaming flesh under the geisha's robe.

A man in a red kimono–he was the futa, or umpire [12]–strode into the middle of the ring carrying two heavy oak weapons which resembled baseball bats. He said politely into a microphone: "I request your attention, please. The taiko binta is to commence. It will go three rounds lasting two minutes each The opponents are the prostitute Watuni, accused of causing the death of one of our students, and her accuser, Minyama Suko, the geisha. It shall be a battle to the death. Be respectful; be silent. When Lieut. Fuggi strikes the gong, the taiko binta starts."

Watuni, her robe discarded now, was a prancing, slavering animal. She swung her stout wood club in furious swipes at the slender geisha. Minyama was not the equal of her beefier, muscular opponent.

"High-priced slut, take this from Watuni, the common one!"

The oak stave connected with the geisha's rounded white shoulder. There was the splintering of bone. Caine winced. He got to his feet and shouted, while the kamikazes looked scandalized at his breach of etiquette.

"Minyama! Hold your bat with both hands, closer to the center. Go for her head!"

The geisha swung her bat and missed. Lieut. Fuggi, a pompous young officer with gold teeth and a superior air, banged a gong to signify the end of the first round. He bleated: "To your corners, women! Remember the rules of taiko binta."

Neither girl was in a mood to abide by rules. Even as the lieutenant's warning echoed through the hushed dining hall, the geisha's bat whistled viciously. Watuni lost her footing on a patch of blood. A moment later the contest was over. Minyama's weapon had caved in the other woman's forehead as if it had been made of cellophane.

Watuni weaved and sank to the floor. Dr. Nimoro hurried into the ring and brought out his stethoscope. He shook his head and pronounced the harlot dead.

Two soldiers came in bearing a litter and rolled the dead prostitute onto the stretcher. Indifferently, they carried the body away.

"You did fine, Minyama, just fine," Caine murmured soothingly, trying not to look into the girl's bleeding face. "They're s.o.b.'s for inventing a game like this. But thank God, it was you who won and not that other creature!"

The following day Col. Homuru and two aides took the American on a tour of the kamikaze training school. Caine learned that the first kamikaze strike against enemy shipping had been made the previous fall, on October 15, 1944, when Adm. Masabumi Arima had deliberately flown his plane into an aircraft carrier, causing a serious fire and killing himself in the crash [13].

Col. Homuru explained that kamikazes graduating from the school were given scrolls proclaiming them "hero gods." After they crashed their planes and died in suicidal strikes at American vessels, they were posthumously promoted two or three grades. Certificates attesting to their noble deaths and newly-attained ranks were mailed to the proud parents and wives of the dead pilots.

"The American admirals scoff at the kamikazes, but we have inflicted serious losses," Col. Homuru said with obvious pleasure. "In December, a graduate of this school, Ensign Hishi, sank your destroyer, the Mahan. Other pilots damaged the American cruiser Nashville and two additional destroyers, sensai. Our men have hit your carriers Bunker Hill and Saratoga. There were 656 men killed and injured on the Bunker Hill. We lost one pilot, who went on to glory and immortality [14]."

He paused to incline his shaved head respectfully before a bust of the late Adm. Arima–the first kamikaze of World War II–which stood in a wall niche. A spotlight played on the admiral's marble face.

Homuru continued: "There were 337 casualties on your Ticonderoga, Caine-san. And 62 were killed or injured on the hospital ship Comfort. 'Our slogan is, "For one man, one ship.'"

He reached in his pocket and brought out a tattered newspaper clipping. "This is a story from Domei News Agency, relayed from Zurich. It quotes a Mr. Stanley Woodward of the New York Times, I shall read it:

"'There is no use denying the fact that damage by kamikazes to units of the fleet has been much more severe than the people at home believe. There is no sure defense against kamikazes. More than 90 per cent of them are picked off by the Combat Air Patrol and our ships' gunners. But the ones that carry out their missions do tremendous damage and cause great loss of life among American crews.'"

Caine next visited "Patriotic History Classroom No. 2," where he found twenty young men, clad in kimonos and with feet encased in getas, squatting on the floor and chanting.

They were reciting from memory the eight printed pages of the "Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors," promulgated by Emperor Meiji in 1882. These precepts are called "The Grand Way of Heaven and Earth, the Universal Law of Humanity," but in reality are a tribute to war and savagery.

