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Kaiten pilot
Yūzō Watanabe
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Tokkō no Shima 1 (The Isle of Tokkou 1)
by
Syuho Sato
Hōbunsha, 2006, 205 pages
The Isle of Tokkou 1 refers to Ōtsushima, a small
island in Tokuyama Bay in Yamaguchi Prefecture. In 1944, the
Japanese Navy established a top-secret base on Ōtsushima for
kaiten, manned torpedoes to carry out special attacks
(tokkou in Japanese). A submarine could carry four to
six kaiten, described in the book as huge steel coffins with
pilots having a zero percent chance of returning alive after
being launched. The Isle of Tokkō 1, a historical
manga book that includes episodes originally published in
Shūkan Manga Times magazine, focuses on the
relationship between Lieutenant Junior Grade Sekio Nishina and
the fictional character Yūzō Watanabe. This manga book, the
first in a series, covers the training period prior to the
first kaiten attack, which took place at Ulithi on November
20, 1944.
Lieutenant Hiroshi Kuroki and Lieutenant Junior Grade Sekio
Nishina open the story by presenting their kaiten weapon plans
to a Naval Staff Officer. The setting shifts then to the base
for Fukuoka Naval Air Group, where 100 young men volunteer to
train for a special weapon for which they will have no hope of
return. When the volunteers arrive at Ōtsushima, Commanding
Officer Itakura shows them the kaiten weapons and explains the
nature of their mission. He states that all of the volunteers
within a few months will ride one of these torpedoes and crash
into an American warship.
Nishina, with long unkempt hair atypical for the Japanese
Navy, visits one of the classes for the new arrivals. He says
that Kuroki, who together with him developed the idea for the
kaiten, died several weeks earlier. He tells the young men
that he will be first to go when the opportunity comes to
sortie, and he encourages them to never forget Kuroki's last
wishes. After the presentation, Yūzō Watanabe angrily
approaches Nishina to find out why he created such a weapon,
but Nishina remains silent. Soon after Watanabe accompanies
Nishina on a kaiten training run but finds out nothing more
about his true feelings. Later in the day at sunset Watanabe
discusses the kaiten's many defects with his friend
Sekiguchi.
When Watanabe returns to the barracks, he drifts off into a
daydream as he sketches some scenery. The dream ends with his
mother asking him what he really wants to do, and he stares at
a blank page in his sketchbook as he thinks about the
question. The other men have gone to sleep, so he goes over to
the torpedo maintenance area, where he finds Nishina engrossed
in his work on a kaiten. Nishina invites Watanabe to view
Lieutenant Kuroki's writings on the inside hull of this
kaiten, which had gone out of control on a training mission
and stuck at the bottom of the bay. Kuroki died before the
kaiten could be recovered.
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Sekio Nishina,
Lieutenant Junior Grade
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Watanabe gets assigned to a second training run with
Nishina. Inside the kaiten prior to launch, Watanabe questions Nishina several
times until he explains his true feelings toward the kaiten. Nishina tells
Watanabe that he wanted to be Lieutenant Kuroki, who totally devoted himself to
the development of the kaiten. He says that when he first read Kuroki's last
letter written at the bottom of the bay, he felt neither saddened nor impressed
but rather in despair. When Kuroki's dead body was removed from the kaiten,
Nishina saw in Kuroki's features a real calmness in the face of death. Kuroki
died as a martyr, continuing to write useful information regarding the kaiten's
failure until oxygen ran out. Nishina considers himself a mediocre person in
comparison to Kuroki, who gave his life with conviction. After telling his
story, Nishina asks about the reasons for Watanabe's conviction. Watanabe
replies that he burns with life so that he can make his life his own. The book
ends as they start their second training run together in the kaiten.
The characters in this manga book thoughtfully discuss the
reasons why they willingly plan to go to their death in a kaiten weapon.
Although the main characters appearing in the book are based on actual history,
the author Syuho Sato writes up front that some of their ideas, beliefs, and
feelings presented in the story differ from those of the historical persons.
The accuracy of the book's characters and drawings reflects the author's
thorough research, including obtaining information from a couple of books on
kaiten history and from the Kaiten Memorial Museum in Ōtsushima, the National
Kaiten Association, and Yasukuni Jinja Yushukan Museum. Some of the manga characters'
features are somewhat exaggerated, such as Nishina's shoulder-length hair being
longer than that shown in historical photos, but the kaiten drawings and
Ōtsushima scenery generally appear quite realistic.
Volume 1 ends in the middle of a kaiten training run, and this
thought-provoking manga story continues in Volume 2, published five years later.
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