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| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze Attacks of World War II Robin L. Rielly, 2012-09-04 Drawing on U.S. government reports, interrogation reports of Japanese officers, ship action reports and secondary sources, this book details more than 400 kamikaze attacks by Japanese aircraft, manned torpedoes, suicide boats and suicide swimmers against U.S. ships during World War II. Part One focuses on the traditions, development and history of the kamikazes, including the origins of the samurai class and its ethos, the development of kamikaze aircraft and watercraft, and the indoctrination of children in the Japanese school system. Part Two details the kamikaze attacks on ships in the waters around the Philippines, Iwo Jima, Taiwan, Okinawa and Japan. Appendices list all of the U.S. ships suffering kamikaze attacks along with casualty figures, outlines and silhouettes of various U.S. ships involved in kamikaze attacks, and silhouettes of Japanese kamikaze aircraft. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze Steven J. Zaloga, 2011-09-20 The destruction of much of the remainder of the Japanese fleet and its air arm in the later half of 1944 left the Japanese Home Islands vulnerable to attack by US naval and air forces. In desperation, the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed using special attack†? formations, or suicide attacks. These initially consisted of crude improvisations of conventional aircraft fitted with high-explosive bombs that could be crashed into US warships. Called Divine Wind†? (Kamikaze), the special attack formations first saw action in 1944, and became the scourge of the US fleet in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. In view of the success of these attacks, the Japanese armed forces began to develop an entire range of new special attack weapons. This book will begin by examining the initial kamikaze aircraft attacks, but the focus of the book will be on the dedicated special attack weapons developed in 1944. It also covers specialized suicide attack weapons such as anti-tank lunge mines. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Kamikaze Hunters Will Iredale, 2016-06-07 In May 1945, with victory in Europe established, the war was all but over. But on the other side of the world, the Allies were still engaged in a bitter struggle to control the Pacific. And it was then that the Japanese unleashed a terrible new form of warfare: the suicide pilots, or Kamikaze.Drawing on meticulous research and unique personal access to the remaining survivors, Will Iredale follows a group of young men from the moment they signed up through their initial training to the terrifying reality of fighting against pilots who, in the cruel last summer of the war, chose death rather than risk their country's dishonorable defeat—and deliberately flew their planes into Allied aircraft carriers. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: American Aces against the Kamikaze Edward M. Young, 2013-09-20 This illustrated history describes the clashes between the US against the hastily created Kamikaze units of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy Air Forces, some of the last large scale aerial engagements of the Pacific War. The Japanese High Command realised that the loss of Okinawa would give the Americans a base for the invasion of Japan. Its desperate response was to unleash the full force of the Special Attack Units, known in the west as the Kamikaze ('Divine Wind'). In a series of mass attacks in between April and June 1945, more than 900 Kamikaze aeroplanes were shot down. Conventional fighters and bombers accompanied the Special Attack Units as escorts, and to add their own weight to the attacks on the US fleet. In the air battles leading up to the invasion of Okinawa, as well as those that raged over the island in the three months that followed, the Japanese lost more than 7,000 aircraft both in the air and on the ground. In the course of the fighting, 67 Navy, 21 Marine, and three USAAF pilots became aces. As Edward M Young shows, in many ways it was an uneven combat and on numerous occasions following these uneven contests, American fighter pilots would return from combat having shot down up to six Japanese aeroplanes during a single mission. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze Yasuo Kuwahara, Gordon T. Allred, 2007 The classic World War II autobiography describes the horrors of war and the author's brutal training and experiences as a kamikaze pilot. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Danger's Hour Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, 2008-11-11 In the closing months of World War II, Americans found themselves facing a new and terrifying weapon: kamikazes -- the first men to use airplanes as suicide weapons. By the beginning of 1945, American pilots were shooting down Japanese planes more than ten to one. The Japanese had so few metals left that the military had begun using wooden coins and clay pots for hand grenades. For the first time in 800 years, Japan faced imminent invasion. As Germany faltered, the combined strength of every warring nation gathered at Japan's door. Desperate, Japan turned to its most idealistic young men -- the best and brightest college students -- and demanded of them the greatest sacrifice. On the morning of May 11, 1945, days after the Nazi surrender, the USS Bunker Hill -- a magnificent vessel that held thousands of crewmen and the most sophisticated naval technology available -- was holding at the Pacific Theater, 70 miles off the coast of Okinawa. At precisely 9:58 a.m., Kiyoshi Ogawa radioed in to his base at Kanoya, 350 miles from the Bunker Hill, I found the enemy vessels. After eighteen months of training, Kiyoshi tucked a comrade's poem into his breast pocket and flew his Zero five hours across the Pacific. Now the young Japanese pilot had located his target and was on the verge of fulfilling his destiny. At 10:02.30 a.m., as he hovered above the Bunker Hill, hidden in a mass of clouds, Kiyoshi spoke his last words: Now, I am nose-diving into the ship. The attack killed 393 Americans and was the worst suicide attack against America until September 11. Juxtaposing Kiyoshi's story with the stories of untold heroism of the men aboard the Bunker Hill, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy details how American sailors and airmen worked together, risking their own lives to save their fellows and ultimately triumphing in their efforts to save their ship. Drawing on years of research and firsthand interviews with both American and Japanese survivors, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy draws a gripping portrait of men bravely serving their countries in war and the advent of a terrifying new weapon, suicide bombing, that nearly halted the most powerful nation in the world. