Why Did The Kamikazes Volunteer?
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- Опубликовано: 13 окт 2022
- Japanese Kamikaze pilots were tasked to fly themselves into enemy warships, and achieved some success in the closing year of the Pacific Campaign. But who were these pilots? And could they be stopped?
Bibliography
Axell, Albert, and Hideaki Kase. Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods. Longman, 2002.
Hallion, Richard P. Precision Weapons, Power Projection, and the Revolution in Military Affairs. USAF Air Armament Summit, May 26, 1999. www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/....
Inoguchi, Rikihei, Tadashi Nakajima, and Roger Pineau. The Divine Wind. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Pr, 1978.
Rielly, Robin L. Kamikaze Attacks of World War II: A Complete History of Japanese Suicide Strikes on American Ships, by Aircraft and Other Means. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012.
Sakaida, Henry, and Koji Takaki. Genda's Blade: Japan's Squadron of Aces: 343 Kokutai: 343 Kaigun kōkūtai. Hersham, Surrey: Classic, 2003.
Toland, John. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. New York, NY: Random House, 1970.
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I didn't realize that Thatch had innovated not one but two different defensive policies for the US military. He definitely had a good head on his shoulders. I think the strangest part of his involvement to me was that the top brass listened and implemented his ideas instead of just dismissing them.
The idea to flush carrier aircraft fuel lines with nitrogen in the event of an attack was also the idea of a low-level sailor. That strategy let the Yorktown survive two air assaults without sinking.
@@origamiscienceguy6658 low-level sailor, general level mentality. Speaks volumes don’t you think?
@@cjclark1208 Ability is nothing without opportunity
I think that the big blue blanket was the precursor of today's carrier fleet's patrol tactics in some way...
That’s why the US Navy was so successful, they were open to innovation, and took good ideas regardless of the source, and when something worked, it was rapidly disseminated throughout the fleet.
When I lived in Japan, I watched a great documentary on the Kamikaze. The Americans kept hearing the pilot's last words they yelled over the radio and learned the one word repeated over and over - "Okasan." It means mother. Tells you everything about them. They were just as human and cried out for their moms as they performed their last actions.
America made a terrible mistake not raping the mothers of those guys who ordered those attacks.
I think that says more about Men and the instinctual/emotional reality coming out in force, when one is face to face with the inevitable void.
But still beeing the huge difference of them setting aside their own feelings and smashing a plane into a ship. They were very special people who had an insane loyalty and deviation. Like the video said, most of them didn’t want to do it but did it anyway. That’s a very special person.
What about men who had terrible mothers? I would never call out for my mother; she was selfish, wasting me and my sister's college fund on a house and car that she lost both after leaving the family
@@pyropulseIXXI well not all parents like those I'd say my mother was sometimes strict but she's my mom so I do understand my mistakes
To your side... I hate to say but your mom chooses her own happiness
I have a piece of a kamikaze plane my grandfather gave to me. It is part of the gas tank. It is made from lacquered wood. My grandfather said when they pulled the body of the pilot out of the water, they realized he could not have been older than 16 years old.
I've seen car crashes, and I couldn't even identify the person, let alone their age. How the f*ck did he identify a meat sack?
@@pyropulseIXXI A lot of kamikazes were shot down, their planes somewhat intact without having detonated their munitions. I think you can pull a somewhat intact body from such a wreck.
He said it was pulled from water
I had a judo instructor who was trained as a Kamikaze pilot. His name was Nabuo Hayashi. Why did he survive the war? Because he was 14 , and when the war ended they had not yet run out of 16-year-olds.
My God 😢
Some pilots survived. Most were barely trained and given obsolete airplanes. Thus many were unable to find the american fleet or had mechanical failures.
Now THAT addresses the real purpose of these things. This wasn't about "desperation" and it cannot be called a military tactic. It is precisely the same as Hitler throwing teenagers out into the streets of Berlin to be shredded by Russian tanks. The sole purpose of these hopeless attacks was to keep the people in power alive for a few more hours/days. Let's not glamorize it as anything different.
In reading, some years ago, a detailed account of all kamikaze attack records, it was surprising how little many of the pilots knew about flying or identifying their targets. Most would attack the first ship they spotted, typically one of the picket destroyers, which even if they successfully hit and crippled the targeted ship, would have far less impact on the combat power of the American fleet than a hit on a fleet carrier would have had. Of course, once the Americans extended their fleet screen, each kamikaze was far less likely to survive long enough to reach a fleet carrier let alone attack it. But this wasn't a strategic move by the kamikaze pilots. Most would report that they were attacking a carrier as they dove at a destroyer. They were so poorly trained and hopped up on adrenaline that they probably thought what they saw was a carrier. Similar to how Allied soldiers in the ETO thought every German tank was a Tiger.
I can't find the title of the book I'm referring to. If I find it later, I'll come back and add it.
