above: The kamikaze pilots were members of special attack units near the end of the Second World War. Their mission was to be human bombs, one with their aeroplanes, sacrificing themselves by diving their planes into enemy ships with the goal of sinking them.
In the legendary Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, the naval aviator Saburo Sakai was credited with downing sixty-four Allied aircraft during the Second World War. In the first years of the war, the Zero was among the best fighter planes in the world, with its superior manoeuvrability, range and performance. Saburo Sakai, is among the most famous, and certainly among the greatest of the Japanese fighter pilots in that war. He served in the Imperial Japanese Navy and, for most of his flying career, was associated with the Zero fighter in its various models. At least 1,500 of his 3,700 hours of flying time was in Zeros.
When the Second World War began in the Pacific, the Zero fighter was unquestionably superior to virtually all other fighter planes in the world. Of all its potential adversaries in the air, the best American example at the time was probably the Curtiss P-40, which objectively was not quite in the same class with the Japanese fighter, except when in the hands of the best American pilots whose skills and capability helped it overcome the imbalance. Certainly, the others, the Brewster Buffalo—obsolete and far less capable; and the Bell P-39 Airacobra—even with its big cannon, were not much competition for the Zero. Among naval aircraft, the main opponent the Zero faced in the early part of the war was the American Grumman F4F Wildcat, whose manoeuvrability may have been a bit better when being handled by U.S. Navy aviators of at least equal competence to that of the opposition. The fine British Spitfire and Hurricane, as effective as they had been in the Battle of Britain, proved much less so when they encountered the Japanese fighter in 1942.
The Zero was the primary mount of most of Japan’s highest achieving fighter aces, including—in order of their number of victories—Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, Shoichi Sugita, Tadashi Nakajima, Saburo Sakai, Naoishi Kanno, Teimei Akamatsu, and Kinsuke Muto.
One factor making the Zero special was its extraordinary range of more than 1,265 miles (1,930 miles with drop tanks). The range made it the only fighter capable, as early as 1938, of escorting bombers all the way to their extremely distant targets and back, until the advent of the American P-51 Mustang in late 1943.
Among the secrets of the Zero’s success in those early days was the approach taken by her designer, Jiro Horikoshi, who was charged with meeting the requirements of the Imperial Japanese Navy for the new plane: fast climb, high speed, great range, and superior manoeuvrability. To achieve those characteristics, Horikoshi opted for very low wing-loading, no armour protection for the pilot, and no self-sealing fuel tanks.
On the downside, while the Zero fighter excelled at low and medium altitudes, enabling its pilots to outfight any Allied fighter on most occasions, its performance degraded at high altitudes in the early war years.
The A6M2 version of the Mitsubishi plane, the first production Zero, which the Japanese used in the Pearl Harbor attack on 7 December 1941, was powered by a fourteen-cylinder Nakajima Sakae air-cooled engine developing 950 hp at 13,800 feet. The Model 21 version was designed with folding wingtips for operations from Japan’s aircraft carriers. The A6M2 was capable of 316 mph at 16,400 feet. It was armed with two 7.7mm machine-guns and two 20mm cannon.
As the war continued, advanced versions of the Zero were introduced, with the A6M5a production model featuring improved cannon armament, and a top speed of 360 mph. The next model, the A6M5b, finally had an armoured-glass windscreen, automatic fire extinguishers for the fuel tanks, further improved cannon armament, all increasing the plane’s weight and reduceing its overall performance at a time when it was up against better American aircraft in the Grumman F6F Hellcat, the Vought F4U Corsair, and the Lockheed P-38J Lightning. The ultimate Zero, the A6M8c, came into production in 1945 near the end of the war. It was considered a higher altitude solution with a 355 mph top speed, and an improved rate of climb, but it arrived too late to be of much use. The improvements featured in that final version might have might have made somewhat of a difference to Japanese military aviation in the war had they appeared much sooner, but the enormous losses in equipment and pilots that Japan incurred in the latter half of the war, coupled with her very limited production capability by that point, meant she was being massively out-produced in the field of fighter aircraft by the Allies. In all its variants, 10,936 Zero fighters were built, compared to 13, 700 Curtiss P-40s, 12,200 Grumman Hellcats, 12,500 Vought Corsairs, 15,300 Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, 14,000 Hawker Hurricanes and Sea Hurricanes, 10,000 Lockheed P-38 Lightnings, 15,000 North American P-51 Mustangs, and 22,800 Spitfires and Seafires.
