Kamikaze: Japan's Last Bid for Victory
by Adrian Stewart
Pen & Sword Books, 2020, 209 pages
Over the years many general histories about Japan's kamikaze attacks have
been published in English. Kamikaze: Japan's Last Bid for Victory retells
in a piecework fashion the story of Japanese
suicide attacks based on previously
published works without adding any noticeable insights or contributions.
The chapters very roughly cover Japan's kamikaze operations chronologically,
but many paragraphs jump forward or backward in time from the main narrative as
if a patchwork from various sources. Much of this history does not deal specifically with kamikaze attacks that
started in October 1944 and continued through the end of the Pacific War.
Rather, it discusses related topics such as historical and cultural background, general
Pacific War history, and unplanned and spontaneous attacks where pilots tried to
ram their targets after their planes had been hit and were going down. Readers need to
go through 33 pages before finally reaching the page that describes Vice Admiral Ōnishi's formation
in October 1944 of the Navy's Special Attack Corps to carry out suicide
attacks on Allied ships. Adrian Stewart, as a British author, focuses much
attention on the British Pacific Fleet with a third of the chapter on the Battle
of Okinawa about British ships in the Allied forces.
The book has a four-page bibliography, but these books mostly do not
specifically deal with Japan's kamikaze operations. Most of Kamikaze: Japan's Last Bid for Victory's
paragraphs do not indicate sources for the information. Although the book has
several quotations and references to other authors, no page numbers are provided
to allow verification of sources. This heavy reliance on previously published sources
results in errors, especially when using books that include unreliable or
outdated
information. The author relies exclusively on English language secondary sources
and does not use U.S. Navy primary sources. Japanese sources, other than the few
translated to English in these secondary sources, were not utilized in the book's
research.
The book's dependence on other secondary sources without independent
verification results in several errors. For example, Stewart writes that "the
Japanese army only resorted to planned suicide attacks a month or so" after
January 29, 1945 (pp. 141-142), but the Japanese Army first formed suicide
squadrons in October 1944 and carried out the first suicide attacks in the
following month. Between November 1944 and January 1945, 283 Japanese Army
airmen lost their lives in suicide attacks carried out in the Philippines [1].
Also, the author incorrectly states, "Atsugi, situated west of Yokohama and
south-west of Tokyo, had been a major Kamikaze base and a very belligerent one"
(p. 186). Actually, Atsugi had a large Navy air base near Tokyo, but it never
served as either a training or sortie base for kamikaze squadrons. In another
example, the book states that a Judy bomber was the second kamikaze plane to hit
the carrier Bunker Hill on May 11, 1945 (p. 154), but this plane in fact was a
Zero fighter [2]. In still another example, Stewart
states, "As for the Kamikazes, Japanese records are apparently and
understandably incomplete, but it has been calculated that in the Okinawa
campaign from late March until 22 June when the island was officially declared
secure, there were some 1,900 Kamikaze sorties." Such a statement is based on
American records, since the Japanese Navy and Army kept detailed records of
sorties and deaths by special (suicide) attack squadron members (see
Navy Kamikaze Air Bases
as example). In a further example, the Japanese word Tokubetsu gets
incorrectly translated as "Special Units" even though this word only means
"special" (pp. 113-114). In a final example, Stewart states that "American
warships suffered no further Kamikaze attacks for almost three weeks" after
November 5, 1944 (pp. 74-75), but then page 75 goes on to describe successful kamikaze attacks on
American ships on November 12, 17, and 19.
Japanese names and words have incorrect spellings in this book as in the
following examples: Susumu Kaijitsu (pp. 61, 65, 67),
correct: Susumu Misoka; book: Nobii Morishita (p. 133), correct: Nobue
Morishita; book: Tatsuo Nakatsuro (p. 185), correct: Tatsuo Nakatsuru; book:
Ryunosuki Kusaka (p. 51), correct: Ryūnosuke Kusaka. Moreover,
macrons for long vowels (ō,
ū) in Japanese are used inconsistently in the book with
some names having them and others not.
The author Adrian Stewart has written about 15 books on a variety of aspects
of World War II, both in the European and Pacific Theaters, including The
Battle of Leyte Gulf (1979), Guadalcanal: World War II's Fiercest Naval
Campaign (1985), and The War With Hitler's Navy (2018).
Notes
1. Tokkōtai Senbotsusha 1990, 254-263.
2. Refer to
Last Letter from Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa
to His Parents for additional details.
Source Cited
Tokkōtai Senbotsusha Irei
Heiwa Kinen Kyōkai (Tokkōtai Commemoration Peace Memorial Association). 1990.
Tokubetsu Kōgekitai (Special Attack Corps). Tōkyō: Tokkōtai Senbotsusha
Irei Heiwa Kinen Kyōkai.
|
