In Japan, fliers began their training in gliders. Until you completed fifty glider hours you could not progress to the Imperial Army Air Force advanced training aircraft. It was a rule, like most rules in our country, which had been carved in stone. The space in the cockpit of the Japan-built Tachikawa training craft was 30 centimeters wide by 140 centimeters long. Tetsukimo was 220 centimeters tall, possibly the tallest man in the Japanese army. Perhaps in the whole of Japan, although there was no survey of such things. No matter how you might have bent or folded him there was no way for Tetsukimo to fit into a glider and so he’d reluctantly taken the second option, to become a mechanic. It was like a rodeo cowboy being forced to feed and water the bulls.

I liked Tetsukimo but he was bitter, especially as day after day he watched the young, inexperienced fliers take off from the airstrip at Thakhek in aircrafts they did not appreciate. I sat with him one evening and watched the Zeros flying overhead.

“How can you stand not flying?” he asked me.

“That?” I said with a laugh, pointing at the airplanes. “That, my boy, isn’t flying.”

He looked confused. I nodded toward the river. A hawk was cruising the air currents. It seemed to freeze in midair for some seconds, then it swooped. It barely broke the surface of the water but in its talons it held a fat catfish.

“That is flying,” I said.

“But that type of flying is exclusive to the birds and the insects,” he said.

“Not at all,” I said. “Have you heard the story of Aki and Ako?”

“No.”

“Aki and Ako grew up in a small village in Shikoku. Aki was a good scholar. He excelled in science and went on to study engineering. Ako was a boy of the mountains. He loved nothing more than to hike for days, alone, observing, learning the ways of nature. He loved to watch the birds and how they rode the air currents and played in the wind. Despite their differences the young men were good friends and they joined the air force together.