Senkan mizūri ni totsunyū shita reisen (Zero fighter that crashed into battleship Missouri)
by Akira Kachi
Kojinsha, 2005, 299 pages
In 2000 when author Akira Kachi retired from a business career and made his
first visit to the Battleship Missouri Memorial next to Ford Island in Pearl
Harbor, he started five years of intensive research to determine the identity of
the Zero fighter pilot who crashed into USS Missouri (BB-63) on April 11, 1945,
during the Battle of Okinawa. This kamikaze attack became famous with the
wide publication of the photograph of a Zero fighter about ready to crash into
Missouri as crewmen take cover (see photo at right on top of book cover). Based on extremely thorough research and careful
analysis of all possibilities, Kachi concludes that the Zero pilot who hit
battleship Missouri on April 11, 1945, was either Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class Kenkichi Ishii or Flight Petty Officer
2nd Class Setsuo Ishino. They were in the same Zero
fighter pair that was part of 16 Zero fighters of the Kamikaze Special Attack
Corps 5th Kenmu Squadron that took off from Kanoya Air Base.
On August 4, 2001, NHK broadcast a one-hour Weekend Special television documentary
entitled Kamikaze tokkōtai: Mizūri totsunyū no kiseki (Kamikaze Special
Attack Corps: Path of crash into Missouri). Kensuke Sato, crewmen of
Japanese battleship
Musashi; Tadafumi Sugiyama, Mitsubishi aircraft plant worker; and Edwin
Kawahara, WWII US Army Military Intelligence Service veteran, had worked with
the USS Missouri Memorial Association to research the identity of the pilot who
hit Missouri. They concluded that most likely it was Setsuo Ishino who hit
Missouri.
Ishino had radioed a telegraph message to base at 2:39 p.m. that he had spotted
the enemy fleet, and Missouri was hit by the kamikaze aircraft at 2:43 p.m. This
would seem to indicate that Ishino hit Missouri, but at 2:47 p.m. another Zero
fighter was shot down in the same area. In the NHK documentary, the contents of
Kachi's research to date were introduced to indicate that it was not possible to
conclude with certainty that Ishino had crashed into Missouri. The documentary
also covered the memorial service held aboard Missouri at Pearl Harbor on April
12, 2001, to commemorate the 56th anniversary of the funeral for the remains of
the pilot found on the ship held at the order
of Captain William Callaghan aboard Missouri on the day following the kamikaze
plane crash. The memorial service attendees included retired Admiral William
Callaghan, Jr., son of Missouri's Captain Callaghan, and two relatives of 5th
Kenmu Squadron
pilots other than Ishii and Ishino who also died in battle on April 11, 1945.
Senkan mizūri ni totsunyū shita reisen (Zero fighter that crashed into
battleship Missouri) has two main threads running through the book. First,
author Akira Kachi presents detailed evidence and analysis to support his
conclusion that either Kenkichi Ishii or Setsuo Ishino could have been the pilot
who hit Missouri. Second, Kachi describes in detail his many
research-related trips and his personal impressions. For example, in the first chapter
over 20 pages in length, he describes his year 2000 trip to the three Pearl Harbor
memorials for battleship Arizona, battleship Missouri, and submarine
Bowfin. He
also includes descriptions of his trips to Kanoya Air Base, Yasukuni Shrine's
Yushūkan Museum, Kokubu No. 1 Air Base, Kikaijima Airfield, Battleship Missouri
Memorial for the second time in 2001, library at the National Institute of
Defense Studies in Tokyo, home of Zero fighter pilot Saburō Sakai, and Ōka
Monument at Kenchōji Temple in Kamakura. On the one hand, these trip accounts
provide excellent background related to Japanese kamikaze pilots and the attacks
made on April 11, 1945. They also allow someone to understand the difficulties
encountered in research of the very specific topic of the identity of the Zero
pilot who hit Missouri. On the other hand, extensive descriptions of subjects
that are only marginally related to the main topic can be distracting from understanding
the author's evidence and arguments to support his conclusion of the pilot's
identity.
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Kenkichi Ishii
Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class
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The evidence carefully presented by Kachi fully supports his conclusion that
either Kenkichi Ishii or Setsuo Ishino could have hit Missouri on April 11,
1945. He examines all other reasonable possibilities and provides reasons for
why they are impossible or extremely unlikely. Kachi had extensive interviews
with Lieutenant Fujio Hayashi, one of the division leaders of the 721st Air Group
from which suicide attacks were carried out by both ōka rocket-powered gliders
with 1,200 kg of explosives in the nose and Zero fighters each loaded with a 500-kg bomb. Hayashi provided much
valuable information related to the attack on April 11, since he was one of the division
leaders present at Kanoya Air Base when the 16 Zero fighters of the 5th Kenmu
Squadron took off on their suicide mission. He explains that the squadron
planned to fly to the island of Kikaijima at which point they would separate
into fighter pairs flying southward at different angles making a fan shape in
order to try to locate the two American task groups (58.3 and 58.4) that had
been spotted earlier by Japanese reconnaissance planes.
