In Japanese, the number five is go and one of its homonyms has a meaning of “protection”. The number four is shi and, likewise, it shares the same pronunciation as “death”. Sen in another Chinese character means “line”.
Hence, it was said that five sen (“protective line”) overcomes four sen (“death line”) and so a five-sen coin was given as a lucky charm to sons going to war. My mother gave me a stomach band made with a thousand stitches, collected from a thousand women, each one contributing one stitch with her prayer for the soldier's safe return. On the band, at the last stitch of the thousand, my mother attached a five-sen coin. Each stitch was my mother's desperate prayer to have her son come home safely. Thus we twenty-year-olds wore stomach bands made by our mothers and entered our camp gates.
In those days, many young men of twenty years had no chance of survival and most were killed. I am one of an unknown number of soldiers who crossed their “death line” and have been saved mysteriously many times over, thanks to the power of the five-sen coin.
I would like to tell you about the mysterious “death lines” I have encountered, as with all the other returned soldiers.
Army
I was supposed to join Shibata 16th Infantry Regiment, since I lived in Shibata. But I was not a very good walker so I applied for anti-aircraft duty in a mobile force, and was taken into Tokyo East Murayama 78th Anti-aircraft Unit. I would have met my honorable death on Guadalcanal Island, had I joined the infantry.
Refusing cadetship
Every night, after lights out, my group leader would come to the side of my bed, and stand by my pillow. And he would torment me for refusing my cadetship. “You are a high-school graduate. Why haven't you applied for your cadetship?” he used to demand. He called me a traitor eventually. A fiendish third-year soldier called Tan, probably egged on by someone, slapped my face more than 30 times. His crazy reason for that action was he just didn't like the look on my face. My mouth was filled with blood and my cheeks were swollen like a pomegranate. The sight put the first-year soldiers in the room all in a tremble. When an officer in charge of the night roll call for the week came, he just walked past me without saying a word.
After that, I was compelled to apply for my cadetship and received special training. However, I stubbornly refused to become an officer at the last interview. I said; “I do not wish to be an officer, Sir”. I was punished terribly for that. But I had stuck to the resolution I first made. MUKAI Masayasu, a Hakodate Marine High School graduate, and I used to despise those who were superficially made officers, and felt terribly superior. But my choice to refuse to become an officer actually enabled me to be flexible and to manage my own affairs when our supplies were all but gone on the starving battle line in New Guinea. And so, I could somehow survive. As an expendable cadet officer, my strong-minded personality would have, no doubt, brought my own death.
Advance Party
Two companies from the battalion were sent as an advance party for No. 18 Operation, moving to Lae from Rabaul. Our artillery section was on board the head of the fleet, one of five ships. The company commander of our headquarter was on board the second ship, which was comparatively safe. On the fourth day, when the fleet was about to enter Huon Gulf at Lae, an enemy submarine that had been tailing us tried to torpedo the leading ship. Our captain at the helm steered hard to port at the last minute and managed to evade the torpedo. Silver colored and shiny, this enormous killer disappeared behind us, looked on by our cheering soldiers all lined up against the gunwale. Then, cruelly, it hit the second ship under the waterline and sank, taking the commander and his main commanding officers, all thirty of them and more, with it. The advance guard, vulnerable to danger, survived but the safer ship behind it got caught.
Three months later, the headquarters of the main force (1st and 3rd Companies) of 50 battalions for No. 81 Operation, heading towards Lae in a large fleet of eight ships, were attacked and more than 7,000 men were lost at sea. Only 95 gunners out of 128 men in two companies had managed to land at Lae, saved by their five-sen coins. But the “death line” presented itself to us over and over again.
Die but never surrender
In August 1942 South Seas Force troops had landed on Buna and were driven back by the enemy when they were within sight of Port Moresby. Even with their supplies down, they kept fighting fiercely. But by January 1943 most of the men were gone. It took six months after that for an enemy battalion to appear in Nassau Gulf in Salamaua. The enemy, astounded by the strength and determination of Japanese soldiers fighting only with bayonets, bombed us relentlessly from air, land, and sea.
