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Flight Petty Officer 1st Class
Minoru Hoshino
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Two Days Before War's End, Jinrai Butai's Last Sortie (Shūsen futsuka mae,
Jinrai Butai saigo no shutsugeki)
Researched and written by Shūji Fukano and Fusako Kadota
Pages 146-8 of Tokkō kono chi yori: Kagoshima shutsugeki no kiroku
(Special attacks from this land: Record of Kagoshima sorties)
Minaminippon Shinbunsha, 2016, 438 pages
The Jinrai Butai (Thunder Gods Corps) was a specialized special (suicide)
attack unit that continued to make sorties from Kanoya Naval Air Base from March
21, 1945, until June 22, 1945, nearly the end of the Battle of Okinawa. However,
this unit's final sortie was nearly two months later on August 13 from
Kikaijima, an island midway between Kanoya and Okinawa.
Jinrai Butai's last special attack squadron was named the 2nd Jinrai
Fighter-Bomber Squadron. It was made up of six carrier-based Zero fighters each
carrying a 500-kg bomb and were commonly called bakusen
(fighter-bombers), but one aircraft was lost in an air attack after arrival at
Kikaijima. The remaining five aircraft took off from Kikaijima Air Base toward
the sea around Okinawa at 6 p.m. on August 13.
Squadron Commander Lieutenant Junior Grade Kanae Okamoto (passed away in
1995) and two other pilots turned back due to engine problems. The two fighters
piloted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Shirō Okashima and Flight Petty Officer 1st Class
Minoru Hoshino attacked the attack transport Lagrange
(APA-124), off the main island of Okinawa, with 120 men killed and wounded.
Keitarō Hanabusa (84 years old, resident of Sakamine in Kikai Town) witnessed
the squadron's sortie. Sitting on a ridge between two rice fields as he looked
at the sea, he saw the five aircraft take off from Kikaijima Airfield at
Nakazato in Kikai Town four kilometers from him. The squadron aircraft soon
joined up and flew off toward the south, but after a while three of them
returned, dropped their bombs into the sea, and landed at Kikaijima Air Base.
Hanabusa thinks back, "After the end of the Battle of Okinawa, I had not seen
any special attack squadrons, so it was strange what happened with those
aircraft."
Attorney Tadao Ōkura (83 years old, resident of Yokosuka City) is from
Nakazato in Kikai Town where 140 houses were lost to fire due to fierce bombings
of the base. In the process of researching the base's history, he had interest
in the special attack squadron that made a sortie just two days before the war's
end. In 1994, Ōkura was surprised to hear from the still healthy Lieutenant
Junior Grade Okamoto that the 2nd Jinrai Fighter-Bomber Squadron separated from
command of the Jinrai Butai Commander, and it was a special attack squadron
directly under Matome Ugaki, 5th Air Fleet Commander-in-Chief. "After moving
forward to Kikaijima on June 10, 1945, we hid the aircraft in the bunkers after
extracting the fuel, and we waited intently for a sortie order from the
Commander."
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Keitarō Hanabusa |
Tadao Ōkura |
Flight Petty Officer 1st Class Hoshino who died in battle had
visited the home of Yae Sakae, who lives in Kawamine in Kikai Town, in order to
help in the rice harvesting, but until the end he did not say anything to
disclose his own name. She knew his name because his name had been written on a
handmade cane. When I served a final meal to the five squadron members before
their sortie, I remember one of them whispered, "It would have been good to not
volunteer."
Yae Sakae
Ōkura said that he read the following in Commander Ugaki's diary, "On August
11 when I sent the sortie order to the 2nd Jinrai Fighter-Bomber Squadron, the
5th Air Fleet Command found out that the unconditional surrender in the Potsdam
Declaration had been accepted. Nevertheless, I think that I did a cruel thing by
issuing the sortie order to the squadron members who knew nothing about this."
Concrete bunker where one plane of 2nd Jinrai
Fighter-Bomber Squadron was hidden
for two months (Nakazato, Kikai Town)
Translated by Bill Gordon
August 2024
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