Kachi accounts for what happened to each of the 16 Zero fighters of the 5th
Kenmu Squadron by examination of the times and contents of radio telegraph
messages from the planes, information contained in official reports of US Navy
ships in the area south of Kikaijima, and projected flight path from Kikaijima
of each of the eight pairs of Zero fighters. Three planes did not reach
Kikaijima, but the remaining single plane in three pairs followed the same
planned flight path. Besides the Zero fighters piloted by Kenkichi Ishii and
Setsuo Ishino, the other Zeros all made their attacks much earlier than the 2:43
p.m. time at which Missouri was struck. One Zero hit the destroyer USS Kidd
causing 38 deaths and 55 wounded. Whereas the other planes attacked the US fleet
from the north, Ishii and Ishino went around east of Task Group 58.4 in order to
attack the rear from the south. Kachi provides maps to show the position of
ships from Task Group 58.4 sailing north toward Kikaijima and the probable
flight path taken by Ishii and Ishino to make their attack. Ishii never sent any
radio telegraph messages during his flight in contrast to Ishino's message at
2:39 p.m. that he had sighted the enemy fleet and another message at 2:41 p.m.
that he had sighted enemy fighters. However, since Ishii and Ishino were flying
in the same fighter pair, the aircraft that hit Missouri could have been
piloted by either one
of them. US Navy records indicate a second Japanese plane was shot down at 2:47
p.m., which could have been a Zero piloted by either Ishii or Ishino. Although
it is not known why Ishii did not send a radio telegraph message, it could
have been due to equipment malfunction. Three other Zero fighters in the 5th
Kenmu Squadron in
addition to Ishii's plane never sent even one radio telegraph message back to
Kanoya Air Base. Although Kachi establishes that either Kenkichi Ishii or Setsuo Ishino was the
kamikaze pilot of the Zero fighter that struck Missouri on April 11, 1945,
the book provides very little information about the personal lives of these two
men.
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Setsuo Ishino
Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class
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This book has many black and white photos, both those from WWII and those
taken by the author in his research. Several maps in the book very
effectively supplement Kachi's explanations of the ship positions and Zero
flight paths. In addition to detailed descriptions of Kachi's trips to various
places, several other sections provide background or related information not
essential for understanding who hit Missouri. For example, 12 pages cover the
Japanese Navy's Yokaren (Preparatory Flight Training Program) and Yobi Gakusei
(Reserve Students) program to increase the number of lower-ranking officers, which
even Kachi mentions as being a digression from the main topic of the book.
Interestingly, neither this book published in 2005 nor the 2001 NHK
documentary Kamikaze tokkōtai: Mizūri totsunyū no kiseki (Kamikaze Special
Attack Corps: Path of crash into Missouri) has changed the information provided
to tourists who visit the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor (as of
September 2011). Ship
guides and the information display stand near the spot where the Zero hit
indicate that Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class Setsuo Ishino is most likely the
pilot who crashed into Missouri on April 11, 1945, with no mention whatsoever
that Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class Kenkichi Ishii is just as likely to have hit
the ship. Only Setsuo Ishino's photograph, not one of Kenkichi Ishii, is
displayed on both the information display stand and in the ship's wardroom as
the pilot who hit battleship Missouri.
Related Information
Hagoromo Society (1973, 11, 158) originally published a book in 1952 with
incidents and reminiscences by surviving pilots and with memorial statements by
family survivors of dead pilots. Setsuo Ishino's father had the following
comment:
As the surviving members of Shiichi Ishino's family, we manage to get along
these days with our memories of our son. We would be honored to have the wartime
death of our son recorded for future generations. When he was still alive, his
squadron commander suggested that we pay him a visit. We went to Konoike Air
Base in Ibaraki Prefecture to see him for the last time. We received a letter
from him when he was stationed at Kanoya in Kagoshima Prefecture, including his
farewell poem, as follows:
Today's mission is something I have long awaited.
All that's left for me now is to crash straight on
Into some enemy aircraft carrier.
Shiichi Ishino
(father of Setsuo Ishino)
Source Cited
Hagoromo Society of Kamikaze Divine Thunderbolt Corps
Survivors. 1973. The Cherry Blossom Squadrons: Born to Die. Edited and supplemented by Andrew Adams. Translated by Nobuo
Asahi and the Japan Tech Co. Los Angeles: Ohara Publications.
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