How Japan's youth see the kamikaze pilots of WW2

[sl8]

From http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39351262 :

How Japan's youth see the kamikaze pilots of WW2
3 November 2017
From the section Asia

During World War Two, thousands of Japanese pilots volunteered to be kamikaze, suicidally crashing their planes in the name of their emperor. More than 70 years on, the BBC's Mariko Oi asks what these once revered men mean to Japan's youth.

Irrational, heroic and stupid: this was what three young people in Tokyo said when I asked them about their views on the kamikaze.

"Heroic?" queried Shunpei, of his younger brother Sho's choice of word. "I didn't realise you were so right wing?"

It is difficult to verify the figures but it is believed that 3-4,000 Japanese pilots crashed their planes into an enemy target on purpose.

...

More at link.

[Girard442]

1. At one point in WWII Allied bomber squadrons were losing one in ten aircraft per mission.

A tour of duty for bomber crews was 20 missions. Draw your own conclusions.

[JayhawkSD]

9. When my father was flying B-17s it was 25 missions.

He lost 20 tail gunners. Never said how many were killed vs. bailed out because, like many WW2 vets, he didn't talk about it much. His record showed 26 missions, and we never heard the story behind that. He claims he changed his mind after the 1st mission of his second tour and told them about his medical degree, which got him transferred to service as a flight surgeon. He also claimed that his two silver stars were "officer's good conduct medals."

He did tell me a story when I joined the Navy about being bored as a flight surgeon in England and volunteering for something that was described only as "interesting and possibly hazardous." Turned out to be service on board an LST during the D-Day landing at Normandy, to tend wounded on the return trip. He described eating Navy food and being addressed as Major even though he was only a Captain at the time. They explained that a Navy ship can have only one Captain aboard, so they "promoted" him, even though the captain was only an Ensign, who he thought was a Second Lieutenant. He claimed to have been very confused and made the story quite entertaining.

Probably wasn't very entertaining making six trips back and forth from Omaha Beach, but he mostly left that part out. That may have accounted for one of his "good conduct medals." That service also got him transferred to service as a medical officer with the ground forces for the rest of the war. Again, all we heard from him was a few funny stories, but we know he was in on liberating one concentration camp.

He was an interesting, and very nice man.

[PdxSean]

2. Hmph. A poll of three.

How the hell can only three people be representative of “Japan’s youth?”

Maybe the video refers to a wider pool in the study, but the (otherwise interesting) article cites only three people.

[sl8]

3. Good point.

The article's title does not represent its content very well.

I think part of the reason for the article is to draw attention to their upcoming documentary program:

You can hear Mariko's documentary "The Last Kamikazes" on the BBC World Service on Tuesday 7 November. You can listen again via the World Service website or World Service Documentaries download.

[JayhawkSD]

8. Headlines very often do not represent content.

It's called "click bait" technique.

[Blue_Tires]

4. There is definitely a certain old-world romanticism to it

but in a real-world 20th century military sense, it was incredibly dumb to sacrifice experienced pilots and serviceable aircraft because you will inevitably start losing them faster than you can replace either...

[malthaussen]

5. Eh, I disagree about that...

... the pilots were mostly inexperienced and the planes old crates with a lot of hours on them already. The Japanese actually had no trouble keeping up production of aircraft, so some lost intentionally was not a critical drain. You could argue that Japan had so much trouble training pilots to start with, that wasting them that way was not cost-effective, but rookie pilots get shot down a lot, anyway, even when they have more hours than the ones Japan was turning out by 1945. And the kamikaze did sink a few Allied ships (drop in the bucket as those losses were), it's unlikely conventional tactics would have succeeded as well at that time (and it takes a lot more training to bomb with any accuracy or launch a torpedo, provided the plane can get to the release point in the first place).

More stupid, IMO, if I can use the word, is the soldiers who killed themselves rather than surrender. I don't see how that served the Emperor at all. Like admirals and captains going down with their ships, it represents an ultimately very selfish attitude, whereas the kamikaze were at least hoping to sacrifice themselves for the good of the people and duty to the Emperor.

-- Mal

[Hortensis]

6. Slightly different, but a friend was a young woman in Japan

during WW2, and as the end neared she and other women at the factory they worked in were trained to use whatever work tools they had available, or a kitchen tool from home, to attack invading American soldiers. Each was shown how to run at a soldier and get one hopefully fatal stab into the abdomen before she died.

This plan for the entire nation to commit suicide-by-attack rather than surrender was, of course, just before the emperor did the unthinkable and surrendered.

[No-Bozos]

7. It's all in the strategy

During a few short minutes the Japanese lost a large percentage of their most experienced pilots during the Battle of Midway. Those who survived were kept in battle until they were shot down. Very few of Japanese pilots who were flying at the beginning of the war survived to the end.

Germany had a similar strategy. If you could fly, you kept flying. In both cases replacement pilots largely received on the job training.

The problem with these approaches is that the incredible amount of institutional knowledge these pilots accumulated was lost in battle.

The U.S., on the other hand, rotated experienced pilots after a set number of missions back to the U.S. to act as instructors. Newbies still had a lot to learn but at least they were much better prepared than their counterparts.

Of course, another significant advantage the U.S. had was its industrial capacity. We were chugging out aircraft in incredible numbers. By the end of the war Ford's Willow Run facility was putting out a B-24 every 63 minutes.

Towards the end of the war Japan was so short of metal they were making hand grenades out of pottery material. An ex-girlfriend gave me one (empty) she bought while stationed in Japan as a Navy doctor.

[Igel]

10. Suicide bombers of the day.

With the exception being that it was openly declared war and the targets were military.

[Kablooie]

11. My wife's uncle was a kamikaze pilot.

The war ended just before he had to go.
I met him when we visited his home near Kyoto.
I knew him as a pleasant old man who sat on the couch in a tee shirt with a can of beer watching baseball.