The left wing of the Zero struck the USS Missouri bare inches below the main deck. The impact sprayed the battleship’s hull with fragments of the aircraft, while the starboard wing was thrown forward to the first superstructure level, frame 102, inboard of the number three five-inch mount. Gasoline ignited, and flames erupted at the point of contact. When the wreckage settled and the fire crews moved in, they found the mutilated body of the pilot lying on the main deck.

It was April 11, 1945, and the young man who had just crashed his bomb-laden fighter into one of the most powerful warships in the world was a nineteen-year-old Japanese aviator named Setsuzo Ishino. In the heat of battle, the crew of the Missouri assumed the body should simply be thrown overboard. They asked their captain for confirmation. The answer they received was not what they expected.

Captain William C. Callahan, commanding officer of the USS Missouri, looked at the fallen enemy pilot and gave a different order: take him below, and prepare his body for burial. By 1944, the South Pacific Theater had become one of the most decisive battlefields in the world. The remaining forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy were fighting desperately to hold back the American advance.

Through the spring and summer of that year, massive engagements involving hundreds of ships produced thousands of casualties on all sides. The fighting was intense, and everything was on the line for the nations involved. The Allies came out victorious in those battles. Japan, running out of time, men, and resources, saw the tide of war turning decisively against them.

Faced with this grim reality, Japanese commanders made a fateful choice: they would unleash their last secret weapon, the Kamikaze. On October 24, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, this new tactic of desperation was implemented for the first time. Built on the Japanese cultural values of loyalty to country, honor for family, and devotion to the emperor, the suicide attacks took the Americans completely by surprise. The results were devastating.

Japanese commanders created units composed solely of kamikazes, pilots trained exclusively for one purpose: to crash directly into enemy ships. More often than not, these were young and inexperienced aviators, usually less than twenty-two years old. One of these fearless young men was Setsuzo Ishino, a pilot from the Okayama Prefecture assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps, Fifth Kinmu Squadron. He knew his fate was death, but he accepted his role with honor and trained for the day he would fly his final mission.

That final flight came during the Battle of Okinawa in April of 1945. This bloody clash was the last true battle of World War II. The Americans wanted Okinawa as a forward base for their eventual invasion of Japan. The Japanese understood the island’s importance and were prepared to give everything to defend it, for this was one of the first times the Americans were attempting to take true Japanese soil.

While the primary fighting for Okinawa took place on the island itself, a serious conflict raged simultaneously in the waters nearby. The United States Navy had stationed a great number of ships in these waters, supporting the ground forces with shelling, air support, food, and medical supplies. Among the most famous of these ships was the battleship USS Missouri, nicknamed “Mighty Mo,” one of the premier warships in the world at that time. Through the months of the Okinawa campaign, the Missouri and hundreds of other American ships sat in the waters around the island, bracing for what was coming.

The attacks came not by shells or bombs, but by kamikazes. The Japanese assembled the greatest force of suicide bombers ever seen and unleashed them upon American sailors in a final desperate effort to push the enemy away from mainland Japan. Over the three months of the battle, it is estimated that the Japanese sent more than one thousand kamikaze aircraft against American targets. Their toll was staggering: thirteen American destroyers and fifteen amphibious ships sunk, multiple aircraft carriers seriously damaged, and thousands of sailors killed.

But within this mass onslaught, there was one story that stands apart. On April 11, 1945, sixteen special kamikaze attack pilots took off from the Japanese air base at Kanoya. Among their number was Setsuzo Ishino. In the days before the attack, the nineteen-year-old had written a final letter to his family.

His words survive:

“Dear Mother, at the last the day has come when the final flower will bloom. I will go smiling. Please do not say anything, since all is for the country. The day when we meet next will be under the splendid flowers at Yasukuni Shrine.

Please say that I did well and smile without crying. I am praying for everyone’s good health forever and ever. Take care. ”

He closed the letter with a poem: “Today’s mission is something I have long awaited.

All that’s left for me now is to crash straight on into some enemy craft carrier. ”

It was dated April 6, 1945. Five days later, Ishino and the rest of his unit climbed into their A6M2 Zeros, loaded with high explosives, and set a heading for the American fleet off Okinawa. Each pilot knew exactly what target he was looking for, because reconnaissance planes had provided in-depth photographs of the ships present.

But before any of them could reach their intended targets, they had to get through what was already proving to be the most effective Kamikaze defense yet utilized: the F4U Corsair. The Corsair had recently arrived on the front lines, flown by both Navy and Marine aviators. Commanders had found it to be the best defense against the suicide attacks. Ships could only open fire once the Japanese planes came within range, but fighters, if they could locate the attackers early enough, could cut them off before they ever reached the fleet.

Kamikazes typically carried no defensive gunners and rarely used escorts, leaving them exposed to interception. The Corsair pilots made them pay dearly. One famous pilot, Jeremiah O’Keefe, shot down five kamikazes in a single mission in this very same month at Okinawa. But on April 11, 1945, the battle was still young and the defensive tactics were still being perfected.