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The US Navy in World War II Mark Henry, 2012-08-20 In 1941 the US Navy had 17 battleships - of which eight would be knocked out on the first day of the war - four aircraft carriers, and about 340,000 men including reservists. Pearl Harbor so weakened it that it was unable to prevent the Japanese capture of the Philippines and a vast sweep of Pacific islands. By 1945 it was the strongest navy the world had ever seen, with nearly 100 carriers, 41,000 aircraft and 3.3 million men; the unrivalled master of air-sea and amphibious operations, it was poised to invade Japan's home islands after reducing her fleet to scrap and her Pacific empire to impotence and starvation. This extraordinary story is illustrated here with dramatic photos, and nine meticulous colour plates showing a wide range of USN uniforms. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, 2002-10-01 Why did almost one thousand highly educated student soldiers volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to convince people that it was their honor to die like beautiful falling cherry petals for the emperor. Drawing on diaries never before published in English, Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and even defiance against the imperial ideology. Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically brief lives. Using Japan as an example, the author breaks new ground in the understanding of symbolic communication, nationalism, and totalitarian ideologies and their execution. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Torpedo Squadron Four - A Cockpit View of World War II Gerald W. Thomas, 2010-10 Thomas, in the only combat account of World War II Torpedo Bomber pilot ever published, relates his 25 months of service with Torpedo Squadron 4 (VT-4) on the USS RANGER, USS BUNKER HILL, and USS ESSEX. Thomas served in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters, and in some of the most important World War II battles. While on the RANGER, he participated in OPERATION LEADER, the most significant attack on Northern Europe by a US carrier during the war. During LEADER, while attacking a freight barge carrying 40 tons of ammunition, Thomas' plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Surprisingly, in spite of the considerable engine damage, the plane made it back to the RANGER, where Thomas crash-landed. That landing was his 13th official carrier landing. In the Pacific, Thomas participated in the numerous actions against Japanese targets in the Philippines, including strikes on Ormoc Bay, Cavite, Manilla, Santa Cruz, San Fernando, Lingayen, Mindoro, Clark Field and Aparri. Following these actions, Thomas' squadron made strikes on Formosa, French Indo-China, Saigon, Pescadores, Hainan, Amami O Shima, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Japan. The attack on Japan was the first attack on Japan from an aircraft carrier since the Doolittle Raid. While on the ESSEX, just after Thomas had returned from a strike on Santa Cruz, the ship was hit by a Kamikaze piloted by Yoshinori Yamaguchi, Yoshino Special Attack Corps. Yamaguchi was flying a Yokosuba D4Y3 dive bomber. The Kamikaze attack killed 16 crewman and wounded 44. Returning from a strike on Hainan, off the Chinese coast, Thomas' plane ran out of fuel. After a harrowing water landing, Thomas and squadron photographer Montague succeeded in inflating and launching one rubber boat and his crewman Gress another. After a long day in pre-Typhoon weather with 40 foot swells, the three were rescued by the USS SULLIVANS. In recounting the events in this book, Thomas draws upon his daily journal, his letters home, and extensive interviews and research conducted over 40 years with fellow pilots and crewman. The book cites 20 interviews and 5 combat journals, and contains 209 photos documenting the ships, planes, men, and combat actions of Torpedo Squadron 4. Many of the photographs were collected by Thomas during the war and include gun photo shots, recon photos, and, remarkably, a picture of the tail of Thomas' Torpedo plane as it sinks in the China Sea following his water crash landing. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze Diaries Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, 2007-03-01 “We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives.” So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or tokkotai, who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II. This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Thunder Gods Hatsuho Naitō, 1989 Thunder Gods is the compelling first-hand account of the pilots who pledged themselves to die for their emperor in the closing days of the Pacific War. Known to the world as kamikaze-divine wind-their suicide attacks on American naval forces caused panic and disruption, but they were bourn out of the desperation of the Imperial Command, determined to avoid the shame of surrender at any cost. Using as a rationale the loudly proclaimed belief that suicide attacks by Japanese pilots attested to the spiritural righteousness of Japan's struggle, the Command's exhortations convinced legions of young men of the virtue of bombs were contructed whose only guiding mechanism was their human cargo. The pilots are the thunder gods of the title, and this is the first time they have told their own story. