They arrived in Tokyo carrying the smell of salt, sweat, and old paper. Some had crossed oceans. Some had crossed borders that no longer existed on maps. A few had crossed nothing more than the narrow circumference of their own fear. Yet when they stood together on the parade ground, boots aligned, shoulders squared, they looked remarkably alike, young men shaped by hunger, purpose, and a promise they could not yet fully articulate.

The Unseen Witness watched them from the edge of the field. He had been assigned to keep records, not names that history would later recognise, but numbers, dates, weights, hours flown, hours failed. He wrote neatly, carefully, as though precision itself might offer protection. The paper smelled faintly of ink and dampness, a reminder that nothing here was permanent, not even memory.

The Tokyo air carried a different discipline. Even in the early mornings, before the city fully stirred, there was movement. Trains whispered past. Flags stirred softly. Somewhere, always, an engine coughed awake. The cadets rose before dawn, their bodies learning the rhythm of command, their ears tuning themselves to whistles and shouted instructions delivered in clipped syllables they barely understood. They learned quickly. They had to.

Among them was Arjun Mukherjee, barely twenty, his hands still carrying the softness of someone who had once turned pages more often than tools. He had grown up in a narrow lane in Shyambazar, his nights filled with borrowed books and distant tram bells. He had never imagined the sky as anything other than an abstraction, something poets wrote about, and kites flirted with. Now the sky waited for him every day, vast and demanding.

Training was relentless. They learned the language of machines, the delicate balance between trust and control. The aircraft were temperamental, unforgiving, their metal skins cold to the touch. The smell of fuel clung to everything, hair, clothes, skin, a scent that followed them into sleep and settled into dreams.

The instructors were precise, their expectations unyielding. Mistakes were corrected sharply, not out of cruelty, but necessity. War did not forgive hesitation. Gravity did not negotiate.

At night, the cadets gathered quietly in the barracks. Someone always read aloud. Letters from home, fragile with distance. News clippings folded until the edges frayed. Sometimes a poem, remembered imperfectly, recited anyway. The sound of voices filled the space where courage was still learning how to sit comfortably. The Unseen Witness listened.

He listened to the tremor in certain voices, the bravado in others. He listened to the silences after bad news, when no one knew which words were safe. He wrote nothing of this down. Some records were not meant for paper.

One evening, Netaji came to see them. There was no grand announcement. No flourish. He walked onto the ground as he had walked onto ships and into rooms before, with economy, with awareness. The cadets straightened instinctively, a collective tightening of spines and resolve.

He spoke to them without notes. He spoke of discipline, not as punishment, but as freedom from doubt. He spoke of the sky, not as conquest, but as responsibility. He spoke of India, not as an idea, but as people whose names he would never know, whose lives would nonetheless be altered by choices made here, now. He did not promise survival. He promised meaning.

Arjun felt the words settle somewhere deep, quieter than excitement, heavier than fear. He realised then that he was no longer training to become a pilot. He was training to become a decision.

The days grew harder. Accidents happened. A misjudged landing. A stall recovered too late. The sound of impact carried across the field like a crack in the world itself. Training paused, then resumed. There was no other way. Grief was folded into routine, carried forward without ceremony.

The Unseen Witness stood with the others during the brief moments of silence. He noticed how the cadets listened differently afterwards, how they respected the machines more, how laughter became rarer but sharper, edged with urgency. He wrote the date. He closed the ledger.

Letters home changed in tone. They grew careful, reassuring. Details were omitted. Bravery was framed as normalcy. Mothers were told of meals eaten, of friendships formed, of weather patterns. Fathers were told of progress, of competence, of pride. No one wrote about the sound of engines failing mid-air. No one wrote about the weightlessness that felt briefly like peace before panic took hold.

Arjun wrote anyway. Not everything. Just enough. He wrote about the sky at dawn, how it blushed before yielding to blue. He wrote about the way clouds looked solid until you passed through them, then dissolved into nothing. He wrote about learning that some things could not be held, only trusted.

The Unseen Witness read these letters before they were sent. Not to censor, but to ensure they arrived. He learned to recognise the cadence of hope shaped to survive distance. He returned the letters sealed, untouched in appearance, though he carried their echoes with him long after.

As months passed, the cadets grew leaner, sharper. They moved with a confidence that had been earned, not assumed. Their laughter returned, quieter now, threaded with understanding. They spoke of the future in fragments, never whole sentences. Superstition was not discussed, but practised.

One night, Arjun confessed his fear to the Witness. Not of death. Of forgetting. “I am afraid,” he said softly, “that if I do not return, I will become a footnote. A number. A line someone else reads without knowing my face.” The Witness considered this. “You are already more than that,” he replied. “Because you are choosing.” Arjun nodded. He did not look convinced, but he slept afterwards.

When deployment orders arrived, they were read aloud. Names echoed in the hall, each one landing differently. Some were met with clenched jaws, others with bowed heads. There was no cheering. No applause. Only the sound of paper being folded, of boots being laced with deliberate care.

Netaji did not attend the send-off. He did not need to. His presence lingered in the discipline, in the language of purpose the cadets now spoke fluently. He had given them what could not be reclaimed, a reason that did not depend on outcome.

The morning they left, Tokyo was unusually quiet. Mist clung to the airfield. Engines warmed slowly, their growl restrained, respectful. The cadets lined up, their uniforms crisp, their expressions composed. The Unseen Witness stood back, notebook closed. Arjun turned once, searching the crowd. Their eyes met. No salute was exchanged. No gesture. Just recognition.

The planes lifted one by one, cutting through the mist, dissolving into the sky that had claimed them long before any order did. The sound lingered after they were gone, a fading roar that settled into silence. The Unseen Witness remained. He recorded departures. He waited for returns that came unevenly, if at all. He learned the language of absence, the way it shaped space without occupying it.

History would later speak of the Tokyo Cadets as an audacious footnote, a dream interrupted by surrender and circumstance. It would measure success narrowly, outcomes harshly. It would not speak of dawn briefings whispered in broken Japanese and Bengali. It would not speak of hands shaking before first solo flights. It would not speak of letters read aloud in dim barracks, voices steady because they had to be. But the sky remembered. And so did those who learned to trust it. The Unseen Witness closed his notebook for the last time. Somewhere far away, engines faded into memory. And the young men who had learned to fly carried India with them, not as territory, but as breath, held carefully, until the very end.

---

Other stories in this series of six stories sorrounding the life and time of Netaji Subhash Changda Bose:

---

---

---

---

---

Copyright © 2026 TRISHIKH DASGUPTA

This work of fictionised history, written by Trishikh Dasgupta, is the author’s sole intellectual property. It draws inspiration from documented wartime training efforts, the little known story of the Tokyo Cadets, and the young Indian lives shaped by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s call during the Indian freedom movement. While this story can be read and experienced independently, it also forms the fifth part of a six story narrative arc, where each piece stands alone yet together deepens the understanding of Netaji’s legacy as it passed from vision to voice, from journey to inheritance. Some characters, incidents, places, and facts may be real, while others are imaginatively reinterpreted.

All rights are reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including printing, photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, send an email to the author at trishikh@gmail.com or get in touch with Trishikh on the CONTACT page of this website.

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Trishikh Dasgupta

Adventurer, philosopher, writer, painter, photographer, craftsman, innovator, or just a momentary speck in the universe flickering to leave behind a footprint on the sands of time... READ MORE

---