Samurai!

By Saburo Sakai and Martin Caidin

Samurai! is a 1957 autobiographical book by Saburo Sakai co-written with Fred Saito and Martin Caidin. It describes the life and career of Saburo Sakai, the Japanese combat aviator who fought against American fighter pilots in the pacific theater of World War II, surviving the war with 64 kills as one of Japan's leading flying aces. Caidin wrote the prose of the book, basing its contents on journalist Fred Saito's extensive interviews with Sakai as well as on Sakai's own memoirs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VintReads
• Release date: Sep 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9788293684268

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE AUTHORS wish to express their appreciation to all the persons and institutions without whose assistance this book would not have been possible. Particular thanks are due to former Naval Aviation Captain Masahisa Saito; to Major General Minoru Genda, JAF; to Colonel Tadashi Nakajima, JAF; to Colonel Masatake Okumiya, G-2, Japan Jouit Chiefs of Staff; to Major Shoji Matsumara, JAF; to all the former pilots and officers of Japan's wartime naval air arm who contributed details of their air combat service; we wish particularly to thank Otto v. St. Whitelock, whose editorial assistance has always been invaluable; Sally Botsford, who has worked many long hours in typing the final manuscript; Major William J. McGinty, Captain James Sunderman, and Major Gordon Furbish of the United States Air Force, who have always been most cooperative in providing historical documentation and other assistance.

HIGH FLIGHT

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer JOHN G. MAGEE, JR., American flier with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Died in aerial combat on December 11, 1941

FOREWORD

SABURO SAKAI became a living legend in Japan during World War II. Pilots everywhere spoke in awe of his incredible exploits in the air.

Sakai enjoyed a singular and most cherished reputation among fighter pilots. Of all Japan's aces, Saburo Sakai is the only pilot who never lost a wingman in combat. This is an astounding performance for a man who engaged hi more than two hundred aerial melees, and it explains the fierce competition, sometimes approaching physical violence, among the other pilots who aspired to fly his wing positions.

His maintenance crews held him in adulation. It was considered the highest honor to be a mechanic assigned to Sakai's Zero fighter. Among the ground complement it is said that during his two hundred combat missions Sakai's skill was such that he never overshot a landing, never overturned or crashlanded his plane despite heavy damage, personal wounds, and night flying conditions.

Saburo Sakai suffered disastrous wounds and intense agony during air fighting over Guadalcanal in August of 1942. His struggle to return in a crippled fighter plane to Rabaul, with paralyzing wounds in his left leg and left arm, blinded permanently hi his right eye and temporarily in his left eye, with jagged pieces of metal in his back and chest, and with the heavy fragments of two 50-caliber machine-gun bullets imbedded in his skull is one of the greatest air epics, a deed which I believe will become legendary among pilots.

These wounds were more than enough to have ended the combat days of any man. Ask any veteran fighter pilot of the appalling difficulties which face a combat flier with only one eye. Especially when he must return to the arena of air battle in a suddenly obsolete Zero fighter against new and superior American Hellcats.

After long months of physical and mental anguish, during which he despaired of ever returning to his first love, the air, Sakai again entered battle. Not only did he again assert his piloting skill, but he downed four more enemy planes, bringing his total score to sixty-four confirmed kills.

The reader will doubtless be surprised to learn that Saburo Sakai never received recognition by his government in the form of medals or decorations. The awarding of medals or other citations was unknown to the Japanese. Recognition was given only posthumously. When the aces of other nations, including our own, were bedecked with rows of colorful medals and ribbons, awarded with great ceremony, Saburo Sakai and his fellow pilots flew repeatedly in combat without ever knowing the satisfaction of such recognition.

The story of Saburo Sakai provides for the first time an intimate look into the other side. Here are the emotions of a man, a former enemy, laid open for our world to see. Sakai represents a class of Japanese we in America know little of, and understand even less. These are the celebrated Samurai, the professional warriors who devoted their lives to serving their country. Theirs was a world apart from even their own people. Now, for the first time, you will be able to listen to the thoughts, share the emotions and feelings of the men who spearheaded Japan in the air.