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Thirty Minutes Over Oregon Marc Tyler Nobleman, 2018 In this important and moving true story of reconciliation after war, beautifully illustrated in watercolor, a Japanese pilot bombs the continental U.S. during World War II and comes back 20 years later to apologize. Full color. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze Adrian Stewart, 2020-07-30 This enlightening WWII history examines Japans Kamikaze Corps of special forces pilots who engaged in terrifying suicide attacks. By late 1944, the Japanese had already proved themselves fanatical in their quest for victory. But the actions of the Kamikaze Corps took matters to a new level. Western military forces were dumbfounded by an enemy strategy of deliberate self-sacrifice. Beginning with the Leyte Gulf battle, Kamikaze attacks continued during the invasion of the Philippines in early 1945 and reached a climax during the months-long Battle of Okinawa. In total, more than a thousand kamikaze airmen perished. In Kamikaze, historian Adrian Stewart examines the historic and cultural roots of the unique and unsettling phenomenon. He also provides graphic descriptions of these suicide attacks and their devastating impact on Allied forces. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Kamikazes Charles River Charles River Editors, 2014-07-23 *Includes pictures *Includes diary entries and other accounts written by kamikaze pilots *Includes a bibliography for further reading One of the most fascinating aspects of World War II was Japan's use of suicide pilots known around the globe as kamikazes, though the Japanese referred to them as Tokubetsu kogekitai (“Special Attack Units”). Translated as “God Wind,” “Divine Wind” and “God Spirit,” kamikazes would sink 47 Allied vessels and damage over 300 by the end of the war, but the rise in the use of kamikaze attacks was evidence of the loss of Japan's air superiority and its waning industrial might. This method of fighting would become more common by the time Iwo Jima was fought over in early 1945, and it was especially prevalent during the invasion of Okinawa in April 1945. The “privilege” of being selected as a kamikaze pilot played directly into the deep-seated Japanese mindset of “death before defeat.” The pilot training manual assured each kamikaze candidate that when they eliminated all thoughts of life and death, fear of losing the earthly life can be easily overcome. Still, not all cases of those chosen to be kamikazes were equally noble. Recruits were trained with torturous regimens or corporal punishment, and stories of mental impairment caused by drugs or saki abound. Some were described as “tottering” and dazed, being carried to their planes by maintenance officers, and forcibly pushed in if they backed down. Pilots who could not find their targets were told to turn around and spare their own lives for another day, but if a pilot returned nine times, he was to be shot. At the moment of collision, he was instructed to keep his eyes open at all times, and to shout “Hissatsu” (“clear kill”). Altogether, nearly 4,000 kamikaze pilots died in combat between October 1944 and August 1945, and about one in seven managed to hit his target. At their peak, they did far more damage to the American Navy than did conventional air attacks, and they undoubtedly placed a significant new obstacle in the path of the American forces slowly encircling the Japanese home islands. However, the widespread use of kamikaze tactics darkened and hardened attitudes toward Japan within the American military and helped to set the stage for the total war on Japanese civilians that the American military waged in the closing months of the war. The Marine Corps Gazette noted, “The ruthless atrocities by the Japanese throughout the war had already brought on an altered behavior (deemed so by traditional standards) by many Americans resulting in the desecration of Japanese remains, but the Japanese tactic of using the Okinawan people as human shields brought about a new aspect of terror and torment to the psychological capacity of the Americans.” As one sailor aboard the USS Miami recalled about kamikaze attacks at Okinawa, They came in swarms from all directions. The barrels of our ship's guns got so hot we had to use firehoses to cool them down. The kamikazes were the most effective weapon the Japanese had in terms of sinking ships, but they only appeared in the final year of the war. The fact that Japan's military leadership concluded it was both necessary and justified to establish special units of pilots trained to sacrifice their own lives by crashing their planes into enemy vessels was a mark of their own desperation. In the heat of battle, individual soldiers occasionally risked certain or near-certain death to protect their comrades or advance their mission, but organized unites devoted to suicide tactics were virtually unknown before 1944. They appeared only once the course of the war had turned decidedly against the Japanese. The Kamikazes chronicles the history of Japan's famous suicide pilots and explains when, why, and how Japan resorted to their use near the end of war. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the kamikazes like never before. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Japanese Special Attack Aircraft & Flying Bombs Ryusuke Ishiguro, 2009-05-01 Japanese Special Attack (Kamikaze) aircraft are well know, but not well described in literature. This book is the first in English on this subject. Details are provided of a wide selection of historic machines and fascinating color schemes, as well as full technical details. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Divine Wind Rikihei Inoguchi, Tadashi Nakajima, Roger Pineau, 1958 |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Operation Storm John Geoghegan, 2014-03-18 The riveting true story of Japan's top secret plan to change the course of World War II using a squadron of mammoth submarines a generation ahead of their time In 1941, the architects of Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor planned a bold follow-up: a potentially devastating air raid—this time against New York City and Washington, DC. The classified Japanese program required developing a squadron of top secret submarines—the Sen-toku or I-400 class—designed as underwater aircraft carriers, each equipped with three Aichi M6A1 attack bombers painted to look like U.S. aircraft. The bombers, called Seiran (which translates as “storm from a clear sky”), were tucked in a huge, water-tight hanger on the sub’s deck. The subs' mission was to travel more than halfway around the world, surface on the U.S. coast, and launch their deadly air attack. This entire operation was unknown to U.S. intelligence. And the amazing thing is how close the Japanese came to pulling it off. John Geoghegan’s meticulous research, including first-person accounts from the I-401 crew and the U.S. capturing party, creates a fascinating portrait of the Sen-toku's desperate push into Allied waters and the U.S. Navy's dramatic pursuit, masterfully illuminating a previously forgotten story of the Pacific war. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Sacred Warriors Denis Warner, Peggy Warner, 1984 |
| kamikaze planes ww2: At War With The Wind David Sears, 2008 In the last days of World War II, a new and baffling weapon terrorized the United States Navy in the Pacific. To the sailors who learned to fear them, the body-crashing warriors of Japan were known as suiciders; among the Japanese, they were named for a divine wind that once saved the home islands from invasion: kamikaze. Told from the perspective of the men who endured this horrifying tactic, At War with the Wind is the first book to recount in nail-biting detail what it was like to experience an attack by Japanese kamikazes. David Sears, acclaimed author of The Last Epic Naval Battle, draws on personal interviews and unprecedented research to create a narrative of war that is stunning in its vivid re-creations. Born of desperation in the face of overwhelming material superiority, suicide attacks-by aircraft, submarines, small boats, and even manned rocket-boosted gliders-were capable of inflicting catastrophic damage, testing the resolve of officers and sailors as never before. Sears's gripping account focuses on the vessels whose crews experienced the full range of the kamikaze nightmare. From carrier USS St. Lo, the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by an orchestrated kamikaze attack, to USS Henrico, a transport ship that survived the landings at Normandy only to be sent to the Pacific and struck by suicide planes off Okinawa, and USS Mannert L. Abele, the only vessel sunk by a rocket-boosted piloted glider during the war, these unforgettable stories reveal, as never before, one of the most horrifying and misunderstood chapters of World War II. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Hiroshima John Hersey, 2020-06-23 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author John Hersey's seminal work of narrative nonfiction which has defined the way we think about nuclear warfare. “One of the great classics of the war (The New Republic) that tells what happened in Hiroshima during World War II through the memories of the survivors of the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. The perspective [Hiroshima] offers from the bomb’s actual victims is the mandatory counterpart to any Oppenheimer viewing. —GQ Magazine “Nothing can be said about this book that can equal what the book has to say. It speaks for itself, and in an unforgettable way, for humanity.” —The New York Times Hiroshima is the story of six human beings who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. John Hersey tells what these six -- a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest -- were doing at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. Then he follows the course of their lives hour by hour, day by day. The New Yorker of August 31, 1946, devoted all its space to this story. The immediate repercussions were vast: newspapers here and abroad reprinted it; during evening half-hours it was read over the network of the American Broadcasting Company; leading editorials were devoted to it in uncounted newspapers. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told. His account of what he discovered about them -- the variety of ways in which they responded to the past and went on with their lives -- is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikazes, Corsairs, and Picket Ships Robin L. Rielly, 2008-09-05 The untold story of ferocious air and naval combat during the WWII Battle of Okinawa—drawn from primary sources and survivor interviews. This is the story of an overlooked yet significant aerial and naval battle during the American assault on Okinawa in the spring of 1945. While losses to America’s main fleet are well recorded, less well known is the terrific battle waged on the radar picket line, the fleet’s outer defense against Japanese marauders. Weaving together the experiences of the ships and their crews—drawn from ship and aircraft action reports, ship logs, and personal interviews—historian Robin L. Reilly recounts one of the most ferocious air and naval battles in history. The US fleet—and its accompanying airpower—was so massive that the Japanese could only rely on suicide attacks to inflict critical damage. Of the 206 ships that served on radar picket duty, twenty-nine percent were sunk or damaged by Japanese air attacks, making theirs the most hazardous naval surface duty in World War II. The great losses were largely due to relentless kamikaze attacks, but also resulted from the improper use of support gunboats, failure to establish land-based radar at the earliest possible time, the assignment of ships ill-equipped for picket duty, and, as time went on, crew fatigue. US air cover during the battle is also described in full, as squadrons dashed from their carriers and land bases to intercept the Japanese swarms, resulting in constant melees over the fleet. