"Ā Iōtō" "Ningen gyorai kaiten" ("Ah, Iwo Jima" "Kaiten human torpedo")
by Masamichi Yokoyama
Ohzora Shuppan, 2006, 389 pages
Although this book of five wartime manga stories came out in 2006, four were
originally published from 1968 to 1970 and another one in 1978. Masamichi
Yokohama, who drew the manga pictures for each story, worked with four writers
to create distinctive plots that depict a range of emotions during wartime. In addition to stories
on Iwo Jima and kaiten mentioned in the book's title, one story entitled
"Tokkō 3man mētoru" (30,000-meter special attack) portrays
ōka
rocket-powered glider bomb pilots who sortie from Kanoya Air Base in southern Japan. Although
the stories exaggerate emotions and distort history, they give insights into the
varied emotions of battle participants.
"Ningen gyorai kaiten" (Kaiten human torpedo) has a flashback to
the war when former Lieutenant Junior Grade Hazama, who was captain of a
submarine that carried six kaiten, visits the former kaiten training base at Ōtsushima
Island in Yamaguchi Prefecture. He remembers a fiery young kaiten pilot named
Yosuke Akashi, who often got teased by others at the base because his father had
become a prisoner of war in China.
A group of young men from Tsuchiura Air Base arrive at Ōtsushima to begin
training in September 1944 on kaiten human torpedoes, carried into battle on
top of I-class submarines. Akashi becomes infuriated when not selected for the
first kaiten squadron of six men. He tries to commit suicide by lashing his feet
together and jumping into the sea, but Hazama rescues him and tells him not to
die uselessly. After the first kaiten squadron achieves success in an attack on
the American fleet at Ulithi on November 20, 1944, Akashi gets assigned to the
second kaiten squadron. He gets a short leave to return home to see his mother and
younger sister in Tōkyō, but he finds his home destroyed and his mother blinded from
American bombings.
In a fanciful account with no connection to actual history, the second kaiten
squadron achieves great success when five kaiten hit and sink several American
ships, including a large aircraft carrier. However, Akashi's kaiten fails to
move from the submarine, so he feels distressed afterward despite his squadron's huge success. When
enemy fighters try to attack the kaiten base on Ōtsushima, Akashi takes a machine gun
and shoots down one of the planes. The base commander asks him to join the next
kaiten squadron, and he readily accepts. He receives a visit at the base from his younger
sister, who informs him that their mother has died in a B-29 bombing. The
submarine carrying the six kaiten torpedoes for Akashi's squadron spots a group of American
ships heading toward Okinawa but gets detected by a destroyer, which starts
dropping depth charges. Akashi volunteers to use his kaiten to attack the
destroyer, and he successfully sinks this enemy ship and saves the submarine and
crew.
In the current day, Hazama kneels before the Kaiten Monument on Ōtsushima
Island as he remembers Akashi's bravery. "Akashi! If only there had not
been a war, you surely would have devoted that youthful passion even more for
the benefit of others. But the deaths of you and your fellow kaiten pilots
became the foundation of the peace we have in Japan. So that your deaths will not be
wasted, we must never again go to
war. The errors of the past . . ."
"Tokkō 3man mētoru" (30,000-meter special attack), the book's
shortest story with 30 pages, tells about a young ōka pilot and his father
who commands the second squadron of Betty bombers, with ōka gliders attached
underneath, after the first squadron of 18 bombers with ōka gets completely wiped out by
Grumman fighters on March 21, 1945. The title refers to the 30-kilometer gliding distance of
an ōka when released from an altitude of two kilometers, but the glider also had
rockets that could increase the distance and speed. The son complains to his
father about the lack of a new counterattack strategy and the uselessness of the
ōka attacks based on the destruction of the first ōka squadron, but his father
firmly tells him that the orders come from headquarters and he should not
criticize them. His son misses the sortie of the rest of the ōka squadron when they
take off one hour earlier than previously announced, but he soon takes off and
hits an aircraft carrier with his ōka glider bomb.
The book's other three stories do not relate directly to suicide attacks.
"Ā, Iōtō" (Ah, Iwo Jima) tells the grim story of the destruction of
Lt. General Kuribayashi's army that defended the island of Iwo Jima by using a series of
underground tunnels. One soldier befriends a young Japanese boy who lived on Iwo
Jima, and the lack of fresh water on the island symbolizes their suffering.
"Rōsoku to kanoke" (Candles and coffin) portrays two brothers as
pilots in the Navy who constantly quarrel. They both survive the war, and one of
the brothers dies after his plane crashes in a violent storm just after
delivering serum by parachute to storm victims on the small island of
Hachijojima. The last story, entitled "Narazumono no kunshō" (Medals
for the good-for-nothings), depicts a band of four men who have gathered
together after not making it in regular military units. They undertake a
daring mission to rescue an important general being held by the enemy on a small
Pacific island. One member of their group, a former kaiten pilot, saves them from a
destroyer's depth charges when they are fleeing in a submarine. He straps
explosives around his waist and swims toward the destroyer to detonate them and
sink the ship.
Akashi says farewell to other kaiten pilots
as he enters the kaiten to be launched
toward an American destroyer
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