Welcome to House of History. During the Second World War, the Japanese had quite a different
war ethos than the Allied powers and even their own allies such as the Germans and Italians.
During the later stages of the war, they deployed so-called kamikaze pilots: pilots that mobilised
their aircraft as a weapon and crashed into enemy ships. So where exactly did the term
kamikaze come from and what is the story behind these pilots?
As for the origins of the word kamikaze, there actually is a very long historical tradition
of the word. It refers to a mythical divine wind that supposedly blew over Japan centuries
ago. According to this tale, this divine wind protected the island when during the 13th
century the Mongols tried to invade it with boats. The grandson of Ghengis Khan, Kublai
Khan, attempted to invade the island twice with a massive fleet. These invasions failed
because a typhoon destroyed the majority of the Mongol fleet. These storms were called
kamikaze and served an important role in later history when explaining the failed Mongol
invasion. During the Second World War the Japanese army command reasoned that just like
the divine wind that repelled the Mongols, the Japanese kamikaze pilots would fight the
US ships. Now using kamikaze pilots wasn’t a familiar
tactic at the beginning of the war. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until late 1944 that
the Japanese high command considered the idea of utilising kamikaze pilots. This idea of
sacrificing oneself in such a way for the emperor and empire wasn’t completely new
though. Before the first kamikaze attack the second world war had already seen Banzai-charges:
Japanese soldiers, and sometimes even civilians, that charged at their enemy, sometimes with
bombs strapped to their body, sometimes without. They preferred death over capture by US troops.
Japanese propaganda played an important role as well: Japanese soldiers were told horror
stories about the treatment of POWs by US soldiers, which led them to think death was
the least painful and most honourable way out.
Yet as the war progressed, Japan suffered material and resource shortages. By late 1944
the Japanese high command considered an American invasion on the mainland to be a serious threat,
if not inevitable. By October 1944 the recently appointed commander of the 1st Air Fleet Takijiro
Onishi started to test the waters with other commanders about a new strategy. In his opinion,
it was the only strategy that could win Japan the war, or at least prolong it: use pilots
that would suicidally charge into US ships with their specifically designed aircraft,
including attached bombs. Now initially while some commanders accepted
his plan, there was some resistance among both the top Navy and army commanders. As
internal discussions went on, several high-ranking officers felt there was no time to waste,
however. Disregarding the fact kamikaze was not yet an official strategy, rear admiral
Masafumi Arima decided to organise his own kamikaze mission.
And on the 15th of October 1944, he became Japan’s first kamikaze pilot. He used his
Mitsubishi G4M twin-engine bomber and supposedly flew into the aircraft carrier, USS Franklin.
Although sources are conflicting on whether Masafumi actually reached the USS Franklin
or he crashed beforehand, what is certain is that the carrier suffered considerable
damage. Regardless of whether the kamikaze attack was succesful - it became a massive
propaganda-tool for Japanese media and the military and Masafumi was credited with being
Japan’s first kamikaze pilot. Following this attack Onishi established the first suicide
brigade, the tokkotai, an abbreviation of the Japanese term of special attack unit.
