The Twilight Warriors Read Online Free PDF Page A

blossoms.
    Tears welled in Admiral Ohnishi’s eyes as he delivered the orders to the volunteers. “You are already gods without earthly desires,” he said in a quavering voice. “But one thing you want to know is that your crash-dive is not in vain. Regrettably, we will not be able to tell you the results. But I shall watch your efforts to the end and report your deeds to the Throne.” They lined up for a farewell drink from a ceremonial container. Their fellow pilots took up an ancient Japanese warrior’s song:
    If I go away to sea
,
    I shall return a corpse awash;
    If duty calls me to the mountain
,
    A verdant sward will be my pall;
    Thus for the sake of the emperor
    I will not die peacefully at home
.
    The mournful notes of the song still hung in the air as the pilots manned their planes. Seki gave his commanding officer a folded paper, which contained strands of his hair. It was a traditional samurai gesture, a farewell gift to his fiancée and his recently widowed mother.
    One after the other the Zeroes, each armed with a 250-kg. (551-lb.) bomb, roared down the runway and headed off for their targets.
    And then returned.
    They had combed the area where the enemy fleet was reported until their fuel was depleted, then returned to Mabalacat. Seki was mortified. With tears in his eyes he apologized for his failure.
    The next day Seki sortied again—and once more returned. Four times this happened, day after day, because of the same problem. The weather over the Philippine Sea bedeviled them. With no radar and little reconnaissance support, the Zero pilots had to pick through the towering cumulonimbus clouds that swelled over the ocean. Every gray shadow and shaft of sunlight looked like a target. Each time they returned to Mabalacat in bitter disappointment.
    Meanwhile, beyond their view in the Leyte Gulf, the greatest sea battle in history was unfolding.
    S ho-1 had begun. The ambitious Japanese operation—a three-pronged strike of surface ships—was converging on the American amphibious force at Leyte. Two separate Japanese surface forces were coming from the south, while Admiral Takeo Kurita’s northern force, led by the world’s mightiest battleships,
Yamato
and her sister ship
Musashi
, charged into the Sibuyan Sea, headed for the San Bernardino Strait. A fourth force, a decoy fleet of carriers with a smattering of warplanes, was positioned severalhundred miles northeast of the Philippines to draw Adm. William “Bull” Halsey’s carriers away from the fray.
    In the early hours of October 25, 1944, the southern striking force, commanded by Admiral Shoji Nishimura, was wiped out in a classic night surface battle in the Surigao Strait before they could reach the critical Leyte landing ships. Kurita’s northern force was hammered in the Sibuyan Sea by U.S. carrier-based warplanes. By the end of the day,
Musashi
and a third of the force had been sunk. The pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the mighty
Yamato
, took two bomb hits but managed to control the damage and stay in the battle. Admiral Kurita reversed course, appearing to withdraw to the west from the battle.
    Halsey had taken the bait. He sent his fast carriers roaring after the Japanese decoy carrier force, leaving the critical San Bernardino Strait unguarded. That night, Kurita again reversed course and passed through the strait. At dawn the Japanese force was bearing down on the virtually undefended fleet of escort carriers called Taffy Three.
    They took the Americans by surprise. Kurita’s warships poured fire into the hapless escort carriers, sinking the escort carrier
Gambier Bay
and three destroyers. Then the Japanese admiral made his own critical misjudgment. Thinking that he was engaging the main American carrier force, Kurita ordered a retreat. With a stunning victory in his grasp, he cut his losses and withdrew to the north.
    It still wasn’t over. Passing back through the San Bernardino Strait and into the Sibuyan Sea, Kurita’s fleet