top: Japanese Vice-Admiral Takejiro Onishi strongly advocated the kamikaze idea; above: Kamikaze pilots in 1945; below: A Japanese bomb explodes on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, killing the photographer Robert F. Read.
Many years after the Second World War, the former fighter pilot ace Saburo Sakai visited the Champlin Fighter Museum in Mesa, Arizona, where he was treated to a ride in P-51 Mustang. During the flight he had the opportunity to take the controls for a while. Until that moment he had always believed in the Mitsubishi Zero which was, to him, the best fighter plane anywhere, ever. The experience of flying the Mustang changed his mind. He came away feeling that the wonderful, high-performance P-51 was number one with him. The Zero was relegated to number two.
He was descended from the Samurai, the ancient warrior class of Japan, who lived by the code of Bushido, serving the lords of the prefecture and living so as to always be prepared to die. Saburo Sakai was the third of four sons. His father died when he was eleven and he was adopted by an uncle who agreed to provide the boy with a good education. But Saburo’s prior educational accomplishment was soon forgotten when he was unable to achieve high scholarship in his new academic environment. This, together with his choice of unsavory friends in the new school, brought shame on his family and his uncle, who sent him home in disgrace. He felt that his entire village had been disgraced by his behaviour and lack of achievement at school, and he decided he could not remain there. So in 1933, at the age of sixteen, he joined the Japanese Navy and soon reported to the Sasebo Naval Base for initial training.
Saburo described his naval training experience as a brutal one. The young recruits were beaten with sticks for the slightest infraction: “I remember sometimes passing out from the blows. The body and mind can take only so much punishment. We were [expected] to suffer in silence. Although there were some [Petty Officers] who were sadistic, there was a method in all of this madness. It made us tough as nails, and in battle this is often the decisive factor. After the first six months we were completely automated in our manner. We dared not, or even thought about questioning orders or authority, no matter how rediculous the order.
On graduating from his basic training, Sakai was assigned to the battleship Kirishima as a turret gunner. In 1935 he studied for and passed the naval gunnery school exam and was soon assigned to the battleship Haruna, a Petty Officer 3rd Class.
Recalling his entry to naval flight training: “There were three ways to enter flight school in the early days. Remember that the recruiting method in the time before 1941 was very different than after we were at war with the United States. The need for pilots caused the quality to drop steeply as the war went on. However, in 1937 when I was selected, there were three ways to get in: Officers graduating from the Naval Academy at Eta Jima; Petty Officers from the fleet; and young men recruited from the schools who would start their careers as pilots (similar to the American ROTC program today).
above: A dramatic photograph capturing the instant of a kamikaze plane striking the flight deck of a U.S. Navy carrier; below: U.S. Navy crews firing 40mm anti-aircraft guns at attacking kamikazes.
top: Trailing a fiery plume, the end of a kamikaze attack on an American warship; above: The aircraft of a Japanese attacker scores a direct hit on this Essex class U.S. carrier; below: Members of the Japanese Army Air Force Tokko Tai had to take a major part in the kamikaze attacks when most of the Japanese Navy pilots had been killed in the suicide raids.
832 crew members of the carrier USS Franklin died when the ship was hit by two Japanese bombs during a kamikaze attack on 19 March 1945. The Franklin and her crew were the most decorated in U.S. Navy history. They sailed the devastated carrier 12,000 miles to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for her major repairs; Japanese naval aviators, below: Kaneyoshi Muto; bottom: Hiroyoshi Nishizawa.
