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Kyodo News
2 days ago
- General
- Kyodo News
FEATURE: 80 years on, former WWII pilot relives kamikaze call that never came
SAITAMA, Japan - In the 80 years since Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender, bringing World War II to an end, Tatsukuma Ueno and his fellow pilots would reflect on how military leadership and youthful zeal nearly sent them on missions with no return. In August 1945, Ueno was a 17-year-old army pilot at Tachiarai Airfield in southwestern Japan's Fukuoka Prefecture. There, he awaited the go-ahead for an attack he was unlikely to survive, after being passed over for "kamikaze" suicide missions. But while others heard the emperor's broadcast in the early afternoon sun of Aug. 15, Corporal Ueno was told that evening as he recovered from life-threatening malaria. "My mind was completely blank," the 97-year-old said in a recent interview in Niiza, Saitama Prefecture, near his home. "I had intended to die, and suddenly, instead, I was going to live...I didn't even think to consider if it had been better to be alive or dead, I was just stunned." Ueno spent a month at his uncle's home in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan in a despondent stupor of fishing, eating and sleeping. Eventually, he was pushed to go back to school along with other boys who were coming to terms with futures they had previously given up. Born in Japan in 1928, Ueno lived in occupied China from age 7 to 15, where he lost his father to an accident on the railways. Eager to reduce his family's financial burden, he passed the entrance exam for the Otsu army air force school for cadets in southwestern Japan in late 1943. As a young teen, Ueno was enamored with the idea of being a pilot. He rushed back to Japan for his studies, where he found poverty and signs of a faltering war effort. With personnel shortages on the frontlines, what should have been two years of basic training at the Tachiarai school was condensed into about six months. "All of us were shocked by the speed of it," he said. 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."
Japan Today
4 days ago
- General
- Japan Today
80 years on, former WWII pilot recalls waiting for kamikaze call that never came
Undated photo shows Tatsukuma Ueno (far R) standing with other trainee pilots in front of a "Red Dragonfly" Yokosuka-K5Y training plane in Seoul. (Photo courtesy of Tatsukuma Ueno)(For editorial use only)(Photo use permitted only for the story concerned)(Kyodo) ==Kyodo By Peter Masheter In the 80 years since Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender, bringing World War II to an end, Tatsukuma Ueno and his fellow pilots would reflect on how military leadership and youthful zeal nearly sent them on missions with no return. In August 1945, Ueno was a 17-year-old army pilot at Tachiarai Airfield in southwestern Japan's Fukuoka Prefecture. There, he awaited the go-ahead for an attack he was unlikely to survive, after being passed over for "kamikaze" suicide missions. But while others heard the emperor's broadcast in the early afternoon sun of Aug 15, Corporal Ueno was told that evening as he recovered from life-threatening malaria. "My mind was completely blank," the 97-year-old said in a recent interview in Niiza, Saitama Prefecture, near his home. "I had intended to die, and suddenly, instead, I was going to live...I didn't even think to consider if it had been better to be alive or dead, I was just stunned." Ueno spent a month at his uncle's home in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan in a despondent stupor of fishing, eating and sleeping. Eventually, he was pushed to go back to school along with other boys who were coming to terms with futures they had previously given up. Born in Japan in 1928, Ueno lived in occupied China from age 7 to 15, where he lost his father to an accident on the railways. Eager to reduce his family's financial burden, he passed the entrance exam for the Otsu army air force school for cadets in southwestern Japan in late 1943. As a young teen, Ueno was enamored with the idea of being a pilot. He rushed back to Japan for his studies, where he found poverty and signs of a faltering war effort. With personnel shortages on the frontlines, what should have been two years of basic training at the Tachiarai school was condensed into about six months. "All of us were shocked by the speed of it," he said. 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." © KYODO
The Mainichi
5 days ago
- General
- The Mainichi
80 years on, former WWII pilot relives kamikaze call that never came
SAITAMA (Kyodo) -- In the 80 years since Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender, bringing World War II to an end, Tatsukuma Ueno and his fellow pilots would reflect on how military leadership and youthful zeal nearly sent them on missions with no return. In August 1945, Ueno was a 17-year-old army pilot at Tachiarai Airfield in southwestern Japan's Fukuoka Prefecture. There, he awaited the go-ahead for an attack he was unlikely to survive, after being passed over for "kamikaze" suicide missions. But while others heard the emperor's broadcast in the early afternoon sun of Aug. 15, Corporal Ueno was told that evening as he recovered from life-threatening malaria. "My mind was completely blank," the 97-year-old said in a recent interview in Niiza, Saitama Prefecture, near his home. "I had intended to die, and suddenly, instead, I was going to live...I didn't even think to consider if it had been better to be alive or dead, I was just stunned." Ueno spent a month at his uncle's home in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan in a despondent stupor of fishing, eating and sleeping. Eventually, he was pushed to go back to school along with other boys who were coming to terms with futures they had previously given up. Born in Japan in 1928, Ueno lived in occupied China from age 7 to 15, where he lost his father to an accident on the railways. Eager to reduce his family's financial burden, he passed the entrance exam for the Otsu army air force school for cadets in southwestern Japan in late 1943. As a young teen, Ueno was enamored with the idea of being a pilot. He rushed back to Japan for his studies, where he found poverty and signs of a faltering war effort. With personnel shortages on the frontlines, what should have been two years of basic training at the Tachiarai school was condensed into about six months. "All of us were shocked by the speed of it," he said. 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."
