Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [215]
On 25 May, 464 B-29s returned to Tokyo, destroying a further nineteen square miles of urban area with 3,258 tons of incendiaries. Of 26 bombers lost, only 4 or 5 fell to enemy action. A further 110 aircraft returned with damage, 89 from flak, 10 from fighters, 11 from a combination of the two. During May, LeMay’s planes dropped 15,500 tons of bombs on three cities. On 1 June, 458 B-29s hit Osaka from high altitude. Ten aircraft were lost, 5 to enemy action. A raid on Kobe four days later marked the last occasion on which the bombers glimpsed significant numbers of enemy fighters. On the night of 15 June, another raid on Osaka killed a host of people and destroyed 300,000 houses. By now, the Twentieth Air Force was running out of targets. Bombers began to hit smaller cities. They attacked some refineries, not a profitable exercise when the Japanese had little oil left to process. In July, on nine nights of operations, they bombed thirty-five urban areas. Most burned satisfactorily.
JAPAN’S fighter pilots found the experience of combating the B-29s deeply depressing, because they achieved so few successes. It was not merely a question of making an interception; the undergunned Zero found it extraordinarily difficult to shoot down these armoured monsters. “We would try to get 2 or 3,000 feet above them, then dive steeply into attack, sometimes by coming up from beneath them,” said Lt. Toshio Hijikata, commanding a flight whose only collective accomplishment was to shoot down a single B-29, tail-end Charlie of a formation, over the sea south of Kyushu. “Again and again we hit them with machine-gun fire, yet seemed to make no impression at all.”
The lives of Japan’s fighter pilots closely resembled those of the RAF’s Battle of Britain fliers, five years earlier. Each day, they lolled in flying gear and parachutes on the grass beside their planes, ready for the electrifying order to scramble, as American planes were identified on radar. Then there was a rush to start up, taxi, and begin the long struggle to high altitude, which alone offered a chance of engaging the bombers. Fuel was available only for operational missions—there was none for replacement pilots to train. The young men were increasingly conscious of the futility of their efforts, the inevitability of defeat. If they escaped death, most shared Toshio Hijikata’s expectation of “a lifetime as slaves of the Americans.”
Like many Japanese, Hijikata blamed the army for everything: “We should have ended the war much sooner. Once we lost the Marianas, there was nothing to be gained from fighting on.” Yet, like almost all his generation of young Japanese, he continued to do his own part, because he was unshakeably convinced that it was his duty to do so. Most pilots imbued their struggle with an aura of romance. For instance, Hijikata’s much-admired comrade Tetsuzo Iwamoto was nicknamed “Koketsu,” after the sword of a samurai warrior, to which Japanese literature attributed powers matching those of Excalibur in Western mythology.
On the ground, Hijikata shared a billet with five other pilots a few miles from the airstrip. Most nights he and his roommates played bridge, “for pretty high stakes, because we had nothing else to spend money on.” The gramophone played music which might sometimes be popular Japanese, but was as likely to be that of Beethoven or Mozart. Their taste in music, like their enthusiasm for bridge, reflected the Japanese navy’s pride in its European connections. While the rest of Japan was by now half-starved, pilots continued to receive good rations, because commanders knew that their men must eat to fight. Food also had to be the right kind. If aircrew were given sweet potatoes as a substitute for rice, such as many civilians received that summer, at 15,000 feet they suffered the agonies of stomach cramps.
Maybe once a week, and especially after a tough battle, the pilots piled into a truck and headed for the Ryotei restaurant