A kamikaze narrowly misses the crowded flight deck of the U.S. Navy escort carrier Sangamon in May 1945.
“Pilot selection was very strict; the men chosen in 1937 when I was selected were a different breed. The men selected to fly in 1944-45 would not have been qualified to even pump fuel into my aircraft at this time, if that shows how select the program was. I remember that 1,500 men had applied for training, and seventy had been selected that year. I was one of them, and all were non-commissioned officers from the fleet. This does not include the ensigns coming from the academy; they had their own selection process. That year I do not believe any civilian recruits were chosen, but that would change as the war with America continued. I was twenty years old; I knew that my acceptance into flight school dismissed my previous dishonor, and my uncle and family were proud of me. The entire village was proud of me.” Saburo began his flight training in 1936. Of the twenty-five students in his class, he ranked first. Upon graduating: “We had additional training in land and aircraft carrier landings at the Naval bases of Oita and Omura in Kyushu, and instrument flying was stressed heavily. This cannot be underestimated, for it saved my life in 1942. This training lasted three months, although I never flew from a carrier during the war. I was sent to southeastern China and in May 1938 I had my first combat.
Just hours after the Japanese attack on U.S. ships and facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii … on 8 December 1941, Sakai was one of forty-five Zero pilots to attack Clark airfield in the Philippines. He was awakened at 0200, but their take-off was delayed by a heavy fog. The pilots had breakfast and waited at their aircraft. There they were told of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Aleutians, and Sakai wondered if the Americans at Clark Field would be expecting their attack. Finally, at mid-morning, Sakai and the other pilots of Tainan Squadron were ordered to take off. They got off to a bad start when one of the bombers they were to escort in the raid crashed on take-off, killing its entire crew.
When Sakai and his fellow pilots reached 19,000 feet, he spotted a formation of U.S. Army Air Corps bombers heading towards his squadron’s airfield. The Japanese pilots flying top cover had orders to attack any aircraft approaching their base, which they headed off to do while the other Japanese aircraft continued on towards the Clark Field target. He and the others in his flight soon realized that the bombers they were about to attack were, in fact, Japanese Army aircraft on a routine flight. The pilots of Tainan Squadron had not been informed about them and had come close to being involved in a major accident of war.
The pilots reformed and, arriving over Clark Field, were surprised that they had not been intercepted. They observed five U.S. fighters below them, but they were under orders not to engage the enemy until all the Japanese bombers were in the area. Sakai was amazed that the American aircraft on the field were parked in perfect alignment, making the Japanese bombing and strafing attack relatively easy and heavily destructive. He then sighted two B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and made a strafing run on them. It was then that he and two other pilots were jumped by the five American P-40 fighters they had seen earlier. In this, his first air combat experience against the Americans, Saburo managed to shoot down one of the fighters. The squadron had destroyed thirty-five American aircraft on the ground.
On 10 December, Sakai’s was one of twenty-seven Zero fighters flying a sweep towards Clark Field. At the same time, a B-17 bomber piloted by Captain Colin Kelly, Jr, had been hit by gunfire from the Japanese cruiser Natori as the plane was returning to the Clark base from a bombing mission. The B-17 was seriously damaged and when the Zeros of the Tainan group encountered it, Sakai and the others attacked it. Kelly, and his co-pilot, Lt Donald Robins, remained at the controls of the B-17 so the other crew members could bail out. As Kelly and Robins attempted to escape the bomber, it exploded. Robins survived, his parachute opening just in time. Kelly’s did not. Theirs was the first American B-17 bomber of the war to be shot down.
