A Thousand Stitches by Constance O'Keefe

Author:Constance O'Keefe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War II, Japan, Kamikaze, Senninbari, anti-war sentiment
ISBN: 978-1-56474-786-0
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Published: 2014-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

The winds had tossed burning embers and debris into the air and whipped the fires from the incendiary bombs into a storm that had devoured the flimsy dwellings along with their occupants, who had heeded the government’s instructions to avoid the few public shelters and stay near their homes to defend them. Fires were still burning and I could make out the smoldering skeleton of Kokugikan, the national sumo wrestling hall. I descended to look for the nearby Asakusa Kannon Temple, which had been a refuge for the people of that neighborhood during the great Tokyo fire that followed the earthquake of 1923. I couldn’t find any trace of that grand structure and was shocked that at the lower altitude, the heat from the ground reached up to my plane.

It was hard to grasp what I was witnessing. Tokyo, the heart of the nation, the vast ocean of the metropolis that I had encountered as a ten-year-old, was devastated. Much of one of the world’s great cities was gone. The B-29s had done their job with startling and ruthless efficiency. America’s might had obliterated much of the capital and many of its citizens. How much longer could this be endured?

After an hour, I returned to the Detachment and reported to Commander Fujimura. He was happy to hear that the radio reports he was receiving about damage to the Palace were wrong. I learned after the war that two hundred B-29s took part in the raid and dropped 25,000 bombs; at least 80,000, and perhaps more than 100,000, died in that raid.

Within a month, spring really arrived. The Detachment had one—and only one—cherry tree. It stood in front of the Officers’ Quarters. Young and spindly, it produced only a few blossoms. As I stood gazing at them at their peak, the old haiku we had learned from Professor Takahashi came to mind, Samazama no / koto omoidasu / sakura kana, and I thought how I was lucky to see those flowers, the last cherries I would ever see. Every spring since, I have remembered that scrawny cherry tree. Samazama no koto.

The now-regular visits of the B-29s were bad enough, but the fighters and dive-bombers were worse—along with the realization that they were launched from aircraft carriers cruising off the coast. When those raids started, Utsumi remarked in the Gun Room one night, “If we added up all the American aircraft carriers that Imperial Headquarters has announced we have sunk, there wouldn’t be a single one left to fly those damn fighters from!” My good friend and colleague was known for his wit and outspoken frankness, and I usually enjoyed bantering with him. This time, however, I couldn’t think of what to say, but I did begin to wonder…even more than I had on my own.

During one of the raids, four fighters swept down on our airfield. The only target they managed to destroy was one of Japan Airline’s DC-3s, which was, of course, a U.S.-manufactured commercial plane. Or so we thought,

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