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Out of the cloud bank came the Japanese kamikaze fighter plane, laden
with explosives, flown by a pilot determined to die for his emperor while
killing as many Americans as he could.
It flew over the right side of the fleet tug USS Ute, its guns strafing
the foredeck, inches from where Wayne Wilson stood watch as officer of the
day.
"Clear the deck," Lt. Wilson bellowed as the Ute's guns began
firing tracers at the suicide plane on that late May afternoon in 1945.
Wilson gave the order to turn the steel-hulled Ute toward the plunging plane.
The 2-year-old ship - about two-thirds the length of a football field and
as wide as a city road - turned slowly in the waters east of Okinawa.
As it did, Wilson locked eyes with the Japanese pilot and saw the Rising
Sun emblem in the center of his headband.
"He looked at me, and I looked at him," Wilson said.
Then the plane splashed into the sea about 50 yards from the Ute's left
side and detonated on impact.
"I've never forgotten him," said Wilson, 78, of Pasco.
That raid was one of about 1,900 on U.S. warships near Okinawa that summer.
Thirty-two U.S. ships were sunk, 368 more damaged and 9,700 sailors and
airmen killed or wounded.
Wilson and the Ute crew saw the kamikazes' fanatical dedication repeatedly
in the first months of 1945.
It was that same kill-or-be-killed mentality Ute sailors believed they would
face in the pending invasion of the Japanese mainland, planned as the last
major assault to end the war.
The Ute, with Wilson aboard, went into action near Amchitka, Alaska, in
the Aleutian Islands in early 1943 when she helped free the grounded transport
Arthur Middleton.
As the war progressed, the Ute played an unglamorous role - until its crew
recovered a Japanese coding system. Divers from the tug recovered codebooks
that some military experts say helped shorten the war and save 1 million
American lives, an act for which the crew was later honored.
Through 1943 and 1944, the plucky tug did routine work in the Aleutians,
traveling from one island to another to help grounded ships and crews.
By early 1945, the Ute sortied with the fleet in an area east of Iwo Jima.
When that island was finally captured, Wilson watched from his telescope
as Marines raised Old Glory on the summit of Mount Suribachi.
"It was a proud moment."
Okinawa opened the way for the invasion.
"The estimate is it would have taken millions of lives on both sides
of for the U.S. to take that mainland," he said.
"I really believe one of those lives would have been mine."