When My Name Was Keoko: Chapters 26–32

“My point exactly,” snaps the CO. “Oh, they’re fine as foot soldiers—they can slog through the mud as well as anyone. But for something like this? Can you imagine any Korean brave enough?”

The next day at school we had bayonet practice and bomb drills, but I was so inattentive and listless that the teacher thought I was ill.

The next day at school we had bayonet practice and bomb drills, but I was so inattentive and listless that the teacher thought I was ill.

Abuji never once interrupted me. He listened intently to every word.

If anything goes wrong in the air, there are things a pilot can do to compensate.

When we go out to the hangars to see the engines for ourselves, I notice that the pilots ignore the mechanics.

It rolls along and careens in crazy S patterns when they panic and start pushing the stick every which way.

They’re kept in the forest at the edge of camp, hidden under pine boughs in case of an enemy air raid.

Then the plane tapers down to the tail.

The numbers of casualties—men, planes, equipment...The never-ending waves of U.S. planes, the strength of the American naval fleet...How the Japanese have been forced to fall back, and back, and back...How they’ve lost nearly all the territory they conquered earlier in the war.

“Our sacred homeland now lies under direct threat of American bombardment,” he says. “The responsibility for any chance of an honorable end to this war rests on our pilots—on you, should you complete your training successfully. You must all apply yourselves with utmost diligence and not waste a single moment of your instruction. In the name of the Emperor!”

He dismisses us with a fervent salute.

Throttle forward, accelerate—I really am listening.

Still more to learn: another plane in the air, pretending to be the enemy, so we can practice evasive maneuvers.

Our instructors are disgusted with us, they make us run around the airfield, stifling in our heavy canvas jumpsuits, until most of us have collapsed.

We get rice and beans, but instead of bream some kind of meat. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any meat. This stuff is tough and full of gristle.

I’ve got one hand on the struts, ready to climb into the cockpit.

I am a member of the kamikaze, the “divine wind” pilot corps.

I wish for each of you the chance to ride in a plane someday; it is a thrilling and humbling experience to view the earth from above.

Omoni did not have to worry about this because the Japanese grudgingly respected those families who had lost someone to the war effort.

People who had not been at the accounting came out of their houses to find out what was going on and quickly joined the raucous celebration.

He handed me a parcel wrapped in brown paper.

That night I ate almost nothing of my dinner, just pushed the food around on my plate. Omoni must have noticed, but she didn’t chide me.

Kanji, for example, is based on Chinese characters that have long been a source of esteemed scholarship for our people.

“We felt so ashamed. Here we’d gotten ourselves prepared to die—the whole base had turned out to send us off. We’d written our letters and everything. The letters had already been collected and sent—someone takes care of that as soon as the planes leave. So there we were, supposedly having accomplished this great mission, and instead we had to go skulking back to the base without even having reached the target site.”