Col. Homuru listened intently to the tedious drone. Missing just one word or phrase, or twisting a sentence, was cause for death.

"Ensign Kyoti–step up here! The fifth page of the Rescript again, please. Recite!"

A terrified youth not more than 20 years old, with a shaved head and a thin, aristocratic face, stood up and stammered the fifth page over again.

Col. Homuru pounded his riding crop against the desk midway in the recitation. He bellowed: "Guards, take this man away! It is an outrage–the fool made the same mistake yesterday on Precept 18. Enough! I order him shot!"

The doomed boy was silent and submissive, though fear flickered in his eyes. He was marched from the hall and there was a painful silence broken by Col. Homuru's drumming of the riding crop against his desk.

Soon John Caine heard a wild exultant cry from the courtyard below. "Long live the Mikado! Glory to the armies of Nippon! Banzai–banzai!"

The voice was that of Ensign Kyoti. Caine peered through a slit in the window blinds and saw the youth. He was almost naked and was tied to a wooden post. Six riflemen stood with weapons aimed.

Even as the American watched, a little captain, saber in hand and looking like a toy soldier, shouted: "Fire!" Caine saw the bullets stitch a red line across the boy's bare chest.

Though he was no stranger to death, the American was sickened and appalled. This was a nation of fanatics. He wondered how wise he had been in consenting to come to the kamikaze school. Maybe a POW camp, or even death if it was mercifully quick, would be better than watching horrors pile up here day after day in the name of patriotism and national pride.

After a light lunch, which Caine couldn't touch because he was thinking about Ensign Kyoti's execution, Col. Homuru gave him a booklet which explained the courses taught at Japan's four kamikaze schools.

The two-month school term was divided in the following manner:

First Course: "Spiritual Intoxication," consisting of patriotic talks, exhortations, prayers and the "Catechism of Genuine Unitary Shinto."

The students learned by heart long passages from the works of the 18th Century philosopher, Yamazaki Anzai, a superpatriot, who counseled blind obedience to the Emperor and urged that Japanese young men find ways to die for their country, in peace or war.

Col. Homuru said proudly to Caine: "We call this 'The School of Heavenly Death.' By becoming thoroughly indoctrinated in bushido, or the way of the samurai, our students emerge from this course filled with the desire to die gloriously and quickly in their airplanes."

Course No. 2, lasting three weeks, was called "Hardening of the Body, Vessel of the Spirit" (physical training). But it was unlike any calisthenics or gym Caine had known in the States. Burly hanchos (NCO's, usually sergeants) outdid each other in ordering the young kamikaze recruits to perform senseless and painful feats.

In addition to countless workouts with barbells, boxing and mass drills, the new students were forced to beat one another with their fists until their faces and bodies were masses of cuts and bruises.

Caine watched in disgust as a fat seishinbo [15] stood on a dais and cried: "Ball your fists! I shall count: Ichi, ni, san–strike! Harder! Ha, you hit like schoolgirls. Come up here, little Yasuo, mama's boy. I shall show you how to hit."

The fat calisthenics teacher drove his fist into the right eye of a boy who was not more than 17. It tore the ligament and retina and Dr. Nimoro was summoned. Caine learned via the school grapevine that although Nimoro operated on the injured eye later that day, the boy lost the sight in it.

Col. Homuru explained patiently: "Caine-san, you are revolted because you do not understand. The flesh must be mortified, hurt, degraded. These men are going to die as kamikazes. They cannot afford to experience fear. By learning to become contemptuous of pain, and hard as steel, they finally welcome death as a brother."

Course No. 3 was titled "Principles of Land and Sea Warfare." It lasted one week.

The fourth course was a two-day session in "Codes and Signaling," for the success of a kamikaze attack on an American warship bristling with cannon and ack-ack often depended on the swift transmission of instructions and code messages by other planes which were guiding the kamikazes in for the strike.

In his own lectures John Caine was asked by Col. Homuru to describe the training of American flyers, the vulnerable parts of our ships, the effectiveness of our bombsights and radar, and other details. Caine wondered how many lies he could get away with, but none of the officers seemed to notice inconsistencies or exaggerations in his statements, and he concluded that the staff of this kamikaze school had extremely faulty knowledge of American naval and military aviation.