In writing this book, I had the opportunity to speak to many of my friends who flew our fighter planes in the Pacific theater during World War II. Not one among them has ever known the Japanese fighter pilots whom they opposed as more than an unknown entity. They have never been able to think of the Japanese fighter pilot as another human being. He has been remote and alien.

As were our fighter pilots to men like Sakai.

SAMURAI! will do much to bring the Pacific air war into new perspective. The wartime propaganda efforts of our country have distorted the picture of the Japanese pilot into an unrecognizable caricature of a man who stumbles through the air, who has poor eyesight, who remains aloft only by the grace of God.

This attitude was on too many occasions a fatal one. Saburo Sakai was as gifted in the air as the best of pilots from any nation; he ranks among the greatest of all time. Sixty-four planes went down before his guns; the toll, except for his severe wounds, would have been much higher.

The conduct and courage of our men during the trials of World War II require no apologies. We also had our share of the great and the mediocre. However, many of our documented victories in the air are conquests on paper only.

A case in point is the celebrated story of the heroic Captain Colin P. Kelly, Jr. The reader will find not a little interest in Sakai's version of Kelly's death, on December 10, 1941, in these pages. The story surrounding his death—that he attacked and sank the battleship Haruna, that he fought his way through hordes of enemy fighters, and that he made a suicide plunge into a Japanese battleship and that he received the Congressional Medal of Honor—is an erroneous one, owing to the inaccuracies of combat observation and the passionate desire of the American people after Pearl Harbor to find a hero.

At the time of the reported battle with the Haruna that ship was on the other side of the South China Sea, engaged in support of the Malayan campaign. There were no battleships in the Philippines at the time. The warship Kelly did attack, but did not strike, according to Sakai and the pilots who flew air cover over the vessel, was a light cruiser of the 4,000-ton Nagara class. Kelly's attack was over and his plane fleeing the area before the enemy even discovered his presence. He did not make a suicide dive, but a bombing run from 22,000 feet and later was shot down—by Saburo Sakai —near Clark Field in the Philippines. Kelly was awarded, not the Congressional Medal of Honor, but the Distinguished Service Cross.

It is ironic, and a disservice to the memory of this fine young officer, that Colin Kelly is not remembered for the actual deed of bravery which is his son's heritage. Kelly and his copilot remained at the controls of their flaming bomber in order that their crew might abandon safely their stricken bomber and live. This was his sacrifice.

To obtain the full record and the story of Saburo Sakai, Fred Saito spent every week end for nearly a year with Sakai, digging into the combat past of Japan's greatest living ace. As soon after the war as conditions allowed, Sakai prepared voluminous notes on his experiences. These notes, plus the thousands of questions posed by Saito, an experienced and capable Associated Press correspondent, recreated Sakai's more personal story.

Saito then searched through the thousands of pages of official records of the former Imperial Japanese Navy. He toured the islands of Japan to interview dozens of surviving pilots and officers, to cross-check the accounts given by these men. All ranks have been polled, from enlisted men of the maintenance crews to general officers and admirals, in order to produce this authentic record. Indeed, several of Sakai's battle accounts have been omitted simply because a search of official Japanese and/or American records failed to produce documentation.

Of especial value was the personal fighting log of former Naval Aviation Captain Masahisa Saito. Captain Saito, who commanded Sakai's fighter wing at Lae, kept an elaborate log during his combat service in this area. Since it was a personal diary which had not been submitted for Imperial Headquarters, Fred Saito and I consider it the single most valuable document of the Pacific air war.

It is a human failing that military officers at times do not report every difficulty within their front-line command to rear headquarters. This especially was true within the military system of the Japanese Navy. Captain Saito's personal diary, for example, lists in detail the precise number of Japanese planes which returned or failed to return from their almost daily sorties in the New Guinea theater. The log is at direct odds at times with the overwhelming claims for victory of many of our pilots. Captain Saito survived the war, and the long interviews with him proved invaluable to this book.

Ex-Naval Aviation Commander Tadashi Nakajima, whom you will meet throughout this book, is today a colonel in Japan's new Air Force. Many hours were spent with Colonel Nakajima, to provide some of the most interesting parts. Also of great assistance has been Major General (formerly Naval Aviation Captain) Minoru Genda, who commanded Sakai's wing during the latter part of the war. At this writing, Genda is the only Japanese general officer who is rated jet fighter pilot, and who has logged many hours in types as the F-86.