That day, the Corsairs were unable to intercept the sixteen kamikazes from Kanoya in time. It fell to the anti-aircraft crews of the United States Navy to stop them. The American sailors opened up as soon as the Japanese aircraft came into range. The kamikaze flight, as trained, split up into pairs and headed for the areas of their assigned targets.

Flight Petty Officer Setsuzo Ishino was paired with another Flight Petty Officer, Kinkichi Ishii. The two special attack fighters quickly located their objective: the battleship USS Missouri. The combat report from the Missouri records the sequence in stark chronological detail. At 13:55, the air defense alert was sounded.

At 14:25, air defenses opened up, and multiple hits were confirmed. Then, at 14:40, thirteen bogeys were reported splashed by the fleet, but three or more bandits were still closing on the formation. Of the sixteen kamikazes that had taken off from Kanoya, only three survived the pounding of American anti-aircraft fire. One of them was Setsuzo Ishino.

His wingman, Kinkichi Ishii, was not so fortunate. As the pair carried on at a distance of a few thousand yards, Ishii’s Zero was shot down and crashed into the water. Ishino barreled onward, straight toward the American battleship. According to the combat report, at 14:42 the USS Missouri commenced firing on a low-flying Zero coming directly in on the starboard quarter, bearing 150 degrees, at a distance of seven thousand yards, flying at an altitude of one hundred feet.

Every gun on the Missouri was firing. All of the battleship’s firepower was being brought to bear on this single aircraft that had miraculously made it through the barrage of flak and machine-gun fire. At four thousand yards, Ishino’s Zero took a hit and began to smoke. The plane appeared to lose altitude and nearly splashed into the sea, but the pilot regained control and resumed his course.

The Missouri’s gunners stood their ground and continued to pour out fire, while the Zero visibly struggled to stay in the air. A few seconds later, still amazingly airborne, the Zero bore directly upon the ship and struck. The impact came at 14:43. The left wing of the Zero struck the Missouri bare inches below the main deck.

The ship was sprayed with parts of the plane, and the aircraft’s starboard wing was thrown forward to the first superstructure level, frame 102, inboard of the number three five-inch mount. Gasoline and fire resulted at the point of impact. The mutilated body of the pilot landed on the main deck. A photograph taken by a cook aboard the Missouri captured the moment just before impact.

The plane is visible mere feet away from the ship, with the defensive gun crews still firing at it. Upon impact, the aircraft broke apart and was catapulted onto the deck, pieces of debris flying in all directions. The damage crew rushed to extinguish the fires. Within minutes, the flames were under control and put out.

Fortunately for the Americans, none of the crew was hurt in the attack, and the damage to the Missouri was not serious. Then, as the crew surveyed the wreckage scattered across the deck, they made a grim discovery: the mangled body of the pilot, Setsuzo Ishino. Still in the heat of battle, the men on deck assumed that the body should be thrown overboard. They asked their captain for confirmation.

The response was not what they expected. Captain William C. Callahan recognized that regardless of which side this man had fought for, he was still a fellow soldier and should be treated as such. He ordered the ship’s medical personnel to take the body below and prepare it for burial.

The crew immediately followed the order, sending the body to the sickbay and making the necessary preparations. Later that night, when the following day’s plan of the day was issued for the USS Missouri, it included a note from the captain: “The funeral service to be conducted at 0900 for the Japanese pilot is not a religious service but is strictly a military service of a burial by military courtesy. ”

The schedule of the event included a bugler, a three-volley salute, and a hand salute. The plan also called for the encasing of the colors.

The crew understood that it would be obviously inappropriate to cover the pilot in the Stars and Stripes, so they took the time the night before to sew together a Japanese flag, so that the deceased pilot who had just wished death upon them would have an adequate burial. The following morning, the plan went on as scheduled. The body was brought up, and Taps was played over the bugle. Senior Chaplain Roland Falk stepped forward and spoke the simple words: “We commit his body to the deep.

”

The burial detail tipped the body, wrapped in canvas, into the sea, where it disappeared into the depths below. The Missouri continued on her course. The burial detail gathered and folded the Japanese flag. Just five months later, after the atomic bombs were dropped, the official surrender of Imperial Japan took place on the deck of the USS Missouri, just feet away from the spot where the kamikaze had struck.

The Missouri served for many more years. In 1998, she was donated and became a floating museum in Pearl Harbor, moored right next to the USS Arizona, symbolizing the beginning and the end of World War II for the United States. On April 11, 2001, more than fifty years after the incident, family members of three Japanese pilots gathered aboard the Missouri, along with the family of former commanding officer Captain William Callahan, to honor his courage and compassion in recognizing their common humanity. Today, if you visit the USS Missouri, you can still see the damage from Setsuzo Ishino’s point of impact on the side of the mighty battleship.

The dent remains visible, a lasting scar from a moment when two enemies, in the middle of a brutal war, remembered that even in battle, they were all still human.