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Japan Today
5 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
Japan Forward
14-07-2025
- General
- Japan Forward
A Kamikaze Pilot Remembers the Mission That Never Flew
At 97 years old, former kamikaze pilot Tatsukuma Ueno moves with remarkable energy. A former pilot with Japan's 66th Air Squadron, he addressed the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ) in Tokyo, offering a firsthand account of the final months of World War II through the eyes of a teenage aviator once prepared to die for his country. Ueno was just 15 years old when he passed the military flight examination in Beijing, then under Japanese control. He was accepted into the Tachiarai Army Flight School in Fukuoka and trained first on the Type 95 intermediate trainer aircraft, known as the "Red Dragonfly." He later advanced to practical flight training on the Type 99 light bomber. These early years were marked by rigorous drills and a sense of rising urgency. Japan was losing ground in the Pacific, and young men like Ueno were being rushed through training to reinforce the thinning ranks. Ueno's unit was initially assigned to ground support, but by 1945, they had been ordered to carry out anti-ship attacks as part of the Okinawa campaign. His Type 99 bomber was outfitted with a 250-kilogram bomb, hardly enough to cripple a large United States warship, but sufficient to damage or disable smaller vessels. "It was technically a light bomber," he explained, "but we used it in the same manner as the special attack forces." Though officially separate from the kamikaze units, the line blurred. "Our unit loaded up just like the kamikaze, flew out just like them, and attacked like them. But we had instructions to return if we survived. That was the only difference," Ueno said. He stressed that their survival often depended on circumstance. "If the battle was going poorly or the attack didn't go as planned, we had to improvise. Some of us made it back. Others didn't." Within a span of just three months, more than 70 of his fellow airmen died. A young Tatsukuma Ueno (©JAPAN Forward) Despite the danger, morale remained steady. "We trained hard and followed orders. We didn't talk about fear," he said. Yet the toll was undeniable. After the war, Ueno and other survivors erected a memorial at Bansei airfield in Kagoshima to honor their fallen comrades. He has returned every year to participate in the memorial service. As Japan's position became increasingly desperate, Ueno was stationed in Kyushu at Bansei base, ready to carry out what could be his final flight. On August 14, 1945, he received his sortie order. The next morning, August 15, was to be his last. But overnight, he fell violently ill. Feverish and shivering under a blanket, he could barely move. "It was like malaria," he recalled. "I didn't even understand what was happening that morning." While Ueno lay in his quarters, the war came to an end. Emperor Hirohito's voice crackled through the radio, announcing Japan's unconditional surrender. "I didn't hear the broadcast. I was too far gone," he said. "Only later, when the fever had dropped, did I learn that the war had ended." His comrades had been preparing themselves to die. Some were devastated that they had been denied the chance to complete their mission. "They were emotionally ready. And when that order was cancelled, it left them shaken," Ueno said. "There was no way to process it immediately." For Ueno, the return home was numbing. "When I got back, I didn't know what to do. I sat in a daze for about a month. Just blank." With no parents or siblings to rely on, he was eventually advised to go back to school and restart his education. "That brought me back mentally. But the memories have stayed." During training and deployment, Ueno worked alongside Korean pilots, something often overlooked in historical narratives. Asked about discrimination or unequal treatment, he replied with certainty. "There was none. Absolutely none. We trained together, ate together, slept in the same quarters. No one talked about who was Korean or who was Japanese. We were comrades." His statement stood out in a discussion often framed by postwar recriminations and historical grievances. In the face of battlefield reality, divisions of ethnicity and background seemed to disappear. "We were all there for the same reason," he said. Reflecting on how Japan has changed since the war, Ueno was restrained but thoughtful. "It depends on when and where someone was born," he said. "People today have grown used to peace. That's different from our time." He expressed neither nostalgia nor criticism for the current era. "Japan is still here. That's something. People have done well to maintain this country." When asked about rising geopolitical tensions, from US–China rivalry to conflict in the Middle East, Ueno was careful not to speak beyond his station. "That's for the politicians to decide. We ordinary people don't have the power to start or stop wars." At the same time, he expressed a quiet wish. "If it can be avoided, then it should be. War takes too much. But every country has its reasons, and we cannot judge too quickly. I only hope leaders do everything they can to resolve things through diplomacy." Maps, sketches, and photographs showing training in Pyongyang during World War II, including a hand-drawn image of Japanese aircraft and a group of trainee pilots. (©JAPAN Forward) Every year on August 15, the date of Japan's surrender, Ueno visits Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. For him, it is not a political act but a personal one. "I go to pray," he said. "Not just for my comrades, but for all those who gave their lives." Even now, as Japan prepares to mark 80 years since the war's end, Ueno does not ask for recognition. Instead, he asks that the memory of his fellow pilots be preserved. "Some of them died at 16, 17 years old," he said. "They deserve to be remembered, not just as soldiers, but as people." His voice was steady as he closed his remarks. "I lived through it. That's why I talk about it. So they are not forgotten." Author: Daniel Manning
