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Wataru Miyazaki
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Phantom Daytime Attack (Part 2): Sudden Cancellation, Not Even Any Record
(Maboroshi no hiruma kōgeki (ge): Totsuzen no chūshi, kiroku mo nashi)
Researched and written by Shūji Fukano and Fusako Kadota
Pages 186-8 of Tokkō kono chi yori: Kagoshima shutsugeki no kiroku
(Special attacks from this land: Record of Kagoshima sorties)
Minaminippon Shinbunsha, 2016, 438 pages
Phantom Daytime Attack (Part 1): Squadron
Members With No Wish to Volunteer
On May 23, 1945, 60 Shiragiku (meaning "white chrysanthemum") aircraft
from the Tokushima Shiragiku Unit departed from Tokushima Naval Air Base in
Matsushige Village (now Matsushige Town), Tokushima Prefecture, and headed
toward Kushira Air Base from where they would make sorties.
Leaving for a special (suicide) attack was a strict secret, and they could
not tell even their families. Unit member Wataru Miyazaki (90 years old, Nagata
Ward, Kōbe City) stopped for fuel at Tsuiki Base and asked a maintenance
technician to give to his older brother, who was working at the same base,
his rising-sun hachimaki (headband), which signified a special attack.
Masato Tajiri (92 years old, Jōrokuchō, Tokushima City), flying at the head
of the formation, changed slightly his flight path to Kushira to fly over his
family's home in Yuda, Higashiichikichō (now Hioki City), in Kagoshima
Prefecture and to say farewell to his hometown.
It was decided that the 1st Squadron of the Tokushima Shiragiku Unit would
make sorties late at night on the 24th and that the 2nd Squadron that included
Tajiri and Miyazaki would make sorties in the early morning of the 25th with
daytime attacks. Tajiri remembers the sortie date of the 2nd Squadron as the
26th, but the two men are in agreement that the sortie time was 5 a.m.
If they flew at a speed of 150 kg/hr (93 miles/hr), they would reach Okinawa
at 10 a.m. The expectation that a slow-speed Shiragiku
would break through the American's powerful interception network in broad
daylight was infinitely
low.
Regardless of that, since we were to do it, we certainly were concentrating
on making a taiatari (body-crashing) attack," says Tajiri. "In the
evening when alone I was tormented with an uneasy feeling," says Miyazaki. He
knew that a flight leader who he idolized when he was in Himeji Air Group
had made a special attack sortie from Kushira Air Base on April 6, and he
accepted his fate, "I also would carry out my mission as that flight leader
did."
However, as Shiragiku propellers were rotating all together on the runway
when the sky was beginning to get light, permission to take off did not arrive. At that time a maintenance technician came running up to us and shouted,
"Sorties cancelled, cancelled."
As for the cancellation reason, "the opportunity to strike had been missed."
Miyazaki recalls his state of mind at that time, "The situation was not well
understood, but for the time being 'today I will be able to live another day,' I
thought."
During that same day the daytime attack group was ordered to return to
Tokushima. Afterward, Tajiri and Miyazaki continued nighttime flight training at
Tokushima, and they ended the war there without getting an opportunity for the
next sortie.
Why was the daytime attack cancelled? There are various theories such as
worsening weather or an assessment of the results of the Army's Giretsu Airborne
Unit that had made an assault on American-held airfields on the main island of
Okinawa with aircraft that carried commandos, but the truth is not clear.
The Tokushima Shiragiku Unit continued nighttime sorties from Kushira five
times between May 24 and June 25, and a total of 56 men died in battle. On the
other hand, not even one detailed action report remains concerning the daytime
attack squadron. "They did not think much of our existence with only that." It
is a painful memory for Tajiri and Miyazaki.
Tokushima Shiragiku Unit waiting for
special attack sorties in May 1945
(provided by Masato Tajiri)
Phantom Daytime Attack (Part 1):
Squadron Members With No Wish to Volunteer
Translated by Bill Gordon
September 2022
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Phantom Daytime Attack (Part 2): Sudden Cancellation, Not Even Any Record
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