There are stories about Sakai; they may or may not be true. But one that persists and certainly has the ring of truth about it is the story of a former Dutch military nurse who happened to be flying low in a Dutch military C-47, Dakota to English readers, over the jungle of Java in 1942. The plane was an air ambulance; the cargo several wounded soldiers and children, being evacuated from a combat area to receive better treatment elsewhere. Seemingly from out of nowhere, a Japanese Zero fighter appeared near the C-47. So close was the enemy fighter that the nurse could clearly see his facial features as he brought the fighter quite near alongside the much larger plane. The nurse, together with some of the children, were riveted by the sight of the enemy, almost within touching distance, and apparently threatening to kill them with a few well-placed rounds from his guns. They began waving frantically to him in the slight hope that he would spare their lives. This strange communication went on for what must have seemed an eternity to the nurse and the children, but was actually but a moment or two. At last, the Japanese pilot wobbled his wings to let them know they would live, before he peeled off and disappeared from view. The nurse and the children cheered and cried in relief that their terror had ended happily.
After more than fifty years and considerable effort on her part, the Dutch nurse finally tracked down the pilot of that Zero fighter, Saburo Sakai. With great luck and determination, and the help of the Japanese Red Cross who managed to locate Sakai. He had been on a routine combat air patrol the day of the encounter with the C-47. The Red Cross person interviewing him asked if he recalled the incident. He said that he did and that he had briefly considered shooting down the C-47, because the Japanese High Command had ordered fighter patrols to down any and all enemy aircraft they encountered, whether they were armed or not. But when he saw the waving hands and the panic-stricken expressions on the clearly innocent faces in the windows of the big transport plane, he relented and spared their lives.
As a fighter pilot, Sakai’s job was to seek out and destroy the enemies of his nation. But he was a human being as well, fully capable of mercy and compassion, while also equipped with the killer instinct. When faced with a decision about the C-47 enemy aircraft, he thought about his orders, about the military value of such a “kill”, and about what he believed was the right thing to do, and he departed.
Saburo Sakai died on 22 September, 2000. In his obituary of the Japanese World War Two fighter ace, Douglas Martin wrote in The New York Times: “Of the 150 pilots who began in his unit, only three survived the war. In August 1942, he was hit in the face by a bullet from a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber. He was blinded in the right eye and his left side was paralyzed. He was prepared to die. Mr Sakai was one of the few Japanese servicemen to rise from the ranks of enlisted men to officer.”
After the war, as an act of atonement, Mr Sakai became a lay Buddhist acolyte and claimed that since then he had not killed any creature, not even a mosquito.
“It is absolutely out of the question for you to return alive. Your mission involves certain death. Your bodies will be dead, but not your spirits. The death of a single one of you will be the birth of a million others. Neglect nothing that may affect your training or your health. You must not leave behind any cause for regret, which would follow you into eternity. And, lastly: do not be in too much of a hurry to die. If you cannot find your target, turn back; next time you may find a more favorable opportunity. Choose a death which brings about a maximum result.”
—from The First Order to the Kamikaze
Struck twice within thirty minutes by kamikazes, the carrier USS Bunker Hill is an inferno.
“I would attack any squadron blockading a port. Nothing could prevent me from dropping out of the clear blue sky onto a battleship, with 400 kilos of explosives in the cockpit. Of course, it is true that the pilot would be killed, but everything would blow up, and that’s what counts.”
—Jules Vedrines, pre-1914 French aviation pioneer
In the final months of 1944, Imperial Japan was losing the war, and some of its military leaders began to express the belief that desperate times called for desperate measures. The notion of self-sacrifice for Emperor and country was commonly accepted among the Japanese, and suicide per se was not alien, and was honoured for its purity by many who had been raised on tales of heroic Samurai warriors. So, it was but a short step to the concept of suicide as a weapon. One example of that concept was the Kaiten human torpedo. Fifty-four feet long and carrying a 3,000-pound warhead, the Kaiten had a range of thirty miles at slow speed, or twelve miles at its top speed of forty knots. The launch of a Kaiten was a one-way trip for the crew, who could not get out. Most of the Kaitens proved unstable and only one Allied vessel was sunk by the weapon, the tanker USS Mississinewa.
