28.

Tae-yul

The last night before I leave for Japan. I’m wide awake on my bunk. Somewhere in the middle of the darkness it finally sinks in.

I’ve volunteered for the Special Attack Unit—the kamikaze.

That’s the new assignment. Mine and two other soldiers’. They’ve chosen three of us, dismissed the fourth with no explanation.

All through the briefing, the CO droning on and on about duty and honor and courage, and I hardly heard him. There was only one thought in my head.

I’m going to fly an airplane!

That was the only thing I’d thought about. Until now.

Now the whole truth looms over me. I’m going to fly an airplane—and crash it. Into an American ship. It grabs me by the shoulders and sits me straight up in bed, that’s how strong it is. Impossible! How can anyone do something like that?

I joined the army to save Uncle. Not for any other reason. Not to kill Americans. And certainly not to help the Japanese.

But that’s what the Imperial forces do—the Special Attack Unit most of all. It’s not just the damage they do to American ships. It’s the power they have to boost the whole army. They make everyone, even lowly guards like Spade-face, believe in the Japanese cause. He said it himself: As long as there are those willing to become kamikaze, there’s no way Japan can lose.

How did I get here? How can I be part of that?

A sudden sound in my head—a grinding noise. It takes me a second to realize it’s me, grinding my teeth. My hands are clenched in fists, too—I want to hit something.

I’ve given my word. If I back out now, they’ll think they were right, that Koreans are cowards. I’d lose face completely and never get it back.

And besides—it sounds stupid, selfish, but I want to fly an airplane.

There has to be a way. To fly, but not to help them.

My jaw relaxes a little. I lie back on my bunk, staring at the ceiling. I spend the rest of the night digging through my mind for everything I’ve ever heard about the kamikaze.

Gray light at the window. And I have a plan.

 

Now everything is happening in such a rush. There’s no time to think. Packing, saying goodbye to the fellows in my unit. We got to be friends really fast here. The guy in the next bunk, Han-joo—Kentaro is his Japanese name—salutes me. Everyone laughs, but it still makes me feel funny. We’re the same rank. But he knows—we all know—as soon as you become a pilot, you’re automatically made an officer.

Leaving Korea, going to Japan. My first time on the open sea.

A lot of the other guys on the boat get sick. I don’t, even though my stomach feels awful the whole time. Flying in a plane probably won’t feel like being on a boat. But maybe a plane rides up and down on the air, like the boat on the waves. I practice breathing deep, trying to control the sloshing in my stomach. Just in case it feels the same.

My new camp is not far from Tokyo, at a base called Kagohara. The barracks are a lot nicer. There’s a platform for sleeping on, with mattresses, not straw mats. And only six men to a room. New uniforms, too.

But the same morning routine. Lessons on the Emperor’s words, reciting the Rescript. Pages and pages to memorize. What does any of it have to do with flying?

We get other lessons on the workings of airplanes. We don’t have to prepare them for flight, or fix them if they break down—mechanics do that. But a pilot has to know his plane as well as he knows his own body. Better, even. If anything goes wrong in the air, there are things a pilot can do to compensate. But only if he knows exactly what’s wrong.

I love these classes, learning about the engines. It’s funny when I think about it, my education in machines. From bicycle right to airplane, nothing in between. Well, maybe one thing—Uncle’s printing press.

When we go out to the hangars to see the engines for ourselves, I notice that the pilots ignore the mechanics. They’re considered a lower class, not just by military rank. I feel bad for them. I wouldn’t mind being a mechanic myself, getting to work with engines all the time. And I’m impressed by how well they know the planes.

More lessons: flight manuals, military operations, military history. We try to learn everything. It’s impossible, but we try anyway. Every free moment back at the barracks we go around carrying books and manuals.

Even in the latrine. If you have to wait to use it, you can hear the guy inside reciting a lesson. Uncle would have made a good joke about that. And I’d have laughed, except that I’m doing it, too.

In the afternoons we have “practical training.” Flying at last!

But not in planes—in gliders. We watch the other squads. The glider is attached to a car with a long cable. The car tows the glider until it gets up enough speed, then the pilot releases the cable. When our instructors demonstrate, the glider banks in a gentle curve and then rises in a big spiral. It’s beautiful to watch.

But when it’s the new recruits piloting, ha!—a whole different story. The glider crawls along the ground, wobbling back and forth, sometimes lifting a meter or two into the air. Sun-hee has a swing in a tree back home. She gets higher on that than they do in the gliders.

Our instructors say that when the whole squad can fly gliders properly, we’ll move on to planes. If we’re good at it, we could be flying planes next month.

My first time in the glider. The instructor sits behind me. First he flies it, telling me the whole time what he’s doing. The control is a stick that raises or lowers the nose. It directs the wings, too. I listen hard, so I can’t really look to see how high we are. I know from watching the others that he’ll take it up to about five meters. Then he’ll bring it back down again, for me to try.

