In the middle of the night, 61-year-old Horikichi insisted on taking a transport boat to one aircraft carrier after another to visit the pilots, despite his old age and infirmity and the high winds and waves of the North Pacific Ocean. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 Chiaki Matsuda, who accompanied him to the court, advised him not to work so hard, and if he had any explanation, he would just convey it through the captains of the ships and the flight captains.

Horikichi shook his head: "Matsuda-kun, if you only think of yourself as a commander and they are subordinates, of course you can do this. But many of these young people are only 20 years old, and some are even under 18 years old, not much older than my grandchildren...... I'm just a few kilometers away from the boat, but they have to fly hundreds of kilometers to attack, maybe they will never come back, if you send your children and grandchildren on the expedition, will you still feel hard? ”

The staff officers behind him, who did not understand, were suddenly silent.

Chiaki Matsuda sighed: "The commander loves soldiers like a son, I have been taught!" ”

By the time Horikichi spun around and struggled to climb onto the last carrier, the Kasaki, all the pilots who were going to go out were already waiting in line on deck.

"The chief has come to visit us personally!"

With a "bang", the pilots all stood up straight.

"You've worked hard!" While shaking hands and saluting the pilots, Horikichi distributed the white cloth strips with the words "Victory" and "Seven Lives to Serve the Country" written on them, and even personally helped the youngest ones wrap them, and everyone respectfully returned the salute.

Seeing the youngest pilot in the entire fleet, Konshin Sato, who was 18 years old and 2 months away, and looked at his tense and serious face, Horikichi patted him on the shoulder: "Sato-kun, are you a little nervous about carrying out the night attack mission?" ”

"Report sir, don't be nervous! I was the first in the school night flying, and the instructors praised me for having cat eyes! Besides, there was also Chief Suzuki who took us, and he said that it would be good to follow him, he had been to Pearl Harbor once, and he had experience! ”

Horiyoshi smiled: "I really envy you, and there are chiefs who are familiar with the situation, and I came for the first time, and no chiefs are willing to take me ......"

Everyone was stunned for a moment, and then they all laughed.

The captain of the support fleet warship, Shingo Yingcheng Nakasa, said: "We have set up a platform, can you ask the commander to take a photo with us?" ”

"Good!" Horiyoshi strode over to find his place and sit down, dozens of pilots immediately went up to line up, photographers flashed magnesium lights, Horiyoshi, Matsuda Chiaki and all the pilots left a group photo.

"Before leaving, we dedicated our favorite song to the chief, thanking the chief for making a movie for us, and even more thanking the chief for seeing us off!"

Under the command of Xinxiang Yingcheng, nearly 90 pilots who were going to attack (2 people per plane for ship attack and ship explosion) sang the loud "Song of the Vulture" together:

"Young and hot-blooded pre-science training, seven button cherry blossoms and anchors;

Today's flight is accompanied by colorful clouds, and dreamy hope soars into the sky;

Ignite the vitality of the preparatory practice, the wrist is the anchor iron core flame;

Winged out of the army across the ocean, fighting in front of the enemy;

admired the pre-training of his predecessors, and repeatedly heard of his exploits;

The belief in victory is practiced to attack, and the soul of Yamato is invincible;

At the expense of life pre-training, the wings of victory and the wings of will;

The enemy ship was sunk heroically, and I wanted to send a photo to my mother! ”

(Note: There is also a more literary translation, if you are interested, you can Baidu yourself; In addition, he spit out the domestic anti-Japanese war drama, criticized "My Regiment Commander, My Regiment" by name, don't engage in competition songs if you don't understand the Japanese military song, and put all the navy songs on the army red deer, which made me look embarrassed)

In order to expand the number of pilots recruited, the Japanese Navy expanded the recruitment of B Fly (basic class), C Fei (crash course), and Special C flight (basic speed course) in addition to the original Class A (officer class) -- Sato, who was not yet 18 years old, was directly changed from B to Special C because of his outstanding performance. In order to encourage more young people to apply for the examination, Toho was commissioned by the military to shoot "Space Decisive Battle" in 1943 as a propaganda film for the recruitment of naval pilots, and the content reflected all the scenes of the Pacific naval battle.

The sample film was filmed before Horikichi returned from Europe, and he only wanted to add a few more scenes of the Combined Fleet's westward expedition, but Horiyoshi thought that the shooting was not deep enough, and the scene was especially bad, and it did not shoot the grand momentum, and then the American plane was either a blurry shot by a military reporter, or an aircraft pretended to be an army or German plane, which he thought was too fake, and asked for a reshoot - hoping to complete it within 3 months, and promised to give full support.

The Combined Fleet went west to get a large number of U.S. aircraft, not only F4F\F6F\SBD\TBF, and even B-17\C-54, etc., in front of Horiyoshi's full support statement, the re-filmed scene was much grander and more realistic, Horiyoshi also came forward to ask some German pilots to play Americans, and selected a group of American prisoners of war to appear in other scenes, all air teams and aviation schools fully cooperated, and the top pilots of the Combined Fleet, including the Sweeping Trio, Akamatsu Sadaaki, etc., all performed stunts in the film. After the "Heavenly Punishment of the National Thief", the powerful Horiyoshi passed the reform bill for the awarding of military ranks to aviation students, and then the movie also absorbed this paragraph.