At this time, a General Yashida of the Japanese Army Air Force, was promoting the use of suicidal air attacks and training in ramming techniques was secretly included in the pilot training syllabus. One Japanese Army General Yoshiroko, commanding units in the Solomon Islands, was frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the anti-tank weapons in his arsenal. He ordered his troops to strap satchels of explosives to their bodies and dive under the tanks of the American enemy. Results were not what the general had expected, and he was severely criticised by the High Command in Tokyo. But the Japanese concept and use of “human bullets” continued.
“The code of the Samurai demands that we must always be ready to die, but that does not mean we must commit suicide on the slightest pretext. Our tradition desires that we should live and fight as best we can so as to experience neither regret nor remorse at the moment of death.”
—a Kamikaze instructor quoted in L’Epopée Kamikaze by Bernard Millot
Vice-Admiral Takejiro Onishi, Imperial Japanese Navy, was a principal advocate of the kamikaze idea. It was he who originated the name kamikaze, which means Divine Wind and is believed to be a reference to the ancient winds that sank the threatening Mongol fleet. Kamikaze pilots were members of special attack units. Their mission was to become human bombs—one with their aeroplanes—and sacrifice themselves by diving their planes into enemy ships with the goal of sinking them.
top: A direct hit on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier; centre: An A6M Zero ploughs into the flank of the battleship USS Missouri on 11 April 1945; above: In a kamikaze attack on 25 October 1944, the U.S. escort carrier St Lo sank after torpedos stored in the hangar deck exploded, blowing the stern off the ship.
In an effort to instill high morale among his airmen, the vice-admiral introduced some ceremonial aspects to the kamikaze units, including the pre-flight toast of sacred water—later changed to saki—and the wearing of a decorated white headband called a hachimaki, a touch of Samurai, indicating that the warrior was prepared to fight to the death. The majority also wore a sennin-bari, a silk or cloth band stitched with red threads that was said to have the power of a bullet-proof vest. Most kamikaze pilots carried a personal flag, usually a small square of white cloth with a red hinomaru circle in the centre and calligraphy encouraging “a suicide spirit”. Kamikaze pilots and their families received privileges, including extra food rations, as well as “very honourable” status. Some referred to the kamikaze as “the black-edged cherry blossoms”.
Onishi was concerned about the shortage of skilled Japanese pilots, but still believed in the suicide weapon idea. “If a pilot facing a ship or plane exhausts all his resources, he still has his plane left as a part of himself. What greater glory than to give his life for emperor and country?”
In Kamikaze—Japan’s Suicide Samurai, author Raymond Lamont-Brown states:
“… the kamikaze pilots evolved from four main sources of recruitment. First came the ‘patriotic crusaders’ who were all volunteers, usually from daimyo or samurai families; they were motivated by nationalistic fervour, military ideals and the concept of chivalry upon which their ancestors had based personal sacrifice to fulfil perceived duties to the state. From this group evolved the ritualization of the kamikaze before suicide flights (i.e., the wearing of samurai symbols, singing patriotic songs, writing poetry glorifying kamikaze action, composing testamentory last letters home, distributing personal effects, and so on.
“Next came the ‘nation’s face savers’. These were recruits who did volunteer, but often for negative reasons, to avoid personal shame in not emulating the deaths of the patriotic crusaders, or to espouse military heroism in order to save the kami land of Japan from humiliating defeat. Like the patriotic crusaders, they too were conformists to the traditions of Japanese society. As the kamikaze Susumu Kitjitsu (1923-45) was to write to his parents: ‘I live quite a normal life. Death does not frighten me; my only care is to know if I am going to be able to sink an aircraft carrier by crashing into it.’
