It was during the Battle of Leyte Gulf that Japanese naval
airmen first adopted kamikaze tactics. On 19 October 1944, Admiral Takijira
Ohnishi, commander of the First Air Fleet, suggested to commanders based at
Mabalacat airfield in the Philippines that “the only way of assuring that our
meagre strength will be effective to a maximum degree” would be “to organize
suicide attack units… with each plane to crash-dive into an enemy carrier.”
Twenty-six pilots enthusiastically volunteered to form the first “special
attack unit”. They were dubbed kamikaze (“divine wind”) after a typhoon that
had miraculously saved Japan from Mongolian invasion in the 13th century.
Nothing was spared in the effort to bolster morale in men
effectively condemned to death. Ohnishi assured them that they were “already
gods, without earthly desires”. A ritual was improvised just before take-off:
the kamikaze pilots drank a glass of water or sake, sang a traditional martial
song, and donned the hachimaki headband once worn by the samurai. Thus
encouraged, they went off to die for the emperor. On 25 October, a kamikaze
pilot crashed a Mitsubishi Zero through the flightdeck of the escort carrier St
Lo, dowsing the hangars in burning gasoline that ignited stored ammunition.
Ripped apart by a violent explosion, the St Lo sank within an hour. It was a
notable success for Japan amid abject failure. Over the following months,
kamikaze tactics were adopted throughout the now land-based Japanese naval air
force and the army air force.
There was a clear military logic to turning their aircraft
into manned, guided missiles. Technologically inferior to the Americans and
forced to throw poorly trained pilots into battle, the Japanese could see no
other way of reaching and hitting their targets. Japan’s airmen had been flying
off in their hundreds to die for the emperor without inflicting the slightest
damage on the US fleet. Now they would still die, but not in vain. Kamikaze
pilots were presented as an elite who proved through their sacrifice the
superiority of the Japanese warrior spirit even in defeat.
The reality was different. As soon as kamikaze attacks
became a general tactic, it was obvious that suicide missions would be an
absurdly quick way of using up the limited number of experienced pilots.
Inevitably, the suicide planes were entrusted to second-raters, dispensable and
in more plentiful supply. The experienced pilots flew escort, using their
skills to fend off the American fighters. So even in the early days, when
suicide attacks were carried out by small groups of aircraft, the kamikaze
pilot was hardly a member of an elite.
By April 1945, Japanese commanders were herding idealistic
young men to slaughter in droves. As the Americans began their invasion of
Okinawa, a force of over 2,000 aircraft dedicated to suicide attacks was
assembled on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu under the command of
Admiral Matome Ugaki. They were launched in mass attacks on the US fleet,
hundreds of planes at a time attempting to overwhelm the American defences. The
pilots for these kikusui (“floating chrysanthemum”) raids were often recently
drafted students who barely knew how to fly. Kanoya, the main naval air-force
base on Kyushu, was under constant threat from B-29 bomber raids. The pilots
were housed in half-ruined buildings, bedding down on the bare floor. In these
uncomfortable and insecure surroundings, they awaited their first and last
mission, most convinced that their death would be honourable and worthwhile.
Kamikaze legacy
Kamikaze attacks undeniably had both a psychological and
physical impact on the US fleet. The bewilderment and sheer terror experienced
by American sailors when they first encountered suicide bombing cannot be
quantified, although it never undermined their disciplined response. The
physical damage inflicted is reckoned at 34 vessels sunk and 288 damaged – a
considerable battering for the US Navy and, in the later stages, its British
allies. After the war, the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that if the
attacks had been carried out “in greater power and concentration they might
have been able to cause us to withdraw…”. But Japan did not have the resources
to sustain mass suicide bombing for long. Whereas on 6 and 7 April 1945, at the
height of the kamikaze frenzy, more than 300 planes a day attacked the US
fleet, by June the Japanese were hard pressed to find 50 aircraft for a raid.
Some 2,000 Japanese aircraft and pilots were lost in suicide attacks, far more
than could be replaced.
In the end, pitting the samurai spirit of heroic
self-sacrifice against overwhelming industrial might was bound to fail. The
Americans organized better for production and for combat. Commanders who valued
the lives of their men – and airmen who valued their own lives – fought more
effectively than those who glorified death in battle.
When the Japanese emperor broadcast his country’s surrender
on 15 August 1945, kamikaze commander Admiral Ugaki took off with ten other
pilots on a final suicide mission. On his aircraft radio he announced: “I am
going to make an attack on Okinawa where my men have fallen like cherry
blossoms. There I will crash into and destroy the hated enemy in the true
spirit of bushido…”. The admiral and his pilots were never seen again.
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