Through scattered clouds, the young pilot peered from his cockpit at the ships coming into view on the surface of the South China Sea. Their wakes made white scars on the choppy water, betraying the presence of the enemy task force he had sought since taking off from Mabalacat, the Philippines, at approximately 1600. There they were at last, south-southwest of Lingayen Gulf, steaming on a northerly course off the coast of Luzon. He felt a wave of relief—satisfaction, too: He had found the enemy without being shot down by its combat air patrol. In a few minutes, his life would be over. If he was fortunate, it would end as he struck and sank one of the American ships below.
His sharp eyes spied a small carrier—probably a Casablanca-class CVE—a prime target. Motioning to his two wingmen, he nosed his stripped-down Zero with its single 250-kg bomb down on the deck and began maneuvering at full throttle toward the camouflaged, stubby ship. It was time to put into practice the crash-diving tactics he and his squadron mates had rehearsed so many times since their deployment at Xinzhu, Taiwan, during the previous month. Gray-black puffs of antiaircraft fire burst nearby, as the carrier’s 40-mm guns opened up on the three weaving fighters, knocking one of them into the sea. Closing fast, the pilot pulled his plane sharply up about 1,000 yards from the ship and came plunging down from 800 feet at high speed on his final dive, strafing as he came. Eternity was seconds away. It was 1748 on 5 January 1945.
‘They Came in Low at High Speed’
It had been a busy day for the 900 officers and men of the USS Manila Bay (CVE-61). Part of Task Unit 77.4.2, she had been operating off the coast of Luzon to the west of Manila Bay, providing air cover for the ships preparing for the Lingayen Gulf landings. Japanese aircraft harassed the fleet twice that morning, keeping the edgy crew at general quarters. The weather had been uncooperative; northeasterly winds of 20 to 30 knots and rough seas caused the carrier to pitch and roll heavily, slowing, but not stopping, air operations. On the cramped, opened wing of the bridge, the ship’s air officer, 32-year-old Commander Wilson R. “Barney” Bartlett—my father—leaned against the thin steel railing, surveying his men working below on the flight deck. Their yellow, red, green, and brown jerseys reminded him of a circus—albeit a dangerous one, where one careless mistake could have catastrophic consequences. Bartlett, a member of the U.S. Naval Academy’s class of ’35, had been up since before dawn planning and directing air operations. He was tired but pleased; these Sailors were pros. Each knew his job, and the process of fueling and rearming the heavy TBF Avengers and smaller FM Wildcats was proceeding quickly and efficiently.
Built in six months at the Kaiser Shipyards, the “Manila Maru,” as the crew called her, had been commissioned in October 1943. Bartlett had been with her since December of that year when, piloting an Avenger as a squadron commander, he made the first landing on the escort carrier’s pocket-sized 474-by-80–foot flight deck.1 Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to air officer.
Since January 1944, the Manila Bay had seen her share of fighting, participating in the Marshall Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, and New Guinea operations. She evaded Japanese bombs off Saipan while ferrying Army P-47s to that island, and had catapulted four of them to augment the fleet’s combat air patrol. During the Philippine campaign, the Manila Bay weathered the full force of “Halsey’s Typhoon,” supported the landings at Leyte, and dodged 14-inch shells from the Haruna (one of Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s battleships) during the Battle off Samar.
Now, after supporting the landings on Mindoro, the carrier was part of the Lingayen operation, steaming about 100 miles west of Manila Bay, site of the famous 1898 naval battle after which the ship was named.2 Morale was high and the officers and men held their skipper, Captain Fitzhugh Lee, in high esteem. “We have a fine Captain now,” Bartlett wrote a fellow naval aviator, “one of your old bosses in VS-5, Fitzhugh Lee . . . he is a real big leager [sic] in every respect. I’ve never seen anyone to equal him.”3
So far, the Manila Bay had proven to be a lucky ship. But her luck was about to change.