This video told me something I hadn't realized before. Many of the kamikaze pilots were not strictly volunteering of their own free will. I will admit, WW2 Japan makes me grit my teeth with disgust at their suicidal tactics in the air and on land. From the American perspective, such tactics seem like fighting dirty, selling your own life just to kill other men in a lost cause. As more research has been done and I've taken the time to digest it, I'm beginning to come around to the idea that the average Japanese in a Banzai charge or piloting a kamikaze felt trapped by duty and the need to uphold honor. Most hadn't sought out the honor of dying for the Emperor, but did so rather then dishonor themselves and their family.
I suppose I can understand that more and feel less disgust about it. Americans acted similarly in some ways. Our men were not outright ordered or expected to commit suicide. But there was a great fear of being seen as a coward. Americans took great risks in combat fueled by the desire to do anything rather than be seen as a coward. There's not too much difference there except that culturally, Americans weren't expected to commit suicide in combat while the Japanese often were. On the other hand, killing yourself rather than be taken prisoner is still fucked up and always will be to me.
It's really more of whether the soldier is gonna do something heroic, or foolish. Those are mainly volunteers. Could apply to the first kamekaze pilot and the handful of others who volunteered. After that, the order to sacrifice is not heroic nor foolish. It's a waste.
I do hope that the higher-ups who ordered the men to do suicide runs were tried in the tribunal and executed.
What does deserve the disgust is the culture the Japanese military had that allowed for the suicide attacks whether bonzai charges or kamikaze attacks. The entire military and government structure of Japan at this time was disgusting and abhorrent.
Genda's idea being ignored proves this, instead of doing something to actually make better pilots they keep sending pilots on suicide missions, it's awful.
That's one of the things about Kamikaze's. It didn't take much skill to fly and crash a plane. It took a lot more than what that took to hit a moving target with ordnance whilst being fired upon.
Killing yourself rather than be taken prisoner by the US and it's allies? I don't understand it neither
Killing yourself rather than be taken prisoner by any other actor in the war? Totally understandable
@@ElemXCR The admiral in charge committed suicide the day after the surrender, without a second, to atone for the 4000 he sent to their deaths, as well as leaving a note apologizing, and encouraging those who survived the war to rebuild Japan and help create a more peaceful world.
But conversely, a tad before the surrender, he wanted to continue the war, believing that the deaths of 20 million Japanese could leave them victorious. So, yeah,, he saw the light a bit late...
As far as the Kamikazes go, I think it is a bit more complicated than that. As the war went on, Japan's pilot quality dropped. To make matters worse for them, fuel also became a problem, so what planes they did have performed worse. Meanwhile, US technology and numbers kept increasing, and the British were able to send more resources to the Pacific as well. The end result of this was the likes of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, aka the Great Mariana's Turkey Shoot, in which 75% or more of the 750 planes Japan committed to the fight were lost. Japan also didn't have the pilot recovery network set up like the US did either. Basically, if you were a Japanese pilot, you weren't likely to come back, one way or the other, if you were sent to attack the US fleets. Given that, it does sort of make sense. Not continuing to fight a war that was obviously lost, but, well, if you were going to fight it, and you were going to lose your planes and pilots either way...
Now, Banzai charges, that's another matter.
Interesting to hear about dissent among Japanese officers and airmen, and the emperor’s own ambivalence about the tactic
Fun fact: Though I'm unable to find a proper source, it is mentioned in a book by James F Dunnigan outlining the pacific war, and mentions how one picket destroyer, angry about constantly being harassed by eager Japanese Kamikaze pilots erected a giant sign in Japanese that read "Carriers that way" with an arrow pointing away from the fleet.
Wow, never thought I’d find an ounce of humor in such a pressing and tragic matter. That’s very interesting.
This seems so outrageously comical that it has to be true. I have to look this up
Seems legit. The ship reconnaissance skill of Japanese pilots, especially when reporting what they'd sunk was very poor.
Oh that's true, I forgot the ship's name but yes it was a destroyer on a radar pocket duty indeed
Don’t think stayed up long
While Genda's instincts were sound, at this point the Japanese didn’t have the ability to provide enough training time to really challenge the Allies. At this point the American pilots were having to essentially compete for spots to go overseas and were getting far more hours than any new Japanese pilot could hope for. They were also being trained by veterans with combat experience.
13:18 - the young boy in the center with the dog is Yukio Araki, one of the most well-known kamikaze pilots and one of the youngest at 17 years old.
The final letters of the pilots show their humanity and are beautiful entries into the minds of men who knew they were about to die. I highly recommend reading some of them online.
Can you please suggest a website with English translation?
@@B9M3 Just search on the internet for kamikaze final letters. I read them in English despite I can read some Japanese (I lived there for 3 years).
00:34 the shear amount of projectiles is amazing.
*sheer (shear means to break off)
Shooting is not as easy as some may it out to be.
WW2 was on a scale so large it’s almost knee-shakingly sublime. The numbers involved were on a scale unmatched in their entirety anytime or anywhere else in history. Other wars had more bombs, others may have had more of a percentage of populations killed. None were as so ever-encompassingly enormous as this conflict.