At night in his room Caine would make secret notes on rice paper about the courses in the school, the morale of the men and the identities of the officers and other instructors. He hoped that if he ever escaped, he could turn over the information to American intelligence officers and psychological warfare experts. Caine kept the growing pile of notes stored in a saki bottle which was hidden in a laundry sack filled with old rags in his closet.

In his lectures to kamikaze students Caine encouraged them to believe that American gunnery crews were inefficient, indifferent and thinking only of getting home to Main Street, ice cream soda and girls.

"I'll fix the bastards," he told himself grimly. "They'll get overconfident and careless. I'll never know abut it, but maybe our boys will pick 'em off like flies."

The Japanese students and the school's staff–though they professed to sneer at everything American as decadent–saw in the big teacher a symbol of what the Oriental men aspired to be, physically and romantically.

Caine had free time and used these hours to observe the kamikaze flyers very carefully. The greatest favors, the most voluptuous women and the finest wines and foods were bestowed on the kichigai (madmen) [16], ultranationalistic youths with a wild fervor and ambition to die in flaming glory for Nippon. These were the true suicide pilots.

Sometimes he had to laugh at their intense dislike of anything American. For some reason, the kichigai seemed to think that the vilest insult they could hurl at John Caine was: "To hell with Babe Ruth!" But as the time approached for them to leave the school and go to the airfield for their one-way trip to eternity, the "madmen" would become silent and withdrawn.

In a room which was supervised by an expert make-up man who formerly worked in Tokyo's Nobuki Theater, the somber pilots would have their heads shaved except for a little round patch of hair on the top of their skulls. Their faces were daubed with rice powder to simulate the pallor of death. Their fingernails were painted blue, to symbolize their mood, and they discarded their kimonos and regular uniforms to don gloomy black robes [17].

The kichigai would walk through the halls with their hands folded on their chests, rarely speaking; quiet apparitions who always gave Caine a start when he saw them. New boys, cadets freshly arrived from the airfields or the provinces, gave the fearful-looking kichigai a wide berth, for they already looked out of this world.

One day Col. Homuru said to Caine: "Come, sensai, I will show you some motion pictures. Though you are a prisoner here and cannot go to the airfield to see our brave Kamikazes take off for their finest hour, you can see the films."

It was a strange and disturbing movie. The film Caine viewed was one which had been taken the previous week of a cadet named Ito Hayashi, a plump boy from the same province in which John Caine had lived years before. The boy's father, the American learned, was Moto Hayashi, the postmaster in Onimichi, the village in which Caine was born. The Yank remembered Moto.

He felt a curious, almost paternal interest in good-natured Ito Hayashi, who was not more than 17 years old. He had been genuinely sorry to see the boy graduate and leave the school for his rendezvous with death.

The film flickered on the screen and Caine saw Ito get out of a staff car at the airfield. The youth's face was deathly pale from rice powder and fear.

A military band played and Caine wondered how poor, frightened Ito felt when the airdrome commandant approached, bowed three times and recited a little poem he had composed in Ito's honor:

"When I fly the skies
What a fine burial place
Would be the top of a cloud."

Caine detected a tremor in the boy's hands as he handed the commandant a small wooden box filled with ashes from burned papers. The box symbolized Ito's own remains; it would be sent back to the proud postmaster in Onimichi after his teen-aged son had crashed his plane into an American ship or into the sea.

Now the motion pictures showed the plane which Ito would fly. The boy had received just enough instruction to make this first, and last, solo flight. The craft was a beat-up Akatombo. There was no escape from the old crate once Ito took off. The wheels were rigged to drop away. He would be locked in the cockpit without a parachute [18].

Bombs and 50-mm mortar shells had been wired to the plane's leading edge, the fuselage and the tail, so that whatever part of the aircraft made contact, the result would be an immediate and devastating explosion [19]. The deadly cargo could not be jettisoned, even if the young pilot wished to do so.

Ito bowed to the twenty officers, pilots, mechanics and guards who stood stiffly at attention, honoring the youth who was about to die. The young pilot was sealed in the cabin and the creaky Akatombo made an erratic take-off, just clearing some power lines.

The next film clip was from a camera equipped with a telescopic lens mounted in a distant Zero. Caine saw the old Akatombo go into a steep glide, heading for a straggling convoy vessel. Ito had his stick over left; he balanced on a wing tip, came down hard, oblivious of yellow-orange bursts from the ship's guns.