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Secret Weapons and World War II Walter E. Grunden, 2005 Grunden's analysis of this fundamental flaw in the Japanese war effort seamlessly weaves together science, technology, and military history to provide an entirely unique look at a crucial but understudied aspect of World War II. Comparing the science and weapons programs of all the major combatants, he demonstrates that Japan's failure was nearly inevitable, given its paucity of strategic resources, an inadequate industrial base, the absence of effective centralized management to coordinate research, military hostility toward civilian scientists, and bitter interservice rivalries. In the end, Japan could not overcome these obstacles and thus failed to make the transition to the kind of Big Science it needed to ward off its enemies and dominate the Far East.--BOOK JACKET. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Days of Steel Rain Brent E. Jones, 2021-05-11 This intimate true account of Americans at war follows theepic drama of an unlikely group of men forced to work together in the face of an increasingly desperate enemy during the final year of World War II. Sprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built vengeance ship USS Astoria, named for her sunken predecessor lost earlier in the war. At its center lies U.S. Navy Captain George Dyer, who vowed to return to action after suffering a horrific wound. He accepted the ship's command in 1944, knowing it would be his last chance to avenge his injuries and salvage his career. Yet with the nation's resources and personnel stretched thin by the war, he found that just getting the ship into action would prove to be a battle. Tensions among the crew flared from the start. Astoria's sailors and Marines were a collection of replacements, retreads, and older men. Some were broken by previous traumatic combat, most had no desire to be in the war, yet all found themselves fighting an enemy more afraid of surrender than death. The reluctant ship was called to respond to challenges that its men never could have anticipated. From a typhoon where the ocean was enemy to daring rescue missions, a gallant turn at Iwo Jima, and the ultimate crucible against the Kamikaze at Okinawa, they endured the worst of the final year of the war at sea. Days of Steel Rain brings to life more than a decade of research and firsthand interviews, depicting with unprecedented insight the singular drama of a captain grappling with an untested crew and men who had endured enough amidst some of the most brutal fighting of World War II. Throughout, Brent Jones fills the narrative with secret diaries, memoirs, letters, interpersonal conflicts, and the innermost thoughts of the Astoria men—and more than 80 photographs that have never before been published. Days of Steel Rain weaves an intimate, unforgettable portrait of leadership, heroism, endurance, and redemption. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Blossoms in the Wind M. G. Sheftall, 2023-05-09 Back with Caliber after more than a decade out of print, a revelatory and groundbreaking account of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze—the suicide pilots of World War II—as told through the eyes of the survivors 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. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Piggyback Flight Pilot's Journey Cyndi Rojohn, 2018-12-05 The airfield is quiet now! A warm breeze bends the grass that was once moved by the engine of the flying fortresses. Seventy-four years earlier, Glenn H. Rojohn would take off from Thorpe Abbotts and be involved in an event that raises questions to this day!!! The Piggyback Flight is the story of courage, heroism, and legend. -Michael Faley, 100th Bomb Group Historian In early December 1944, flight engineer T/Sgt Conley Culpepper flew aboard The Little Skipper&q |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Ship that Would Not Die F. Julian Becton, Joseph Morschauser, 1980 |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Bodies of Memory Yoshikuni Igarashi, 2000 Japan and the United States became close political allies so quickly after the end of World War II, that it seemed as though the two countries had easily forgotten the war they had fought. Here Yoshikuni Igarashi offers a provocative look at how Japanese postwar society struggled to understand its war loss and the resulting national trauma, even as forces within the society sought to suppress these memories. Igarashi argues that Japan's nationhood survived the war's destruction in part through a popular culture that expressed memories of loss and devastation more readily than political discourse ever could. He shows how the desire to represent the past motivated Japan's cultural productions in the first twenty-five years of the postwar period. Japanese war experiences were often described through narrative devices that downplayed the war's disruptive effects on Japan's history. Rather than treat these narratives as obstacles to historical inquiry, Igarashi reads them along with counter-narratives that attempted to register the original impact of the war. He traces the tensions between remembering and forgetting by focusing on the body as the central site for Japan's production of the past. This approach leads to fascinating discussions of such diverse topics as the use of the atomic bomb, hygiene policies under the U.S. occupation, the monstrous body of Godzilla, the first Western professional wrestling matches in Japan, the transformation of Tokyo and the athletic body for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the writer Yukio Mishima's dramatic suicide, while providing a fresh critical perspective on the war legacy of Japan. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kaiten Michael Mair, Joy Waldron, 2014-05-06 In November 1944, the U.S. Navy fleet lay at anchor deep in the Pacific Ocean, when the oiler USS Mississinewa exploded. Japan’s secret weapon, the Kaiten—a manned suicide submarine—had succeeded in its first mission. The Kaiten was so secret that even Japanese naval commanders didn’t know of its existence. And the Americans kept it secret as well. Embarrassed by the attack, the U.S. Navy refused to salvage the sunken Mighty Miss. Not until 2001, when a diving team located the wreck, would survivors learn what really happened. In Kaiten, Michael Mair and Joy Waldron tell the full story, from newly revealed secrets of the Kaiten development and training schools to gripping firsthand accounts of U.S. Navy survivors in the wake of the attack, as well as the harrowing recovery efforts that came later. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Memoirs of a Kamikaze Kazuo Odachi, Shigeru Ohta, 2020-09-15 **Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner** An incredible, untold story of survival and acceptance that sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history. This book tells the story of Kazuo Odachi who--in 1943, when he was just 16 years-old--joined the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a pilot. A year later, he was unknowingly assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps--a group of airmen whose mission was to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into enemy ships. Their callsign was ten dead, zero alive. By picking up Memoirs of a Kamikaze, readers will experience the hardships of fighter pilot training--dipping and diving and watching as other trainees crash into nearby mountainsides. They'll witness the psychological trauma of coming to terms with death before each mission, and breathe a sigh of relief with Odachi when his last mission is cut short by Japan's eventual surrender. They'll feel the anger at a government and society that swept so much of the sacrifice under the rug in its desperation to rebuild. Odachi's innate samurai spirit carried him through childhood, WWII and his eventual life as a kendo instructor, police officer and detective. His attention to detail, unwavering self-discipline and impenetrably strong mind were often the difference between life and death. Odachi, who is now well into his nineties, kept his Kamikaze past a secret for most of his life. Seven decades later, he agreed to sit for nearly seventy hours of interviews with the authors of this book--who know Odachi personally. He felt it was his responsibility to finally reveal the truth about the Kamikaze pilots: that they were unsuspecting teenagers and young men asked to do the bidding of superior officers who were never held to account. This book offers a new perspective on these infamous suicide pilots. It is not a chronicle of war, nor is it a collection of research papers compiled by scholars. It is a transcript of Odachi's words. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Zero Fighter Akira Yoshimura, 1996-03-11 Both the superiority of the aircraft in the early stages of the Pacific War and the great stature of Jiro Horikoshi as an aircraft designer (he is to Japan what the designer of the Spitfire is to the U.K.) will come as a revelation to most readers here. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Rising Sun John Toland, 2011-10 A chronicle of the World War II rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invation of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from the Japanese perspective. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Japan at War Haruko Taya Cook, Theodore F. Cook, 2005-06 In a vivid, sweeping panorama, this captivating oral history relates the remarkable story of Japanese people living during World War II, offering the first glimpses of how this century's most violent conflict affected the lives of the ordinary Japanese population. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze Attacks of World War II Robin L. Rielly, 2010 This book details more than 400 kamikaze attacks performed by Japanese aircraft, manned torpedoes, suicide boats and suicide swimmers against U.S. ships during World War II. Part One focuses on the traditions, development and history. Part Two details the kamikaze attacks on ships. Appendices list all of the U.S. ships suffering kamikaze attacks--Provided by publisher. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: เน€เธ‡เธดเธ™เธ--เธธเธ™เน€เธ„เธฅเธทเนˆเธญเธ™เธขเน‰เธฒเธขเธฃเธฐเธซเธงเนˆเธฒเธ‡เธ›เธฃเธฐเน€เธ--เธจเน เธฅเธฐเธ เธฅเธขเธธเธ--เธ˜เนŒเธ™เน‚เธขเธšเธฒเธขเธ เธฒเธฃเน€เธ‡เธดเธ™เธซเธฅเธฑเธ‡เธงเธดเธ เธคเธ•เน€เธจเธฃเธฉเธ เธ เธดเธˆเน€เธญเน€เธŠเธตเธข , 2000 |
| kamikaze planes ww2: A Tale for the Time Being Ruth Ozeki, 2013-03-11 In the wake of the 2011 tsunami, Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home in British Columbia. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes, heartbreak and dreams of a young girl desperate for someone to understand her. Each turn of the page pulls Ruth deeper into the mystery of Nao’s life, and forever changes her in a way neither could foresee. Weaving across continents and decades, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about our shared humanity and the search for home. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze , 2018 |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Kamikaze Nightmare Ron Burt, 2013-01-08 BOOK REVIEW BY: Tin Can Sailors - The National Association of Destroyer Veterans Reviewer: Bernie Ditter Overall Rating: Four Stars: Highly recommended. An excelllent book. Ron Burt writes a compelling story about his older brother's heroism and injuries received at the hands of Kamikaze direct hits on two ships, about his brother's recovery from those injuries and about his own efforts to gather the information necessary to support the process to have his brother awarded the Navy Cross and Silver Star. His brother, Pete Burt, was on the USS OMMANEY BAY (CVE-79) when it was sunk by a Kamikaze attack. While he was in the water following the order to abandon ship he gathered ten non-swimmers and kept them together until rescued. The officer on the whaleboat told Pete that he planned to recommend him for the medals. Following his rescue he was transferred to the USS COLUMBIA (CL-56) where two days later it too was struck by a Kamikaze attack resulting in the injuries sustained by Pete Burt. He was to survive fifty surgeries and twenty-two and one half months in hospitals and nearly a lifetime of post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). During much of this time his brother Ron, a four year