“By the last few months of the war the third category of recruits emerged: these were the ‘young rationalists’. They came mostly straight from higher education, went through hurried training and died to sustain the war effort and to keep Japan free from foreign taint. As Bernard Millot wrote: ‘With a few very rare exceptions, they were the most affectionate, well-educated, least troublesome sons who gave their parents the greatest satisfaction.’
“The last group of recruits were also mostly young, the ‘appointed daredevils’, who emerged right at the end of the war. It may be noted that among their number were do-or-die delinquents, hell-raisers and those of shady moral reputation and social deviation who, through the drastic measure of suicide, were escaping the legal, civic, and social consequences of their behaviour.”
“The psychology behind [the kamikaze attacks] was too alien to us. Americans who fight to live, find it hard to realize that another people will fight to die.”
—Admiral William F. Halsey, Commander, U.S. Third Fleet
Onishi could not actually order his pilots to fly the special suicide attacks. They had to volunteer, and with no expectation of survival, they did so almost unanimously. On 20 October 1944, he addressed twenty-six fighter pilot volunteers who were to comprise the Shimpu (God and Wind) Force: “My sons, who can raise our country from the desperate situation in which she finds herself? Japan is in grave danger. The salvation of our country is now beyond the power of the Ministers of State, the General Staff, and lowly commanders like myself. It can come only from spirited young men such as you. Thus on behalf of your hundred million countrymen, I ask you this sacrifice, and pray for your success. You are already gods, without earthly desires. But one thing you want to know is that your own crash-dive is not in vain. Regrettably, we will not be able to tell you the results. But I shall watch your efforts to the end and report your deeds to the Throne. You may all rest assured on this point. I ask you to do your best.”
Shortly after Onishi’s speech, 201st Air Group Chusa Tadashi Nakajima was assigned to Cebu in the Philippines. His job there was to set up a new kamikaze unit. When he arrived he told his pilots there: “I have come here to organize another Special Attack Unit. Others will want to follow in the footsteps of the first pilots charged with this mission. Any non-commissioned officer or enlisted flyer who wishes to volunteer will so signify by writing his name and rate on a piece of paper. Each piece of paper is to be placed in an envelope which will be delivered to me by 2100 hours today. It is not expected, however, that everyone should volunteer. We know that you are all willing to die in defence of your country. We also realize that some of you, because of your family situation, cannot be expected to offer your life in this way. You should understand also that the number of volunteers required is limited by the small number of planes available. Whether a man volunteers or not will be known only to me. I ask that each man, within the next three hours, come to a decision based entirely upon his own situation. Special Attack operations will be ready to start tomorrow. Because secrecy in this operation is of utmost importance, there must be no discussion about it.” All of the pilots volunteered.
Vice-Admiral Onishi launched a mass of kamikaze attacks in November 1944. On the 5th one of his groups of aircraft was on its way to strike at an American landing force on Leyte. It encountered a large formation of U.S. bombers and all of the Japanese pilots rammed their aircraft into their American enemies. Then, in a desperate effort to prevent the American invasion of Luzon, Onishi diverted his pilots from their planned attacks on U.S. aircraft carriers, to striking transport vessels, and he started the practice of using heavy bombers loaded with explosives in his suicide units. Later in the month, his kamikazes flew against the American carriers, causing serious damage to four, forcing the U.S. Command to increase the number of its destroyers on picket duty around the carriers, as well as doubling the number of fighters flying combat air patrols from them. American sailors going on shore leave had orders not to discuss the kamikaze attacks. The American bombing of Japanese airfields on Luzon was increased. The U.S. forces were dealt another blow in mid-December when a major typhoon hit the Philippines heavily damaging many American warships, leaving much of the fleet in port for repairs. Onishi was not fairing much better, having fewer planes than pilots by this time. He determined to order all pilots without planes to fight on as infantry when the forces of the enemy landed on Luzon. That invasion began on 9 January. By the 13th, 1,208 Japanese pilots had died in kamikaze missions. The only option available to the U.S. Navy warship crews lay in putting up a maximum concentration of gunfire at the incoming suicide planes.
By March 1945, the Japanese were down to a small number of airmen, “pilots” who were barely able to fly at all, having had minimal training. The remaining force of kamikaze and conventional bombers in the area was ordered on 17 March to strike with the greatest possible intensity at the American fleet, which was less than 100 miles from the coast of Japan. In that attack on the U.S. carrier Franklin, the crew suffered more than 1,000 casualties. The Japanese lost fifty-two more aircraft.
In January, Admiral Onishi was reassigned to Formosa to rapidly organize more new kamikaze units. The Japanese now focused on destroying the American fleet in order to force some kind of honourable peace settlement, and the kamikaze pilots were at the centre of that action. American B-29 bombers, “Mr B” to the Japanese, were ramping up their massive bombing campaign against Japan’s home islands and on 9 March they struck an immense blow at Tokyo, killing nearly 100,000 Japanese and making more than one million homeless. In an attempted retaliatory strike on U.S. Navy ships in the huge American harbour at Ulithi by kamikaze and Japanese bombers, they achieved little success. Now utterly desperate, the Japanese military planners saw only two choices: surrender, or fight to the death making maximum use of the kamikaze weapon. The latter option gained more and more favour as the B-29 fire raids were staged with ever greater intensity. Time was running out for the Japanese though, as was their supply of aircraft, fuel and, of course, pilots. By March they were down to a small number of airmen, “pilots” who were barely able to fly at all, having had minimal training. The remaining force of kamikaze and conventional Japanese bombers in the area was ordered on 17 March to strike with the greatest possible intensity at the U.S. fleet, which was then less than 100 miles south of the Japanese mainland. In that attack, the U.S. Navy carrier Franklin was very badly hit and the crew suffered more than 1,000 casualties. The Japanese lost fifty-two more aircraft.
“If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
—from a speech by Abraham Lincoln, 27 January 1838, at Springfield, Illinois
Dear Parents,
Please congratulate me. I have been given a splendid opportunity to die. This is my last day. The destiny of our homeland hinges on the decisive battle in the sea to the south where I shall fall like a blossom from a radiant cherry tree.
—from a last letter home in The Divine Wind by Captain Rikihei Inoguichi and Commander Tadashi Nakajima, with Roger Pineau
In 1956 Jean Larteguy’s edited version of the George Blond description of a typical kamikaze attack in Le Survivant du Pacifique appeared in Larteguy’s The Sun Goes Down: “On 14 May, at 6.50 a.m., the radar plotter reported an isolated ‘blip’, bearing 200° at 8,000 feet, range about twenty miles. The rear guns were pointed in that direction, ready to fire as soon as the ‘phantom’ should appear. At 6.54 it came into sight, flying straight for the carrier. It disappeared for a moment in the clouds; then, after approximately three and a half miles, it emerged again, losing altitude. It was a Zero. The five-inch guns opened fire. The Japanese aircraft retreated into the clouds. The batteries continued to fire. The crew had been at action stations since four in the morning. All the aircraft that were not in the air had been de-fuelled and parked below decks.
“The Japanese machine approached from the rear. It was still not to be seen, as it was hidden by the clouds. Guided by radar, the five-inch guns continued to fire at it, and soon the 40mm machine-guns began to fire as well. It was very strange to see all these guns firing relentlessly at an invisible enemy.
“The Japanese aircraft emerged from the clouds and began to dive. His angle of incidence was not more than 30°, his speed approximately 250 knots. There could be no doubt—it was a suicide plane. It was approaching quite slowly and deliberately, and manoeuvring just enough not to be hit too soon.
“The pilot knew his job thoroughly and all those who watched him make his approach felt their mouths go dry. In less than a minute he would have attained his goal, there could be little doubt that this man was to crash his machine on the deck [of the carrier Enterprise, CV-6].
