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Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Samurai

The author starts right off comparing the kamikaze to today's suicide bombers. (The author does not seem to note the major difference; though. The kamikaze were trying to destroy military targets filled with military people. Today's suicide bombers often kill civilians. The ones in Iraq and like areas usually target military people, but many other attacks kill common people who have virtually nothing to do with what the bombers really want. That's quite different from the kamikaze.)

He says the kamikaze were recruited from four groups: patriotic crusaders, nation's face savers, young rationalists, and appointed daredevils.

He has an interesting thing to say in relation to the lack of cooperation between the Army and the Navy in Japan. They did not actually start to cooperate with each other until the attack on Okinawa.

A good example of how the fortunes changed for Japan was the length of pilot training, which was three and a half years at the start of the war, and three months near the end, the training dropping combat techniques entirely.

He notes how propaganda films in Japanese theaters extols the virtues and courage of the kamikaze.

Japan had hoped that the kamikaze would unnerve the Americans and cause them to maybe think twice about an actual invasion of the homeland, but things didn't work out that way. The Americans dealt with the kamikaze as a dangerous weapon of war, but they kept doing what they needed to do no matter what.

From October 1944 to January 15, 1945, kamikaze sunk two carriers, three destroyers, five transports and six other craft, and damaged 87 ships. The kamikaze lost 1,198 lives in the effort. That's 16 vessels sunk and 87 damaged for 1,198 lives. That amounts to 75 pilots dead per ship sunk, making the assume that the ones that were damaged were repaired and reentered service.

He also has a short chapter on the sinking of the Yamato, and later discusses the use of ships and people as kamikaze. He even has a chapter on the use of the balloon bombs, paper balloons launched from Japan whose purpose was to drift to the U.S. and drop explosives, starting forest fires and instilling panic in the country. (That program was pretty much a miserable failure.)

This is a good book that examines the multiple facets of the kamikaze which were not just planes but included a wide variety of other approaches.



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