Navy veteran of the Korean Conflict and a tin can sailor (USS SHELTON (DD-790), spent years of research and writing his account of his efforts to locate veterans who could corroborate Pete's heroism. He contacted the Navy, veteran's organizations, his congressman, placed ads in veterans magazines and contacted numerous veterans by phone, mail and in person. He went to the reunion of the survivors of the OMMANY attack in 1990 and spoke to the nearly 120 veterans and their families who were there. The result is a book that is unique in that it puts a face to the Kamikaze pilots who committed these atrocities, provides vivid first person accounts of the experience (as painful as they are) and gives us a hero that we can all identify with, one who was there and who lived through it with grace. This is a book that will make you think about war in all of its ugliness. Availability: Amazon.com * * * This book (with 28 photographs) is about my brother, Pete Burt, a survivor of four Japanese kamikaze crashes while on board the USS Ommaney Bay (CVE-79) and the USS Columbia (CL-56). These two ships encountered countless attacks from the kamikazes. The Ommaney Bay was sunk while the Columbia sustained three hits, seriously injuring Pete. He was pronounced dead twice, unconscious for 7 days and hospitalized for 22 1/2 months, undergoing 50 operations during that period. He suffered from PTSD for 32 years. For 44 years, he contended that the kamikaze pilot was a woman. Research uncovers a unique aspect of the kamikaze that has remained dormant for years. * * * The Dept. of The Navy has deposited Kamikaze Nightmare in their Operational Archives Branch to allow for its preservation and availability to researchers. The book is a fine addition to the Center's World War II Collections and is especially valuable because it adds a personal dimension that is lacking from the official records. Ltr. Aug 1995. * * * Ron Burt holds a Bachelor of Science in Commerce degree from Texas Christian University. A Korean War Veteran, he served on board two vessels, a patrol frigate, the USS Burlington (PF-51) and a destroyer, the USS Shelton (DD-790), from December 1950 to May 1954. He made four cruises to the Far East during that period and earned five combat stars while in Korea. He was on board the Shelton on February 22, 1952, while that ship was defending the island of Yang Do, near Songin, North Korea, from further invasion attempts by the North Korean Communists. The Shelton suffered four direct hits and fifty near hits from five mobile shore battery guns resulting in twelve casualties. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: December 7, 1941 Gordon William Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon, 1988 The last of the Prange manuscripts about Pearl Harbor--Page ix. A detailed chronological account of the day. Includes reminiscences of officers, both American and Japanese. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: The Indestructible Man Don Keith, David Rocco, 2017-07-02 Dixie Kiefer was a true World War II hero. He was the first man to fly an airplane off a ship at night, Executive Officer on the carrier USS Yorktown at the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, and skipper of USS Ticonderoga when she came under brutal attack by Japanese kamikaze planes. Through it all, he performed coolly and heroically, leading his men through hell and back. But Captain Dixie was much more. He was a sailor's skipper. A man who would not ask his men to do anything he would not do. He referred to his crew as Dixie's kids. His regular cocktail club meetings aboard his ships were legendary. And he even had a key role in an Academy Award-winning movie. When his big aircraft carrier was hit by suicide planes, he remained on the bridge overseeing defenses and damage control for twelve hours even though he had suffered more than sixty serious shrapnel wounds and a badly broken right arm. It was not the first time he had been injured in battle but carried on performing amazing feats. His men joked their skipper had so much shrapnel in his body that the ship's compass followed him. When the Secretary of the Navy awarded Dixie a medal for his amazing valor, he proclaimed Kiefer to be The Indestructible Man. But nobody could have foreseen the end to Captain Dixie's story. Now, for the first time, Don Keith and David Rocco tell the full story of this pioneering hero who inspired not only the men with whom he served but an entire nation at war. |
| kamikaze planes ww2: Beyond Pearl Harbor Ron Wemeth, 2008 This book is the story of the air war in the Pacific through the eyes of the last surviving Imperial Japanese Naval aviators of World War II, chronicled through never before published first-hand accounts, wartime diaries, and private photographs. Living in Japan for over half a decade, the author befriended the survivors of Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima to gather this trove of stories and images. Meticulously translated and painstakingly researched, all of the veterans' accounts in this book are supported by both official Japanese and Allied records, together with first-hand narratives of American and British participants in these pivotal, historic battles. |
Kamikaze - Wikipedia
Kamikaze aircraft were pilot-guided explosive missiles, either purpose-built or converted from conventional aircraft. Pilots would attempt to crash their aircraft into enemy ships in what was …
Kamikaze | Pilots & Aircraft | Britannica
May 23, 2025 · kamikaze, any of the Japanese pilots who in World War II made deliberate suicidal crashes into enemy targets, usually ships. The term also denotes the aircraft used in such …
Japanese Kamikazes: Heroic or Horrifying? | HowStuffWorks
Jul 22, 2024 · When Mongol emperor Kublai Khan sent his naval fleets to attack Japan in the 13th century, fierce winds twice repelled the invasions. The Japanese considered these storms …
KAMIKAZE Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of KAMIKAZE is a member of a Japanese air attack corps in World War II assigned to make a suicidal crash on a target (such as a ship). Did you know?