My turn. The car gains speed. The instructor yells, “Now!” and I push the button to release the cable.

The glider slithers along on its belly like a snake. Push the stick, pull it precisely, at just the right moment—and we’re off the ground!

The glider stays in the air for a few seconds. It feels like a few years. Magic, that’s the only word for it. Then it bumps down again, tipping a little on the landing so the instructor has to help me straighten it.

I wish he hadn’t had to help, but still I’m proud of myself—some of the other guys can’t even get the glider up at all. It rolls along and careens in crazy S patterns when they panic and start pushing the stick every which way.

I can’t wait to fly a real plane. There are only two planes for the whole camp, more than two hundred men. So even when we do start to fly, we’ll have to take turns.

Still, it’s a thrill to see them for the first time.

They’re kept in the forest at the edge of camp, hidden under pine boughs in case of an enemy air raid. The planes used to be kept in hangars, but the huge buildings are easy to spot from the air. So all the training planes were moved to the woods.

It’s one of the duties of new recruits to jog out to the woods and uncover the planes. The feel and smell of pine again.

Ai, they’re beautiful! So slim. The cockpit is the widest part—just wide enough to hold a man or two men, one sitting behind the other. Then the plane tapers down to the tail. The propeller blades are enormous—three of them, each as tall as me. What power! And the wings are broad and flat, like two strong arms.

We uncover the planes after lunch and cover them up again at the end of the day. That’s the closest we get to them for weeks.

I can see why it’s organized like that. Being so close to the planes every day, but not able to fly them, makes us want to do even better at our training. So we’ll be able to fly soon.

Our squad makes progress. Thirty of us—three Koreans, the rest Japanese. Our instructors are very pleased—they say we’re all fast learners, considering we don’t get many chances to fly the gliders.

We’re flying more often than they know. The controls for the rudder are foot pedals. After lights out we sit on our beds, imaginary stick in front of us, imaginary pedals on the floor, our hands and feet moving, every one of us flying a glider in our minds.

 

The day finally arrives—our first day in the planes! Reveille at 0430. The morning lesson on the Emperor’s sayings is agony. Then after lunch we have to endure another speech. When the CO starts talking, I feel like I’ll die from impatience.

But this speech is different from the others. For the first time ever the CO is saying something different about the war.

Losing—Japan is losing. He doesn’t use that word, but for nearly an hour he talks about recent battles. The numbers of casualties—men, planes, equipment . . . The never-ending waves of U.S. planes, the strength of the American naval fleet . . . How the Japanese have been forced to fall back, and back, and back . . . How they’ve lost nearly all the territory they conquered earlier in the war.

And how the battle in the air is Japan’s last hope.

“Our sacred homeland now lies under direct threat of American bombardment,” he says. “The responsibility for any chance of an honorable end to this war rests on our pilots—on you, should you complete your training successfully. You must all apply yourselves with utmost diligence and not waste a single moment of your instruction. In the name of the Emperor!” He dismisses us with a fervent salute.

The squad is quiet after hearing all that. But then our instructors yell for us to march. Double time to the airstrip, where the planes are waiting for us, uncovered by the new recruits.

We aren’t new anymore. We’re ready to fly.

 

I talk to myself all the way out to the airstrip. You’ve wanted so badly to fly. This is bound to be a letdown. It’ll be different somehow—not nearly as good as you’ve imagined. Expect that and you won’t be disappointed.

Me in the front seat now, with the instructor behind. We have radio headsets! They’re wonderful—it’s like his voice is inside my head. Except I keep forgetting to press the button down when I want to talk. It’s embarrassing—I answer him, then he repeats the question. And then I realize that I haven’t pressed the button.

Headset. Harness. I feel the rudder pedals with my feet—bigger and heavier than the ones in the glider.

The plane starts to roll. I hear the instructor’s voice the whole time. I try to listen hard. Throttle forward, accelerate—I really am listening. But only with part of my brain.

The rest of it is looking out the cockpit windshield. At the ground, sliding faster and faster beneath us. And then I can feel it, I can tell the exact moment that the wheels leave the ground. We’re in the air!

The noise is incredible. At first I can hardly hear myself think. But then we’re climbing—climbing fast! Noise—and the power to go with it.

In no time we’re high above the airfield. The instructor banks the plane—his voice is in my head—something about going easy on the control . . .

I can’t listen anymore. I have to look down at the ground.

Everything is so tiny! The trees are like little sprouts, the buildings like toys.

The seat is beneath me, I know that, and then the undercarriage of the plane, and the wheels.

But all I feel underneath me is air.

I was wrong. It’s better than I imagined. I want to shout, as loud as I can. But of course that wouldn’t be very soldierly. I might even get in trouble.