Clearing the jungles as they went, the enemy took a long time to advance. Without the control of air and sea power, we had no way of getting reinforcements. What we had, to face a huge enemy force, were two anti-aircraft guns, four high-angle guns that are so unreliable that you could almost call them fireworks, and one field gun you would hesitate to use, because one burst from this would be returned by 100 from the enemy.
Our situation was laughable. From the end of July, we fought desperately against each B24. They were flying in from Buna 15 minutes away, 40 a day. They would mock us and fly at low altitude, about 2,000 metres. They should have been easy targets for us since our 12 gunners were all very experienced and very confident. However, the humidity of the tropics had dampened half our detonators and we couldn't ignite them. As a first gunner, I scanned the skies for signs of a trailing smoke, but to no avail. There was nothing we could do but keep shooting. This was how, in one and half months, we managed to bring down only 23 B24s.
Once, without a trace of smoke or fire, a formation leader, nose-diving, came crashing down with thunderous roar that felt as if the sky was splitting, and threw up black smoke. We were dumbfounded. Perhaps bullets had gone through the pilot's seat and there was no time for the six or seven crew to escape. This was a rare, amazing kill. Encouraged by our successes, we radioed headquarters for more ammunition. The two hundred rounds of brand new ammunition arrived with unexpected speed in rubber bags, delivered by marine engineers who risked their lives to cross a sea full of danger in the dark. The effect was immediate. The next day, seven big planes were shot down at one sitting. Sergeant YASUDA, who went to report this achievement, came back in high spirits with 30 litres of sake as a reward. The commander told him: “Generally, anti-aircraft fire hits the mark one in 400 times. But you downed seven planes in 18 bursts. I take my hat off to you.” Even a first gunner like myself was elevated to being “excellent” and was given sake. But our success was really due to the brand new ammunition.
To retrieve our vulnerable situation, the Mito infantry regiment of the 51st Division arrived from Wewak in a landing ship along the coast to be by our side. Every day, one company would dash out to attack the enemy, but each time only a few men came back. After one month, all had perished and we had nobody with us. Bombs rained down on the beach near us. Yet, mysteriously, I was never directly hit. A bomb would always land four to five metres away from me and the blast would knock me over. But I kept shooting.
The enemy edged in close and by the end of August, our position was within the enemy's mortar range. Superior Private SUDA was shot in his right lung and died. Lance Corporal GOTÔ was so used to war, he used to sleep nonchalantly rather than take cover. Debris flew over within an inch of his face, and blasted open a hanging helmet and a canteen like a watermelon. When I saw that, I thought we were goners too. It was a few days later, probably, about 1 September, when Second Lieutenant INUZUKA came and delivered a “die-but-no-surrender” order from headquarters to our captain. Commander URAYAMA gathered us and relayed to us the order he had received. Then he demonstrated how to kill oneself, using me as a model, in case no hand grenades were available. He handed sake to each one of us in farewell and we all drank together. Looking back, I cannot help but wonder how we felt no emotions about dying then. We just thought: “Alright, this is our last night. So be it,” without passion or regret, for we were always ready to die anyhow.
On the contrary, our enthusiasm rose considerably by thinking of how, with our skills and with our guns, we would hit straight at the enemy tanks and ships. We actually talked more animatedly than usual and even slept soundly.
Army Commander ADACHI in Wewak received a telegram from Salamaua Commander NAKANO, which informed him about the order given to us. He changed this order after much deliberation and ordered a withdrawal to Lae instead. Overnight, “die-without-surrender” had changed to withdrawal. Suddenly we felt deflated.
Next day, after our damaged guns had been hastily dismantled, we withdrew, hiding under the night shadow, to Lae, with only one gun and very dispirited, heavy of heart. Without Commander ADACHI's decision, it is certain that the soldiers in Salamaua would have died. And so, I was saved by the five-sen coin again. At this point, the strength of our unit was down to 70. Another 95 were dead, wounded or missing.