Kamikaze Pilots: What Was The Real Story? - History
The Origins of Kamikaze. The word “Kamikaze” is Japanese for “divine wind.” The term originally referred to a typhoon that destroyed a Mongolian fleet that was invading Japan in 1281. …
How Japan's Kamikaze Attacks Become a WWII Strategy - HISTORY
Dec 5, 2018 · The USS Laffey engages in a heated battle against 22 kamikazes off the coast of Okinawa in the most concentrated kamikaze attack of World War II. The new terror descended …
10 Facts About The Kamikaze You Probably Didn’t Know
Feb 5, 2017 · Kamikaze suicide attacks were one of the most frightful tactics of the Pacific theater during World War II. Named after the divine wind of a hurricane that repelled Mongol invaders …
The Kamikaze: Inside Japan’s Devastating Suicide Attacks Of …
Sep 4, 2021 · Thousands of Japanese kamikaze pilots, known as the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai, sacrificed themselves during World War 2 through suicide attacks. “I have to accept the fate of …
The Divine Wind: Japan's Kamikaze Pilots of World War II by …
As American ground forces fought for control of Okinawa in the spring of 1945, Japanese Kamikaze pilots wreaked a grim toll on American naval forces.
Kamikaze - Encyclopedia.com
May 14, 2018 · kamikaze (Jap. ‘divine wind’) Name given to crews or their explosive-laden aircraft used by the Japanese during World War II. Their suicidal method of attack was to dive into …
Kamikaze - Wikipedia
Kamikaze aircraft were pilot-guided explosive missiles, either purpose-built or converted from conventional aircraft. Pilots would attempt to crash their aircraft into enemy ships in what was …
Kamikaze | Pilots & Aircraft | Britannica
May 23, 2025 · kamikaze, any of the Japanese pilots who in World War II made deliberate suicidal crashes into enemy targets, usually ships. The term also denotes the aircraft used in such …
Japanese Kamikazes: Heroic or Horrifying? | HowStuffWorks
Jul 22, 2024 · When Mongol emperor Kublai Khan sent his naval fleets to attack Japan in the 13th century, fierce winds twice repelled the invasions. The Japanese considered these storms …
KAMIKAZE Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of KAMIKAZE is a member of a Japanese air attack corps in World War II assigned to make a suicidal crash on a target (such as a ship). Did you know?
Kamikaze Pilots: What Was The Real Story? - History
The Origins of Kamikaze. The word “Kamikaze” is Japanese for “divine wind.” The term originally referred to a typhoon that destroyed a Mongolian fleet that was invading Japan in 1281. …
How Japan's Kamikaze Attacks Become a WWII Strategy - HISTORY
Dec 5, 2018 · The USS Laffey engages in a heated battle against 22 kamikazes off the coast of Okinawa in the most concentrated kamikaze attack of World War II. The new terror descended …
10 Facts About The Kamikaze You Probably Didn’t Know
Feb 5, 2017 · Kamikaze suicide attacks were one of the most frightful tactics of the Pacific theater during World War II. Named after the divine wind of a hurricane that repelled Mongol invaders …
The Kamikaze: Inside Japan’s Devastating Suicide Attacks Of …
Sep 4, 2021 · Thousands of Japanese kamikaze pilots, known as the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai, sacrificed themselves during World War 2 through suicide attacks. “I have to accept the fate of …
The Divine Wind: Japan's Kamikaze Pilots of World War II by …
As American ground forces fought for control of Okinawa in the spring of 1945, Japanese Kamikaze pilots wreaked a grim toll on American naval forces.
Kamikaze - Encyclopedia.com
May 14, 2018 · kamikaze (Jap. ‘divine wind’) Name given to crews or their explosive-laden aircraft used by the Japanese during World War II. Their suicidal method of attack was to dive into …
