The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [71]
He heard another engine, closer, and he stepped back from the opening, instinct, but the sound grew louder, passing close overhead. There were more now, many more, and he caught flickers of movement out to the north, planes dipping and rolling, streaks of machine gun fire, combat in the air. He was curious, moved to the edge of the cave’s mouth, sought the best view, thought, what is happening? The Americans do not make raids at night, and it will be dark in minutes. But those … those are our planes. He saw more of them now, rolling up and over the mountain, a swarm of angry insects. The swarm continued to grow, emerging from behind the mountain, some dipping low, flowing out past the city of Naha, past the distant beaches, spreading out in a chaotic pattern, no formation. He began to feel a sharp stirring in his chest, saw a flash of light, a burst of flames, then another. The ships were responding, streaks of anti-aircraft fire rising up, hundreds of ships answering the swarm with a swarm of their own, the streaks lighting the sky like strands of fiery straw. In the corridor behind him were boot steps, coming quickly, but he kept his stare out to sea, to the battle that was erupting right in front of him. Yes, there could be glory here! They have come at last!
“Sir!”
The voice was Colonel Miyake, another of the staff. The man stood silently for a long moment, absorbing the sight, and Ushijima said nothing, watched the distant bursts of fire, the impacts of so many bombs … and then he began to see, the planes were dropping low, close to the water, and the stirring inside of him turned colder, a sudden clarity, the sickening reality. He had seen this before, but only single planes, began to understand what the battle meant.
“Sir! Forgive me for interrupting … but we have received a report. What we have been told has finally happened, sir! Tokyo reports the first wave of Operation Floating Chrysanthemum. They are attacking the enemy fleet! It is as we have heard, sir! The Divine Wind! Kamikaze!”
Ushijima had received the coded messages from the Imperial High Command that the air force was mobilizing every available plane, an attack that was as the rumors described, wave upon wave of assaults upon the American fleet. So far the reports had been empty promises, rumors that inspired the men, and frustrated the one man who had the responsibility for defending Okinawa against what he now knew to be the enemy’s overwhelming superiority. He had kept the hope inside of him, his own fantasy, that someone in Tokyo would live up to the promise, that the ocean would be cleansed of the massive fleet. But the anti-aircraft fire and the bursts of flame revealed now what Operation Floating Chrysanthemum truly meant. The planes were not dropping bombs. They were the bombs.
Though reports had circulated through the American command of scattered suicide attacks by small numbers of Japanese planes, the first organized kamikaze assault against American warships had taken place in October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The apparent willingness of the Japanese pilots to crash their explosive-laden planes deliberately into the American ships had shocked the American commanders and inflicted considerable casualties, sending five ships to the bottom and damaging thirty-five others. As horrified as the Americans were, those attacks had been carried out by no more than a few dozen specially