Six Grummans moved in fast from the west, trying to intercept the diving Akatombo. Caine prayed they would succeed in blowing Ito's aircraft to bits. But the boy, inexperienced as he was, had luck. The suicide plane dived through a barrage and grazed the stern of the merchantman, the S.S. Belinda Victory.

Caine saw a puff of white smoke, flying bits of metal, and watched fire break out on the vessel. The Akatombo and its pilot disintegrated.

Col. Homuru ordered the projectionist to turn on the room lights. The officer sat quietly gloating. "Not a bad hit, Caine-san. The boy was nervous but brave; he died a hero's death. And we got a ship."

"I knew his father," Caine said. "I'm sure he'll be very proud to receive Ito's ashes."

But there was another group of flyers–the better-educated men from old families–who were scornfully called the sukebi (libertines) [20] by the ultrapatriots who courted death. The members of this latter group, though they'd sworn to die for the Mikado, showed a greater interest in assignations and partying than in their impending date with doom.

Mental crack-ups were most frequent among the more thoughtful class of kamikazes who weren't too happy about crashing deliberately on the deck of a carrier or a cruiser.

One of these was Lieut. Abiko Toyo, a grave and courteous young man of 21 whose older brother (killed at Guadalcanal) had received his M.A. degree at Harvard. Young Lieut. Toyo shyly sought out John Caine and talked with him about Yank college courses, campus life, the stage and literature.

"I always wanted to go to Harvard too," he said wistfully, "as my brother Tomashi did. But now that we are enemies, that is just a dream, Caine-san.

"Maybe you'll get there yet, Lieutenant. The war has to end sometime. But you can't go to Harvard if you die trying to sink one of our ships."

"I admire you, Caine-san. Lately I have been thinking very carefully about this school and the whole kamikaze philosophy. Are we heroes–or the greatest of fools? I wonder."

With the cryptic remark he left the room. Caine opened a book but his thoughts were on Toyo. The flyer's voice had held a desperate note. The big Yankee had a hunch he was one kamikaze trainee who would never make the death dive against an American vessel.

It was the night of Friday, February 6, 1945. Another air raid was in progress over Tokyo and the kamikaze school rocked and trembled from the concussion of bombs and antiaircraft fire in the neighborhood [21]. For two hours the metropolis had reverberated with bomb explosions, and the air raid sirens had whined without letup.

The strictest blackout regulations prevailed; not a glimmer of light showed from the school . Air raid wardens patroled each floor, making certain that the drapes and blackout curtains in students' rooms were tightly drawn.

Caine ran into Lieut. Toyo sitting dejectedly in the school library, an odd place for a handsome young kamikaze who could have been with a geisha tonight.

Strain and fear were deeply etched on Toyo's face. "It is bad tonight, sensai-san, very bad. Feel how the building rocks from the concussions; your airmen are hurting us more than we care to admit. Damn the Americans!"

Caine said evenly: "I understand that your time is up here, Lieutenant, that you're leaving tomorrow for Nikura Airdrome [22]. I might as well say good-by now. You'll probably die next week in the first plane you take up. I just don't understand this suicide impulse."

Lieut. Toyo looked at Caine. "You are right, sensai. It is madness. I know that now. Good-by. I have liked you though you are my enemy."

He hurried from the library, eyes downcast, almost bowling over a slender girl whose black tresses hung down her neck. She wore a low-cut pink evening gown. Her name was Rajo. Before the war she had been a popular strip teaser in Tokyo's gaudy and lewd Asakusa Park.

"Teacher-san," she said petulantly, "what has gotten into the honorable Toyo? He was to be my companion tonight. This is his final night in the school and I wish to make him happy."

Caine smiled. "Yukkuri–take it easy, Rajo. He's a little gloomy, that's all. He'll probably come to your room later. Give him time to compose himself. It isn't easy for a man to know he dies soon."

But Lieut. Toyo was not to keep his appointment with the girl from Asakusa Park. At 11:45 p.m. the stripper, who had gone to his room and let herself in with a passkey, emerged and uttered an electrifying shriek.

"It is the honorable lieutenant; he is dead; he has killed himself! Aa-eii! He was young and kind to me. May his ancestors welcome him."