Salt
I was most fond of physics and chemistry classes when I was at Shibata High. I used to rush to the lab before anyone else. Mr YOKOZAWA, a teacher nicknamed “Three Foot”, told us in his lecture one day, that when the salinity in the blood is deficient, the blood flow slows and one eventually dies of scurvy. So, he explained, a distressed sailor drifting in a boat would make a knife wound in his body in order to replenish salinity by soaking the wound in seawater, for it is very dangerous to drink seawater on an empty stomach. This information stuck in my mind like a stubborn piece of dirt that never comes off, and saved my life.
Lae’s 51st Division commenced their fateful “crossing of the treacherous Sarawaket” and around 10 September we joined the last artillery and edged our way into the jungle.
Since the “die-without-surrender” order had become a “withdraw” order, we gathered in Lae. We were surrounded by Australian force from the sea and by American bombers from the mountains. The only escape left to us was to climb the 4,500-metre Mt Sarawaket that soars beyond the upper Busu River. The Yokoyama Machine Gun Company was ordered to become a shield and sally out against the Australian force in order to buy some time for the others. Two days later, the sound of their firing had stopped and was never heard again; all dead. Barrels of rice and packets of dried bread, which had been delivered by our submarine, braving extreme danger, were all smashed up. The ground looked like a snowfield, covered with rice and bread. We each collected one bootful of rice, three packets of dried bread, to last seven days. We each had to carry artillery ammunition, but did not mind that. We thought it was such a small burden, compared with what the Yokoyama Company had to endure, and busied ourselves to prepare for our withdraw in the precious time left to us.
“What a waste!” Everyone picked open linen bags fallen on the side of road, and collected sweets they had never seen or eaten during the war and put them into their rubber bags. They all thought the sweets would see them through, and were very happy. But they didn't know they were making a big mistake. Suddenly, Mr. YOKOZAWA's words came to my mind, and I guessed that there would be no salt in the mountains. Desperately, I searched for salt. I didn't even look at the sweets. There they were, wrapped in strong waxed papers like a toffee: 50 compressed salt cubes. I left dried bean paste because it was bulky.
It took three days before we crossed the Busu River, after skirting around US paratroopers under our noses and discarding our field guns, in the dark untrodden jungle. We were told it would be now 20 days before we reached our destination. But we only had enough food to last four days. We were stricken with apprehension. From then on, the effect of salt worked wondrously. Weeds and a very small cup of rice cooked together are not edible without salt. The sweets were long gone and those of us without salt became weakened. Malaria sufferers could not move their legs and had no course other than to kill themselves. I used my salt sparingly and never drank unboiled water. I took a dose of Quinine salt tablets (against malaria) to keep my feverish, suffering body going.
For 10 days on end, mountain and valley reappeared again and again in front us. Finally, when the bodies of those who simply could not go on started to pile up on both side of the path, we reached the foot of 3,000-metre-high Mt Tukaket. A second-year soldier and a leader, YAMASHITA, who was a command orderly, came down from the mountain. “There is snow on the top of the mountain. You must go over without a stop. Estimate 40 days. If you must, kill yourself away from the path.” After imparting this information, he left.
Four or five days ago, a sapper, a real scoundrel, stole a bag from Sergeant KONDÔ. Our commander pretended to have a gun with him and insisted that the sapper return the bag. But he was more astute than the commander. He threatened to cut off Sergeant KONDÔ's right arm if the gun the commander was supposedly carrying turned out to be a lie. We had to let him go. Reluctant though we were, each of us contributed a small amount of rice for the sergeant.
It was a bitter incident. Salt and rice were becoming more precious than people's lives. Out of the 8,000 men from the Lae 51st Division, a thousand men were already dead when we are about to start our climb. By the time we reached Kiari over the hellish 4,500-metre mountain in freezing sleet without a grain of rice to eat, sadly, 2,500 men were dead. If I had made a wrong choice, sweets instead of salt, my death would have been certain.
A night at the top
“Dead or alive, this will be our defining day. We must reach the top before the sun disappears,” our commander told us on the morning of our climb from Mt Tukaket. Then we began to tackle wisteria vines clinging over an almost vertical cliff. They say Napoleon took elephants with him when he climbed the Alps. It had to be a cat or a squirrel, not even a dog, to climb this. Worse still, we were starved, just bags of bones. There were already a few who gave up at the foot of cliff.
