Kamikaze Diaries

The book is basically about the history of some of the Japanese kamikaze. The entires are based on diaries or other writings of the students who became kamikaze. It is not an actual collection of long diary entries, though. It's more a summation of the individual histories and thoughts of those who died.

The introduction goes into how students were recruited into the war effort. An interesting quote from this section is: 'The Japanese military tradition had a distinctive, almost unique element. Whereas German soldiers were told to kill, Japanese soldiers were told to die.' That is, they were to fight to the death and never to be taken prisoner.

Some Japanese soldiers were subject to being shot by their own troops if they tried to escape or surrender to the Americans.

Various forms of coercion to get students to become kamikaze are examined, including peer pressure, and punishment for not volunteering by being sent to the front lines in some really bad area. There was also the old standby that if a particular higher-up didn't like you for some reason, you could end up a kamikaze whether you liked it or not.

One of the impressions you get when looking at the diary entries and writings of these student soldiers is that the Japanese lost an terrible amount of great potential in these young men. Many of them were quite intellectual and could have ended up making very valuable contributions in society; instead, they ended up in planes, boats, subs, and rocket-propelled craft to try to die on purpose and take as many Americans with them as they could.

Another interesting thing is how the students saw the emphasis of the students as their identity as men, and the stereotyped image that they adhered to of what the proper manly man does.

There were at least some of the kamikaze that didn't really believe in the war, and didn't believe in dying in the way they would, but out of loyalty to the Emperor or their family or their peer group they still went and did what they were ordered to do.



Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page