Saigo no picchingu: Tokkō no kieta maboroshi no meitōshu (Final
pitch: Phantom star pitcher who disappeared in special attack)
by Masao Kogure
Illustrated by Chūji Aoshima
Popurasha, 1987, 198 pages
Shin'ichi Ishimaru, star pitcher with the Nagoya Team (now Chūnichi
Dragons) in the 1942 and 1943 seasons, entered the Japanese Navy in December
1943 and died in battle as a member of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps 5th
Tsukuba Squadron on May 11, 1945. This book by children's author Masao Kogure,
author of numerous children's books and 1987 winner of the Japan Children's
Literature Association Prize, tells the story of Shin'ichi Ishimaru. However,
despite a subtitle of Phantom star pitcher who disappeared in special attack,
which would seem to indicate that the book is focused on Shin'ichi Ishimaru's
life, the author provides extreme details in extended diversions about the life
of his older brother Tōkichi Ishimaru, the historical background of the Pacific
War, and the history of Japanese baseball at all levels (professional,
university, and amateur) until competition was discontinued due to wartime
conditions. Tōkichi answered interview questions from Kogure and gave him much
information for the book, which probably is why so much of it has
little to do directly with Shin'ichi Ishimaru. Masao Kogure also used Hidehiko
Ushijima's 1981 book Kieta haru - Tokkō ni chitta tōshu Ishimaru Shin'ichi
(Lost spring - pitcher Shin'ichi Ishimaru who fell in special attack) as a
source for this children's book, but there is no mention of his romantic
relationship with Keiko Sakurai, which plays a prominent role in Ushijima's book
and in the 1995 movie
Ningen no Tsubasa (Wings of a Man)
about Shin'ichi Ishimaru's life.
The first half of the book focuses on Tōkichi Ishimaru, one of eight children
(three boys and five girls) raised by his parents Kinzabu, a barber, and Sode in
Saga City. In 1937, even though Tōkichi's father strongly opposed his becoming a
professional baseball player, he joined the Nagoya Team, the third professional
baseball team organized in Japan. Tōkichi distinguished himself in his first season as
the best batter on the team with a .276 batting average, but the Nagoya Team could do no better than last place in the league.
In 1938, he was drafted into the Army,
trained as a communications specialist, and sent to central China where Japan
was at war.
Shin'ichi, eight years younger than Tōkichi, excelled at baseball from an
early age and enjoyed practice no matter how difficult or long. He asked his
brother Tōkichi in the Army for an introduction to the Nagoya Team's
Representative and Manager so that he could get a position there, and he became
the starting second baseman for the 1941 season. However, when Tōkichi returned
from the Army, he returned to his regular position of second basemen, and
Shin'ichi became a pitcher, his position in high school, starting with the 1942
season. This was the first time in Japanese professional baseball when two
brothers played on the same team. They sometimes quarreled during games, and at
times the manager had to go onto the field to mediate the dispute. Tōkichi often
made negative comments to Shin'ichi to make him even more determined when he was
pitching. When Shin'ichi was the starting pitcher against the Hanshin Team on
April 18, 1942, an American bomber (from the Doolittle Raid) was sighted in the
skies, so the game was cancelled. During the 1942 season, he won 17 games, the
most for the Nagoya Team, but his team still finished far behind the leader in
seventh place. On October 12, 1943, he pitched a no-hit, no-run game, and he
finished the 1943 season with a 1.15 ERA and a record of 20 wins and 12 losses.
The Nagoya Team jumped to second place in the league's final standings.
In December 1943, Shin'ichi joined the Navy as a member of the 14th Class of
Flight Reserve Students (Hikō Yobi Gakusei). He had been taking night classes at
Nihon University in Tōkyō, but the draft exemption for university students ended
in the fall of 1943. After basic and flight training at Sasebo, Tsuchiura, and
Izumi, he was assigned in September 1944 to the Tsukuba Naval Air Group in
Ibaraki Prefecture. Shin'ichi gave his best with great determination as a Zero
fighter pilot in the same way as he did as a pitcher for the Nagoya Team. In
February 1945, 84 men of the Tsukuba Air Group were selected from volunteers for a
special (suicide) attack unit. One day in the first part of March, Shin'ichi
visited the Tōkyō Office of the Nagoya Team to talk with the Representative, who
gave him a new baseball to take with him. On April 26, he departed Tsukuba Air
Group for southern Kyūshū from where he would make a special attack toward
Okinawa. On April 30, Ishimaru's 5th Tsukuba Squadron received an order to make
a sortie from Kanoya Air Base on the morning of the next day, so he wrote last
letters to his parents, his oldest brother Tachio, and the Nagoya Team
Representative. However, rain delayed the sortie. On May 10 after orders had
been given that the 5th Tsukuba Squadron would make a sortie the next day,
Shin'ichi talked with Kōichi Honda, who had played college baseball at Hōsei
University in Tōkyō until the cancellation in April 1943 of the Tōkyō Six
University League due to wartime conditions. Honda and Shin'ichi had become
friends with a common passion for baseball when they were stationed together at
Izumi and Tsukuba. Honda offered to catch ten pitches from Shin'ichi outside the
schoolhouse that had been serving as their makeshift barracks at Kanoya.
Shin'ichi threw ten straight strikes as the last pitches of his life as the
other men watched. Early the next morning on May 11, 1945, Shin'ichi Ishimaru and
the other eight 5th Tsukuba Squadron members flew toward Okinawa in their Zero
fighters and lost their lives in special attacks.
Although the book indicates that it is for children in the middle grades of
elementary school and older, it seems that it is directed towards older students
with its challenging language even though the pronunciation is shown for the
kanji (Chinese characters). The extended parts on details of the historical
background may be meant for children's education, but it slows down
significantly the book's plot. Some readers may be interested in details of the early history of Japanese baseball, including professional,
university, and amateur teams, but the amount of information is much more than
is needed to understand the main plot about Shin'ichi Ishimaru. One of the more
interesting background sections is when the Japanese government required in 1943
that the league change all of the baseball words and team names derived from
English words to Japanese equivalents, since there was the belief that Japanese
people should not be using the enemy's language. The book includes about 20
illustrations (see example at bottom of page). Even after reading this
children's book, readers will not know much about Shin'ichi's feelings and
opinions as he faced death as a Kamikaze Corps member other than what he wrote
in his final letters.
Related Web Pages
Shin'ichi Ishimaru pitches ten strikes
to Kōichi Honda on day before he took off
from Kanoya Air Base and died in battle
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