Kaigun suijō tokkōtai: Shin'yō (Navy surface special attack corps:
Shin'yō)
by 56th Shin'yō Squadron Member Volunteers, Reiko Kimura, and Enosuke Kamida
Genshū Publishing, 2004, 187 pages
Almost six decades after the 56th Shin'yō Special Attack Squadron disbanded,
several surviving veterans share their wartime experiences in this history
entitled Kaigun suijō tokkōtai: Shin'yō (Navy surface special attack corps:
Shin'yō). Probably since so much time has passed, the individual events described
in the book do not contain many details or much emotion, and a great deal of
information regarding the squadron's history gets repeated as different
individuals tell the same basic story. The book also presents background of the
overall deployment of the Japanese Navy's Shin'yō Special Attack Corps assigned to carry out
suicide attacks by crashing motorboats loaded with explosives into
enemy ships as they neared the shore.
On May 25, 1945, the 56th Shin'yō Squadron was formed at Ōmura Bay in Kawatana
Town in Nagasaki Prefecture, where the motorboat pilots had trained for almost
two months. In the first part of June 1945, the men left for Ena Bay at the
southern end of Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture. The 56th Shin'yō Squadron had 183
members in total including 8 officers, 53 motorboat pilots, 14 headquarters
personnel, 73 base workers, and 35 maintenance personnel. The squadron had 52
one-man Model 1 and four two-man Model 5 motorboats that carried 250 kg
of explosives in the bow. They were hidden during the day in tunnels dug into
cliffs alongside Ena Bay, and squadron members made training runs during the
darkness of night.
The squadron officers located their headquarters at the main hall of nearby
Fukusenji Temple, and the shin'yō pilots lodged in four private homes. Most
pilots were only 16 or 17 years old while stationed in the Matsuwa area around Ena
Bay waiting for the anticipated landing of the American fleet. At about 2300
during the night of August 1, 1945, an order was given to squadron members to be
ready to sortie, since there was an alert that an enemy fleet had been spotted
near shore. They waited throughout the night to launch their boats, but at about
dawn they received notice that the information about an approaching enemy fleet
was mistaken. On August 15, 1945, the Emperor announced the end of the war.
Without suffering any casualties during the war, 56th Shin'yō Squadron members left base on
August 24 to return to their homes.
Reiko Kimura, who grew up on Miura Peninsula and went to high school in
Yokosuka near the end of war, coordinated the creation of this
book. She explains in the Preface that she never heard about the 56th Shin'yō
Squadron until she visited Fukusenji Temple in 1999. She met several former
squadron members during their annual reunion in Miura City and became interested
in telling their story, since the Navy's Shin'yō Special Attack Corps has remained
relatively unknown in comparison to the Kamikaze (Shinpū) Special Attack Corps. Kimura
gets the book off to a slow start with the first section providing a long
chronological history of the Greater East Asia War with extended excursions into
her wartime experiences, which have no direct relationship to the Shin'yō Corps
history. The next unnumbered section written by Kimura summarizes the history of
the Navy's Shin'yō Special Attack Corps and the 56th Shin'yō Squadron.
The book's next sections written by Kanichi Usui, a former 56th Shin'yō
Squadron motorboat pilot, provide a summary history of the squadron, names of
the 183 squadron members, and a listing of the squadron's annual reunions held
since 1976. The current chief priest of Fukusenji Temple then has an
article about the squadron's use of the temple as its headquarters and the reunions
held in the postwar period. Eight former squadron members then have individual
articles about their wartime experiences. Next a section gives various unattributed
quotes from a reunion of nine former squadron members that took place in June
2003. One interesting quote mentions that their training included sessions
similar to mind control (pp. 112-3):
I did not think of death as scary. Perhaps I did not know what type of thing
was death and that then was not the time to die. Even if I died, I only had the
feeling like I would live again. Every day we listened to two hours of lectures
to keep us mentally prepared, so it seems like we were subjected to a kind of
mind control.
The next part includes interviews with current residents at each of the four
private homes where shin'yō pilots lodged during the war. Some interviewees
were children at the time the pilots stayed in their homes, and they describe what they remember from that time. They
also each mention how former squadron members return year after year during
reunions. The book's final section has various reference material including
detailed base maps, photos of Ena Bay and shin'yō tunnels, information about all 114
shin'yō squadrons, maps showing shin'yō base locations in Japan and other
countries, and a chronological history of the Shin'yō Special Attack Corps. The
book also includes over 20 photos, including one of the 56th Shin'yō Squadron's pilots (see
below) and a couple taken at reunions of former squadron members.
56th Shin'yō Special Attack Squadron
In the year after publication of this book in 2004, the
56th Shin'yō Special Attack
Squadron Iwadate Unit Monument was erected at Fukusenji Temple in Miura City. |
