by John M. Joyce
Dormant for centuries, the “Divine Wind,” roused once again by the gods, was moaning high over the shimmering heave of the Pacific Ocean…
He glanced to the side where the other planes, all flying at the same speed, seemed motionless like shadowy, tapered clouds suspended in the starless tropic sky. The sight comforted him, as if knowing others were sharing a collision course to oblivion made his fate more bearable.
Theirs was a rare comradeship, one shared only by men who willingly face certain death together. A heroic, meaningful death which would breathe new life into their gasping nation. Pilots of the Special Attack Corps, the Kamikaze, their mission was to blast the American Navy out of the Pacific just as a kamikaze (Divine Wind) sent by the gods, destroyed a Mongol fleet attacking Japan in 1570.
Already the kamikaze had inflicted heavy losses off the Philippines and Iwo Jima and tonight this small Tokkotai (attack group) would crash their planes, each loaded with a 550-pound bomb, on ships of a great American fleet anchored in the atoll ahead.
He fought a surge of panic as his twin-engined craft bucked and trembled like a frightened horse. It had been patched together and reinforced with parts from damaged planes for this one final trip and he knew there was barely enough fuel to reach his destination. Fingering the small onamori (good luck charm) in his tunic pocket, he prayed only for the chance to die honorably with his comrades, not out here alone and wasted.
There! Far off, a filmy whiteness hanging low on the horizon like a distant morning mist. His prayers were answered. Seconds later the whole sky to the northwest glowed from many lights. As he scattered tinfoil to jam the enemy radar he remembered with a pang the lights fading in the distance when he sailed from Yokohama a year earlier. It was the last view he would ever have of his homeland.
Suddenly, as if it had been a mirage, the glow was gone. The radar had found them but it was too late, they were already sweeping over the dark humps of the outlying islands.
Cramps of fear were gone now but his body throbbed as if aflame with fever. Seconds from death, a few hundred thumping heartbeats from eternal glory. Muscles tense and twitching, he felt great power in his hands as they performed their final duties. Flicked the switch to arm his bomb so it would explode on contact, adjusted the small white flag on his shaved skull, turning it until the crimson sun was over his forehead. Under full throttle he started his descent, bracing for anti-aircraft fire, but there was none.
They were home free and what a sight below! Masts and turrets and superstructures silhouetted in the darkened lagoon as far as the eye could see. Hundreds, maybe a thousand, ships of every shape he had memorized in recognition class. Carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, auxiliaries—all sitting there like plump chickens sleeping on a roost. A tattoo of icy needles stung his scalp as he wiped the sweat from his eyes, searching right, then left.
Straight ahead! On the far side of the harbor, near the open sea, a big one. A carrier. Compact superstructure centered on a long flight deck. Adam’s apple rasping on his dry throat, he took dead aim on the bridge and shoved the stick forward.
The sea tumbled towards him as the plane responded, a part of him now, motor thrusting against its walls just as his blood pounded in his veins. Screeching his defiance for him, lurching angrily, it accelerated into its steep power dive. Bigger and closer, bigger and closer, dark water and darker ship rushed up to meet him. He could see white phosphorous waves lapping at the ship’s hull like surf breaking on an island shore.
Only he and his gods will ever know if he realized, too late, that he was indeed plummeting toward an island.
There were almost a thousand ships of all types anchored in the natural harbor formed by the coral islands of Ulithi Atoll that night in mid-March 1945. Including the famed Task Force 58 and the vast invasion fleet forming up for the landing on Okinawa, it was one of the mightiest forces of naval power ever assembled in one place.
With that multitude of prime targets in his sights the excited young kamikaze pilot had zeroed in on Sorlen, one of the small, low islands in the horseshoe-shaped atoll.
On the island, the sailors of Standard Landing Craft Unit 34 who were off duty had been watching a Roy Rogers movie when “Condition Red” sounded. Some recent “bogies” at Ulithi had been high-flying, unarmed reconnaissance planes. With much grumbling over the interruption the landing craft sailors ambled through the darkness toward their assigned stations.
Most likely because the radarmen were also bored with “Bedcheck Charlie” and his sightseeing tours the alarm was late and the movie goers had not gone far when they heard a howl as of a sudden gale rushing head-long across the anchorage. Closing swiftly, an avenging spirit swooping from the sky, it roared out of the night and plunged between the signal tower and a water tank in the center of the island, hypnotizing the men below with its shrill, crescendo death whine.
Far into the night, long after the storm had subsided and the sacrificial fire and done feasting, a shocked, funeral hush shrouded Sorlen Island and ghostly traces of the “Divine Wind” lingered, fanning smoldering embers where the shallow hole had been blasted in the sand and coral.
They were a ragged, hard-bitten band of warriors, those 11 brave kamikaze pilots who coaxed their rickety “Ginga” medium bombers through the lonely, one-way trip to Ulithi from the Japanese stronghold at Truk. It was a gallant effort although only one of them was successful, crashing on the fantail of the carrier Randolph. The remaining nine erupted harmlessly in the inky waters of Ulithi lagoon.
It was hardly a devastating blow to the U.S. Pacific Fleet but the gods were far from finished with their heavenly hurricane. Even then they were harnessing powerful thunder clouds which would soon burst in the skies over the Ryukyu Islands and ignite a hail of “flaming terror and searing death.”
Back in Japan thousands of young men were volunteering for the Special Attack Corps, pledging their lives to save time for their beleaguered country. His bomb-laden plane a projectile, a single man could sink a great ship of the line. Pretty good odds: the life of one man against the lives of hundreds or even thousands. Their slogan was: “One plane, one warship.”
Officially formed five months earlier in the Philippines to channel decimated air strength into maximum efficiency, the kamikaze became an integral part of the defense of the Ryukyus, a desperate replacement for a shattered navy.
When the skies over the Ryukyus finally cleared more than 4,000 Japanese planes had been destroyed, 1,228 of them kamikazes. With 34 ships sunk and 288 others damaged the U.S. Navy endured its most costly campaign of the war.
The losses would have been much heavier but for the courageous efforts of American sailors to keep disabled ships afloat. Men like the officer who was the senior man still alive on a destroyer under kamikaze attack at a remote radar picket station. The last message received from the stricken vessel was his battle report to his flagship, the carrier Bunker Hill. He signed off with the words, “I am an ensign. I have only been on this ship for a little while. I have been in the Navy for only a little while. I will fight this ship to the best of my ability and forgive me for the mistakes I am about to make.”
If planes of the Special Attack Corps were equipped with radios those could also have been the final words of a young Japanese pilot as he rocketed through the night on a collision course with a barren, sandy island which projected a shadowy contour similar to that of a great warship.
Surely his superiors, and his gods, would forgive him. He only had one chance and he was certainly a novice. In the words of Adm. Marc Mitscher (Commander of Task Force 58), “There are no experienced kamikaze pilots.”
Bibliography
Jones, Ken, and Hubert Kelley Jr. Admiral Arleigh (31-Knot) Burke. Chilton Co., Philadelphia, 1962.
Miller, Francis Trevelyan. War in Korea and History of World War II. N.p., 1954.