“All the batteries were firing; the five-inch guns, the 40mm and the 20mm, even the rifles. The Japanese aircraft dived through a rain of steel. It had been hit in several places and seemed to be trailing a banner of flame and smoke, but it came on, clearly visible, hardly moving, the line of its wings as straight as a sword.
“The deck was deserted; every man, with the exception of the gunners, was lying flat on his face. Flaming and roaring, the fireball passed in front of the ‘island’ and crashed with a terrible impact just behind the for’ard lift.
“The entire vessel was shaken, some forty yards of the flight deck folded up like a banana-skin: an enormous piece of the lift, at least a third of the platform, was thrown over 300 feet into the air. The explosion killed fourteen men. The last earthly impression they took with them was the picture of the kamikaze trailing his banner of flame and increasing in size with lightning rapidity.
“The mortal remains of the pilot had not disappeared. They had been laid out in a corner of the deck, next to the blackened debris of the machine. The entire crew marched past the corpse of the volunteer of death. The men were less interested in his finely modelled features, his wide-open eyes which were now glazed over, than in the buttons on his tunic, which were to become wonderful souvenirs of the war for a few privileged officers of high rank. These buttons, now black, were stamped in relief with the insignia of the kamekaze corps: a cherry blossom with three petals.”
On Kudan Hill in the heart of Tokyo, near the Imperial Palace, stands the Yasukuni-jinja, or Shrine for Establishing Peace in the Empire. It is dedicated to Japan’s war dead and is a controversial war memorial because it contains personal effects of executed war criminals, including Hideki Tojo. “Even today,” according to Raymond Lamont-Brown, “any government minister who makes an official visit to the shrine would be technically liable to be stripped of his office.” Displays in the Yasukuni include relics of the kamikaze pilots of the Great East Asian War, as the Japanese refer to the Second World War. Japanese war veterans groups, as well as representatives of the Bereaved Families Association, regularly visit the shrine and petition the public to sign requests for the Yasukuni to be reinstated as the official Japanese war memorial. Lamont-Brown states: ‘As time passes, according to some sections of the Japanese press, the spirits of the dead kamikaze ‘cry out’ for honourable, official recognition through the members of the ‘Thunder Gods Association’ who meet annually at the Yasukuni-jinja on 21 March—the day on which the first Ohka suicide attack was made.’”
Japanese naval aviators, top: Toshio Ota; centre: Sadaaki Akamatsu; above: Toshiaki Honda; below: Masuaki Endo; bottom: Damaged Japanese military aircraft in a Pacific field at war’s end.
In the last days before their final attacks, the kamikaze pilots were mostly calmed by the Bushido philosophy. They were able to relax in a seeming detachment, spending their waiting time listening to gramophone records, playing cards, reading, and writing their last letters home. They gave their belongings to comrades and friends, and they all carried three sen in copper coins, their fare to cross the Japanese equivalent of the River Styx.
“I was wired to the port catapult of the San Jacinto, when the boing boing boing went off, followed by ‘This is no drill!’ I saw a Japanese Jill aircraft coming across the front of our ship, starboard to port. He was low, about 100 feet, and every ship in the fleet was shooting at him. I started yelling at the catapult officer to launch my plane. It seemed to take forever. I charged my guns while waiting. The Japanese plane had bore-sighted another carrier to our port side. Finally the cat fired. The Jill, with bomb or torpedo in plain view, was crossing my launch path. I squeezed the trigger. Nothing. The gear was still down. The guns are not supposed to fire with the gear down. I hit the gear-up lever. The Jill was closing at full deflection. I was squeezing the trigger. At last all six .50s were firing just as the Jill crossed in front of me. It exploded as it flew into my line of fire. I had been in the air less than thirty seconds. My aircraft was hit several times by shrapnel, but I continued my combat air patrol and landed just under four hours later.”
—former U.S. Navy fighter pilot James B. Cain, 19March 1945