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	Ensign Shirō Mori

Young Ski Jumper Who Was Olympic Contender
by Yasuhiro Shōguchi

At 0700 on May 11, 1945, Ensign Shirō Mori took off from Kanoya Air Base as pilot in a Zero fighter carrying a 500-kg bomb and died in a special (suicide) attack off Okinawa at the age of 22. He was a member of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps 5th Tsukuba Squadron. After his death in a special attack, he received a promotion to Lieutenant. He was from Nagano Prefecture, attended Meiji University in Tōkyō, and was a member of the 14th Class of the Navy's Flight Reserve Students (Hikō Yobi Gakusei).

During the war many talented young men were lost.

One such man was Ensign Mori who was a ski jumper.

In 1940 while attending Iiyama Junior High School (now Iiyama High School), he won the Youth Division of the Japan National Ski Championship. Also in the year after he entered Meiji University, he won consecutive championships. He was a leading contender for the Olympics.

His last writing that he left had only the words "Leader" and "Skies" written in Indian ink on a ski that he regularly used in the mountains of Nagano. The truth is that I want to fly not in a Zero fighter but rather on skis. One can hear a cry concealed in the innermost depths of his heart, which could not be expressed in words.

At 7 a.m. on May 11, 1945, he made a sortie from Kanoya Air Base as the 2nd plane in the 7th Kutai (tactical group of four planes). At 0920, after a telegraph message of "enemy ships sighted," contact was lost. He did not return to base.

Translated by Bill Gordon
April 2025

The story and photograph come from Shōguchi (2016, 47-49). The biographical information on this page comes from Osuo (2005, 199) and Shōguchi (2016, 47).

Sources Cited

Osuo, Kazuhiko. 2005. Tokubetsu kōgekitai no kiroku (kaigun hen) (Record of special attack corps (Navy)). Tōkyō: Kōjinsha.

Shōguchi, Yasuhiro. 2016. Senchi kara no saiki no tegami: Nijūninin no wakaki kaigun shōhei no isho (Last letters from battlefield: Final letters of 22 young Navy officers and men). Tōkyō: Kairyūsha.