Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods
by Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase
Pearson Education, 2002, 274 pages
"At the very moment of impact: Do your best. Every
deity and the spirits of your dead comrades are watching you intently. Just
before the collision it is essential that you do not shut your eyes for a
moment so as not to miss the target. Many have crashed into the targets with
wide-open eyes. They will tell you what fun they had" (p. 81). These
chilling instructions come from a manual of basic instructions for kamikaze
pilots.
In addition to six pages of excerpts from this kamikaze
instruction manual, the book Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods provides
various insights into the motivations of the special attack pilots who flew
suicide missions against Allied ships. This book contains many vignettes of the
moving personal stories of the kamikaze pilots and their families and friends.
Albert Axell, who was a correspondent and university
instructor in Japan, and Hideaki Kase, a writer and lecturer in Japan, present
this history of the kamikaze pilots from the Japanese viewpoint. The authors
provide some unique Japanese perspectives on war and suicide. This book gives
the reader a peek into the personal lives of several kamikaze pilots:
- the husband who lied to his wife about joining a
kamikaze unit
- the Christian who was going to crash into an enemy
vessel singing a hymn
- the professional baseball player who pitched ten times
to a fellow officer before taking off
- the Army officer whose wife committed suicide with their
two young children in order that her husband's request to become a kamikaze
pilot would not be rejected on the grounds of his being married with children
Although the individual stories are fascinating, most
chapters represent a hodgepodge of material instead of the presentation of an
organized argument. Chapters end abruptly, rather than providing summaries or
conclusions. The authors generally do not comment on relationships between
different parts of the book, and some material has little relation to the
book's main topic, such as ten pages on the wartime exploits of a pilot prior
to his becoming a kamikaze flight instructor.
The time periods and topics covered by the book jump around,
so the reader does not need to read the chapters in succession in order to
understand the stories. Although this may disturb some readers, I enjoyed this
feature since I could start with the chapters that interested me most.
The sources for this book include previously unpublished
documents, interviews with surviving kamikaze pilots, and translations of
published Japanese material. Although the book contains a three-page list of
recommended readings, the authors generally do not mention sources for the
stories. For example, the English translations of two long letters (pp. 140-2)
written by kamikaze pilots come directly from The Divine Wind (1958) by
Rikihei Inoguchi and Tadashi Nakajima without any acknowledgement of the
source.
Although Axell and Kase mention the misgivings of some
kamikaze pilots, they tend to idealize the lives and beliefs of the kamikaze
pilots in the stories included in this book. One young woman wrote in a letter
to the parents of a pilot who crashed into an American ship, "All of these
young men were kind-hearted and were emotionally tied to their families. . . .
I learned how precious is the spirit of sacrifice carried out for the good of
the people. They were possessed by true altruism" (pp. 144-5).
Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods provides readers with
insights into the personal lives of kamikaze pilots and those individuals
closest to them. However, its lack of organization and documentation does not
make it a recommended book for someone who wants to know the history of Japan's
kamikaze operations.
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