Caine raced down the hall and pushed aside several jabbering soldiers who stood uncertainly at Toyo's door.

Rajo's cry of alarm was true. The young flyer who had wanted to go to Harvard was as dead now as if he had crash-dived a Zero or Suesi [23] onto the deck of a battleship.

After bathing ceremoniously and writing letters to his parents and to Col. Homuru, Abiko Toyo had looped a metal clothes hanger around his neck. He had tied it to a rope, knotted the hemp over a heating pipe, and had stepped off a chair into eternity.

Col. Homuru arrived on the scene minutes later. His dark face was bitter, as if the lieutenant had cheated him personally by dying before his time.

He grabbed the letters from the dead flyer's desk and read aloud the missive which was addressed to himself: "The words of Caine-san, the American teacher, are correct though he is our foe. Kamikaze is not a glorious aspect of bushido; it is a fool's way to perish. But I cannot live on after having taken an oath to die; it is better that I rejoin my ancestors in this fashion while I have courage to leave this world."

The colonel's cheeks puffed in and out like a blowfish. He tore up the letter with shaking hands. "So! You encouraged the weak Toyo to commit a traitorous act, sensai?" He has died a coward instead of a hero. It was a pointless death, and now we must punish you for destroying his confidence. Sgt. Tatsuno! Take this man to detention quarters."

Tatsuno was a shaggy brute who was hairy of face and body. Though John Caine was in peak physical condition, he was no match for burly Sgt. Tatsuno.

When Tatsuno grabbed his arm, Caine shook it off impatiently. The sergeant picked up the big American from the floor as if he were lifting a small child. Then he threw Caine against the wall.

Had Caine hit his head, it would have shattered like an overripe melon. As it was, the stunning impact wrenched his left shoulder and a river of pain coursed through his body. He picked himself up groggily and allowed Tatsuno to push him roughly into the elevator.

They descended to the basement of the former warehouse. It was a steamy place filled with heating equipment, elevator machinery, cases of canned food and liquors, cleaning compounds, bedding and empty packing cases. Tatsuno pushed the injured Yank toward a door marked: "Detention Room."

He flung Caine inside, grunting with childish amusement as the sensai again fell to his knees and gashed his cheek against an iron cot which was suspended from the wall.

Some time later Col. Homuru came down and peered through a barred window into the bleak cell. He said: "It will not be pleasant here, teacher. We must make an example of you. Rest awhile; you will need every bit of strength. Goro, the Sumo wrestler, will arrive tomorrow. The match between you and our beloved Goro will be most amusing for the kamikazes."

Homuru left abruptly and Caine was alone. He lay wearily on the filthy cot and watched a cockroach meander aimlessly up, down and across the dirty wall.

Caine had never heard of Goro but had read about Sumo wrestlers. Whatever Col. Homuru had planned for him in the way of punishment, Caine realized, would be spectacular, brutal, and the odds would be against him.

John Caine stayed in the dingy, poorly ventilated cell for sixteen hours. One dish of moldy rice and a cup of brackish water constituted his only meal.

Busy little yellow men hurried in and out of the basement, as he could see from his cell, putting in supplies, fuel, water kegs and other provisions for the school. From other parts of the city Caine could hear fitful explosions and the wail of fire engines which were still fighting the flames from the previous night's raid on Tokyo.

Several times the lights in the building went out but flickered back on after a while. He noted a dozen or so barrels being rolled in marked "Kerosene" and bearing the stencils of a British oil company which had long since been taken over by the Japs.

Caine surmised that the kerosene was for the school's emergency generators in the event Tokyo's municipal power system was knocked out for a long period by American bombs.

He loathed the school. He eyed the kerosene and wished he could put a match to it and send the building up in flames.

He was still brooding about the kamikazes and wondering how to hamper their operations when the hairy Sgt. Tatsuno stepped off the elevator and swaggered like King Kong over to the American's cell.

"You come with me now, sensai. Goro upstairs. Many people wait for you, to see Goro kill you."

The kamikaze pilots and their female companions of the night were finishing their gochino [24], the main meal, when soldiers led John Caine into the brightly lighted dining hall. They had stripped him of his shirt and dungarees; he wore a scanty fundoshi cloth.

As always, when they beheld the imposing American, there was a sigh from the women and a murmur of resentment mixed with admiration from the slightly-built Japanese men who were awed by Caine's physique.