Suddenly, the portside 40-mm antiaircraft batteries began firing. Bartlett’s attention snapped toward two Zeros, closing fast. The timing could not have been worse: five TBFs, fully gassed and armed, were secured in a line behind the island on the starboard side of the flight deck, and seven more were below on the hangar deck being fueled. The men on the exposed bridge saw muzzle flashes from the first plane’s machine guns, followed a split second later by bullets splattering against steel all around them. As Bartlett later recalled, “I’ve gotten used to ducking now . . . not much room on that cheese box bridge.”4
According to Captain Lee, both of the attacking planes were “beautifully handled. They came in low at high speed, weaving slightly, and strafing during the approach. When about 1,000 yards from the ship they pulled into sharp climbing turns, turned over almost on their backs, then straightened out and dove straight into the ship.”5 They struck about 15 seconds apart, but the first Zero caused the most serious damage. It hit between the base of the island and the forward elevator, breaking in two as it crashed and penetrating into the gallery deck. A fiery explosion blew a 16-foot-wide hole in the flight deck, and threw most of the men on the bridge, including Bartlett, off their feet. Below them, the men in the radar-transmitter room were incinerated by the blast, which started fires in adjacent radio facilities, knocking out the ship’s communications. Hot, burning shrapnel started fires in nearby clipping rooms on the gallery deck and the flight-crew ready room. Several survivors, including Bartlett, received flash burns; 51 more were more seriously wounded and 15 were killed.6
The Body on the Flight Deck
The pilot of the second Zero attempted to crash directly into the bridge, strafing as he came. Those on the bridge ran to the other side and jumped to the flight deck, where they landed in a pile. As Bartlett recounted: “I . . . have had little trouble being low man in the heap so far. I’ve developed a flying body block combined with a half-gainer and full twist that works every time . . . a fella has to work fast.”7 This plane, whose pilot may have been partially blinded by the ship’s forward 24-inch searchlight shining in his eyes, clipped the carrier’s radio antenna and starboard yardarm with one of its wings and cartwheeled into the sea. The Zero exploded on impact at the waterline, causing minor ship damage.8
On the hangar deck, two fully fueled and armed TBFs closest to the crash site immediately burst into flames, threatening to ignite nearby aircraft and imperil the entire ship. Because Captain Lee had judiciously activated the sprinkler system a few seconds prior to impact, however, fire stations in the hangar deck, as well as sprinklers on the second and third decks and in the magazines, had maximum water pressure; the rapid response of fire crews produced speedy results. Men wearing asbestos suits and rescue breathing apparatus sprayed water, fog, and foam, and in less than 20 minutes all fires were either under control or completely out.9
As Commander Bartlett directed the damage-control efforts, a crewman handed him a leather wallet.
“Where did this come from?”
“The Jap pilot, sir,” came the reply. “His body’s up on the flight deck.” Bartlett stuffed the wallet into his pocket and forgot about it. Later, after the fires were out, he joined Captain Lee and other officers as they inspected the body of their former enemy. They found that he had been “blown out of his seat and back up through the hole in the flight deck . . . created by his crash,” where he “landed some distance away . . . pretty badly banged up,” Lee later recalled. “He was a young boy.”10 The man who had almost killed them wore a flag with inscriptions in Japanese on it wrapped around the waist of his flight suit, and an autographed white scarf tied around his head. In addition, he carried a small Japanese military sword about a foot and a half long.
It was then that Bartlett remembered the wallet the seaman had given him. He retrieved it from his pocket, and the assembled examined its contents. Since no one present spoke Japanese, the pilot’s identity remained a mystery. Bartlett kept the wallet and agreed to get it translated. The next day, the pilot was buried at sea, along with 14 of the 15 Americans he had killed (one of three men who had been blown overboard was not recovered).
Government Property
In real terms, the kamikaze’s sacrifice had little impact on the invasion of the Philippines at Lingayen Gulf, and did nothing to deter the powerful American fleet from ravaging the waters off Japan during the remaining months of the war. Although he destroyed eight Avengers on the Manila Bay, by 1900 the ship had resumed her position in the formation. It took until 2300 to pump out all the water that had been used fighting the fires, thus correcting a 4-degree starboard list. Communications with other ships was accomplished via Aldis lamp and a makeshift arrangement using VHF radio equipment in one of the undamaged planes on the flight deck. Nothing could be done to repair the ship’s radar, however, since the radar-transmitter room had been demolished.
Eight fighter-squadron aircraft from the Manila Bay, which were in the air at the time of the attack, found temporary homes on the Natoma Bay (CVE-62) and Steamer Bay (CVE-87). These planes, plus eight replacement TBFs and two F4Fs from the Shamrock Bay (CVE-84) and Kadashan Bay (CVE-76), enabled Bartlett to get back to work scheduling limited air operations within 48 hours. Forty-two sorties were made on 9 January, despite lack of a squawk box, bull horn, phones, siren, and wind instruments. Other impediments to normal air operations included a jammed forward elevator with an upward bulge in the flight deck that gave a “nasty bounce” to aircraft as they took off, damaged arresting gear, and no night landing lights.11 Full air operations were resumed on 10 January. On 17 January, the Manila Bay left the fleet for stateside repairs.