So I shout silently—one enormous yell of joy.

 

More flying lessons. I pilot the plane several times, with the instructor in the second seat—two sets of controls, in case of trouble. If you go out three times in a row without him having to touch his controls, you get to solo.

I’m one of the first. Flying feels so natural. Timing, control, speed—like playing with my top when I was little. Or riding my bike. I feel like I was born to do this.

We have so many things to learn. How to take off with as little runway as possible. How to control the plane no matter what the weather. How to land properly—very important, as even a small mistake on landing can damage the plane.

After we solo for a while, the instructor rides in the plane again. Now he demonstrates all kinds of maneuvers and teaches us to fly them. Then he gives us a series of tests: He puts the plane into a dive, and we have to climb out of it. Or he makes the plane spin, forcing us to regain control. With the plane upside down, he cuts the power. We have to get the power back on and get the plane right side up again.

Still more to learn: another plane in the air, pretending to be the enemy, so we can practice evasive maneuvers. Sometimes scary, always exciting.

The time comes for us to practice our actual mission tactics. There’s no way to do this, really. Two different tactics. The dive approach: target, the radio tower. We go into a dive from high above. But of course we have to pull up and out well above the target.

There’s also the wave-hopping approach. For this we fly in low, as if we’re just above the waves but beneath enemy fire, in a straight line toward the target “ship”—a marked tree on the edge of the field. Again, we pull out and up before we hit the tree.

The first few times we try the dive approach, we all pull out too soon. Hundreds of meters from the tower. It looks so foolish, watching the others from the ground. But when you’re the pilot, it feels like the tower is right up your nose.

Our instructors are disgusted with us, they make us run around the airfield, stifling in our heavy canvas jumpsuits, until most of us have collapsed. Like little ants crawling around the perimeter of the field.

When we finally get so we’re pulling out only fifty meters or so from the tower, they give us our next assignment: Do the dive with our eyes closed. This is to practice the timing, to prove that we know the planes and our flying abilities so well that we can tell where we are without looking.

The first time, I open my eyes at least half a dozen times. Impossible, what they’re asking us to do—I feel like I’m going to crash right into the tower. But it’s funny, how—how interested I feel. I like it, the challenge of it—I want to prove I can do it. Not to them. To myself.

They had us count during our earlier dives, so we know about how long it will take before we have to pull out: ten seconds from two thousand meters. The second try with my eyes closed, I start counting. How far could I get without looking? One. Two. Three—don’t peek, get to five. I try to picture the tower, getting bigger and bigger . . . Four. Five—don’t peek, get to seven . . .

I can feel the sweat pouring down my face and body. I yell at myself inside my head—Don’t look!—and squeeze my eyes shut tighter. Those last few seconds are the longest in my whole life.

At ten I open my eyes, blink once to clear them. The tower, right where I thought it would be. I pull out and go soaring.

That day I don’t have to run.

 

Reveille one morning in June. The sergeant shouts for full dress uniforms. We’ve only worn them twice—on our first day here, then again when we got to fly the planes for the first time.

We line up. I take a quick glance around. In our uniforms we’re a pretty smart-looking bunch. The CO seems to think so, too. He praises us for our success in training.

Then he assigns us our mission date.

Four days: If the weather’s clear, we leave in four days.

For Operation “Kikusui,” off Japan.

“Your assignments are posted on the barracks,” he says. Then he turns to the sergeant, who explains how the assignments work. The best students have been assigned as fighters or bombers. Then signalmen, and last, mechanics.

Not one of us moves—we all remain standing at attention—but I can feel the shock go through my body and I’m sure the other trainees are feeling the same. Signalmen? Mechanics? That means some of us won’t be flying.

What if I’m assigned mechanic? A few short weeks ago I thought I wouldn’t mind having that job. But those mechanics—they trained as pilots, too. Now they work on planes all the time and never have a chance to fly one. I’d hate that.

Then a thought hits me so hard I feel my stomach lurch. My plan! For my plan to work, I have to be a pilot. If I get the wrong assignment . . . if I can’t fly . . .

We’re dismissed, and there’s a mad rush to the barracks. Everyone crowds around the assignment sheet posted on the wall. I get bumped and jostled and have to wait forever for my turn. I’m praying silently, please, please . . .

Running my eyes down the list. The K names.

KANEYAMA Nobuo. Bomber.

 

None of us is truly ready to fly a mission, but the military command is desperate. No squad is getting full training. We’ve been luckier than some—we’ve had target practice for more than a month now.

We don’t get bream for our last meal. They must not have any. We get rice and beans, but instead of bream some kind of meat. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any meat. This stuff is tough and full of gristle. I don’t even want to know what it is.

Back to the barracks one last time. Each of us is given a little box for our things. We trim our nails and put the trimmings in a little envelope. A lock of hair, too. Both Koreans and Japanese do this, something about leaving behind whatever you can that your parents have given you.

