At last the sacred mountains of Kyushu, darkened by curfew, broke the monotony of the night. It had been four years since he’d last seen these peaks, and the vista, so different from the festive panorama he remembered, reminded him again of the war’s advancing frontier. How had his parents fared? By now they would’ve given him up for dead, his mother heartbroken, his father cursing the blight that was his only son, and this thought, evoking all the years he’d lived under his father’s disapproval, plucked a nerve and sent a melancholic twang through him. How often had he dreamed of returning, head held high, chest lavishly decorated for the years he’d spent crawling among jungle snakes and leeches to repel the white devils who, with their forked tongues, sweetened their cheapest promises while plundering Asia right under the nose of Japan, their ally in the Great War? What he would’ve given to see his father bowed, his father who’d always belittled his ambition to serve the world the way he, Tanaka, believed to be right. But by the time anyone learned of his contribution to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, he’d be gone, reborn eternally in history.
December 5, 1944, 09:00
Their weapon was introduced to them fitted atop a transport cart, its long body tapered at the front, four fins attached to the rear. Measuring 14.6 meters, the Kaiten was an enlarged version of the Navy’s own Type 93, the world’s fastest and longest-ranging torpedo. Boasting a speed of 30 knots and projected to carry a 1.55-ton warhead, a single Kaiten was said to be capable of sinking an aircraft carrier. Walking them to the rear, the commanding naval officer, Sub-Lieutenant Nagai, pointed out the rudders, the two propellers blooming above them like caged flowers: the Kaiten’s diving planes. Explaining its propulsion system, he emphasized its quick launch capability, its impressive range: 23 kilometers at maximum speed, more than twice the range of any enemy torpedo. He showed them the periscope—a 15-meter extension—and invited them to look underneath. There, on the underbelly, was a hatch just large enough for human shoulders to pass through. They straightened.
“Private First-Class Yamada, Maeda, Tanaka, do you have any compunctions?”
The soldiers gazed at him; nobody had ever asked about their compunctions.
“I know you’ve served the Army—no doubt you did so courageously. What I’m asking is, are you ready to join the Navy to defend not just our country but our race from extermination?”
The men lifted their chests. “Yes, sir, we are.”
“Are you sure?”
They glanced at each other, then at the Sub-Lieutenant. What difference would it make? Behind them, the transport cart creaked, and the Kaiten shivered, its black body awaiting its vital component. Tanaka closed his eyes; the jungle’s interlocking hands reached to smother him. “Yes, sir,” they said, almost in unison.
“Do any of you have familial responsibilities?”
Yamada sucked in his breath. “No, sir,” he said. Maeda also replied in the negative, but Tanaka hesitated. He was an only child, his family’s sole heir. It was a technicality, and the question no doubt a formality, but his throat locked.
Sub-Lieutenant Nagai recited the conditions for exemption every soldier knew by heart.
He lowered his gaze. “Sir, I apologize. I have no responsibilities.”
Sub-Lieutenant Nagai nodded. For a moment, he looked sympathetic. Then his face emptied. “Training will commence at 08:30. You’ll start in the simulation room and report to me until my own sortie is decided. Yes, that’s right,” he told them. “I’m an officer, but I’ve decided to sortie as well. Dismissed.”
February 6, 1945, 14:30
One knock on the hull, and he counted to ten. Despite two months of simulation, live training had a different feel to it, and his hands faltered, the sensation of the moving vessel distracting him. Diving crank, seawater valve. He forced himself to focus. The Kaiten’s golden depth was 15 meters, deep enough to avoid detection but shallow enough for the periscope to poke above the waves. He opened the valve; the Kaiten drilled down. Even here, in the bay’s relative calm, his path was crosshatched with currents. He squeezed the crank, rode the bumps. At 15 meters, he leveled off. Checking his angle, he waited for the water to slacken, then accelerated. The Kaiten leapt; he gripped the lever, but the Kaiten raked the reef, disturbing the ghost of a private whose cracked skull and fractured cockpit had sunk him into irrecoverable depths. Tanaka hung on. The Kaiten hopped, skipped, then lifted. Grabbing his stopwatch, he began counting, sweat ribboning his back.
Ten minutes later, he raised the periscope. Gray-blue sea. He checked his compass: Where was his target boat? He had seven seconds to look and retract. He swiveled to the right. Nothing but water, white sparkles playing like seabirds. He swiveled to the left. Two warning shots. He swung the periscope. Rocks! He cut the rudders and accelerated. Waves slammed against him. He fought the controls; his tail slid, bumped once, twice, then cleared. Two minutes later, his escort boat found him. A quarter of an hour later, he was on the pier, vomiting, sour scraps of his breakfast pelting the water like flesh.
March 3, 1945, 17:00
Victory for the Empire! Four vital hits: a transport, a destroyer, two heavy cruisers. It was good, but everybody wanted an aircraft carrier. He’d pictured it hundreds of times, his dead-center hit blowing up the biggest carrier in the water. He’d imagined the headlines, his dumbstruck parents, his soul enshrined in tragic glory at Yasukuni. All he needed were the coordinates to turn the tide of history. Then there would be nothing: just the sun and sea, the empty waves pebbling an island, all traces of the war gone, only his memory, snagged by rocks, blown about by a forgotten breeze.
April 12, 1945, 13:00
In war, information management is paramount.
But inevitably rumors slip from mouth to mouth. Like the death of Ensign Noguchi, the only Kaiten pilot to return from his mission unlaunched. He’d been discharged honorably, his cause for failure a technical malfunction. But a week on shore, he’d dispatched himself, a soft, unshelled torpedo splayed like a starfish in the rocks below.
Yamada, Maeda, and Tanaka sneaked out to the cliff edge to keep vigil for Noguchi.
April 18, 1945, 06:30
Three cheers for the sortieing pilots! He willed his legs to straighten, snippets of the previous night hurtling back at him. Unaccustomed to the free flow of liquor, his head had spun almost immediately, blurring the hours between the first toast and the pounding sunlight; he’d barely made it to roll call, his head swollen to the size of the largest temple bell in Kyoto. Every New Year it took seventeen monks to ring that bell, and he felt like that bell now, rung by seventeen monks wishing to awaken him. One by one, they tipped back their sake cups. Bowing deeply, they received their short swords, then they were marching down the pier to the I-55, the last of the Imperial submarines to take them out to sea.