80 Years On: Legendary Pitcher Lost in Wartime Suicide Attack

   Tokyo, Aug. 7 (Jiji Press)--Eighty years ago, among the young members of the Imperial Japanese military's "kamikaze" corps, many of whom died in suicide attacks against Allied ships during the final months of World War II, was a legendary professional baseball pitcher who once threw a no-hitter.
   Before being drafted into the military, Shinichi Ishimaru played for the Nagoya baseball club, now known as the Chunichi Dragons of Japan's Central League.
   In 1945, at 22 years old, he became a Navy pilot and joined Operation Kikusui, a series of desperate missions of no return launched as Japan's situation in the Pacific theater of the war grew increasingly dire.
   On May 11, 1945, the youngster departed from Kanoya Air Base in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan, flying toward Okinawa in a plane loaded with a 500-kilogram bomb. It was roughly three months before the end of the war.
   Today, Shinchi's memory lives on through his nephew, Takeshi, 73, who inherited both family mementos and the responsibility for sharing his uncle's story from his own father, Tokichi, Shinichi's elder brother. "There was no signal of attack from him, so we don't even know whether he was shot down or crashed into an enemy ship," Takeshi said. "It's a cruel story."

(2025/08/07-10:30)