Then we write letters home. I don’t know what to say at first. But once I start writing, it gets easier. When I reach the end, I hesitate for a moment. They’ve promised us that these won’t be censored, that no one but our families will read them. I don’t know if I believe that or not. But it will be my last letter ever, so I sign it with my real name.

The excitement has been washed away by a huge wave of fear—so strong that I feel the blood drain from my face. But it’s too hard to imagine that the day after tomorrow I won’t be here on this earth. It’s probably better that way.

I put the letter on top of the box. Then I lie around on my bunk for the rest of the night. I don’t think any of us sleep. I know I don’t, anyway. I think about home. Not about Omoni—it makes me too sad. Or about Abuji either—it’s uncomfortable, somehow, thinking about him. Mostly I think about Sun-hee and Uncle.

Sun-hee. She’s a nice kid, even with all those questions. One good thing about never getting back home, I joke to myself—I won’t have to answer a million questions. And Uncle. Best of all, thinking about Uncle. It makes me feel less sad to know that he’d be proud of me . . . if he knew. He won’t know, of course—there’s no way to ever tell him. But I feel like he’ll know somehow. Not know it as a fact, but feel it in his heart. He’ll think the best of me, anyway.

Then I think about other things. Girls. I’ve never had a girlfriend. Hee-won, Jung-shin’s older sister—I wish I could have gotten to know her better. Maybe we could have talked about things, about her family being chin-il-pa, about me joining the army, how life gets so complicated sometimes.

Now the simplest things seem the best. Marriage, a family of my own, children. I never thought before about being a father—it seemed too far in the future. But now it feels like it would have been just around the corner for me. If it weren’t for . . . tomorrow.

I’m not excited anymore. Or afraid. Just sad.

A deep, wide feeling of sadness.

 

Reveille. For the first time since I started training, every single one of us is out of bed before the wake-up call. Before dressing, we all go to the latrines. It’s too hard to go after you have your flying uniform on—it’s a jumpsuit, all one piece.

One addition to the uniform: our ceremonial swords. After a final salute from the sergeant, we put our swords back on our beds with the little boxes. As we file out of the barracks, a soldier is already collecting them. To send to our families.

Out onto the tarmac. A table is set up there, with cups of sake lined up. Time for our three toasts. I’ve worked this out already. The first toast is to the Emperor’s shrine. The shrine on the base isn’t far from the airfield itself, and beyond that, the woods where the training planes are hidden. I raise my cup like everyone else, but in my mind I toast the planes, not the shrine.

The second toast is to the Emperor himself. I picture Uncle instead. And the last toast toward our hometowns. For me, west and a little south. I can be honest about that one.

 

One last speech from our commanding officer. Then we gather in squads to receive our orders. “Listen carefully,” says our flight lieutenant, Watanabe. He’s Japanese, of course, but a pretty good guy all the same. “Last known location of the enemy ships was a hundred forty-four degrees twenty longitude east, thirty-nine latitude north. As you know, we’ll be flying in three formations. Keep your speed between seventy-five and ninety kilometers per hour. Altitude, fifteen hundred meters. All planes to use the dive tactic. Do not under any circumstances break formation. Understood?”

“Hai!” we shout all together and salute him.

Just then a soldier comes running out onto the tarmac, waving a piece of paper. “Sir!” he shouts. “Wait! An important message from Military Command!”

I turn at the sound of his voice. I’ve got one hand on the struts, ready to climb into the cockpit. A message? It’s not a normal part of the routine, as far as I know. Should we fall back into squads?

The CO reads the message. I’m pretty far away, so I can’t tell from his expression if it’s good news or bad. A change of enemy position, maybe? New information about their fighters?

He calls us back into squad formation.

I hustle into line. I can see everyone’s faces. They don’t know what’s going on either.

When we’re all settled, the CO waves the paper. “A personal message from His Divine Majesty! Wishing you all the strength and guidance of Heaven on your mission!”

I keep my face steady, but inside I’m rolling my eyes. Just what I need: personal encouragement from the Emperor.

We’re dismissed again. I climb into my plane. It’s not really mine, but that’s how I think of it. And it will be mine now, all the way to the end.

Strapped in, headset on, instruments checked. Engine running, Watanabe’s voice, and another sound—a strange thumping. I listen hard for a moment. Is there something wrong with my plane?

No. It’s my heart, thudding hard. Stupid.

I check everything again, just to have something to do while I wait to take off.

Watanabe leads the way. I’m third in line. I love taking off. The wheels, grumbling on the tarmac. Grumblegrumblegrumble—and then that sound, gone. Only the engine noise left.

We circle the base once and waggle our wings. I look out the window.

The whole base, saluting us.

Saying goodbye.