Sora no kanata ni (To distant skies)
by Asahi Shimbun Seibu Honsha
Ashishobō, 1990, 134 pages
Tome Torihama ran a restaurant in Chiran near the air base from where 436
Special Attack Corps (tokkōtai) pilots made sorties between April and June 1945. She personally met many of
the pilots who visited her restaurant, and after the war she also met many family
members who visited Chiran. Sora no kanata ni (To distant skies) gives the
personal stories of several of these pilots.
From September to December 1988, Asahi Shimbun published a series
of newspaper articles about the pilots who made sorties from Chiran Air Base. Each article
became a chapter in this book, which has 28 chapters of about one and a half
pages of text each. The chapters also have full-page photos of the pilots and
many other historical photos. The front of the book has a map of the many small
islands between Chiran and Okinawa (some where pilots crash landed before
reaching Okinawa) and another map of the numerous Army and Navy air bases on Kyūshū,
the southernmost main island of Japan. The back of the back contains a listing
of Special Attack Corps pilots who died after departing Chiran.
This book contains many moving stories, but the format of less than
two full pages per chapter limits the details provided about individual pilots.
Most of the stories include items about pilots' family members, some who
visited Chiran long after the end of the war. Although the introduction states
the book is based on stories told by Tome Torihama, some chapters seem to be
more based on the author's research and interviews with the pilots' family
members.
Each chapter gives readers a glimpse into the feelings of the
Special Attack Corps pilots and their bereaved family members. For example, one chapter
tells of a pilot who wrote a final
letter in katakana to his five-year-old son and his two-year-old daughter.
The last part of the chapter gives postwar episodes about his wife and children. Another chapter tells about
a baseball player who as a
professional only had two times at bat, both as a pinch hitter, before he
entered the Army to train as a pilot. He struck out the first time, and he
grounded into a double play during his final at bat. The book also contains two of
Tome's most well-known stories of
Second Lieutenant Fumihiro Mitsuyama, the Korean pilot
who sang the Korean song Arirang on the night before his sortie, and
Sergeant Saburō Miyagawa, who told Tome he would return as a firefly.
A chapter near the end of the book tells the story of Tadamasa
Itatsu, a Special Attack Corps pilot who made a sortie on May 28, 1945, but crash landed at
Tokunoshima. He had no chance to sortie again before the end of the war, and he
was tormented by feelings of guilt for many years since
he was the only one to survive. He later became director of the Chiran Peace
Museum for Kamikaze Pilots. Itatsu personally visited over 600 family members of
Special Attack Corps pilots, and many of these visits led to donations of photographs,
letters, and other items to the Chiran Peace
Museum, making it today the museum with the most extensive collection
of artifacts related to Special Attack Corps pilots. He mentions that a few parents who he
visited had never acknowledged their sons' death and still believe they
survived.
One chapter tells about Tome Torihama's photograph albums full
of blank spaces. She had about 20 albums full of photos of Chiran Air Base
pilots together with her taken when they visited her restaurant. These included
not only the Special Attack Corps pilots who made sorties in the spring of 1945 but also student
pilots who from 1942 came for a few months to the Army's Tachiarai Flight School
branch at Chiran Air Base. During the war Tome was prohibited by the military
from sending these photos to parents, but after the war's end many family
members visited Chiran and took these photos when they met with Tome.
Tome Torihama died in 1992, two years after publication of this
book, at a Makurazaki City nursing home
that faces Mount Kaimon, a mountain at the southern tip of Japan where Chiran
Special Attack Corps pilots flew over on their flights toward Okinawa. Her touching stories
about the young men who went to their deaths remain alive in this
book.
Tome Torihama in 1990
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