[Rare image] Thoughts put into the album left behind by a legendary fighter pilot

One of the ``Kijin,'' the Three Great Navy Fighters

While I was interviewing former Japanese Navy fighter pilots for more than a quarter of a century, So, I often heard the words "three major 'Kijin' and 'three major 'Ijin' of the naval fighter squadron'".

The “Three Great Kijin” are Air Sergeant Major Toshio Kuroiwa, Lieutenant Sadaaki Akamatsu, and Second Lieutenant Tadashi Torakuma (all in the final rank). All of them are veteran fighters born in the Meiji era, with strong personalities and legendary piloting skills. are common in "Kijin" may have been both an "eccentric" and a "demon".

"Three major 'Ijin'" refers to the generation that is slightly younger than 'Kijin', Ensign Kanichi Kashimura, Lieutenant Saburo Sakai, and Lieutenant Tetsuzo Iwamoto. Second Lieutenant Kashimura was a national hero at the time. was. Both Lieutenant Sakai and Lieutenant Iwamoto are famous as ``Shooting King'' from books published after the war.

What these three people have in common seems to be that they are good at speaking, but they are good at talking. It is not clear whether 'Ijin' is 'great man' or 'foreigner'.

Sergeant Major Toshio Kuroiwa (1908-1944) stands out among those legendary fighter pilots. On June 1, 1941, the rank designation of naval crew members changed from Air Petty Officer Major to Flight Petty Officer Major, but Kuroiwa retired from the Navy in 1939, before the name change. .

Sergeant Major Toshio Kuroiwa. At Jiujiang Air Base, China, with the 96 battleship in the background

This spring, through Mr. Taizo Nakamura, the manager of the "Hokoku 515 Museum", which has an actual Zero fighter plane in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture, An unknown person named Kazuhide Nagasumi of Fukuoka Prefecture brought me unexpected news.

Sergeant Major Kuroiwa's granddaughter works for the same company, and it is said that he will soon donate the albums he keeps to a museum in his hometown. And Mr. Nagazumi, who is a reader of my book, is talking with his grandson to show me the album before donating it.

I have met many people who know Sergeant Major Kuroiwa directly, but I have never heard of his family, let alone imagined that his album still exists, so I was surprised.

From what I heard, Sgt. Kuroiwa and Mrs. Sumako had no children, so they adopted their older sister's daughter, Satsuki, but she passed away in March of this year. Satsuki's daughter, Satomi Nonaka, the granddaughter of Sgt. Kuroiwa, took over the album. Looking at the photos sent by Mr. Nagazumi through SNS, this is a first-class document. I immediately asked to borrow it for copying.

Four albums soon arrived, filled with never-before-seen photos of battlefields and fighter jets, but what emerged from them was a former Navy colleague. A little different from the loose-minded image he had been told, he was a kind, caring, and caring father.

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