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In the final year of World War II, a horrific new weapon was unleashed in the Pacific: the kamikaze. Idealistic, young Japanese men had been taught that there was no greater glory than to sacrifice one’s life to defend the homeland. Now, with the war all but lost, thousands of these determined warriors were hastily trained in the basics of piloting an airplane, then sent out in waves to crash into enemy warships, suicide attacks that killed altogether some seven thousand American sailors.
But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle and lived? In the wake of 9/11, ethnographer M. G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cloistered community of Japan’s last remaining kamikaze survivors. As an American fluent in Japanese, Sheftall was the only westerner to ever sit face-to-face with these men and hear their stories. The result is a fascinating journey into the lives, indoctrination, and mindsets of the kamikaze, through the eyes of participants who are now lost to time.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 9, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593472323
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593472323
- File size: 2447 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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June 13, 2005
An independent scholar, long a resident of Japan, has produced a superior addition to the literature on Japan's tokko
, or suicide, warriors. Suicidal missions—in the air (both conventional aircraft and the ineffective Ohka guided bomb) and at sea (the even less effective Kaiten manned torpedo)—had been under development during much of WWII, but the large-scale operations were launched in defense of the Philippines in October 1944. Thanks to unparalleled access to the surviving tokko
personnel and a gift for characterization worthy of a first-rank novelist, the author gives us an extraordinary range of humanity, including Toshio Yoshitake, who flew obsolete attack planes all over the Philippines; Tokuro Takei, who became a suicide pilot while a teenager; and Iwao Fukagawa, holding his father's hand in farewell—as well as tokko
founding father Adm. Onishi Takijirou. The author's description of the right-wing Japanese politics surrounding this part of WWII history and the resentment of many Japanese at comparisons of 9/11 to the tokko
missions may raise eyebrows, but the book is remarkably evenhanded as to the vexed question of war guilt, and enormously rewarding if read carefully.
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