The Sen-Toku Raid
by John Mannock
New American Library, 2005, 453 pages
Before the end of World War II, the Japanese Navy completed three Sen-Toku class submarines
that could each launch three bombers with foldable wings. The Japanese had
plans to use the planes from these submarines in a strike against the Panama
Canal, and they even discussed using the planes to bomb U.S. cities. On August
15, 1945, two Sen-Toku submarines (I-400 and I-401) were proceeding toward the
Ulithi Atoll to launch a suicide attack on American ships
anchored there. However, without ever launching their planes, the two submarines
received orders to return to Japan after the emperor announced Japan's
surrender. John Mannock has written an excellent thriller based on Sen-Toku
submarines and several types of suicide attack weapons developed by the Japanese.
The Sen-Toku Raid has the same elements as a great action flick:
suspense, memorable characters, intense conflict, and surprising
twists.
Based on the accuracy of events, places, and weapons
described in this novel, John Mannock (a pseudonym) obviously performed much
detailed research to create a story with great realism. His first novel, Iron
Coffin, also told the story of a World War II submarine—a damaged German
U-boat off the coast of Louisiana. Mannock's second novel displays storytelling
mastery shown by few authors of historical fiction. He served in the American
military in the early 1980s in an infantry reconnaissance unit, which may
partly explain the convincing accounts of reconnaissance found in The
Sen-Toku Raid.
The novel opens with six men in a U.S. Navy Underwater
Demolition Team (UDT) that reach the beach of a Philippine island one night in
October 1944 in
order to reconnoiter, mine, and destroy submerged obstacles in preparation for
a full-scale amphibious invasion by U.S. Marines. They succeed in their mission,
but only two on the team survive, after drifting on a chunk of wood for six
days before being rescued by a Royal Australian Air Force seaplane. The two men
later get shot down while a transport plane carries them and a group of Allied
soldiers and civilians to another island. This small group of Allies discover a
Japanese Sen-Toku
submarine base on a small Philippine island, so the outnumbered
men plot to destroy it. The final man of the Underwater Demolition Team to
survive communicates a warning that another Sen-Toku submarine carrying
kamikaze planes and other suicide weapons plans to launch an attack on Washington,
D.C. The attack is foiled, but President Roosevelt covers it up as an
"intricate if somewhat overdone aerial exercise designed to test the
absolute impregnability of the defenses surrounding our nation's capital"
(p. 440).
In addition to kamikaze planes that made sorties from land bases,
the Japanese Navy developed several other weapons intended for suicide attacks
(called "special attacks" in Japanese). This book weaves in these
different weapons as part of the plot, even though some models were never
deployed before the end of the war. The Underwater Demolition Team that scouts
out a Philippine island at the beginning of the novel encounters shin'yō (explosive
motorboats) and fukuryū (frogmen who destroy landing craft with an explosive
charge mounted on top of a wooden pole). The Sen-Toku submarine carries three
types of suicide weapons: one ōka (manned rocket-powered glider), two kaiten
(manned torpedoes), and three bombers. The plot even includes a Zero fighter's
ramming of an American plane pursuing it. Late in the war, the Japanese Army had
formed special attack
squadrons to protect the homeland by ramming B-29 bombers, but other pilots also sometimes tried to use this tactic against enemy planes.
The men who carry out suicide attacks in the novel generally
display a strong sense of duty to the emperor and Japan, which seems to be
their main motivation. A precept in the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and
Sailors of 1882 expresses that "duty is heavier than a mountain, death is
lighter than a feather," and each man in the military needed to know this
entire Imperial Rescript by heart. However, rather than duty to the emperor, the
Sen-Toku submarine commander seems more motivated by revenge for the loss of
his wife and sons in Doolittle's 1942 raid on Tokyo. This commander uses a
practical approach to motivate the suicide pilots on his submarine by nurturing
and exploiting that "each young suicide pilot, deep down, had an overwhelming
need to feel special, part of an elite" (p. 245). Even when faced
directly with death, each man carries out the suicide attack with courage. For example,
the shin'yō explosive motorboat pilot "felt no fear, only a kind of
light-headed exhilaration" (p. 66) as he steered his small boat toward an
American ship. Interestingly, the American who steals a kaiten begins to have
similar feelings as the Japanese suicide pilots when he steers the torpedo toward
its target.
Although the Japanese built three Sen-Toku submarines, their
actual capabilities differed somewhat from the features of the two submarines
in the novel. They both carried three Seiran ("Mountain Haze"
in Japanese) bombers inside a deck-mounted cylindrical hangar, which opened
forward with launch rails from the hangar door to bow for the planes to be
catapulted into the air. The Seiran bombers could be readied for flight
in seven minutes even in the dark. However, in contrast to the novel's
submarines, the historical Sen-Toku submarines did not have the ability to also
carry two kaiten and an ōka weapon. Other Japanese submarines had been
converted to carry two to six kaiten, but no submarine had both aircraft and
kaiten. The Japanese did have plans to design a submarine that could launch
rocket-propelled ōka weapons, but they never developed one.
