Kamicaze pilots 2
Kamicaze pilots 2Kamikaze Pilots
During World War II in the Pacific, there were pilots of the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy who made suicide attacks, driving their planes to deliberately crash into carriers and battle- ships of the Allied forces. These were the pilots known as the Kamikaze pilots. Because right-wing organizations have used the Kamikaze pilots as a symbol of a militaristic and extremely nationalistic Japan, the current Japanese respond to the issue with ignorance and false stereotypes and with generally negative and unsympathetic remarks. However, the Kamikaze fighters added a new wrinkle to navel warfare.
Kamikaze expressed their feelings and thoughts about the missions through haiku poems. In many of the haiku that the Kamikaze pilots wrote, the Emperor is mentioned in the first line. According to those who have lived through the early Showa period (1926-1945), the presence of Emperor Showa was like that of a god and he was more of a religious figure than a political one (Scoggins 276-277). In public schools, students were taught to die for the emperor. By late 1944, a slogan of Jusshi Reisho meaning "Sacrifice life," was taught (Morimoto 148-151). Most of the pilots who volunteered for the suicide attacks were those who were born late in the Taisho period (1912-1926) or in the first two or three years of Showa. Therefore, they had gone through the brainwashing education, and were products of the militaristic Japan.
In 1944 the General Staff had considered mounting organized suicide attacks, (Ikuta 25) "suicide attacks" had been made since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Shinbusha 266) Two types of suicide attacks had been made. The first was an organized attack which would, in 90% of the cases, result in the death of the soldiers. However, if the plan had worked on the battlefield as it did in theory, there was some possibility that the soldiers would survive (Ibid 49). The other type of suicide attack that had been made was completely voluntary, and the result of a sudden decision. This was usually done by aircraft. The pilots, finding no efficient way to fight the American aircraft, deliberately crashed into them, and caused an explosion, destroying the American aircraft as well as killing themselves (Ikuta 35-42). Because these voluntary suicide attacks had shown that the young pilots had the spirit of dying rather than being defeated, by February, 1944, the staff officers had started to believe that although they were way below the Americans in the number of aircraft, battleships, skillful pilots and soldiers, and in the amount of natural resources (oil, for example), they were above the Americans in the number of young men who would fight to the death rather than be defeated. By organizing the "Tokkotai," they thought it would also attack the Americans psychologically, and make them lose their will to continue the war (Ibid 28). The person who suggested the Kamikaze attack at first is unknown, but it is...
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