Kamikaze

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Kamikaze (神風) is a word of Japanese origin, which in the English language usually refers to suicide attacks carried out by Imperial Japan's military aviators against Allied shipping towards the end of the Pacific campaign of World War II, by crashing their planes into warships.

Air attacks were the predominant and best-known aspect of a wider use of—or plans for—suicide attacks by Japanese personnel, including soldiers carrying explosives, and boat crews (see Japanese Special Attack Units).

Since the end of the war, in 1945, the word kamikaze has sometimes been used as a pars pro toto for other kinds of attack in which an attacker is deliberately sacrificed. These include a variety of suicide attacks, in other historical contexts, such as the proposed use of Selbstopfer aircraft by Nazi Germany and various suicide bombings by terrorist organizations around the world, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks. Hyperbolic usage also includes non-fatal attacks which result in significant loss for attackers, like the end of their career.

Origins of the word kamikaze

In the Japanese language, kamikaze (IPA: ^*) (Japanese:神風), usually translated as "divine wind" (kami is the word for "god", "spirit", or "divinity"; and kaze for "wind"), came into being as the name of a legendary typhoon said to have saved Japan from a Mongol invasion fleet in 1281.

In Japanese, the exact term used for units carrying out these suicide attacks during World War II is tokubetsu kōgeki tai (特別攻撃隊), which literally means "special attack unit." This is usually abbreviated to tokkōtai (特攻隊).

More specifically, suicide air squads that came from the Imperial Japanese Navy were officially called shinpū tokubetsu kōgeki tai (神風特別攻撃隊, "Divine wind special attack units", shinpū is the on-reading of the same characters that form the word kamikaze), in obvious reference to the 13th century typhoon, nowadays commonly known as kamikaze tokubetsu kōgeki tai though. The English language picked up the word Kamikaze to designate Japanese suicide units in general, and this usage has gained acceptance worldwide. Japan continues to prefer the term tokkōtai (特攻隊), although the foreign usage of Kamikaze is widely acknowledged.

In fact, the word "kamikaze" was never used by the Japanese during WWII; they used the pronunciation shinpū. The word was misread by American translators during the war, and the mistaken pronunciation stuck. After the war, when the Japanese had largely renounced their militaristic past, they re-imported the word with the pronunciation "kamikaze" from American media.

Additionally, while kamikaze is pronounced as with all short vowels in Japanese, it is generally pronounced with a long "e" sound in English.

World War II

Background

Japanese forces, after their defeat at the Battle of Midway in 1942, lost the momentum they had at the start of the Pacific War (known officially as the Great Eastern Asian War in Japan). During 1943-44, Allied forces, backed by the industrial might and rich resources of the United States, were advancing steadily towards Japan.

Japan's fighter planes were becoming outnumbered and outclassed by newer US-made planes, especially the F4U Corsair and F6F Hellcat. Because of combat losses, particularly at the Battle of Midway, skilled fighter pilots were becoming extremely scarce. Finally, the low availability of parts and fuel made even normal flight operation a problem.

On July 15, 1944, Saipan, an important Japanese base fell to the Allied forces. The capture of Saipan made it possible for US air forces, using B-29 Superfortress long-range bombers to strike the Japanese home islands. After the fall of Saipan, the Japanese high command predicted that the Allies would try to capture the Philippines, which was strategically important due to its location between the oil fields of Southeast Asia and Japan.

The prediction came true in October 17, 1944, when Allied forces assaulted Suluan Island, beginning the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Imperial Japanese Navy's 1st Air Fleet, based at Manila was assigned the task of assisting the Japanese ships which would attempt to destroy Allied forces in Leyte Gulf. However, the 1st Air Fleet at that time only had 40 aircraft: 34 Mitsubishi Zero carrier-based fighters, three Nakajima B6N torpedo bombers, one Mitsubishi G4M and two Yokosuka P1Y land-based bombers, and one reconnaissance plane. The task facing the Japanese air forces seemed totally impossible. The 1st Air Fleet commandant, Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi decided to form a suicide attack unit, the Kamikaze Special Attack Force. In a meeting at Magracut Airfield near Manila on October 19, Onishi, visiting the 201st Navy Flying Corps headquarters, suggested: "I don't think there would be any other certain way to carry out the operation hold the Philippines, than to put a 250 kg bomb on a Zero and let it crash into a U.S. carrier, in order to disable her for a week."

