U.K. Navy Aircraft Carrier Prince of Wales Docks at Yokosuka; Marked 1st Visit by a U.K. Aircraft Carrier Since 2021
Accompanying the carrier were British destroyer HMS Dauntless and the Norwegian Navy's frigate HNoMS Roald Amundsen, both of which are part of the carrier strike group led by the Prince of Wales deployed in the Indo-Pacific region. The two ships also docked at the Maritime Self Defense Force base in the city on the same day.
This is the first-ever port call to Japan by a Norwegian Navy vessel.
An arrival ceremony was held at the MSDF base. Vice Adm. Tomohiko Madono, commander of the MSDF Yokosuka District, said he hoped this port call would further enhance operational effectiveness between the MSDF, British and Norwegian navies.
The Prince of Wales is due to call at Tokyo International Cruise Terminal in Koto Ward, Tokyo, on Aug. 28, and leave Japan on Sept. 2.
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He took further training in Seoul in Japanese controlled Korea, learning in Yokosuka-K5Y training planes known as "Red Dragonfly" due to their burned orange coloring. As Ueno learned to navigate the skies, Japan's position in the war grew increasingly desperate. By 1944, military leadership was debating using kamikaze, or "divine wind" suicide attacks in which young men plunged planes, midget submarines and other craft laden with explosives into enemy targets. After the war, the practice of sending young men to their deaths was criticized by former pilots as a form of collective coercion that unjustifiably ended many young lives. Some said that young men felt pressured into the suicide attacks and could not back out. The first kamikaze attacks were in October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. For Japan, it was a key engagement aimed at stopping U.S. forces from cutting off crucial shipping lanes. Pilots were trained to crash their aircraft, loaded with their explosive payload, into battleships and vulnerable parts of aircraft carriers. In practice, many aimed for smaller targets that accompanied the carriers. An association for commemorating and honoring fallen kamikaze says over 6,000 men died in suicide attacks staged by the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy, with under 4,000 dying in aircraft-based operations. In early 1945, as the prospect of a land battle on Okinawa loomed, Ueno was in training to perform steep dive maneuvers, in which he practiced plunging at around 500 kilometers per hour and dropping a bouncing bomb toward a vessel below. They flew Mitsubishi Ki-51 planes for the exercises, the same aircraft that kamikaze pilots were using at the front. "There was an understanding that this training was getting us ready to conduct kamikaze attacks," Ueno said. Soon after, in February 1945, Ueno and the others were handed slips of paper. On them, they were asked to answer whether they would be willing to join special attack units for kamikaze, with three options: ardent desire, willing or refuse. As far as Ueno knows, no one refused. "I was already resolved to die. At that point, we had done the training," he said. "I was 17, so I didn't think too deeply about things, except wondering what it might be like to die." Fortunately, he was not among those called up to join a special attack unit, though nine of his fellow trainees were. Ueno was told he was not chosen due to a lack of trained pilots and instead was made an assistant instructor. Usually, orders came by letter, but with the reeling Japanese forces sliding toward defeat, the instructions came by telephone. His duties included transporting planes for kamikaze use. During that time, he says, he came close to dying at a plane's controls. In March 1945, he was flying in a 12-plane transport formation to an area in what is now North Korea. The flight path went over central Japan's Suzuka mountain range, an area of treacherous topography where Ueno's former superior had died in a crash. Passing over the peaks, Ueno's plane was caught in a downdraft which sent it hurtling earthward, coming as close as 100 meters from impact before he recovered control. "I saw the faces of my mother and sister," he said of that moment. "I thought, this is what death would feel like." As Japan's position in the war deteriorated, his 66th air combat group was transferred back to the Tachiarai Airfield. He thought his turn had come. On the morning of Aug. 14, he was told to get ready to fly out, but with no further orders by the evening, he remained on standby. The next morning, Aug. 15, they learned the emperor was due to address the nation at midday. After the war, Ueno finished his studies and turned his hand to the construction trade under his uncle's guidance. The industry helped rebuild a defeated and demolished country. He married, and he and his wife had two children who gave them four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. In later years, Ueno took to carving Kannon Buddha statues for bereaved families, and around a decade ago he began telling his war stories. He said his effort to remember the young men he knew comes not from a sense of duty. "I do it from my heart," he said. "We spent time together, ate together as were resolved to die, but it doesn't mean they wanted to." Eight decades on, few are left who saw the war from a Japanese aircraft cockpit. Every April, Ueno attends the annual remembrance event for kamikaze pilots at the Bansei Tokko Peace Museum in southwestern Japan. "Now when I go, everyone is someone's child, their nephew, niece or grandchild. The men I knew are all gone," he said. "It's like war was another world away, not just in the past."