When I finally reached the top, crawling with my legs as thin as my arms, and after seven hours since morning, I thought: “I've made it! I'm going to live, now it's downhill all the way.” But it wasn't to be. At the top, a vast swamp like Oze Marsh in Japan was in front of us, and no end was in sight. I had pushed my physical strength to the limit. Soon I was left behind. I struggled along, almost swimming in the mud. The sun was still high. With four to five hours before the dark, though, I thought I could manage this swamp. I knew that if I stopped, the place would be my grave. So I kept dragging my feet, through piercing cold air, trying not to collapse.
An infantryman straggling behind his unit lay dead before us. He was holding his .38 calibre weapon in his arms. Doesn't he show the sprit of infantryman? I thought to myself. I couldn't even stand the weight of two grenades. I laughed at myself being so useless and prayed for him.
By nightfall, I hadn't even reached the beginning of the descent. “I haven't made it yet. I must keep walking till I fall.” When I said that to myself, I saw a fire in a distance. Flickering shadows of men too. Are there any dry trees that can be burned around here? If you can make a fire, you are handed a passport to your life. It was a small dry hill with thin shrubs, the thickness of a thumb. I made shavings from a tree, still green, and lit them together with my army diary and a photo of my mother. I watched fire ignite the photo, burning slowly up from mother's feet to her smiling face. And I whispered. “Help me, Mother”. A small fire came alive and I added more sticks. When the fire was big enough, I warmed my front and back.
Suddenly, a shadow appeared across the fire. He said, “Let me warm my body with your fire”. “Of course,” I replied and looked at his face. He was one of my rank, KOBAYASHI Gorô. He busily collected more sticks and made a nice strong fire. We decided to try to get some sleep. We held each other close to share the warmth but it was impossible to shield the cold air with our short-sleeved summer shirts and shorts.
Drowsing, I dreamt that my uncle, Kisaburô, and my younger brother had walked past me without noticing, talking loudly, just in front of my eyes. When I woke up, I realized they were soldiers who had dropped behind their units and were marching in the night. It must have been around 2 am, for the moon was young and high. “This is no good. Let's walk, otherwise we'll freeze to death. There is still moonlight,” I said to my companion. The sleep we had was a miserable and sad one.
Maybe a couple of hours or so passed. The darkness lightened. Before us, stretched a sea of thick cloud, shrouding the world far below. We were standing on the edge of precipice. “Look, we are at the summit!” said somebody. The voice lifted our spirits. About 800 men had frozen to death on this climb. How I survived the dangerous night without food, I don't know. Was it a fire, trees, or the moon, maybe KOBAYASHI, maybe the dream?
A close call with torpedo
What awaited the 51st Division when it came down from the mountain was the 9th Division of the Australian Army eagerly watching for us at Cape Gunbi. Poor infantrymen, each just a bag of bones, had to go ahead and fight them. But the anti-aircraft force I belonged to was told to stay back because, without guns, we were like a mutilated crab without arms and legs.
Happy that we were saved again, we walked to Wewak. For two months, through a different world, safe and far behind the battlefield. We were told to go to Palau by a motor-powered sailing ship. “We are going home”. Even Second Lieutenant IGARASHI, who accompanied us, couldn't stop smiling. As we watched the Southern Cross move further down the sky each night from the ship, our thoughts for the men of the 20th Division, who were still fighting at Gunbi, faded, and we fell into lassitude.
The slow five-day voyage was about to end without an incident. Then, as the shadow of Palau loomed large ahead, we were suddenly alarmed by a shout of “Torpedo! Torpedo!” I rushed on deck. Lance Corporal AIDA Tetsu from Hokkaido, holding onto the deck, said to me, “We are alright, SATÔ! The torpedo went under the ship and has gone!” “That can't be … didn't it touch the stern?” I kept asking. But he insisted that he saw with his own eyes the torpedo approach abeam and go under the ship. A hospital ship right behind us was hit and all patients on board were strewn over the water like sesame seeds. Our ship slipped into the Palau harbour at a dash. Who knows, maybe our ship was not very heavy, or maybe the torpedo was too heavy. Another miracle had saved our lives.