We are also deeply indebted to Colonel Masatake Okumiya, who is today Chief of Intelligence, Japan Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colonel (formerly Commander) Okumiya, one of my coauthors on ZERO! and THE ZERO FIGHTER, was in more air-sea battles than any other Japanese officer, and for the last year of the war commanded the homeland air defense of Japan. Through his efforts we were able to secure the necessary records from the archives of the defunct Imperial Navy Ministry.

I believe it is important here to tell of Sakai's attitude toward his present position as Japan's greatest living ace. Sakai feels that he was simply fortunate to survive the losing war, the devastating air battles fought from 1943 on. There were many other great Japanese aces—Nishizawa, Ota, Takatsuka, Sugita, and more—who fought until the long odds of incessant air battles caught up with them.

This is Sakai's own statement of the postwar period:

"In the Imperial Japanese Navy I learned only one trade— how to man a fighter plane and how to kill enemies of my country. This I did for nearly five years, in China and across the Pacific. I knew no other life; I was a warrior of the air.

"With the surrender, I was thrown out of the Navy. Despite my wounds and my long service, there was no possibility of a pension. We were the losers, and pensions or disability payments are received only by the veterans of the victor nation.

"Occupation rules forbade me even to sit at the controls of an airplane, no matter what its type. For seven long years of the Allied occupation of 1945 to 1952, I was banned from obtaining any public position. It was all quite simple; I had been a flier in combat. Period.

"The end of the Pacific War only opened a new, prolonged, and bitter struggle for me, a struggle far worse than any I had ever known in combat. There were new and deadlier enemies—poverty, hunger, sickness, and all manner of frustration. There was the ever-present barrier raised by the occupation authorities which prevented my gaining any public post. There was only one opportunity, and I snatched at it eagerly. Two years of the hardest manual labor, with primitive living quarters, with rags for clothes, and barely enough food.

"The ultimate crushing blow was the death of my dearest wife from illness. Hatsuyo had survived the bombs and all the danger of war; she could not, however, escape this new enemy.

"Finally, after the years of self-imposed privation, I scraped together enough money to open a small printing shop. By working day and night it was possible to make ends meet, and even to get a little ahead.

"Soon I succeeded in reaching the widow of Vice-Admiral Takijiro Onishi, a person I had sought out for many months. Admiral Onishi committed harakiri immediately after the surrender in 1945. He chose death in this fashion rather than remaining alive, when so many of his men—men he had ordered out to die—were never to return. For it was none other than Onishi who had instituted the devastating Kamikaze attacks.

"Mrs. Onishi was even more to me than the admiral's widow; she is the aunt of Lieutenant Sasai, the best friend I ever had. Sasai flew to his death in combat over New Guinea while I was in a hospital in Japan.

"Mrs. Onishi had for several years scratched out the barest subsistence by peddling on the street. I was enraged at the sight of her shuffling along in her tattered rags, but there was no way to help.

"Now, with a small printing shop, I persuaded her to accept a position as manager. Soon our business was expanding; I searched diligently and brought into the business several other widows and brothers of my close friends who flew with me during the war and who met their death.

"Fortunately, things have changed. It is now more than a decade since the war's end. Our business has continued to expand, and the people who work together in my shop are again well on their economic feet.

"The later years have been strange, indeed. I have been invited as a guest of honor aboard several American carriers and other warships, and the incredible changes in present-day jet fighters from the old Zeros and Hellcats is astounding. I have met men against whom I fought in the air, sat and talked with these men, and found friendship. This to me is truly the most impressive fact of all; these same people who, for all I know, came under my guns so long ago, sincerely offered friendship.

"On several occasions I have been approached with offers to accept a commission with the new Japan Air Force. These offers I have declined. I do not wish to return to the military, to relive all which has passed.

"But to fly is just like swimming. You do not forget easily. I have been on the ground for more than ten years. If I close my eyes, however, I can again feel the stick in my right hand, the throttle in my left, the rudder bar beneath my feet. I can sense the freedom and the cleanliness and all the things which a pilot knows.

No, I have not forgotten how to fly. If Japan needs me, if Communist forces press too closely against our nation, I will fly again. But I pray fervently that it is not for this reason that I return to the air.