When she arrived a month later, Bartlett was detached and ordered to Fleet Air West Coast in San Diego. While stationed there, he sent the mystery wallet to the Department of the Navy, requesting a translation and especially the name of the kamikaze pilot. Months later, he received a reply containing photostats of the wallet’s contents:
• photos of a distinguished-looking Japanese man and woman (presumably the unknown pilot’s parents)
• photos of two Japanese aviators standing in front of their planes
• a calling card from an Ensign Osamu Masuda of the 201st Naval Air Group
• an “Official Train Discount Certificate,” a card titled “Method for Compensating Magnetic Compass”
• a burned silk flag with writing on it, which the Navy translator said “is so small that it is indecipherable.”12
The pilot’s name was still unknown and the wallet was missing. When Bartlett inquired about it, he was told that no identification had been found, and the wallet had been confiscated as property of the U.S. government.
Although that was the end of the story as far as the Navy was concerned, Bartlett kept the envelope containing the pictures with his personal papers, filed under the heading “Career Mystery.” And there it remained for 36 years until his death in 1982.
Journey to the East, and to the Past
Thirteen years after my father’s passing, I visited Japan for the first time. The occasion was the marriage of my son to a Japanese girl from a small town in southern Kyushu, near Kagoshima. My wife and I went to see her country and meet her parents, Minami and Kazue Ijichi. On the outside chance that I might obtain a more detailed translation than that given by the Navy Department almost half a century before, I took my father’s envelope with the information from the kamikaze’s wallet. What I got was more than I expected. The Ijichis said that several local air bases had been staging areas for kamikaze deployments toward the end of World War II, and there was much interest in the Imperial Japanese Navy Special Attack Corps (the kamikaze force) in that part of Japan. Furthermore, a museum devoted to kamikaze study was at nearby Naval Air Station Kanoya, and Minami arranged for us to have an interview with the director of the facility.
Lieutenant Commander Toshiaki Kikuchi, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, was, in true Japanese fashion, extremely hospitable and very interested in the story of the wallet. He told us that the return of personal possessions belonging to individual kamikaze pilots was an exceedingly rare occurrence. He called in members of his staff, and together we spent many hours deciphering the wallet’s contents trying to discover the identity of its owner. Thanks to the museum’s extensive collection of detailed records, we were able to establish that the pilot who crashed into the Manila Bay that day was one of 17 men from Kongo 18 Unit, a squadron operating from Luzon in early January 1945.
The two planes that hit the Manila Bay that day were part of an attack of 20 aircraft in two groups that left Mabalacat Airfield at 1557. According to Japanese Navy records (GF Notification No. 85), these consisted of 16 fighter-bombers armed with 250-kg bombs, escorted by four Zeros for observation. They were in two groups of ten planes: Eight fighter bombers and two escorts were under Lieutenant Shinichi Kanaya, the rest commanded by Lieutenant (junior grade) Yutaka Maruyama. Fifteen fighter-bombers and two escorts did not return.13 (As for the fighter-bomber that did return, any number of factors often led kamikaze pilots to come back, from mechanical failures to navigational errors.) On reaching Task Unit 77, some planes skimmed the wave tops, while others dove from patches of clouds. That day, besides the planes from Kongo 18 Unit, the fleet was attacked by seven fighters from three different army units and one dive-bomber from Kyokujitsu Unit.14 Their success rate was 40 percent; ten ships (including the Manila Bay) were damaged by direct hits or near misses.
Lieutenant Commander Kikuchi furnished us with the names and addresses of each pilot in Kongo 18 Unit. After touring the rest of the museum and marveling at its exquisitely restored Zero fighter, we thanked our hosts and left, still not knowing who the owner of the wallet was—the man who, 50 years earlier, had sacrificed his life for his country and nearly killed my father.