The first kamikaze unit

Commander Asaiki Tamai asked a group of 23 talented student pilots, whom he had personally trained, to volunteer for the special attack force. All of the pilots raised both of their hands, thereby volunteering to join the operation. Later, Tamai asked Lieutenant Yukio Seki to command the special attack force. Seki is said to have closed his eyes, lowered his head and thought for ten seconds, before asking Tamai: "please let me do that." Seki thereby became the 24th kamikaze pilot to be chosen.

The names of four sub-units within the Kamikaze Special Attack Force, were Unit Shikishima, Unit Yamato, Unit Asahi, and Unit Yamazakura. These names were taken from a patriotic poem (waka or tanka), "Shikishima no Yamato – gokoro wo hito, towaba Asahi ni niou Yamazakura Bama" by the Japanese classical scholar, Motoori Norinaga. The poem reads:

If someone asks about the Yamato of Empire" spirit of Shikishima poetic name for Japan,

It is the flowers of yamazakura cherry blossom that are fragrant

in the Asahi sun.

The first attacks

At least one source cites Japanese planes crashing into the USS Indiana and USS Reno in mid-late 1944 as the first kamikaze attacks of World War II.^* However, there is little evidence that these hits were more than accidental collisions or last-minute decisions by pilots in doomed aircraft, of the kind likely to happen in intense sea-air battles.

Captain Masafumi Arima, the commander of the 26th Air Flotilla (part of the 11th Air Fleet), is also sometimes credited with inventing the kamikaze tactic. Arima personally led an attack by about 100 Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (or "Judy") dive bombers against a large Essex class aircraft carrier, USS Franklin near Leyte Gulf, on (or about, accounts vary) October 15, 1944. Although Arima was killed, and part of a plane hit the Franklin, it is not clear that this was a planned suicide attack.^* The Japanese high command and propagandists seized on Arima's example: he was promoted posthumously to Admiral, and was given official credit for making the first kamikaze attack. Official accounts of his attack bore little resemblance to the events concerned.

In any case, the idea of suicide attacks was not new and — according to eyewitness accounts by Allied personnel — the first kamikaze attack was carried out by an unknown pilot, who was definitely not a member of the Kamikaze Special Attack Force. The pilot concerned may well have been an aviator from the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. The attack took place on October 21, 1944, near Leyte Island; gunners from both the flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Australia, and HMAS Shropshire fired at, and reportedly hit, an unidentified Japanese aircraft. The plane then flew away from the ships, before turning and flying into Australia, striking the ship's superstructure above the bridge, and spewing burning fuel and debris over a large area. A 200 kg (440 pound) bomb carried by the plane failed to explode; if it had, the ship might have been effectively destroyed. At least 30 crew members died as a result of the attack, including the commanding officer, Captain Emile Dechaineux; among the wounded was Commodore John Collins, the Australian force commander.

On October 25, 1944 the Australia was hit again and was forced to retire to the New Hebrides for repairs. That same day, the Kamikaze Special Attack Force carried out its first mission. Five Zeros, led by Seki, and escorted to the target by leading Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, attacked an escort carrier, the USS St. Lo. Although only one plane actually hit the St. Lo, its bomb caused fires that resulted in the bomb magazine exploding, sinking the carrier. Others hit and damaged several other Allied ships. By day's end on October 26, 55 kamikaze from the special attack force had also damaged the large escort carriers USS Sangamon (CVE-26), USS Suwannee (CVE-27), USS Santee (CVE-29), and the smaller escorts USS White Plains, USS Kalinin Bay, and USS Kitkun Bay. In total seven carriers had been hit, as well as 40 other ships (five sunk, 23 heavily damaged, and 12 moderately damaged).

HMAS Australia returned to combat in January 1945; by the end of the war, the ship had survived being hit by kamikazes on six separate occasions, with the loss of 86 lives. Other ships which survived repeated hits from kamikazes during World War II included the Franklin and another Essex class carrier, USS Intrepid.

The main wave of kamikaze attacks

Early successes, such as the sinking of the St. Lo were followed by an immediate expansion of the program, and over the next few months over 2,000 planes made such attacks.

Purpose-built kamikaze planes, as opposed to converted fighters and dive-bombers, had no landing gear at all. A specially-designed propellor plane, the Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi, was a simple, easy-to-build plane, intended to use up existing stocks of engines, in a wooden airframe. The undercarriage was non-retractable: it was jettisoned shortly after take-off for a suicide mission, and then re-used on other planes. Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka rocket-bombs — essentially antiship missiles guided by pilots; were first used in March 1945. Small boats packed with explosives, and manned torpedoes, called Kaiten were also manufactured.

