Wakamonotachi wa naze tokkō o eranda no ka: Nihonjin ga shiranai tokkō no
shinjutsu (Why young people chose special attacks: Truth about special
attacks not known by Japanese)
by Sadaaki Yoshimoto
Heart Shuppan, 2015, 158 pages
Japanese junior and senior high school students are the intended audience of
this book on the history of the Special Attack Corps that carried out suicide
attacks near the end of the Pacific War. Sadaaki Yoshimoto, a high school
teacher of world history and author of several other books for teenagers about
modern Japanese history with a focus on World War II, concentrates his efforts
in this book on reasons why youths volunteered for and supported special
(suicide) attacks and does not focus on battle results, details, and numbers.
The book provides pronunciations for Chinese characters (kanji) and
provides definitions for words that may be unfamiliar to young readers.
Yoshimoto plays up the positives of the motivations of the tokkō
(special attack) pilots and does not mention any real negatives such as pressure
from officers and peers and the government's controls to ensure support for the
war, which gives the impression that he is trying to promote his political
agenda by writing such a book. The author focuses on battle results achieved by
the Special Attack Corps and downplays their failures such as not reaching their
targets when shot down. The reader gets the idea that they had more success than
they actually did. The book creates the impression that everyone volunteered
freely for their missions of death, but it is not certain that this is the case.
Yoshimoto claims that Special Attack Corps youths had no fear of death and made
attacks that would result in certain death for their country and beloved
families. Negative attitudes toward the Special Attack Corps are blamed on the
Allied Occupation for seven years after the war's end when Americans controlled
the type of education received by Japanese young people.
The book's four main sections address the creation and battle history of the
Special Attack Corps, why young men chose to carry out special attacks, how
kamikaze pilots are seen by non-Japanese people, and the postwar period for
former Special Attack Corps members, others related to special attack
operations, and bereaved families. The first section also gives a basic history
of the Pacific War from its beginning at Pearl Harbor. The second section
presents examples of several individuals who show their commitment such as
First Lieutenant Hajime Fujii
whose wife committed suicide with their two daughters so that he could go
freely on a special attack mission, Ensign Masahisa Uemura who volunteered for a
special attack unit even though he had a wife and infant daughter, and Vice
Admiral Matome Ugaki who led the last special attack squadron after the
Emperor's announcement of surrender. The third section includes opinions of
several non-Japanese authors to provide support for the argument that Special
Attack Corps members should be respected for their patriotism and bravery. The
last section highlights the postwar stories of Tome Torihama, who befriended
many Army pilots at her restaurant near Chiran Air Base, and Sakae Seki, mother
of Lieutenant Yukio Seki, leader of the first Kamikaze Special Attack Corps
unit.
The book presents last letters or excerpts written by the following Special
Attack Corps members just before their deaths:
Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class
Masaru Miyazaki to his younger sisters Fumiko and Yasuko,
Ensign Masahisa Uemura to his
baby daughter Motoko, and
Second Lieutenant Toshio Anazawa to his fiancée Chieko. The majority of
final letters of Special Attack Corps members, almost all who were unmarried,
were addressed to their parents, so the types of addressees (i.e., younger
sisters, daughter, and fiancée) for the letters of the three pilots featured in
the book are rather uncommon among last writings of Special Attack Corps
members.
The author concludes with a plea for Japan's young people, who have
completely lost a sense of patriotism due to postwar peace education, to visit
memorial museums for the Special Attack Corps throughout the country and read
books about the Special Attack Corps so that may learn about the sacrificial
spirit of youths who offered their lives at the time of the country's crisis.
Moment when special (suicide) attack plane
hits battleship New Mexico (p. 55)
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