‘Willing to Make the Supreme Sacrifice’
As it turned out, our son’s new mother-in-law finally discovered the mystery pilot’s identity. Kazue Ijichi, a librarian, was fascinated with the almost illegible writing on the badly damaged flag in the picture. After lengthy examination, she concluded that the words were not yosegaki (congratulatory comments from relatives and friends), but written and signed by the pilot himself. Furthermore, he had a one-character signature, although it was illegible. A search of the list of names of men in Kongo 18 Unit furnished by the museum revealed only one that had a kanji (a Chinese ideograph) with the same shape as the kanji present on the flag belonging to the deceased pilot. His name was Lieutenant (junior grade) Yutaka Maruyama, Imperial Japanese Navy. The Ijichis wrote to his official address as given at the time of his death in 1945, and the Maruyama family responded.
The pilot had indeed been identified. His family subsequently was able to verify that the wallet photos of the older couple were Maruyama’s mother and father, and one of the pilot photos was of Maruyama’s brother, First Lieutenant Hiroshi Maruyama of the Imperial Japanese Army, who had been killed in action over Biak Island in June 1944. (The other photo in the wallet was of a “Pilot Suchi,” presumably a colleague or friend of the brothers.)
Ten years my father’s junior, Yutaka Maruyama was born in the city of Nanao, on the Noto Peninsula, on 27 February 1922, according to the family register. Unlike my father, for whom growing up was an economic struggle, Yutaka enjoyed favorable childhood circumstances. His parents were respected teachers, who saw that Yutaka and the rest of their children received the best education they could provide. He was a bright, eager pupil, talented in art and music and consistently among those at the top of his class. Faced with the certainty of conscription, he applied to and was accepted at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy (IJNA) in Etajima in December 1940. He graduated in September 1943 and was appointed to the Naval Air Corps.
After ten months of basic flight training in Type 93 biplanes and advanced training in Zeros at NAS Kohnoike, Maruyama was designated a naval aviator in July 1944 and ordered to NAS Tsukuba as a flight instructor. There he taught flying to reserve students and practiced simulated dogfights with seasoned petty-officer instructors. He enjoyed the duty, commenting in his diary (which has been preserved by his family) that “Tsukuba was the place where I worked in the real world for the first time in my life, and I had a lot of memories.”15 One of his close friends was Hiroshi Shinjo, an IJNA classmate and survivor of the war who, in a recent interview with the authors, recalled, “Yutaka was very serious-minded and taciturn person, one of the classmates I could trust most.”16
One day during Maruyama’s second month at Tsukuba, a special assembly was called by the commander and flight commander. Married men and first and/or only sons were excused. “The commander and flight commander explained the deteriorating war situation to us, and said that the Navy was organizing a special attack corps using a new weapon,” Maruyama wrote in his diary. “It could destroy even the largest enemy carrier, but the pilot could not be expected to return alive. Then they asked us to raise our hands if we wanted to volunteer to pilot the new weapon. Everyone was very tense for a moment, but soon all of us raised our hands.”17 Under those circumstances, the difficulty of refusing due to peer pressure is understandable. The choice—to be recorded officially “as willing to make the supreme sacrifice for the country”—was being made by young men throughout the naval air service that same day at that same hour.18
In November 1944 Maruyama was one of four IJNA graduates ordered to the 201st Air Group in the Philippines. He left NAS Tsukuba on the 23rd for NAS Kanoya, where he was put in command of a ferry unit of 17 Zeros bound for Gaoxiong, Taiwan. After modifying the planes to carry a bomb under each fuselage, he and his men remained at NAS Kanoya for ten days until weather conditions improved. On 4 December, Maruyama’s group arrived at Takao after a tiring five-hour, 50-minute flight of 957 miles. On 6 December they flew in the rain from Takao to Shinchiku to join elements of the 201st. There they received a week of kamikaze attack training, despite continued poor weather. The first two days were spent practicing takeoff and assembly procedures, the next two on formation flying, the final three focused on approaching and attacking the target. On the night of 13 December, they received orders to the front.
Yutaka slept little, due to a combination of excitement about his forthcoming introduction to combat and nostalgia regarding his life and family. Early the next morning the group flew to the 201st’s forward airfield at Mabalacat, Luzon.19
At the front, Maruyama discontinued his correspondence and diary entries. Three weeks later, on 5 January 1945, he climbed into his Zero for his last flight.