And they only used a tracer for every 4th round, so if you see 20 rounds coming at you, there are 60 OTHER rounds that you don't even see coming... 😳😳😳
The capacity of US naval fleets were insane, they could put thousands of rounds in the air within seconds with superb radar fire control, this saved thousands of sailors later on
This reminded me of a trip to the Yamato Museum in Kure, Japan. They had a kamikaze black, mini-submarine (literally a human torpedo) piloted by a single person on a one way trip. The pilot penned an emotional letter to his mother. It was recorded on audio and played on repeat. Heartbreaking. Right so they were called the Kaiten subs - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiten
Similar was the Ohka, essentially a piloted missile. I believe there was even an anime made representing pilots chosen for these "aircraft" but that's a fleeting memory of mine.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_MXY-7_Ohka
Christ
@@OOZ662 The Germans had a piloted V1 as well. Theoretically, the pilot was supposed to bail out right before the impact, but given the location of the canopy right below the engine....
They were assembled in Hiroshima I believe, at the torpedo factory. Young women built the internals because it required small and agile hands.
@@Axterix13 They actually had test pilots fly the V1, one of their famous female pilots was killed or badly injured bailing out during a test flight.
I've seen this footage many times before, but it never gets any less chilling.
"I am not going on this mission for the Emperor or for the Empire. I am going for my beloved wife. I am going because I was ordered to."
Fuuuuck. :(
How many if not most of those men thought, but dare not display publicly for fear of shame and ridicule, pretty sad and insidious overall.
The story of the kamikaze is so heartbreaking, and is a cautionary tale. The pilots weren't all crazy fanatics, they were kids whose masculinity and patriotism were manipulated by a fascist regime. They wanted to be heroes, they wanted the love of their community. What they got was a quick and utterly meaningless death, like so many other Japanese servicemen in the late stages of the war. We should remember them not as mystical heroes or fanatical villains, but as a tragedy. A collection of young men who died for the empty promises and ambitions of old men.
It should be remembered, too, that the kamikaze pilots were not just the victims of an inhuman system, but that the system itself had a twisted logic to it. The loss rates among pilots were so horrendous that there were three options. To roll over and lose the war was rejected off-hand. To continue the current way of war would mean to send men to their death, only for them to achieve little. The kamikaze, though an assured death, at least ensured that the pilot had a good (comparatively) chance of wounding the enemy.
fascist ? You are a bit confused
Look the Japanese during WW2 were assholes sure but they weren't fascists. Not every totalitarian authoritarian government is fascist. There is a clear distinction between all the Axis power governments but assuredly they were all major assholes.
i was hoping to see comments like this as opposed to the usual
@@saburosakai9129 it's the word du jour. There's a whole segment of society that uses that word about anyone they can't win an argument against......
Its good to know that even at the time the Japanese were largely horrified by these tactics. Its a shame RUclips's policies won't allow certain words that would emphasize what this was.
It makes more sense why a nation would come to the conclusion this was a good idea when you realise that from late 42 onwards allied AAA meant that any attacks on large task forces had an extremely high casualty rate. For example in the battle of the Eastern Solomons ~90 Japanese carrier planes attacked a US task force including a battleship and the CV USS Enterprise, less than 10 made it out.
Constantly being shredded by CAP and AAA developed a cult of death within the IJNAF that already had strong foundations in the various ultranationalist and ultramilitarist ideologies that had ruled Japan for almost 20 years, ensuring that any young man would have grown up steeped in those values
This death cult is what would essentially devour Japanese culture in the last months of the war as desperation for all set in and invasion loomed. Propaganda called for the “glorious deaths of 10 million”, Japanese Women were trained to charge GIs with spears, Women and children were to be used as suicide bombers, hoping that their innocence would cause allied soldiers to hesitate for long enough for them to detonate. Massed fleets of suicide boats were planned to ram allied LSTs, suicide submarines would attack fleets offshore while suicide divers would use explosives on poles to sink allied landing boats, specialised jet powered suicide manned rockets were built and deployed at the very end of the war.
Facing that you can see why the atomic bomb was used
I always had to explain this point to certain morons who love to use the Americans are barbaric because they dropped the A-Bomb trope as part of their Communist Poseuring stances.
Simultaneously, the strategic and carpet bombing of Japan, along with the Soviet invasions within Manchuria were making the possibility of a land invasion low.
@@AshanBhatoa The Soviet Union came very close to invading Hokkaido, and if that had happened, it would have been a bloodbath. Look up how the soldiers of the Red Army went berserk when they entered Germany and look at how the NKVD enforced discipline in the Red Army.
Second even with the carpet bombing the Empire of Japan still refused to surrender.
@@ChairmanMo Yup, we could've ended up with an east/west Germany in Japan if a land invasion was launched by the Soviets in the North and the US in the south.
That would've been a catastrophic loss of life for Japan in comparison.