Saburo Sakai

Tokyo, 1956

Martin Caidin

New York, 1956

CHAPTER 1

ON the southernmost main Japanese island of Kyushu, the small city of Saga lies midway between two major centers which in recent years have become well known to thousands of Americans. At Sasebo, the United States Navy based most of its fleet which participated in the Korean War; from the airfield runways at Ashiya, American fighters and bombers took off for flights over narrow Tsushima Strait to attack the Chinese and Red Koreans on the disputed peninsula.

Saga City is no newcomer to military expeditions across Tsushima Strait. My own ancestors were members of the Japanese forces which in 1592 invaded Korea from Saga. Nor is the unpleasant outcome of the modern Korean conflict without its precedent; the medieval Korea-Japan War choked to a stalemate in 1597 after the Ming Dynasty of China threw its strength onto the side of the North Koreans, just as modern Red China has brought about the current Korean impasse.

Thus my family has a warrior's origin, and for many years my forebears served faithfully the feudal lord of Saga until, under a government centralization plan in the nineteenth century, he committed his estate to the Emperor's keeping.

In the feudal times when four castes divided the Japanese people, my family enjoyed the privilege of the ruling class known as the Samurai, or Warriors. Aloof from the mundane problems of everyday life, the Samurai lived proudly, without personal concern for such matters as income, and devoted their time to local government administration and to constant preparedness for emergencies which would make demands upon their fighting prowess. The Samurai's living necessities were underwritten by his lord, regardless of farm depressions or other outside influences.

The nineteenth century abolition of the caste system proved a crushing blow to the proud Samurai people. In a single stroke they were stripped of all their former privileges and forced to become merchants and farmers, and to adopt patterns of life under which they were ill suited to prosper.

It was to be expected that most of the Samurai became destitute, struggling to eke out a living through the most menial labor or through dawn-to-dusk work on their small farms. My own grandfather fared no better than his friends; he finally accepted a small farm on which he struggled bitterly to scratch out the necessities of life. My family was then, and is today, one of the very poorest in the village. It was on this farm that I was born on August 26, 1916, the third of four sons; my family also included three sisters.

Ironically, my own career closely paralleled that of my grandfather. When Japan surrendered to the Allies in August of 1945, I was at the time the leading live ace of my country, with an official total of sixty-four enemy planes shot down in aerial combat. With the war's end, however, I was dismissed from the defunct Imperial Navy and barred from accepting any government position. I was penniless and with no skill I could employ to adapt myself to a world which had crashed all about me. Like my grandfather, I lived by dint of the crudest manual labor; only after several years of bitter struggle did I manage to save enough to set up a small printing shop to serve as a means of livelihood.

The task of tilling the one-acre household farm near Saga City fell heavily on the shoulders of my mother, who also had the problem of tending her seven children. To add to her unceasing labors, she was widowed when I was eleven years old. My memories of her at that time are of a woman steadfastly at work, my youngest sister strapped to her back as she bent over for hour upon hour hi the fields, toiling under brutal conditions. But at no tune do I recall hearing any complaint pass her lips. She was one of the bravest women I have ever known, a typical Samurai, proud and stern, but not without a warm heart when the occasion demanded.

I sometimes returned home from school, whimpering after having been thoroughly beaten by older and larger schoolboys. She had no sympathy for my tears, only scowls and admonishing words. Shame on you, was her favorite retort. Do not forget that you are the son of a Samurai, that tears are not for you.

In the village primary school I worked hard at my studies and, throughout the six years, remained at the head of all my classes. But the future presented apparently insuperable problems to my further education. While the primary schools were government-financed, the majority of the more advanced institutions required the student to be supported by his family. This arrangement was, of course, impossible for the Sakai family, which barely met its needs for food and clothing. However, we had not reckoned with the generosity of my uncle in Tokyo, who offered, incredibly, to underwrite all my school expenses. He was a successful official in the Ministry of Communications and his offer included adoption and a complete education. We gratefully accepted our good fortune.