One girl caught his eye. She was full-breasted and had an outdoor look. A drunken pilot was foundling her but she had eyes only for the American prisoner. Caine paused and stared at her, then he remembered.

"Little Yamai, the fisherman's daughter! The one who saved me! I don't know whether to thank you or hate you. What are you doing here?"

"Nichi, nichi! Be quiet, sensai, walk up front!" Sgt. Tatsuno growled, shoving him forward.

Caine could imagine the story behind Yamai's presence here. He remembered the angry eyes of her fiancé, Hosui, when she had snuggled under the fishing boat's tarpaulins with himself.

Hosui, his dignity affronted, must have persuaded the authorities to press Yamai into service in the kamikazes' school. Caine felt a twinge of pity for her. But he had to move along now for the impatient crowd was roaring.

At the other end of the hall a fearful figure was laboriously climbing the five steps to an elevated platform which had been erected for this occasion. It was Goro, the Sumo wrestler, a long-time star in this ancient Japanese game which has been a traditional sport since the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Goro was tall and outlandishly fat–a potbellied, bland-faced giant who weighed almost 400 pounds. His shiny black hair was worn in the strange feudal style of all Sumo wrestlers–it was allowed to grow long and was fastened on top of his head in a neat topknot. The man mountain's layers of fat quivered like aspic; his droopy loincloth gave him a ludicrous infantile look, but here was nothing amusing about his powerful arms.

The ring in which Caine was to wrestle this giant was 15 feet square and thickly sanded. An announcer recited in a sing-song voice the ancient Sumo code; the Japanese spectators sat with heads lowered in prayer-like poses.

Goro did knee bends and bowed ceremoniously to his fans. Then he bowed again until his topknot touched the sand and his blubbery lips moved soundlessly in a Shinto prayer for success over his enemy.

A gong sounded in the hushed hall. The fight was on. It would last without respite until one of the men won. This would not be a contest on points. Only one man would leave the ring alive.

Goro, now 40 years of age, had been a Sumo wrestler since he was 15. He was fed staggering quantities of chanko ryori, a mixture of chicken, beef and vegetables, to keep him fat. The Sumo star ate seven full meals a day.

Despite his tremendous belly, the Jap was surprisingly agile. His shoebutton eyes glittered with the expectation of an easy triumph.

"Shinpei, shinpei, kutsu migaki–amateur, fool, white man, you will soon die!" Goro murmured to Caine.

The American moved in, feinting with his right hand at Goro's moon face. Suddenly Caine moved back a step and lowered his head; he ran full tilt into the expanse of Goro's stomach. There was a mighty grunt; the Jap retreated a few steps.

Goro's short left leg kicked out like a pile driver. It caught Caine on the chin. The hall became a pinwheel of colored lights, Caine's head rocked, he lost his footing and fell.

Face pressed to the floor, Caine slithered through his obese opponent's legs just as Goro tried to bounce on the prone American. The 400-pound man missed landing on Caine's head by inches.

Both men, crab-like, edged back on all fours and got heavily to their feet. Goro pawed sweat from his angry moon face. The hall resounded with screams and exhortations.

"Kai! Sit on the foreign devil, Goro, crush him!"

"A purse of 10,000 yen for you, Goro, if you break his back!"

"Tear the bakayaro's tongue out, Goro-san!"

Caine tried to kick the huge stomach. With a lightning movement the elephantine Jap shot out a fist of iron and twisted the American's foot, hurling him to the floor. Goro launched himself full tilt at the dazed Caine.

This time the flying body connected, though the Yank desperately twisted out of the way so that only a leg was in Goro's downward path.

There was a sickening crunch as the femoral bone in Caine's right thigh snapped under the other man's weight. He no longer could get to his feet.

Goro, seated like an idol, raised his ham-like hands which were locked together. A human stamping machine, he was aiming for the American's face, hoping to crush Caine's skull and bring death with one blow. But Caine's thumb went to the Nip fighter's left eye, grinding it hard, and the Jap's mountainous body broke out in a sweat.

"Nichi, nichi, American pig!" he mumbled, struggling hard to draw back from Caine's relentless thumb. The American intensified the pressure.

Though white with pain from his leg injury, Caine summoned his last reserve of strength and brought his right hand down hard in a judo chop at Goro's neck. It was a jolting, teeth-rattling blow; it would have killed any lesser man.