@@SuperCatacata The Japanese would have fought to the death and even used chemical and biological weapons if the Red Army set food on Hokkaido and went berserk there.
My dad said one of the few times in the war that he was scared was when the Kamikazes showed up. He was a Quartermaster on a cargo/repair ship late in the war. His duty station was on the bridge and he could see them come in for an attack. The thin-skinned and lightly defended auxiliaries were a favored target, as one hit from one of these planes quickly sank them. The Kamikazes sand a destroyer next to his ship. He didn't like to talk about it and only told me the full story once. Thanks for this video, as it helped me picture what he was talking about.
"Legions of promising young men were sent off to meaningless deaths"
That's a pretty succinct description of war, too.
That depends entirely on what you're fighting for.
It's not meaningless if you won the war
The deaths were only meaningless because the Japanese lost the war. If Japan had won, kamikazes would be hailed as heroes for reducing the overall deathtoll required to take out the entire enemy fleet
Dying for the ambitions of a fascist regime is never meaningful.
This.
Absolutely right. Through military history there are plenty of examples where risky actions taken by generals succeeded, and they were later on hailed as geniuses and brilliant strategist, while those actions that failed characterized the leaders as dumb and incompetent. If Market Garden achieved all of its objectives, it would have been described as one of the most brilliant operations in military history. While if the Thunder Run in Baghdad resulted in a couple of tanks destroyed and a dozen or so KIA everyone would be asking themselves what were those guys thinking driving through an urban area with little to no infantry cover.
but by the time the kamikaze started the war was already decided. It’s not heroic to waste lives on a conflict that is already decided
The only reason Kamikazes were even put in place was BECAUSE the war had been decided already.
Military History Visualised did a very interesting video on the logic behind the Kamikaze. Essentially he compares the number of Japanese aircraft lost in order to achieve one hit between regular and Kamikaze attacks. Well worth a look.
It was a really brutal and cold calculus when once the numbers were broken down, it took about the same amount of lives to sink a ship conventionally as it did by kamikaze
@@andrewzheng4038 and much less training… lower quality planes, less fuel… hmmm
This is the most in-depth and concise documentary about the Kamikazes I ever watched! Amazing job!
It becomes a lot easier to understand the rationale behind the kamikaze attacks when you realize that by this point in the war, the survival rate of conventional bombing runs was something like 10%. A kamikaze raid that dealt the same damage as a conventional attack would sustain far fewer casualties
It's absolutely unbelievable that these pilots were the first smart guided munitions.
I love your content! We are lucky to see it for free!
Well, not quite true. The German Fritz X bombs were first used in 1943, over a year before the first Kamikaze program attacks. Though pilots had, prior to then, suicided into various targets, just not as part of official policy.
This channel advertised having quality primary sources including footage and this video demonstrates it. I have seen WW2 footage for decades and still was chilled at the footage starting at 10:15. Managing to combine both the highest levels of grand strategy and the raw power of being on the ground leads to a simply superior product.
Thank you and look I forward to future videos.
It's worth noting that kamikaze attacks actually suffered less casualties per hit than normal fighter attacks.
I'm happy for this channel and all that you do. Many people don't really understand the brutality of war, and the mindset people were in.
The line about them drowning themselves over being captured is exactly right. There was so little POW's compared to any other front or war we've fought, because they often fought to the last.
Hell, when our Marines were about to show up, mothers would throw their children off cliffs before jumping themselves, because they thought the marines would *eat their children*.
It's why the bomb was needed to completely break them. Otherwise it would have been unimaginably worse for everyone
I have nothing but the utmost admiration and respect for kamikaze pilots. I don't believe they died in vain, or without purpose; on the contrary I think it was the grim determination of the Japanese serviceman to fight to whatever end that won Japan a much more favorable and dignified peace than the other axis powers.
During an interview with the famous Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service Ace Lt. (j.g.) Saburo Sakai said this about Kamikaze pilots “A lot of Westerners looked at the kamikaze strategy with complete shock, the idea of putting a kid in a plane and telling him to kill himself by crashing into the enemy. But even if you don't tell him to crash into something, putting a kid with only about 20 hours flight time into a plane and telling him to take on U.S. pilots in Hellcats and Corsairs is just as much a suicidal tactic as being a kamikaze. We figured that if they're going to die anyway, the kamikaze attack will probably cause more damage to the enemy for the same price in lives.
But let me tell you, all that stuff you read about "dying for the emperor ... Banzai!" that's all crap. There wasn't one kamikaze pilot or soldier out there who was thinking anything about the emperor when they were facing death. They were thinking about their mother and their family, just like anybody else. The reason those final letters home that they wrote are so filled with emperor glorification stuff is because they knew the censors would read them, and because they simply wanted to try to make their parents proud.”
I swear this is like a tv show and I love how regular the posts are becoming
There’s no dishonor is losing to a superior opponent. But there is dishonor in throwing your life away for a fool who refuses to admit that he is beaten. Human life has value, and only those who esteem its value have any worth.