In all Japan, the feudal clan of Saga occupied one of the poorest of the self-sustaining provinces. Its Samurai class had for ages lived an austere life, and was famous for its Spartan discipline. We were the only province in all the land which lived religiously by the Bushido code, Hagakure, the main theme of which was: A Samurai lives in such a way that he will always be prepared to die. Hagakure during the war became a textbook for every school in the country, but it was the code under which I had always lived, and its severity served me well, both in my new school life and in the years to follow in combat.

Everything in Tokyo bewildered me. I had never known a city larger than Saga, with its 50,000 people. The milling throngs in Japan's capital were incredible, as were the constant turmoil, the noise, the large buildings, and all the activities of one of the world's greatest centers. I was also to find that Tokyo in 1929 was a stage of fierce competition in every field; not only were new graduates competing bitterly for jobs, but even the young children had to fight for the comparatively few openings in the select schools.

I had thought my life on the farm difficult; I had thought myself exceptional as the leading student of my school for six entire years. But I had never encountered school children who studied literally day and night, who crammed every available moment in order to beat out their fellow students! The select Tokyo high schools, such as the Tokyo First or the Tokyo Fourth, all chose their entrants from the outstanding students of the primary schools. Furthermore, of every thirty-five applicants, only one received admission.

It was clearly out of the question for a country boy such as myself, bewildered as I was with this strange and tempestuous atmosphere, even to aspire for enrollment in these famed schools. I accepted gladly a student's place in the Aoyama Gakuin, established years before by American missionaries. Not equal in reputation to the better known institutions, it was not, however, without repute.

My new home life could not have been better. My uncle, however, was overly serious and of the opinion that the less seen or heard of children, the better. This was not the case with my aunt or her son and daughter, who could not have been kinder or more friendly. Under these pleasant circumstances I began high school, burning with ambition and enthusiasm, fully determined to retain always my comfortable place at the head of the class.

It took less than a month for these dreams to vanish. My expectations of again leading all the students were rudely shattered. It was obvious, not only to my teachers but to myself as well, that many of the other boys—never leading students in their primary schools—bested me in studies. I found this difficult to believe. Yet, they knew many things of which I was totally ignorant; despite desperate studying into all hours of the night, I was unable to learn as quickly as the others.

The first semester ended in July. My school reports, which placed me in the middle of the class, were a heavy disappointment to my uncle, and the cause of despair for me. I knew that my uncle had accepted all my expenses because he felt I was a promising child, and could maintain student leadership. There was no denying his unhappiness at my failure. Summer vacation therefore became a period of intense home study. While my classmates went on their holidays, I crammed through the summer months, determined to make up my scholastic déficiences. But the opening of the school year in September proved the futility of my efforts; there was no improvement.

These repeated failures to gain scholastic prominence caused a feeling of sheer desperation. Not only had I become merely average in my studies; in sports, as well, I found myself outclassed. There could be no doubt that many of the boys in the school were more agile, more capable than myself.

The disillusioned state which followed was unforgivable. Instead of continuing the attempt to surpass those students who had clearly indicated their scholastic superiority, I chose friends of mediocre abilities. I lost no time in asserting leadership over these other youngsters, and then went on to pick fights with the biggest of the school seniors. Hardly a day passed when I did not, through one means or the other, goad a senior into a fight, during which I thoroughly pummeled my adversary. Almost every night I returned to my uncle's home covered with bruises, taking care, however, to keep these adventures secret.

The first blow fell after the end of my first year at the Methodist school, when a letter from my teacher informed my uncle that I had been branded as a problem pupil. As best I could, I passed off as unimportant the fights, but made no attempt to discontinue what had become a most satisfying means of proving, to myself at least, that I was better than the older students. The teacher's letters became more frequent and, finally, my uncle was summoned to the school for a direct verbal report of my disgraceful conduct.

I finished my second year in school almost at the bottom of the list. It was too much for my uncle. He had become increasingly angry in his lectures to me and, now, decided finally that there was no further use in continuing my stay in Tokyo.

Saburo, were his final words, I weary of scolding you, and shall not do so further. Perhaps I am to blame for not supervising you more closely, but, whatever the cause, I seem to have made the child of the proud Sakai family into a delinquent. You are to go back to Saga. Obviously, he added wryly, Tokyo's life has spoiled you. I could not say one word in defense, for everything he said was true. The blame was all mine, but it did not make my return to Saga—in shame—any less bitter. I was determined to keep my embarrassment a secret, particularly from my uncle's daughter Hat-suyo, of whom I was very fond. I passed off my departure as a visit to my family in Kyushu.

