As a Japanese war pilot, Zenji Abe did it all: He dive-bombed the Arizona with a 250-kilogram bomb; led an attack on Guadalcanal; survived Midway; fouled up a kamikaze mission in the Mariana Islands; attacked Dutch Harbor, Alaska; survived for 15 months on mice and lizard meat while stranded in the jungles of Rota Island; lived through a year of being an American POW on Guam.
Now 75, the ex-dive-bomber and kamikaze pilot for the Japanese Imperial Navy is one of the 16 Japanese still alive who participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor 50 years ago.On the day before the attack, Abe wrote a short will to his wife, who six months earlier had given birth to their first son. He also wrote to his father, enclosed in each envelope a customary lock of hair and fingernail clippings, then sealed the notes in an envelope and hid them in the drawer of his desk.
"I had the thought I would probably not return alive tomorrow."
Abe was born on Aug. 18, 1916, the fourth child in a struggling farm family. After attending military school and the naval academy in Edajima, he began a rigorous course of flight training.
Of 25 anti-ship bomber pilots in Abe's class, five died in training. "Every day, training stood on the border between life and death," Abe says, through a translator.
In April 1941, Abe was transferred to the Akagi, the flagship of the Imperial Navy fleet that eight months later would attack Pearl Harbor. He was promoted to lieutenant; his job was to lead a squadron of nine ship-based bombers.
With his transfer, he was assigned to the First Aerial War Troop - a switch that required more training - this time, in steep dive-bombing, shooting, dog fights, navigation.
By mid-November, six Japanese aircraft carriers including the Akagi had assembled in Saiki, a port in Kyushu. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of Japan's combined fleet, arrived. He told his officers that talks with the United States were going badly and that they were about to set sail on the biggest operation Japan would ever mount.
Then, one by one, the carriers, led by the Akagi, began slipping out of Saiki, cut off all radio communications and disappeared.
A few days later, the fleet of 350 planes and more than 30,000 soldiers showed up in Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands north of Japan. No one came ashore. The crews used only flag signals.
"If we were perceived by the enemy now, then the operation plans which we had worked long and hard to build would all be turned to bubbles in the water," Abe says.
Finally, on Nov. 24, 1941, Vice Adm. Chuichi Na-gumo, speaking from a podium on the deck of the Akagi, broke the secret to assembled captains and staffs of the carriers, battleships, cruisers, tankers, destroyers and submarines. For the first time, he outlined the impending attack on Pearl Harbor.
Abe's mission was to bomb. He was trained as a "hell diver" in Japan's elite corps. The first enemy ship that came into his sight was the USS Arizona.
Abe took part in the second wave of dive bombers against Pearl Harbor, carrying with him a small pistol for suicide and a compass. "One did not think of surviving, and if you got hit, you should then use your plane as a weapon and die. Returning to the aircraft carrier wounded was considered dishonorable."
The trip from the carrier to Oahu was about 200 miles - and took about an hour and a half.
"I was able to see what appeared to be the shoreline," Abe says. "It was Kaneohe. Right on target. What appeared next was the barrage of high-angle guns exploding to the front right, above the clouds. I was shocked by the all-too-nimble and accurate counterattack of the U.S. forces. I felt a sweat at my neck.
"In the sky over Diamond Head, I ordered my squadron to charge and, gaining speed, loosely circled to the right and charged toward Pearl Harbor.
"Turning the nose of the plane gradually downward, from 3,000 meters I entered a steep dive. When I reached 2,500 meters, I lifted the cap of the targeting machine and concentrated all my nerves on setting the enemy ship's bridge. My right hand grasped the control lever and my left hand was grasping the release lever of the 250-kilogram bomb.
"My height fell, quickly. The counterattack was getting fierce. I ignored it and continued to cut across from the top of Diamond Head to Waikiki and continued my descent. The target: enemy ships moored on Ford Island.
"I was closing in on the Arizona. My height dropped. 1,000, 900, 800 meters . . . 400 meters. Bullets were flying. I sighted the Arizona, dropped the bomb, pulled the control lever and my eyes went dim. I just managed to scrape over Ford Island at a low height and turned the nose of the plane toward Barbers Point. Navigator Saito said, `Squadron leader, sir! It's a hit!'
"I then flew out to sea. It was after I got over the sea that it dawned on me that I was alive. There, at a rendezvous point 20 miles northwest of the tip of Oahu, I circled, awaiting the return of a second plane, but it never came back."
After Pearl Harbor, Abe was assigned to the Philippines, then on to Guadalcanal, then the Marianas, over which he had been ordered to make a suicide mission of more than 400 miles. But after attacking an enemy ship, he crash-landed on Rota, where he joined other lost and demoralized Japanese troops.
Abe glosses over his POW experience, saying it was surprisingly pleasant compared to the living standard in Japan at the time. He describes Spam in glowing terms, for example.
When he finally returned to Japan in late November 1946, the country was in ruins: no jobs and no food. His family had thought he was dead.
Eventually, he joined Japan's National Police Agency, later the Self-Defense Forces. Before retiring in 1983, he served on the board of a plastics company.
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service