Life has value, yes.
Zaddy Hirahito
Great videos! I really love the detail and the attention given to history that is being forgotten, Keep up the great work!!
Great video and thanks for the insight from the perspective of the Japanese high command that not all of them were in favour of this tactic.
Happy to see this companion channel doing so good. Keep up the good work, Operations Room!! You are doing it right!!
Thank you for this nuanced and thoughtful video.
In blossom today, then scattered; Life is so like a delicate flower. How can one expect the fragrance to last forever? -Takijirō Ōnishi, known as the father of the kamikaze
While the Kamikazes were able to get more hits, my understanding was that the terminal speed of a plane in a dive was not as effective as a bomb in penetrating a ships citadel. Small ships like destroyers and lightly armed escort carriers were vulnerable but the larger ships were not. Even the Franklin survived. It also gave more impetus to the use of the atomic bomb because the concern about supporting an invasion off the shore of the main islands.
Japans first priority at this point was not to sink ships, it was to put them tempoarily out of action to give itself some breathing room. As discussed in the video and in other comments and as you said, Kamikaze attacks generally were able to achieve the same number of hits with fewer planes, or more hits with the same number of planes compared to conventional bombing attacks.
You dont need to penetrade the armor deck on a US carrier to disable hit, as the armor was below the hangar and thus a hit in the upper part of the ship was enough to cause everything inside the hangar (planes, ammunition, fuel) to explode and cripple the ship. Those ships would not sink but it could take months until they were fully repaired in shipyards on the US coast. Same with cruisers. With the british carriers that served in the Pacific from late 1944 onwards (the Royal Navy basically send every modern large surface warship into the pacific, including all their carriers, yet it is never mentioned anywhere) it was different. They had armored flight decks, which were not penetrated by kamikazes. The planes would just bounce off from the flight deck with no damage done, and if there was any damage it was either splinter damage or a small dent in the flight deck. As a compromise, the carriers had smaller hangars than their US counterparts.
When looking at USS Franklin it is worth noting that she had to be towed to the east coast of the US because all the west coast shipyards were full with repairing other damaged ships. If I remember correctly at one point half of the US carrier fleet was out of action and undergoing repairs due to kamikaze hits. Also, when looking at extreme cases like Franklin one should always bear in mind that under most circumstances, the ship would not have been saved and scuttled instead. The reason she was saved was because Japan had no surface ships or submarines in the area that would be able to finish her off. The japanese carriers at the battle of Midway in 1942 recieved routhly a similar amound of damage from US attacks. None of those sunk carriers were in danger of sinking after the attacks themselves, they were all scuttled because everything from the hangar upwards was completely destroyed (like Franklin) and most onboard power was lost. If Japan had total sea control they could have possibly saved them in a similar way the US saved Franklin. But they didnt, there was a possibility of further US attacks so they had to prevent the capture of their carriers by scuttling them and then retreating. If the Franklin had to face that danger of continued japanese attacks, it would have been scuttled as well.
I dont want to take anything away from the US damage control teams, they were leagues ahead of their japanese counterparts and did wonders on Franklin. But they were only able to do so because the overall tactical and strategic situation was that there was little to no risk of a follow up attack, and thus the USN could afford to stay with Franklin instead of abandoning her.
@@xxnightdriverxx9576 You make a good argument. If you assign the goal as a temporary “kill” vs a permanent kill the Kamikazes certainly look much more successful and rightly so. You still face those ships returning at some point and with nearly 100 carriers of various types in the US inventory by 1945 plus allied ships like your armored British carriers, eventually you reach a point where returns might approach the temporary kills? Would be interesting to run the numbers.
I still think it was a mistake as it was definitely a factor in the decision to use the atomic bomb as operations near the main islands would expose the Allied fleets to greatly increased risk thus the A Bomb justified its own use to counter the Kamikaze risks?
Based on the description of Kamikaze as "Divine Wind", I think it can be written as 「神風」 whereas 「神」 means "God" or something divine while 「風」 literally means wind and thus, the Divine Wind.
In recent months I have been watching videos about the Pacific War. I am amazed at the difference between Western Armies and others regarding the value of life.
Banzai Charges, The Battle of Stalingrad, Iwo Jima and the list goes on, and on.
In thinking of this, the damage done by Kamikaze to Allied Forces in the Pacific was significant, while the tactic seems as strange to our Western Values as Suicide Bomber today.
Good Video. Thanks,
There's something deeply humbling and sad about seeing these letters to their young children.
But then you realize they were on a mission to kill, and suddenly the whole ideal loses all meaning.
Excellent video. Keep up the great work! Cheers.
Thank you! A great summary with different views!
As always, a great video, thanks!
I've been on the Laffey. Quite sobering to stand in the same places where men of both sides died.
In a way, the kamikaze attacks did work, just not in the way the Japanese could see. It was a psychological affect that really haunted the sailors and the survivors of these attacks.