That night, however, as the train glided out of the Tokyo Central Station for the 800-mile trip to Saga, I could not prevent the tears from coming to my eyes. I had failed my family, and I dreaded the return home.

CHAPTER 2

I RETURNED as a disgrace to my family, and to the entire village as well. To complicate matters, my home suffered from increased poverty and misery. My mother and my oldest brother tilled the tiny farm from sunup to sundown. They and my three sisters were clad in tattered rags, and the small house in which I had been raised was shockingly neglected.

Every person in the village had spurred me on with good wishes when I left for Tokyo; they would have a feeling of sharing my success. Now, although I had failed them, no one would reproach me face to face or utter words of anger. Their shame was in their eyes, however, and they turned aside to avoid embarrassment for me. I did not dare to walk through the village because of this reaction of my own people; I could not endure their silent admonitions. To flee this place of disgrace became my most fervent wish.

It was then that I recalled a large poster in the Saga Railway Station calling for volunteers to enlist in the Navy. Enlistment seemed the only way out of an unhappy situation. My mother, having already suffered from my absence for several years, deplored my determination to leave once again, but she could offer no alternative.

On May 31, 1933, I enlisted as a sixteen-year-old Seaman Recruit at the Sasebo Naval Base, some fifty miles east of my home. It was the beginning of a new life of monstrously harsh discipline, of severity beyond my wildest nightmares. It was then that the strict Hagakure code under which I had been raised came to my aid.

It is still difficult, if not altogether impossible, for Americans and other westerners to appreciate the harshness of the discipline under which we then lived in the Navy. The petty officers would not for a moment hesitate to administer the severest beatings to recruits they felt deserving of punishment. Whenever I committed a breach of discipline or an error in training, I was dragged physically from my cot by a petty officer.

Stand to the wall! Bend down, Recruit Sakai! he would roar. I am doing this to you, not because I hate you, but because I like you and want to make you a good seaman. Bend down!

And with that he would swing a large stick of wood and with every ounce of strength he possessed would slam it against my upturned bottom. The pain was terrible, the force of the blows unremitting. There was no choice but to grit my teeth and struggle desperately not to cry out. At times I counted up to forty crashing impacts into my buttocks. Often I fainted from the pain. A lapse into unconsciousness constituted no escape however. The petty officer simply hurled a bucket of cold water over my prostrate form and bellowed for me to resume position, whereupon he continued his discipline until satisfied I would mend the error of my ways.

To assure that every individual recruit in the station would do his utmost to prevent his fellows from committing too many errors, whenever one of us received a beating, each of the fifty other recruits in the outfit was made to bend down and receive one vicious blow. After such treatment it was impossible to lie on our backs on our cots. Furthermore, we were never allowed the indulgence of even a single satisfying groan in our misery. Let one single man moan in pain or anguish because of his paternalistic discipline, and to a man every recruit in the outfit would be kicked or dragged from his cot to receive the full course.

Obviously, such treatment engendered no fondness for our petty officers, who were absolute tyrants in their own right. The majority were in their thirties and seemed destined to remain in the rank of petty officers throughout their careers. Their major obsession was to terrorize the new recruits—in this case, ourselves. We regarded these men as sadistic brutes of the worst sort. Within six months the incredibly severe training had made human cattle of every one of us. We never dared to question orders, to doubt authority, to do anything but immediately carry out all the commands of our superiors. We were automatons who obeyed without thinking.

Recruit training melted into a blurr of drilling, studying, training, the vicious swings of the sticks and the always painful buttocks, the bruised and blackened skin, the wincing upon sitting down.

When I completed the recruit training course, I was no longer the ambitious and zealous youth who had several years previously left his small farm village to conquer the Tokyo school system. My scholastic failures, the family disgrace, and the recruit discipline all combined effectively to humble me. I recognized the futility of questioning official authority; my egotism had been knocked out of me. But never, while I was in training or later, has my deep-rooted anger at the brutality of the petty officers abated.

Upon completion of land training, I was assigned as an apprentice seaman to the battleship Kirishima. Life at sea proved a shock to me; I had thought that,