Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods
by Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase
Pearson Education, 2002, 274 pages
Although the individual stories in Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods are fascinating, most
chapters represent a hodgepodge of material instead of the presentation of an
organized story or 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, this
feature allows readers to start with the chapters that interest them most.
The book jacket indicates that the sources for this book include previously unpublished
documents and interviews with surviving kamikaze pilots. Although the book contains a three-page list of
recommended readings, the authors do not mention any 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 acknowledgment of the
source. In the same way, the authors appropriate the entire letter of Ryōji
Uehara (pp. 138-40) from the English translation by Midori Yamanouchi and Joseph
L. Quinn in Listen to
the Voices from the Sea: Writings of the Fallen Japanese Students (Kike
Wadatsumi no Koe) (2000) without any recognition of its source. The authors'
copying of text from other sources without any attribution makes a reader wonder
how much of this book actually can be attributed to actual research and efforts
by these two authors.
Although Axell and Kase mention the misgivings of some
kamikaze pilots, they tend to idealize the lives and beliefs of the kamikaze
pilots in 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
various insights into the motivations of the special attack pilots who flew
suicide missions against Allied ships. This book contains many vignettes of moving personal stories of kamikaze pilots and their families and friends.
There are six pages of excerpts from a kamikaze instruction manual, but it is
not explained whether any kamikaze pilots who carried out attacks were actually
influenced by this manual.
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
This book provides readers with
insights into the personal lives of kamikaze pilots and those individuals
closest to them. However, its disjointedness and lack of documentation of sources do not
make it a recommended book for someone who wants to know the history of Japan's
kamikaze operations.
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