Goro grunted and spat in the American's face. Again Caine raised his fist–his hands were dwarfed by Goro's own–and put every ounce of power in a final chop at the back of the Sumo star's fleshy throat.

This time the blow felled the giant. He gasped for air, there was a wheeze in his chest. Caine chopped him again. Goro fell face-forward, motionless.

Dr. Nimoro climbed into the ring and put his head to Goro's chest. The physician shook his head incredulously; Goro was dead. A gong was struck softly and two white-faced, shocked soldiers hurried forward and respectfully covered the dead Sumo star with a Nipponese flag.

There were no cheers or whistles for the American's performance; just shock and incredulity that a white man–and a hated enemy, at that–had killed one of Japan's most revered Sumo fighters.

Caine lay a long time in his cell. Finally Dr. Nimoro came, looked at the injured leg, and said: "We will operate on you tomorrow morning, sensai. It will not be pleasant for you."

Dr.  Nimoro's eye glasses were misty; he had been weeping. For more than twenty years he had been one of Goro's most enthusiastic fans. Now his idol was dead.

At this moment John Caine knew fear. He wondered how he could avoid surgery, for he had an oppressive feeling that Dr. Nimoro had no intention of letting him leave the operating room alive.

Another air raid was in progress. Caine lay on a tattered straw pallet, his splintered thigh bone telegraphing pain to his body. He listened to the angry barking of the ack-ack guns and the renewed scream of fire engines racing through the streets.

His big body was spent and weakened by the epic fight. From his cot he eyed the kerosene barrels in the deserted basement. In his mind's eye Caine could picture the kamikaze school going up in flames, the screams of the pilots, the agony of Dr. Nimoro, Col. Homuru and other officers.

"Sensai-san?"

The voice was the faintest of whispers, from the back stairwell which led upstairs.

"Yes, who is it? Come out into the light so I can see you."

Fearful but eager, her eyes fixed admiringly on the big American, the girl Yamai from the fishing boat crept out into the dim light provided by the solitary bulb hanging in the prisoner's cell.

"I could not bear to think of you here injured and alone," she said in a timid voice. "So I made advances to your guard, Sgt. Tatsuno, who looks like an ape and smells as bad. Now he is asleep. And I have taken his keys."

He could scarcely believe his good fortune. Yamai reached into her kimono and pulled out the key to his cell. Moments later Caine was free. The girl brought him two broomsticks which he tied together with baling wire, improvising a crutch so that he could hobble.

"Do you trust me? Will you do as I say?" he asked. "This is an evil place, Yamai. Help me destroy it so you will be free to go back home. With your help, none of the women here will be hurt."

"I will help you, sensai."

He felt in his pocket for matches; they were there. A hammer, rusted but useful, lay on a shelf filled with junk.

He said in a low voice: "Go back upstairs. Give me fifteen minutes in which to open these kerosene barrels, Yamai. Round up all the women and leave the building quickly."

His leg pain was increasing; he felt very hot and he knew he had a fever. Like a wraith in a bright, flowered kimono, Yamai melted into the darkness of the stairwell and Caine set to work with his hammer, knocking the bungs from every kerosene barrel he could find.

A quarter of an hour passed. The basement floor was awash with four inches of highly flammable fuel. John Caine opened the last barrel of kerosene. By now Yamai and the other girls must be out of the place. He looked at his watch.

At exactly 2:45 a.m. the American struck a match and dropped it into the black pool of kerosene at his feet. There was a dull whoomp. An orange glow suffused the basement and a great explosion followed, shattering his eardrums.

Flames licked at Caine's improvised crutch and raced up his oil-saturated dungarees. He felt the terrible breath of the basement's heat.

Outside on the street he could hear the twittering of excited girls. He was relieved. Yamai had done her job well. He hoped that most of the women had been saved.

And then, as flames shot up the elevator shaft and the stairwell–blooming fiercely on every floor of the kamikaze school–John Caine coughed in the smoke and pawed at his blackened and charred face. He tottered and pitched forward into the sea of flame at his feet.