It earned Onishi the dubious nickname the “father of the kamikaze”. But the term
kamikaze was only used informally, and only after the term gained popularity abroad did
it become a commonly accepted term in Japan. The brigades were formed on the Malabaca Air
Base in the Philippines. When the concept was relayed to the local squadron commanders
it is said they received it in ‘a frenzy of enthusiasm and happiness’. In short:
Japanese soldiers received the order to die for their fatherland. That
goes for all those Japanese soldiers that literally fought to the last man: there are
so many accounts of battles for islands in the pacific where thousands of Japanese soldiers
were killed and only a dozen captured. One of the reasons was the military code from
1872, stating that soldiers that surrendered or fled should be killed. But there is a deeper,
collective psychological reason for this notion as well. It was the heritage of the feudal
samurai culture and the tradition of bushido and harakiri: committing suicide was seen
as a sign of personal courage. During those last couple of months of the
war, Japanese Kamikaze pilots managed to sink 34 United States ships and aircraft carriers,
and seriously damage hundreds of others. A common myth is that these kamikaze pilots
willingly carried out their missions. While some pilots certainly jumped at the opportunity
to sacrifice their life for the emperor, anthropologists and historians dispute this claim. The social
pressure these pilots suffered was very extreme. Japanese anthropologist Ohnuki-Tierney refutes
the myth of voluntary sacrifice among pilots. One of the key differences was that traditional
harakiri was an individual decision. At the same time, kamikaze pilots were selected in
groups and if you didn’t want to go on the mission, you’d have to withdraw in front
of your peers. As you can imagine, the peer pressure was immense, and those that did refuse
their assignments were sent to the deadliest fronts, where one would near certainly perish
in the last stand. Now, I mentioned the first unofficial kamikaze
mission, but the first official kamikaze attack is much better documented. This photograph
shows the men of the first of three kamikaze units having a ceremonial toast of water as
a farewell. 23-year-old Lieutenant Yukio Seki led the squadron. It consisted of 5 Mitshubishi
Zero’s each carrying a 250 kg bomb with the mission to fly it into US aircraft carriers
during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The goal of the mission was to paralyse the US fleet
for at least a week, for the Japanese fleet to prevent a US landing on the mainland. The
mission, however, wasn’t a success. It wasn’t, like the earlier mission, because the pilots
missed their targets. All five planes crashed into US carriers and even sank the USS St.
Lo, killing 143 of its crew. But the damage on other US carriers didn’t cause too much
disruption and at most delayed the US fleet for several days.
Even though the mission cannot be considered the staggering success the Japanese military
command hoped for, vice-admiral Onishi and the Japanese propaganda machine welcomed it
as if it was an unprecedented victory. They broadly publicized about the courage of the
kamikaze pilots. Due to this propaganda-storm, both the military and the Japanese public
started to see kamikaze missions as a necessity for the war effort.
The initial kamikaze missions were carried out with Japanese Mitsubishi fighter planes.
But soon the Japanese developed the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, a human-guided kamikaze attack
aircraft. On it the cherry blossom was painted, a symbol used to stoke militarism and nationalism
among the populace. These aircraft were specifically designed for suicide attack missions.
And as for the composition of Kamikaze units, well it had some very telling statistics.
Over 75 per cent were young men, most of them in their late teens and early 20s. In total
well over 3800 Japanese pilots ended up dying in kamikaze attacks. Around 1000 of these
were young men that had just graduated university and were promptly selected to join a kamikaze
unit. No high-ranking officers were recruited, and no descendants of prominent Japanese families
either. That is not to say high-ranking Japanese officers didn’t join kamikaze missions - the
first unofficial mission was carried out by a rear admiral and the last attack, which
I made a separate video of, was carried out by another admiral. Kamikaze missions initially
remained small in scale. The Battle of Okinawa in June 1945 saw the first large-scale use
of kamikaze pilots. During this battle, one of the bloodiest of the entire war in the
Pacific, over 1500 Kamikaze attacks were registered. The incredibly bloody battle led to between
77 and 110.000 killed Japanese soldiers and Okinawan conscripts. Yet it was not for another
two months, until the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagaski, that Japan finally
surrendered. The day after Japan surrendered Takijiro Onishi
committed ritual suicide, seppuku, and wrote a letter in which he apologised for the deaths
of around 4000 pilots he had sent on kamikaze missions. He included a poem that read “Refreshed
/ I feel like the clear moon / after a storm”. He then slit his abdomen with his sword and
stabbed himself in the chest. After the war one of Onishi’s subordinates wrote a classic
book called ‘the Divine Wind’ in which he called the use of kamikaze pilots unforgivable.
In 1975 the Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots was built. It is built on the site
of the airbase at Chiran, where hundreds of kamikaze pilots took off for their final flight
during the last stages of the war. Now if you’re interested in more stories
about Kamikaze pilots, there will be some end-cards on-screen about both the story of
the last Japanese kamikaze attacks and the incredibly tragic story of First Lieutenant
Hajime Fuji, a man whose family sacrificed themselves so he would not be held back in
performing his perceived duty of carrying out a kamikaze attack.
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