US aircraft carriers, with their wooden flight decks, proved to be far more vulnerable to kamikaze attacks than the reinforced steel-decked carriers from the British Pacific Fleet which operated in the theatre during 1945.

The peak came during the period of April-June 1945, at the Battle of Okinawa. On April 6, 1945 waves of planes made hundreds of attacks, in Operation Kikusui ("floating chrysanthemums"). At Okinawa, kamikaze attacks focused at first on Allied destroyers on picket duty, and then on the carriers in the middle of the fleet. Suicide attacks by planes or boats at Okinawa sank or put out of action at least 30 US warshipsand at least three US merchant shipsbattleships or cruisers were sunk by kamikazes at Okinawa. Most of the ships destroyed were destroyers or smaller vessels, especially those on picket duty. [http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq82-1.htm" target="_blank" >^*

The Japanese resistance at Okinawa included a one-way mission by the battleship Yamato, which failed to get anywhere near the action, after being set upon by Allied planes, several hundred miles away. (See Operation Ten-Go.)

Because of the poverty of their training, kamikaze pilots tended to be easy pickings for experienced Allied pilots, flying vastly superior aircraft. Allied naval crews had also begun to develop techniques to negate kamikaze attacks, such as firing their big guns into the sea in front of attacking planes flying near sea level, in order to create walls of water which would swamp the attacking planes. Although such tactics could not be used against Okhas and other fast, high angle attacks, these were in turn more vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire and Allied fighter planes. During 1945, the Japanese military began stockpiling hundreds of Tsurugi, other propellor planes, Ohka, and suicide boats, for use against Allied forces expected to invade Japan. Few were ever used.

Use of the tactic for air raid defence

When Japan began to be subject to intense strategic bombing by B-29 Bombers after the capture of Iwo Jima, the Japanese military attempted to use suicide attacks against this threat.

However, it proved much less successful and practical since an airplane is a much faster, more maneuverable, and smaller target than a warship. Taken with the fact that the B-29 model also had formidable defensive weaponry, suicide attacks against the plane type demanded considerable piloting skill to be successful. That worked against the very purpose of using expendable pilots and even encouraging capable pilots to bail out before impact was ineffective because vital personnel were often lost when they mistimed when to exit and either failed in their objective and/or were killed as a result.

Effects

By the end of World War II, the Japanese naval air service had sacrificed 2,525 kamikaze pilots and the army air force had given 1,387. According to an official Japanese announcement, the missions sank 81 ships and damaged 195, and according to a Japanese tally, suicide attacks accounted for up to 80 percent of US losses in the final phase of the war in the Pacific. However, according to a U.S. Air Force webpage:

Approximately 2,800 Kamikaze attackers sunk 34 Navy ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded over 4,800. Despite radar detection and cuing, airborne interception and attrition, and massive anti-aircraft barrages, a distressing 14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank.^*

Traditions and folklore

While commonly perceived that volunteers signed up in droves for Kamikaze missions, it has also been contended that there was extensive coercion and peer pressure involved in recruiting soldiers for the sacrifice. Their motivations in "volunteering" were complex and not simply about patriotism or bringing honour to their families.

Special ceremonies were often held, immediately prior to kamikaze missions, in which pilots, carrying prayers from their families, were given military decorations. Such practices honored and legitimized the suicide missions.

According to legend, young pilots on kamikaze missions often flew southwest from Japan over the 922 metre (~3000 ft) Mount Kaimon. The mountain is also called "Satsuma Fuji" (meaning a geometrically symmetrical beautiful mountain like Mount Fuji, but located in the Satsuma Province region). Suicide mission pilots looked over their shoulders to see this, the most southern mountain on the Japanese mainland, while they were in the air, said farewell to their country, and saluted the mountain.

Residents on Kikaijima island, east of Amami Oshima, say that pilots from suicide mission units dropped flowers from the air, as they departed on their final missions. According to legend, the hills above Kikaijima airport have beds of cornflower that bloom in early May (Source: Jiro Kosaka, 1995, Kyō ware Ikiteari).

With the passing of time, some of those who survived the Kamikaze raids have become critical of the policy. Saburo Sakai, a Navy Ace:

References

The article contains materials from Mr. Nobu's personal website with permission for use.

External links

Kamikaze Images - Explores different Western and Japanese portrayals and perceptions of kamikaze pilots.
Kamikaze Footage - Watch real Kamikaze footage from WWII
Kriegsbriefe gefallener japanischer Studenten
dayofthekamikaze.com

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