Although the novel's deployment dates and geographical locations of
Japanese suicide weapons at times do not agree with historical facts,
Mannock provides details and uses technical terms to present convincing action
and characters. He skillfully weaves in historical background with the novel's
main story line. Mannock limits the number of geographical settings and even
provides a map of the Philippines to show the exact location of the Sen-Toku
submarine base, so readers can easily follow the story's action.
The book depicts a wide variety of interesting and memorable
characters, both on the Allied and Japanese sides. Although Mannock presents
some favorable aspects of several Japanese characters, he generally portrays
the Japanese less favorably than the Allied combatants. The two most detestable
Japanese, the arrogant ōka pilot who physically and verbally abuses a talented
flight technician and the wily warrant officer eager for advancement by turning
in others for rule violations, both get their just deserts when killed
intentionally by someone on their own side.
The character of Major Barnaby, former sociology
professor at Cambridge University and an Allied intelligence adviser and field
researcher, supposedly has the most brains of anyone in the novel, but his
statements regarding the history of kamikaze attacks reveal several major
errors. Although the first Japanese aerial suicide squad was named shinpū
(meaning "divine wind" in Japanese), Barnaby explains (p. 102),
"Nisei translators, American soldiers of Japanese descent, . . . have come
up with the shorter, somewhat more derogatory term kamikaze when
referring to these units." Obviously, kamikaze is not a shorter
word than shinpū in English, and even in Japanese the two words have the
same number of syllables. Also, it is hard to believe that any Japanese person
at the time would have considered the word kamikaze to be "derogatory,"
since kamikaze was a historical term that referred to the typhoon
(divine wind) that saved Japan from a Mongol invasion in the late 13th century.
Also, in contrast to Barnaby's assertion, the Nisei translators did not just "come up" with the word
kamikaze.
Many people, including Japanese during and after the war, have used the more
common pronunciation of the two Chinese characters (kanji) that make up the word kamikaze
(Japanese-style reading) rather than less common pronunciation of shinpū
(Chinese-style reading), even though the correct pronunciation of the name for
the first aerial suicide squad is shinpū. Another error Barnaby makes is to
state that toku means "special attack," when the correct
Japanese word is tokkō (or tokko).
Major Barnaby also commits several anachronisms. On October
27, 1944, he explains (p. 102) that the word kamikaze "has
pejorative overtones of foolishness or recklessness when used
colloquially." This definitely happened in Japan in the postwar period,
but the word had no such "pejorative overtones" at that time. He
states (p. 102) that the "intelligence-gathering community knew for some
time that the kamikaze existed," even though the first aerial suicide
squad was formed on October 20 (Inoguchi and Nakajima 1958, 12-3), and the first
newspaper article about their successful attack on October 25 was not even
published in Japan until October 29 (Kaneko 2001, 134). American military
translators did not first use the word kamikaze (instead of shinpū)
until November 8 as part of the translation of a telegraphic communication from
Tokyo dated October 31 (Hara 2004, 115). The telegraph did not indicate the
pronunciation of the two Chinese characters that make up the word kamikaze
or shinpū, so they translated it using the most commonly used
pronunciation (i.e., kamikaze). On October 27, 1944, Major Barnaby also states
that he knew about shin'yō (explosive motorboats) and kaiten (manned torpedoes),
even though very few men in the Japanese Navy knew of their existence at this
date. For example, a commander of a shin'yō squadron states, "the nature of
my squadron was kept so secret that the relevant supply departments knew
nothing about us" (O'Neill 1999, 79).
Just one month after publication, every one of eleven reader
book reviews on Amazon and Barnes & Noble give The Sen-Toku Raid a
rating a five stars (at April 17, 2005). This exciting novel deserves the
accolades.
Sources Cited
Hara, Katsuhiro. 2004. Shinsō kamikaze tokkō: Hisshi
hitchū no 300 nichi (Kamikaze special attack facts: 300 days of certain-death, sure-hit
attacks). Tōkyō: KK Bestsellers.
Inoguchi, Rikihei, and Tadashi Nakajima, with Roger Pineau.
1958. The Divine Wind: Japan's Kamikaze Force in World War II.
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
Kaneko, Toshio. 2001. Shinpū tokkō no kiroku (Record of
Shinpū Special Attacks). Tōkyō: Kōjinsha.
O'Neill, Richard. 1999. Suicide Squads: The Men and Machines of World War II
Special Operations. Originally published in 1981. London: Salamander Books.
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