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By Root 1186 0

Emperor because we of the Home Front are responsible for the loss of the war.” Yoichi felt angry and resentful. He was sure that he and his kind had done their utmost. Had the headmaster forgotten all those hours they spent digging out pine roots from which pitiful quantities of oil were extracted for aviation fuel? He went home and said to his mother: “Surely, we have lost the war922 because our soldiers were not good enough. They told us a Divine Wind would come, and it didn’t. They lied to us, didn’t they?”

Lt. Cmdr. Haruki Iki flew a little communications plane to navy headquarters the night before the surrender, for a conference about his wing’s invasion suicide mission. On landing, he met two staff officers whom he knew well from navy academy days. They greeted him and said: “Forget about the meeting. An important announcement’s due which could change everything. Let’s go and have a drink.” They got their drinks, then spent the hours which followed in shelters, evading the attentions of American bombers. Then they listened to the emperor’s broadcast. Like so many others, Iki dissolved into helpless tears. He flew alone back to his base, to find that most of his aircrew had decamped towards their homes. Iki, furious, dispatched demands for their return, with which most sheepishly complied. He put the disconsolate fliers to work smartening up their planes: “I thought the Americans923 would be taking them for reparations.” Then a terse order arrived from headquarters: all aircraft were to be destroyed. So indeed they were.

Another pilot, Toshio Hijikata, was in a naval hospital, having lost weight and developed chronic fever during the summer months. The doctors diagnosed lung trouble precipitated by combat flying. Other men in his ward seemed vastly relieved to hear the war was over, but Hijikata threw himself out of bed and hitched a ride on a vehicle back to his squadron’s base at Kagoshima. “I was sure there would be924 one last great air battle,” he said, “and I wanted to be in it.” He was crestfallen to discover that his unit had accepted the surrender.

Maj. Shoji Takahashi, a general staff intelligence officer, had spent a week in Hiroshima as a member of the army’s investigating team after the atomic explosion. Takahashi became ill, suffering from what he afterwards assumed was radiation sickness. He learned of Japan’s surrender at the airfield on their return to Tokyo. “All the way back to general staff headquarters925,” he said later, “I was trying to decide how I would kill myself, because I assumed that we would all be expected to do this.” It came as a surprise to discover that most officers were content to survive. Amid the profound sense of humiliation which engulfed the army, Takahashi refused an order that he should join the Japanese delegation flying to Manila to receive detailed instructions from the Americans: “I could not bear the idea of being one of those who abased ourselves before MacArthur.”

At 1000 on 15 August, twelve kamikaze aircraft were as usual prepared for take-off at Hyakuri air base north of Tokyo. One proved unserviceable, but the remainder left as scheduled to attack the American fleet. Ground crews began to prepare the next wave of thirty for launch soon after noon. The imperial broadcast intervened. Interference was so bad that the crews working under Petty Officer Hachiro Miyashita could not understand a word the emperor said. They assumed that he was simply inciting them to greater effort, and returned to work. Suddenly, a man bicycled up to their dispersal and said: “Didn’t you hear?926 The war’s over.” The most bewildered men on the airfield were the pilots, who had expected to be dead within two hours. “I watched them walk away to their quarters,” said Miyashita. “Their shoulders were hunched, they looked sunk in misery. They were so keyed up for what they were going to do.” The ground crews were expected in the mess hall, but even after flying was cancelled, Miyashita and his companions had no appetites. It was only some hours later that a new thought burst upon his consciousness: