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The tragic events that rocked America on September 11th
added a whole new dimension to the medieval Japanese notion of kamikaze
with security experts keeping a close eye on suicide bombers, especially
active in the Middle East, warning about an incoming wave of terrorist
attacks using this cruel and unorthodox method.
A World War Two snapshot of young Japanese pilots in headsets
and goggles, looking lovingly at a little puppy could have seemed sugary
had it not been for the fact that it was their last photo opportunity.
Their planes were already waiting for them at a nearby airfield fuelled
for a one-way trip only and fully loaded with heavy bombs. The term “kamikaze”
quickly entered international parlance and has since been applied to Palestinian
radicals and al-Qaeda terrorists, even though the Japanese pilots were
only soldiers fighting enemy soldiers and out to cause maximum damage to
enemy warships which were essentially instruments of death. The term kamikaze
or Divine Wind derives from the legendary typhoon that saved Japan from
a Mongol invasion back in the 13th century. The Mongol Emperor,
Bogdykhan, twice sent out naval expeditions to the Japanese islands and
each time the flotillas were sunk by typhoons. Attributing their
victories to divine intervention, the Japanese called the typhoons “kami
kaze” which translates into English as “divine wind”.
In 1944, realizing that the allied navies were already preparing
to claw back the Philippines and the typhoons stubbornly refused to
sink enemy warships, the Japanese High Command decided to create a man-made
divine wind. Also, realizing full well that the Americans were stronger
in virtually everything, the Japanese decided that what their country lacked
in military might it would make up for in fervor. The idea was to
demoralize the enemy and win a final victory. That was how the Kamikaze
strike force was formed led by Admiral Takijiro Onishi a ruthless warrior
and one of the authors of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
The first kamikaze strike came on October 25, 1944, off the
Philippine island of Leyte. 26 fighter planes were to take part in
the attack with four squadrons ordered to crash dive into enemy carriers
and the rest to provide cover. Five Zero fighters armed with 250 kg bombs
reached their target sinking the US aircraft carrier Saint Lo. Buoyed by
their initial success, the Japanese set up many more kamikaze air teams
both in the Navy and the air force. In the following months they
fielded more than 2,000 planes more than half of which successfully carried
out their missions. According to a Japanese tally, suicide attacks accounted
for up to 80 percent of American losses in the final phase of the war in
the Pacific.
Kamikaze warfare peaked out with the start of the battle
of Okinawa in April 1945 where the Japanese, besides suicide pilots, were
now also using manned rocket bombs, torpedoes and explosives-laden gunboats
and small submarines. The war, however, had already been lost,
and a Japanese surrender followed shortly after.
Legend has it that the suicide teams were made up of volunteers
only, which is not entirely true. The more experienced Japanese pilots
died while the new generation of 17-year-old conscripts was joining in
to replenish the dwindling suicide air corps and training for just
a couple of weeks before flying their first combat mission. The kamikaze
recruitment procedure was two-pronged with aspiring airmen lining up to
sign on. Expert fliers were supposed to fill out a questionnaire, which
asked them whether they wanted to become a kamikaze or not. Because
the forms had the name of the respondent printed in, refusal to become
a suicide was tantamount to admitting one’s cowardice.
Admiral Takijiro Onishi, the founding father of the kamikaze
movement, after seeing all his desperate attempts to ward off his country’s
imminent defeat fall through and hearing the Emperor’s decision to capitulate,
performed a hara-kiri. Refusing anyone’s help, he swam in a pool of blood
for a whole 18 hours and died squeezing the hand of a close friend...
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