Just for a moment before he died the American had a wry and disturbing thought; damned if I didn't become a kamikaze myself just so this place would be destroyed. I guess I understand the Nips a little better now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The story you have just read was written by Hal North after a trip to Japan, at which time he interviewed many Japanese ex-soldiers, geisha girls and prostitutes who had been at the kamikaze school or had some knowledge of it. From what these people remembered, or had heard, Mr. North was able to piece together the incredible and heroic story of John Caine.

THE END

Notes

1. A B-29 bomber named Lottie Carroll did not exist.

2. Yamai is not a female name in Japan. Instead, the word yamai means illness or disease.

3. Onimichi does not exist. This fictional name appears to come from Onomichi, which is a city in Hiroshima Prefecture and the hometown of Yasuo Kuwahara, author of the 1957 book entitled Kamikaze.

4. The author misspells the common Japanese word bakayaro as bakiyaro, which would not happen if the author actually were Japanese.

5. The prefecture of Kiirun never existed in Japan. Keelung, a major port city situated in the northeastern part of Taiwan, was known as Kiirun during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.

6. The word kampai is used when giving a toast or before drinking in celebration or honor of something. Such a word is totally inappropriate in the context of this story.

7. Atami is southwest of the capital city of Tokyo, so it is not clear why the author would call it a "remote northern fishing village."

8. A typhoon, called kamikaze (divine wind), destroyed the Mongol fleet in 1281 during the 13th century, not the 16th century as indicated in the story.

9. Hilo is a city on the island of Hawaii. Hilo and the great military shrine described in the story do not exist.

10. The cities of Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Hiro did not have any such kamikaze schools or even major military air bases in the cities. The Navy had a small airfield in Hiro.

11. Kuwahara (1957, 37-40) describes the game of taiko binta, so his book is most likely the source for the game in this story. The actual existence of this game is suspect, since other Japanese WWII veterans do not mention it. Also, Kuwahara's book is fictional (see Ten Historical Discrepancies of Kamikaze by Yasuo Kuwahara and Gordon T. Allred).

12. A futa in Japanese is not an umpire but rather a lid or cover.

13. Adm. Masafumi Arima did not hit any ship before he was shot down (Inoguchi and Nakajima 1958, 37; O'Neill 1999, 123-4; Warner and Warner 1982, 84).

14. The time frame for kamikaze attacks on the aircraft carriers Bunker Hill and Saratoga is incorrect. Later in this story there is a reference to Tokyo's being fire bombed on February 6, 1945, so Col. Homuru's statement about the kamikaze attacks was made prior to this date. However, Bunker Hill did not get hit by two kamikaze aircraft until May 11, 1945. Also, the aircraft carrier Saratoga was hit by five kamikaze planes on February 21, 1945.

15. A seishinbo was not a person but rather a bat used in the Japanese Navy to "instill spirit" in trainees.

16. This description about kichigai (madmen) comes from Yasuo Kuwahara's fictional book Kamikaze (1957, 116). There is no historical evidence that this kamikaze group existed.

17. This entire paragraph is preposterous and without basis in history.

18. The last three sentences of this paragraph have no historical basis.

19. No kamikaze planes ever were wired where the bombs they were carrying would explode if contact was made at any part of the planes.

20. This mention of sukebi (or sukebei to correctly spell the word) comes directly from the fictional book Kamikaze (1957,116) by Yasuo Kuwahara.  There is no evidence that such a kamikaze pilot group ever existed.

21. February 6, 1945, was a Tuesday, not a Friday. There was no air raid on Tokyo on that date (Bradley 1999, 25-38).

22. Nikura Airdrome is a fictional name.

23. The Suisei, not Suesi, dive bomber was used by the Japanese Navy in kamikaze attacks.

24. The word gochino does not exist in Japanese. The word gochiso means dinner or feast, so the author may have meant to use this word.

Sources Cited

Bradley, F.J. 1999. No Strategic Targets Left. Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Company.

Kuwahara, Yasuo, and Gordon T. Allred. 1957. Kamikaze. New York: Ballantine Books.

Inoguchi, Rikihei, Tadashi Nakajima, with Roger Pineau. 1958. The Divine Wind: Japan's Kamikaze Force in World War II. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.

O'Neill, Richard. 1999. Originally published in 1981 as an illustrated edition. Suicide Squads: The Men and Machines of World War II Special Operations. London: Salamander Books.

Warner, Denis, Peggy Warner, with Commander Sadao Seno. 1982. The Sacred Warriors: Japan's Suicide Legions. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

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