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
U.S. Navy attack: Did you know history's largest airstrike from a carrier happened this year?
The U.S. Navy has been party to some of history's largest maritime military operations — including, in modern times, World War II's Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Battle of Midway. But the largest airstrike from an aircraft carrier in naval history belongs to 2025. On Feb. 1, the USS Harry S. Truman and its strike group launched the 'largest airstrike in the history of the world' from an aircraft carrier during recent operations near Somalia, Stars and Stripes reported. About 125,000 pounds of munitions were fired into the African country, U.S. Navy Adm. James Kilby, the acting chief of naval operations, said earlier this month while speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations' Robert B. McKeon Endowed Series on Military Strategy and Leadership. Navy Times reported that the USS Harry S. Truman — a Nimitz class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier — launched 27 F/A-18 Super Hornets as part of a coordinated airstrike against Islamic State operatives in Somalia in collaboration with the federal government of Somalia. The joint airstrikes targeted senior IS leadership in Somalia in a series of cave complexes approximately 50 miles southeast of Bosaso. The command reported that 'approximately 14 ISIS-Somalia operatives were killed and no civilians were harmed.' Among those killed was Ahmed Maeleninine, a key IS recruiter, financier, and external operations leader responsible for the deployment of jihadists into the United States and across Europe. 'Degrading ISIS and other terrorist organizations' ability to plot and conduct attacks that threaten the U.S. homeland, our partners, and civilians remains central to U.S. Africa Command's mission,' the report added. Over the years, U.S. Navy airstrikes against IS militants in Somalia have been relatively rare compared with those against the al-Shabab group, the largest terrorist organization in the country. However, there are indications that IS in Somalia is expanding, according to Stars and Stripes. Analysts estimate the IS ranks in Somalia at 1,000 members. During a visit earlier this year to U.S. Africa Command headquarters, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the massive Somalia airstrikes were an example of commanders' now having more decision-making authority on such matters, Stars and Stripes reported. 'That's a reflection … of pushing authority down (and) untying the hands of warfighters,' Hegseth said. '(Such decisions) should be made at the four-star level or at the Secretary of Defense level more quickly based on the ability to degrade the enemy.' Past large-scale U.S. airstrikes, like those conducted during Operation Desert Storm, involved multiple aircraft carriers and air wings, which would fly joint missions. But the Feb. 1 strike was unique in that it was conducted by a single air wing, according to Navy Times. The USS Truman arrived in the Red Sea on Dec. 14, 2024, to provide combat support against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who've conducted missile and drone strikes against shipping and military vessels in the region since November 2023. While there, Carrier Air Wing 1, composed of eight embarked squadrons aboard the Truman, reportedly took part in operations striking over 1,100 targets. The strikes killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and multiple senior Houthi officials, Navy Times reported. Beyond its sizable combat activities, the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group's eight-month deployment, which is arriving home this week at various homeports, encountered several challenges. In February, the Truman collided with a merchant ship in the Mediterranean Sea. The aircraft carrier suffered structural damage, and its commanding officer was relieved of duty, Virginia's WVEC-TV reported. The strike group also saw the loss of three F/A-18 Super Hornets during this deployment. The first happened in December, when one of the fighter jets was shot down in a friendly fire incident. Both Naval aviators were able to eject from the jet and were recovered safely. One of them sustained minor injuries, according to U.S. Central Command. On April 28, another F/A-18 fell into the Red Sea as it was being towed by a tow craft. Then, just over a week later, an F/A-18 was coming in for landing on the aircraft carrier when the Navy said a 'failed arrestment' occurred, leading to the fighter jet falling off the deck of the carrier and into the water, according to the WVEC-TV report. Both pilots in the jet ejected safely and suffered minor injuries. No one on the flight deck was hurt. The aircraft cost around $60 million each.