They worked im more ways than that. It is actually quite easy to argue that the Japanese got more hits at a lower cost using kamikaze tactics then they could have any other way. They were out of seasoned crew, out of fuel, and had a large surplus of aircraft no longer suited for frontline service but perfectly suited for such attacks. Tacticly a small force of any other could almost certainly be repelled by allied fleet defenses but a lone kamikaze was much more successful at infiltrating. Essentially once the Japanese successfully were able to spoof IFF signals late in the war. I am not down playing the atrocious tactics by saying this just point of it was militarily successful.
@@Redpatch not militarily successful if there's no real end result that benefits your position.
By the same token, the v1 and v2 programs were not military successes for germany
What a great subject and so well done
They were training kids to be a part of a guided anti ship missile, meanwhile America tried pigeons instead and decided it was not worth it. Puts into perspective how Imperial Japan thought about human lives.
Excellent work. There is not enough discourse and understanding among Westerners about the nuances of the Japanese perspective on these tactics. Myself certainly belonged in that group until you educated me with this fine presentation of history. Thank you for this important material
Because everyone with half a brain already knows what the kamikazes were actually like
well done, amazing video well documented and with real footage of kamikazee attacks...
Perhaps the worst part of this is that given the potency of U.S. Navy fleet air defense at that point in the war, Kamikazes were arguably no more crazy than a conventional attack.
In Robert Conroy's alternate history novel _1945_ (2007) which depicted the U.S. invasion of Japan [Operation Downfall], _Kamikazes_ were also used against American ground targets in Kyushu.
The threat of kamikazes was a real concern for military planners of Operation Downfall after Okinawa because of how vulnerable transports would be during the landings and how difficult it would be to locate and stop kamikazes due to the relatively short flight Japanese planes would have to fly. At the end of the war Japan still had some 12,000 aircraft, half of which were considered of kamikaze design and use, plus they still had hundreds of mini subs and several thousand small motorboats that were to be used in suicide attacks during the landings. I only recently found out about Conroy's novel and it's on my list of books to find this year.
Really good content. I'm a big fan.
Great video!
Excellent stuff
1:30 The USS St. Lo had originally been named the USS Midway. A month before her sinking, the navy decided that naming a mere escort carrier after their great victory was a waste. They reserved the name for a planned Essex class carrier and renamed the Midway to the St. Lo.
Sailors are superstitious and one long standing superstition is that changing the name of a ship is asking for bad luck. When her crew heard the news of the re-naming, some of the veterans in the crew swore the bad luck brought on by the name change would see the ship on the bottom within a month. They were correct. Coincidence?
Largely yes. If you universally believe something is bad luck, it will be.
I love these videos
Christ, that live footage of all the splashes and explosions in the water is terrifying.
The explosive bursts where you see shrapnel bursting in lines across the sea really gives me a understanding of what bomber crews meant when they said the flak was so thick you could walk on it.
Even so late in the game, the Japanese just didn't understand the overwhelming industrial force of the US. Even if every single one of the initial 300 kamikaze planes had sunk a ship, by 1944 it wouldn't have changed the ultimate outcome of the war. If they had used kamikazes in 1942 at the Coral Sea or Midway, it might have made a difference, but not by '44. Yamamoto knew this, which was why he strongly argued against going to war with the US, and why he privately admitted after Midway that the war could no longer be won by Japan, but it was easy to disregard his pessimism when the fighting was taking place thousands of miles from the home islands.
The important thing to realize about kamikaze is that attacking the american fleet at the end of the war was anyway a suicide mission with nearly no chance to survive. This is why the first experience pilots were volunteer. They accepted to attack the american fleet, a suicide in itself, but they also wanted that their death would have a chance to accomplish something.
There was also story of a Kamikaze pilot who flew 9 Kamikaze missions and each time found an excuse to not carry out the attack and returned to a different airfield to avoid punishment. Japanese press back then listed the names of each Kamikaze pilot in newspapers and people seeing the same guy "dying" over and over again realized the whole campaign is BS and his act probably encouraged more pilots into desertion.
The banzai mindset. One of the most crippling aspects of the Japanese mindset was the focus on trying hard, rather than doing what was necessary to achieve real success. What was important was to be SEEN to still be trying, even if that came at the cost of real effectiveness.
It’s always the junior officers who were the most fanatical and crazy ones.
good work
That was excellent that you used both American and Japanese sources.
Interesting that even the emperor wasn't sure how to feel about it
The Big Blue Blanket really underscores how it was airpower and not the vaunted American AA that was the primary defence of American WWII fleets.
I love that you have found such a range of Japanese sources on this. Their voices are never heard enough in the literature, and too often we get the "official view" represented as "everyone's view".
"I was really sad when that entire culture was removed from the face of the Earth." Said no one ever.
And parts of it seem to be still there.
It's amazing what social pressures can do to someone. These kids...It's heartbreaking to see what they were pressured to do...Calling to their Mothers when they were gonna buy it...Terrifying really...
