The Divine Wind

The book was written by someone who worked closely with the man who came up with the idea for the kamikaze corps. It's also written in a style that is basically just the author talking to the reader and not boring the reader in any way. He covers the history of the kamikaze concept from the inside.

The author points out that the Japanese military knew that the American forces had command of the sea and the air. American ground soldiers coupled with the efforts of the Navy and the AAF were basically unstoppable. The Japanese military felt that they had no choice left to them but to go for the radical concept of the kamikaze. The book notes that there was no lack of enthusiasm among the Japanese soldiers who were willing to give up their lives in order to sink an American ship.

The book also does point out that the kamikaze were not always successful. Many of the pilots were lost in accidents or they had to turn back to base when they either couldn't find the American ships or their own planes developed mechanical problems.

The book goes into the last voyage of the Yamato which was a one-way voyage that ended in failure as the ship was intercepted by American planes and sunk.

The book also goes into how the Japanese estimates of American ships sunk tended to be inflated. One set of numbers for a specific time had the Japanese claiming they had sunk 37 American ships when they had really sunk 16.

There's also a brief discussion of the Japanese atomic bomb project.

It's good to get an insider's viewpoint of history.

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