Anti-aircraft troops
On 15 February 1944, we marched through the streets of a ruined Rabaul. When we were on our way to the runway of Lakunai airfield with two newly acquired guns, we were stopped by a navy engineer in front of a Zero fighter emplacement. He asked, “Where are you going, triple A?” We told him that we were going to the eastern end of the airfield nearby. He was wide-eyed with shock. “What? That's crazy. I'm sure they'll get you. We'll come and help you then,” he promised.
Our hope of going home was shattered. It was two months since our two companies, reduced to 26 men, had been brought back to Rabaul. We were placed under Otsuka Company, and soldiers surviving from various units were gathered from all over the place. As soon as 57 men were put together, an order was handed down to us. It was to defend Lakunai airfield, which was then under continuous heavy air raids. It was a ticket to Hell. Our faces turned white with fear. It was cruel.
Our bodies and souls pushed to the limit, we had fought at the frontline, ahead of many anti-aircraft troops already here for a long time. Now they were telling us, a few survivors, to go and die again. Soon we resigned ourselves to do just that.
Getting injured or sick was considered honourable and could mean a return home, but any men who withdrew were never going to set foot in Japan. They were sent to deadly battles to be eliminated. This unwritten law, it seems, permeated the Japanese army.
This was illustrated by the plight of the Fukuyama 41st Regiment. They were merely a few tens of men, part of the 400 men of the South Seas Force, reduced from 8,000. They reached Ujina in Japan, yet were refused permission to land, and were sent to Korea instead, then to Leyte, where they all perished.
I made up my mind to die and do the decent thing, for you cannot fight a war if you keep thinking of unfairness and where your duty might call you next. “Urayama Anti-aircraft Suicide Squad, Banzai!” Farewelled by the Otsuka Company's cries at our back, we arrived at the foot of Mt Tavurvur in the sweltering afternoon.
We dug the warm beach sand and made a bunker through the night. The following morning, as early as 9 am, 300 enemy bombers swarmed over us like thick cloud. In a flash, an enormous bomb was dropped right into our bunker. The observation team was gone, together with all their equipment. The navy did not come to our rescue. Our commanders, looking down on this calamity from the top of the hill we called Kanteiyama, did not move to order our withdrawal. Our commander, who had been nearly buried alive but rescued just in time, moved our position to a nearby hill to avoid senseless loss of life among his men.
We placed a line of guns during the day. After our first burst next day, however, the enemy hit back at close range with a heavy barrage as thick as rain drops, destroyed our guns, and killed more than 10 of our men. Thus, as the Japanese army intended, our two companies, which started from Manchuria, were destroyed, leaving only 18 men alive. It was impossible to continue fighting. We withdrew to a hill we called Tô’nandai and became anti-aircraft troops. Even as a most vulnerable gunner, I escaped serious injury and survived malaria. I must have been blessed with the luck the five-sen coin brought me till the end.
Epilogue: you will never win a war
As someone who has experienced war, I know in my bones that there must not be a war at any cost, and that war is a foolish action. I have learned from war the destructive nature of human beings and at the same time the sense of satisfaction in the responsibility of sacrificing one's own life and enduring agony to save the weak. I have learned that one's words and actions often do not match and what's left in the sieve at the end is one's ego. This is why any pacifism will never stand a chance against any war; war which man will never cease to bring to our world. My post-war life has been dedicated to building a healthy, stable family life, and bringing up children, to instill in them a strong sense of right and wrong. For me, there is no place for hedonism, laziness, or the easygoing life style, which most people crave. One must be prepared to sacrifice a meal, if you have to. With no more National Service, no more ethics studied at school, I am anxious for the future of Japan. To the undisciplined, I always say: “You will never win a war.”
Notes
Sen is an old monetary unit: one hundredth of one Yen.
Huon Peninsula:
Overview text Longer text Images KITAMOTO Misamichi Map SATÔ Hiromasa Seabourne counter-attack