I read one kamikazee came back from 9 missions. He'd say he had engine trouble, got lost or couldn't locate a proper target. My understanding is he was executed instead of being sent out a 10th time.
The most ridiculous special attack unit was the human underwater mine. They planned to build underwater bunkers so divers could actually live underwater in the shallow coastal waters around the home islands. Then you'd go out with a mine on a stick with a trigger that goes off after banging it on the bottom of a ship, especially troop transport landing craft
i recommend the japaense movie The Eternal Zero, seems to be inspired by Yukio Seki but not openly talking about it since the film got alot of criticisms from the right wing parties in japan for showing the truth of sending young men to die in a one way attack. i dont think its necessarily historically accurate in terms of who and what happened on what date, but i would like believe the emotions portrayed is historically accurate
The numbers dont lie. Kamikadze attacks cost less lives than conventional attacks. They where ultimetly missiles with an organic computer since electronic guidance had not been invented yet. And in the modern day most air weapons are guided missliles for a reason.
Very sad, but I can’t get over the fact that there was a WW2 ship named U.S.S. Pringle
in that last photo, the guy in the center looks like just a kid. absolutely heart breaking
I saw a comment that mentioned he was 17 years old :/
He's holding a puppy too
The most common word used to describe kamikaze pilots in western documentaries is "fanatical". Which I think is wrong. These were normal young men, just as eager to live and to return to their families after the war as any other soldier. A crucial factor not mentioned in this excellent documentary are Japanese social mores that elevate the group above the individual. You do not want to be the nail that sticks out. And the particular role of shame in Japanese society. These factors were exploited by Japanese high command to ensure a ready supply of "volunteers" to join the kamikaze.
Although the Kamikaze’s saw some significant successes in their missions, they also acted as an absolutely terrifying weapon to the marine’s and sailors on those ships, realizing that these pilots weren’t breaking away from their dives, but heading right towards them must’ve been beyond terrifying.
Did you not watch the video discussing that they were actually very effective?.....
Watch the video again. "Rarely" is incorrect.
Nice
Needless Death. That's what sums up the Kamikazes quite nicely. Many were brave but at the end of the day it was all needless death.
You know Kamikazes are bad even when Hirohito himself says "Really?"
My stepfathers grandfather was a Sailor in the Pacific and to this day he will not sit in a restaurant if there is a Japanese person and is highly racist towards them.
Don't be racist but just goes to show what kind of hate war can bring for an entire life.
It is a horrific thing, however, conventional bombing tactics at this point in the war were nearly suicidal as well. Desperation turns even the most vial things into viable options.
Absolutely heartbreaking. What a reservoir of absolutely heroic and astonishing souls thrown away towards the unjust cause of an evil empire. Truly each one would have lived as a great man rather than dying as one.
Spiff have a perfect term for them: The Banzai Boys
It should also be considered that dive bombing against US ships by 1944, with the amount of AA emplacements and radar direction that had been implemented, was basically suicide.
I recommend 'Kamikaze Diaries' by Emiko Ohnuku-Tierney, which examines the lives of university students who became kamikaze pilots, and what motivated them.
Great video. Life is senseless anyways. I admire the senseless but thoughful kamikazi.
Ever notice... there was never any annual former Kamikazi Unit reunion parties?
That should be self evident lol
Afaik there were Kamikaze Pilots who survived their mission and returned to base, e.g. when they found no opportunity to initiate attack, but that probably was the rare exception.
Afaik there is a case of one who returned 9 times, and as later investigations,after the war have shown, with good reason, but his superiors during the war didn't believe him and had him executed for cowardice in front of the enemy.
Actually, they had 1 reunion but they all crashed on the drive over.
You need a sense of humor transplant. Better yet, a personality transplant.
One of the carriers was the USS Franklin, my dad's good friend who was a shop steward at Chrysler in Belvidere, IL was on the Franklin during WWII
Wow
Best video on this subject I've seen. Reading the book I listed beow agrees with The Intel Report's assessment, and also debunks the whole kamikaze script. Lankford points out numerous cases (including kamikazes) about what makes a suicide bomber. First step: Find someone who is suicidal. Second step: Send them out to kill themselves. (Where's the part about being so loyal, or wanting to go to paradise? Not necessary.) But even Japan didn't actually have as many suicidal people, but it had social pressure (Banzai attacks were not optional, and if you survive, surrender and come home? Fail to follow any order? You were told your family will be made to suffer. (There are reports of this during the war.) The Japanese military also had a deeply entrenched practice of brutal relentless bullying. If you aren't suicidal, by the end of boot camp you will be. Officers beat sergeants, sergeants beat privates, everyone in the Japanese military was brutal to civilians, POWs, each other.
The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers Hardcover - by Adam Lankford (I'd recommend getting this book at the library. It's a bit repetitious. The formula for kamikaze's is so simple it doesn't require an entire book.)