When the final film was completed, it cost a total of 39 million yen, which is equivalent to the cost of a light cruiser, and the entire main force of the combined fleet was used, which can be described as a unique blockbuster. But the filming was very successful, much better than the rush of "United Fleet Commander", in order to strengthen publicity, the remake of "Space Showdown" not only introduced more star actors, but also modified the main story line at the suggestion of Hori Yoshi:

The film mainly tells the story of two young students, a poor and a rich, who join the Navy as pilots together, the poor one is called Panasonic, and the rich one is called Takahashi. Takahashi and Matsushita have not dealt well since childhood, Takahashi, who has a good family, often bullies Matsushita, and Matsushita occasionally takes revenge on Takahashi by pranks. The two applied for the Navy Flight Prep Department with different goals: Takahashi was eager for excitement and wanted to be a hero, and became a fighter pilot; Panasonic aspired to get ahead, wanted to become an officer, became an attack aircraft pilot.

The two are still at odds in flight school, not only are they showing signs everywhere, but they are constantly sparking in kendo, judo, sports and other subjects, and even the flight team is fighting with each other for merit and promotion opportunities; Even though their co-superiors and seniors repeatedly taught them to be united, the two still had a discord in their hearts. However, during a sortie, the commander crashed first to cover everyone out of danger, and Matsushita's plane was injured after completing the attack, and he was ready to return to the team with difficulty, but he was closely pursued by US fighters, and Takahashi, who ran out of ammunition, obviously chose to return alone, but in the end he resolutely chose to die with the US plane and cover Matsushita's retreat. After coming back, Matsushita got a medal and became an officer, but Takahashi couldn't even find his body, only a suicide note and some relics. In the cemetery, Panasonic put his medal and rank epaulette in front of Takahashi's tombstone, and returned to the team without hesitation to embark on a new journey. ”……

There are actually a lot of things that embarrassed the filmmaker about this film:

First, he drastically cut the scene of "serving the emperor", except for a few links, most of them were omitted;

Second, it is required to show that the US military pilots are very brave and not afraid of death, but the liberal style is strong, and the metaphor is not united enough -- but this is contrary to Japan's consistent propaganda that the US military is greedy for life and afraid of death;

The third is to clearly show the strong industrial strength of the US military in the film - the US fleet always follows the mighty supply ships and transport ships when it appears, and the GIs never have to walk, all of them are jeeps or trucks, and they can also eat ice cream (in fact, the US prisoners eat ice cream from the Yamato Hotel), when the Japanese fleet appeared, there were few warships, and it was also very difficult to replenish, and the soldiers, including the pilots, all relied on two legs, not to mention ice cream in wartime, and even gasoline could not be guaranteed, which was a metaphor for Japan's weak national strength and inability to hold on for a long time - This is contrary to Japan's consistent propaganda of its final victory;

Fourth, when assigning tasks, the commander repeatedly asked the pilots to pay attention to safety and return as safely as possible -- this is also in conflict with Japan's usual preaching of serving the country with a decisive death.

Even though there are so many embarrassments in the eyes of the press and film industry, no one dares to say no when Horiyoshi nods and lets him go, so the film is promoted to the national public, not only publicly, but also required to be broadcast in every middle school and university, so that students can watch it for free, and "The Song of Wakawa" (lyrics by Saijo 80, he also composed "Sakura at the same time") has not only become the most widely sung song among young students, but also has become a resonance song for all HNA preparatory students such as Yifei, Bingfei, and Tebingfei.

Because the army aviation does not have any promotional videos, and the army aviation preparatory students have no chance to become officers (the army still selects officers from the non-commissioned officer school, not because the army does not want to change, but because if the army can become an officer, then the armored corps, artillery, cavalry, engineer and other specialties are eligible to become officers, plus the army recruit students much more than the naval academy, so the army rank system will not change), so the first choice of young students who want to become pilots is all HNA.

After the broadcast of "Space and Air Combat", the number of applicants who volunteered to join HNA was as many as 270,000, ranging in age from 14 to 20 years old, and finally eliminated young applicants, with 16 years old as the threshold, and absorbed nearly 12,000 of them according to the ratio of 10:1. A special flying graduate like Sato, who is less than 18 years old, was not allowed to join the first-line flight team, let alone the carrier-based aircraft flight team, but because he was talented, not only did he perform particularly well in night flight, but he also mastered other carrier-based capabilities with extreme speed. Horikichi only sighed when he saw the roster before leaving, but didn't say anything.

After listening to them singing, Chiaki Matsuda found that Horiyoshi's eyes were full of tears, and he walked to the front of the pilot queue and bowed deeply, "Gentlemen, have a good trip!" ”

"Sir, take care!"

At half past three in the morning, all the attack groups had taken off, and the Xinxiang Yingcheng, who led the team, issued an order through the radio: "Fly around the flagship and say your final goodbye to the commander!" ”

At night, Horikichi and all the officers of the headquarters stood on the deck and saluted as the group departed...... Everyone, including the pilots, knew that Horikichi gave the first attack wave an order to "attack to the death" - to complete the mission even if he died!

He usually doesn't give such orders, but this time for the sake of Pearl Harbor, he can only give ......

ps: It's the middle of the month, let's ask for a few monthly passes......