Kamikaze

For other uses, see Kamikaze (disambiguation).

Kamikaze (神風) is a Japanese word, usually translated as "divine wind" — which 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 word kamikaze is usually used only for this typhoon. In the English language, however, kamikaze usually refers to suicide attacks carried out by Japanese aircrews against Allied Shipping towards the end of the Pacific campaign of World War II.

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. In Japanese, the term used for units carrying out these attacks is tokubetsu kōgeki tai (特別攻撃隊), which literally means "special attack unit." This is usually abbreviated to tokkōtai (特攻隊). In World War II, suicide squads that came from the Imperial Japanese Navy were called shinpū tokubetsu kōgeki tai (神風特別攻撃隊), where shinpū is the on-reading of the same characters that form the word kamikaze.

Since the end of World War II, the word kamikaze has been applied to a wider variety of suicide attacks. Examples of these include Selbstopfer in Nazi Germany in World War II. Terrorist attacks that employ suicide attacks, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks, and Suicide bombing in Israel by Palestinians are sometimes likened to kamikazes.

World War II

Background

Japan's fighter planes were becoming outnumbered and outclassed by newer US-made planes, especially the F4U Corsair and P-51 Mustang. Because of combat losses, 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 Allied forces. The capture of Saipan made it possible for US air forces, using B-29 Superfortress long-range bombers to strike the Japanese mainland. 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 on 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 [to 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

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) by the Japanese classical scholar, Motoori Norinaga. The poem reads:

If someone asks about the Yamato ["Japanese"] spirit of Shikishima [a town in Japan],

It is the flowers of yamazakura [mountain cherry blossom ] that are fragrant

in the Asahi [rising sun].

The first attacks

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 October 13, 1944. Although Arima was killed, and part of a plane hit the Franklin, it is not clear that this was a planned suicide attack.

According to eyewitness accounts by Allied personnel, the first kamikaze attack - in the generally accepted sense of the term - was carried out by an unknown pilot, who was probably from the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, on October 21, 1944. The flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, the Heavy cruiser HMAS Australia, was hit by an unidentified Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (440 pound) bomb, off Leyte Island. The plane struck the superstructure of the Australia above the bridge, spewing burning fuel and debris over a large area. However, the bomb 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, 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, attacked a US escort carrier, the USS St. Lo, although only one plane actually hit the ship. Its bomb caused fires that resulted in the bomb magazine exploding, sinking the carrier. Others hit and damaged several other Allied ships. Because many of them had wooden flight decks, US aircraft carriers soon came to be seen as more vulnerable to kamikaze attacks than the steel-decked British carriers from the British Pacific Fleet which operated in the theatre during the war.

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

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, 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 the Kaiten were also manufactured.

The peak came on April 6, 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa, when 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. These attacks, which expended 1,465 planes, created havoc: accounts of losses vary, but by the end of the battle, at least 21 US ships had been sunk by kamikazes, along with some from other Allied navies, and dozens more had been damaged.

The effort 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 more vulnerable to anti-aircaft 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.

The tactic's use for air raid defence

However, it proved much less successful and practical since an airplane is a much faster, maneuverable and smaller target than the typical 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 with the loss of vital personnel who often mistimed when to exit and either failed their objective and/or were killed as a result.

Effects

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 antiaircraft 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.[https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/EARS/Hallionpapers/precisionweaponspower.htm]

Traditions and Folklore

Special ceremonies were often held, immediately prior to kamikaze missions, in which pilots, carrying prayers from their families, were given military decorations. Such practices helped to glamourise the suicide missions, thereby attracting further volunteers.

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 "goodbye" 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. Supposedly the hills above Kikaijima airport have beds of cornflower that bloom in early May. (Source: Jiro Kosaka, 1995, Kyō ware Ikiteari)

See also

• Takijiro Onishi: The "father of the Kamikaze".
• Imperial Japanese Navy
• Personnel involved in the development of World War II suicide attacks
• Giretsu special forces operations
• @ World War II Japanese suicide weapons
• @ World War II operations and battles of the Pacific Campaign
• Suicide bombing
• Suicide weapons
• Selbstopfer: German World War II suicide attacks.
• Japanese Special Attack Units
• Taran
• Davy Crockett (nuclear device)

Books

• Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase - Kamikaze: Japan's suicide gods

External reference

• The article contains materials from Mr. Nobu's personal website with permission for use.
• Kamikaze Images - Explores different Western and Japanese portrayals and perceptions of kamikaze pilots.