Tokkōbana: Manga de yomu tokkōhei monogatari (Kamikaze flowers:
Reading kamikaze pilot stories by comics)
by Yone Iso
Gakugei Miraisha, 2016, 182 pages
This manga (comic) book contains four stories about kamikaze
pilots who took off on special (suicide) attacks from Kyūshū
toward Okinawa. The stories have the following titles:
1 - Blue Skies with All One's Might
2 - Satsuma Fuji
3 - Package Delivery from Kamikaze Pilot
4 - Kamikaze Pilots and Kuroshima
These accounts are dramatizations of actual stories with the real names
slightly changed, at least in the last two stories about the six kamikaze pilots
who made forced landings in the sea near Kuroshima, a small island about 60
kilometers southwest of the southern coast of Kagoshima Prefecture. Yone Iso, a
female manga artist, portrays the kamikaze pilots as young men who joined the
Special Attack Corps for the people they loved and for their country. The
stories focus on the pilots' interactions with the civilian population with only
one brief battle scene when a special attack squadron is ambushed by American
fighters near Amami Ōshima on the way to Okinawa.
The first story depicts the kindnesses showed by Navy pilot Yasuhiko Mebaru
to a 15-year-old girl named Katsuko Adachi. Mebaru does not return from his
special attack sortie. At the end, an elderly Katsuko goes by ferry to Okinawa
with her older sister who also knew Mebaru, and she throws a bouquet of
tokkōbana (kamikaze flowers) into the sea in his memory. The story is based
on part of Yoshiko Tanaka's book entitled Jūyonsai no natsu: Tokkōtaiin no
saiki no hibi o mitsumeta watashi (Summer when 14 years old: I looked at
days of kamikaze pilots' end).
"Satsuma Fuji" refers to Mt. Kaimon at the end of the Satsuma Peninsula.
People often refer to it as "Satsuma Fuji" with a shape similar to Mt. Fuji, and
kamikaze pilots' last view of the mainland when going south toward Okinawa was
Mt. Kaimon. This second story involves two friends, Kōji Manda and Teruto Ōki,
who grew up near Mt. Kaimon and became members of the same special attack
squadron (tokkōtai) at Chiran Army Air Base. Manda clearly has qualms
about making a suicide attack, but he tells the commander almost unthinkingly
that he wants to join a special attack squadron. They together go to visit
Toyoya Restaurant in Chiran where the owner comforts them. This scene is
reminiscent of the support provided by Tome Torihama, owner of Tomiya Restaurant
in Chiran. The special attack squadron takes off from Chiran but encounters
American P-51 Mustang fighters on the way to Okinawa. Manda's plane gets shot
down, but he survives when he makes a forced landing in the water and gets
rescued by a Japanese Army boat from a nearby island. At the end, as he looks
upon Mt. Kaimon, Manda remembers Ōki and others who gave their lives in special
attacks.
The third story tells how Army pilot Masaya Asao (Masaya Abe in history)
delivered medicine to seriously burned Navy pilot Ensign Shibasaki (Ensign
Shin'ya Shibata in history) on the small island of Kuroshima. On April 29, 1945,
Asao and seven other members of the 24th Shinbu Special Attack Squadron made a
sortie from Chiran Air Base. Asao's plane engine developed problems, and he made a
forced landing in the sea near Kuroshima. He was rescued by the islanders and
found out that Ensign Shibasaki of the 29th Shinbu Special Attack Squadron had
crash landed in the sea there after taking off from Chiran three weeks before on
April 8, 1945. A young islander named Katsumi Yasukata (Katsumi Yasunaga in
history) volunteered to go with Asao back to the mainland in a small boat. They
reached land after 30 hours of rowing. In early May, Asao made another sortie to
make a special attack, and on the way to Okinawa he dropped from his plane a package with
medicine for Shibasaki and other supplies for the islanders.
Kuroshima islanders rescue Masaya Asao
when his plane crashes into the sea
The fourth story is about Navy airman Takehiko Ehara (Takehiko Ena in history)
and his relationship to Kuroshima. On May 11, 1945, Ehara made a sortie from
Kushira Air Base in the 3rd Seiki Special Attack Squadron as navigator in a
three-man Type 97 Carrier Attack Bomber (Allied code name of
Kate). His plane had to make a forced landing in the sea, and all
three of the crewmembers survived by swimming about a kilometer from the crashed plane to the
shore of Kuroshima. On July 30, 1945, a small Army transport submarine picked up
the stranded airmen to return them from Kuroshima to the mainland. When he
returned home after the war's end, Ehara's family had already received money from
the government and notification of his promotion of two ranks for his
death in a special attack. At the end, an elderly Ehara talks to reporters on
Kuroshima next to the Special Attack Peace Kannon that he erected to
remember the young men who died in special attacks during the Battle of Okinawa
and the kind treatment provided during the war by residents of Kuroshima to the
kamikaze pilots who were stranded there.
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