And I've actually met a kamikaze pilot. I didn't know it until after he'd died, so I could never ask him about it. He was a friend's father, drafted into the kamikaze corps near the end of the war. War ended before he could be sent on a mission. Thank goodness. I wonder how many other wonderful people were never born because dictators, fanatics and emperors thought it would be a good idea to start a war.
My friend in the Navy married a Japanese girl whose father was a Kamikaze pilot but the war ended before he had to fly to his death.
A printed manual in Japanese detailed how to be what English-speakers popularly call a kamikaze. More formal Japanese terms do exist. The manual stated that if the pilot adhered to the spiritual, mental, and physical instructions properly, the last thing they would see would be their mother's face. Additionally, the protocol stated that supposedly the pilot was required to be provided with a dagger -- so that after making final course correction and IN THEORY securing the aircraft’s control yoke with a cord so as to remove their hands from the controls, they could IN THEORY opt for a quicker and easier death by stabbing themselves. There were also considerable numbers of manned, human-guided suicide submarines (English: Heaven Shaker) and thousands of suicide motorboats (English: Sea Quake) in the Japanese inventory, ready for use. Additionally, there were or would soon have been underwater bunkers off the coast of Japan from which suicide divers carrying "lunge mines" would have attacked the landing ships of the Allied invaders from below. The English translation of the term used for the suicide divers would have been “Crouching Dragon." Before the point when extensive use would have been made of these additional suicide weapons, Japan surrendered. Similarly, the Nazi Germans had their "Sonderkommando Elbe" suicide pilot unit, but that unit was vastly smaller and less well-known.
The first recorded ritual suicide in Japan is believed to have occurred in either 1170 AD or 1180 AD. That first case was carried out by a samurai to atone for his personal shame in failing to prevent a terrible military outcome under his watch -- and because, in that first case, he considered further resistance to be pointless or impossible. Traditionally, this act was reserved for samurai and performed only with the permission or at the explicit instruction of one's feudal lord. There were also a few special circumstances when it was done by women of noble birth. For example, it might happen if a home invasion occurred and there was no one available to help -- if a noblewoman was certain that despite her best efforts, her own attempts to stop the home invasion would not be successful.
The notion that individuals NOT of samurai descent would be methodically deceived and guilt-tripped into committing ritual suicide centuries later would have been abhorrent to the vast majority of historical samurai. The fact that this expectation was intentionally extended to ordinary people -- as part of an intricately planned conspiracy of misrepresentation by ultraradicals -- is something the historical samurai would have utterly despised. By extension, the historical samurai would now also feel insulted for another reason, since part of their specialness was that ritual suicide was a way they and they alone could be expected to answer for themselves and back up their deeds to the ultimate extent, in a way it was felt non-samurai could not do and should never aspire to do. Non-samurai were historically felt to have a completely different set of responsibilities. Those differences were historically kept very, very clear.
Think of all the hands and brains lost that could have been used in bringing Japan up after the war. Yes. They got up but how much quicker would it have been?
Death is as light as a feather
Duty is as heavy as a mountain
Unknown Kamikaze pilot
Been reading Zen At War and it’s heartbreaking….and that people are still willing to die for an unfounded belief. Can’t we do better?
War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it.
-Benito Mussolini
As a teen who read a lot of WWII history, I seem to recall that after taking off, a drafted Kamikaze pilot came back around to the airfield he took off from and strafed the control tower. He then flew off to his mission.
Turning the gun is exactly what I would do.
We have a saying for that kind of thing in the US military - "Voluntold".
Although the Kamikaze program saw some significant success, it would still hurt Japan in all retrospect, by this point in the war, and up until the end, the Japanese were wasting valuable planes, pilots and fuel for this program, instead of reserving these things and using them to combat the US navy and Air Force more wisely. Although they still stood as an effective terror weapon as well as a weapon in of itself, the men and materials wasted by the program would ultimately hurt and damper Japan’s ability to continue fighting in the end.
US advances in planes and tactics meant that they would die anyway. I think the logic was, if they are going to die anyway, better to kill some enemies in the process.
Other than unconditional surrender, all that Japan had to offer at that stage was suicidal. Flying an obsolete Zero in conventional warfare was in my opinion a waste of resources.
The U.S. had made incredible advances in anti-aircraft weapons by this point. Any attack on a U.S. task force was suicide.
Yeah might as well use a tactic that takes the most kill per pilot if the outcome is the same
It is good to mention that the Japanese (and apparently a lot of them even in the military ranks) opposed this idea. The idea of dying for the emperor is also used as a propaganda. Just like what happened in Germany when they started losing.
Of course, it is successful at first because of surprise factor and there was little to no strategy to counter this. By 1945, it was a case of extreme luck to even get close to any of the ships and sink them. It's like a banzai charge but on air.
Imagine if Seki hadn’t been successful the Japanese might have scrapped the kamikaze program; preventing their invaluable experienced pilots from being literally wasted. This might have allowed the Japanese to better resist allied advances and maybe a chance to turn the tide.