A number of interesting coincidences point to the possible identity of the pilot of the second Zero that narrowly missed crashing into the bridge of the Manila Bay. Lieutenant (junior grade) Naotaka Kitagawa had gone through the naval academy and flight training with Maruyama, and it is reasonable to assume that his proficiency in aircraft handling was equally good. His assignment on 5 January was to escort Maruyama’s flight, observe the strike, and report the results. But he did not return to Mabalacat that day. As an observer, Kitagawa’s plane would not have carried a bomb, which might explain why, after it missed the carrier’s bridge and hit the water next to the ship, the impact was minor, with little resulting damage to the hull at or below the waterline. Also, Kitagawa knew his fate: Sooner or later he would be assigned to lead bomb-laden aircraft, so why not die together with his classmate and friend from the IJNA days, Yutaka Maruyama? Academy friendships were much stronger than those of people in general, and cadets were taught that classmates are those who would “shed blood on the same deck.” Since Kitagawa was not carrying a bomb, his life would be most efficiently sacrificed by killing all those on the bridge—taking out the brains of the ship.
Every Reason to Live
The chance crossing of paths between Bartlett and Maruyama that occurred during the final milliseconds of the latter’s life invites some interesting comparisons. They were each graduates of their respective countries’ naval academies. They were both naval aviators dedicated to their branch of service, flying in what had become a long, brutal conflict. But there the similarities end. Maruyama had had little chance to become a seasoned officer. He had been on active duty only one and a half years, managing during that time to accumulate approximately 300 hours of flight time. By 5 January 1945, the cause for which he was determined to die was clearly lost. Bartlett, on the other hand, was a member of the most powerful navy in history. He had almost ten years of active duty under his belt, and 2,000 hours of flight time in the cockpits of 25 different types of aircraft.20 In fact, it is not unreasonable to speculate that Bartlett probably already had as much time in the air (359 hours in ten different types of aircraft) when he left Pensacola in June 1939, as did Maruyama on the day he died. Furthermore, as a naval aviator with considerable combat and carrier experience, Bartlett was on the cutting edge of naval power. He could look forward to his future career. He had every reason to live.
Two adversaries, unknown to each other, whose paths crossed only once, on 5 January 1945. Two individuals who, had they met under different circumstances in more favorable times, would have respected each other as professionals and, had they known each other personally, would perhaps have become friends.
1. Bartlett family papers, “The Air Officer Says: Vita Dulcet Est,” U.S.S. Manila Bay (CVE-61) Plan of the Day for Tuesday, 3 October 1944.
2. Ibid.;. LTJG Ignatius and LTJG Stewart, USNR, U.S.S. Manila Bay: Her Life and Times (Ship’s publication, no date).
3. Bartlett family papers.
4. Ibid.
5. Walter Karig, R.L. Harris, and F.A. Manson, Battle Report: Victory in the Pacific, vol. 5 (New York: Rinehart, 1949), p. 160.
6. War Damage Report No. 60: Escort Carriers, Preliminary Design Section (Bureau of Ships, Navy Department, 31 July 1948), pp. 44–51. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
7. Bartlett family papers.
8. U.S.S. Manila Bay (CVE-61), “Action Report: Operations in Support of the Landings at Lingayen, P.I. in Task Unit 77.4.2” (1–19 January 1945), p. 2. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD. The authors thank CAPT Stephen M. Senteio, U.S. Navy, for his help with this research.
9. War Damage Report No. 60, pp. 44–46.
10. VADM Fitzhugh Lee, “Kamikazes in the Lingayen Gulf,” Carrier Warfare in the Pacific: An Oral History Collection, E. T. Woolridge, ed. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1993), pp. 215–221.
11. War Damage Report No. 60, pp. 46–51.
12. Bartlett family papers, letter from J. M. Bromley, 1946.
13. Imperial Japanese Navy Records, GF Notification No. 85 (Combined Fleet Operations, 11 December 1944–6 January 1945).
14. Tadao Morimoto, Tokko (Tokyo: Bungei-Shunju, 1992), p. 179.
15. Diary of Yutaka Maruyama, 22 November 1944 entry.
16. Interview with Hiroshi Shinjo by Kan Sugahara, 27 June 2008.
17. Diary of Yutaka Maruyama, 22 November 1944 entry.
18. Hatsuho Naito, Thunder Gods: The Kamikaze Pilots Tell Their Story (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1989), p. 31.
19. Diary of Yutaka Maruyama, 23 November–13 December 1944 entries.
20. Bartlett family papers, W. R. Bartlett’s Aviator’s Flight Log Books, vols. 1–2 (NAVAER-4111), July 1938–February 1945.