Author: Yasuo Kuwahara Publisher: American Legacy Media ISBN: 0976154757 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
The classic World War II autobiography describes the horrors of war and the author's brutal training and experiences as a kamikaze pilot.
Author: Kazuo Odachi Publisher: Tuttle Publishing ISBN: 1462921493 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
**Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner** An incredible, untold story of survival and acceptance that sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history. This book tells the story of Kazuo Odachi who--in 1943, when he was just 16 years-old--joined the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a pilot. A year later, he was unknowingly assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps--a group of airmen whose mission was to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into enemy ships. Their callsign was "ten dead, zero alive." By picking up Memoirs of a Kamikaze, readers will experience the hardships of fighter pilot training--dipping and diving and watching as other trainees crash into nearby mountainsides. They'll witness the psychological trauma of coming to terms with death before each mission, and breathe a sigh of relief with Odachi when his last mission is cut short by Japan's eventual surrender. They'll feel the anger at a government and society that swept so much of the sacrifice under the rug in its desperation to rebuild. Odachi's innate "samurai spirit" carried him through childhood, WWII and his eventual life as a kendo instructor, police officer and detective. His attention to detail, unwavering self-discipline and impenetrably strong mind were often the difference between life and death. Odachi, who is now well into his nineties, kept his Kamikaze past a secret for most of his life. Seven decades later, he agreed to sit for nearly seventy hours of interviews with the authors of this book--who know Odachi personally. He felt it was his responsibility to finally reveal the truth about the Kamikaze pilots: that they were unsuspecting teenagers and young men asked to do the bidding of superior officers who were never held to account. This book offers a new perspective on these infamous suicide pilots. It is not a chronicle of war, nor is it a collection of research papers compiled by scholars. It is a transcript of Odachi's words.
Author: Steven J. Zaloga Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1780960816 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 95
Book Description
The destruction of much of the remainder of the Japanese fleet and its air arm in the later half of 1944 left the Japanese Home Islands vulnerable to attack by US naval and air forces. In desperation, the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed using “special attack” formations, or suicide attacks. These initially consisted of crude improvisations of conventional aircraft fitted with high-explosive bombs that could be crashed into US warships. Called “Divine Wind” (Kamikaze), the special attack formations first saw action in 1944, and became the scourge of the US fleet in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. In view of the success of these attacks, the Japanese armed forces began to develop an entire range of new special attack weapons. This book will begin by examining the initial kamikaze aircraft attacks, but the focus of the book will be on the dedicated special attack weapons developed in 1944. It also covers specialized suicide attack weapons such as anti-tank lunge mines.
Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226620689 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 441
Book Description
Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to convince people that it was their honor to "die like beautiful falling cherry petals" for the emperor. Drawing on diaries never before published in English, Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and even defiance against the imperial ideology. Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically brief lives. Using Japan as an example, the author breaks new ground in the understanding of symbolic communication, nationalism, and totalitarian ideologies and their execution.
Author: Will Iredale Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1681771799 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
In May 1945, with victory in Europe established, the war was all but over. But on the other side of the world, the Allies were still engaged in a bitter struggle to control the Pacific. And it was then that the Japanese unleashed a terrible new form of warfare: the suicide pilots, or Kamikaze.Drawing on meticulous research and unique personal access to the remaining survivors, Will Iredale follows a group of young men from the moment they signed up through their initial training to the terrifying reality of fighting against pilots who, in the cruel last summer of the war, chose death rather than risk their country's dishonorable defeat—and deliberately flew their planes into Allied aircraft carriers.
Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226620921 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 255
Book Description
“We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives.” So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or tokkotai, who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II. This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II.
Author: Albert Axell Publisher: Longman Publishing Group ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
The use of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots during the second world war was one of the most dramatic and chilling developments of the war. But who were the Kamikaze pilots and what motivated them to make the ultimate sacrifice? The call for Kamikaze pilots drew a staggering response. Three times as many applied for suicide flights as the number of planes available. The authors of Kamikaze: Japan¿s Suicide Gods look into the hearts and minds of the Kamikaze pilots, viewed in the full context of the war and the Japanese cultures and traditions out of which the Kamikaze emerged. Based on interviews with Kamikaze survivors, unpublished memoirs, and documents not previously open to the public, the book portrays one of the most extraordinary and astonishing events in history, an event that has made Kamikaze a household word around the world.
Author: Robin L. Rielly Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786457724 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
"This book details more than 400 kamikaze attacks performed by Japanese aircraft, manned torpedoes, suicide boats and suicide swimmers against U.S. ships during World War II. Part One focuses on the traditions, development and history. Part Two details the kamikaze attacks on ships. Appendices list all of the U.S. ships suffering kamikaze attacks"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Etgar Keret Publisher: Boom! Studios ISBN: 1613988583 Category : Comics & Graphic Novels Languages : en Pages : 120
Book Description
Presented for the first time in full color, award-winning writer Etgar Keret (The Seven Good Years) and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Asaf Hanuka’s (The Realist) powerful graphic novel, Pizzeria Kamikaze, is a most unexpected story of love, loss, and escape. Mordy wanted to get away. Now condemned to an afterlife exclusively for all victims of suicide, he still has to attend a crappy job in a place no less crappy than the place he came from. When he discovers that his beloved ex-girlfriend is there too, he embarks on much needed road trip through an absurdist and fantastical landscape to find her.
Author: Michael Slade Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504095863 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
This thriller “weaves together historical strands, contemporary killers, and the feats of [an elite police team] in a gripping, tense, and exciting climax.” —Hellnotes A war criminal and the head of Japan’s organized crime, Genjo Tokuda wants nothing more than to avenge the murder of his family during the WWII bombing of Hiroshima. He has waited more than fifty years to enact his plan to kill the family of the surviving American airman responsible for the attack. When his prey is invited to speak at a convention for Pacific War Vets in Vancouver, he knows his opportunity for revenge has finally arrived. Corporal Jackie Hett of the Special X team of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will do anything to protect her grandfather, a crewman of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It’s up to her and her fellow Mounties to put a stop to the all-powerful samurai gangster before he strikes. “A virtuoso breakout by Slade.” —Jack Whyte, bestselling author of the Camulod Chronicles “With its strong emotional resonance, Kamikaze is a passionate indictment of the lies of wartime. It’s intense, and easily capable of keeping a reader up into the wee hours.” —The Vancouver Sun “Slade is all about procedure, feeding our endless appetite for the inner workings of the police. . . . War itself comes off as the most murderous of serial killers.” —The Georgia Straight
Author: Yasuo Kuwahara
Author: Kazuo Odachi
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Author: Will Iredale
Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Author: Albert Axell
Author: Robin L. Rielly
Author: Etgar Keret
Author: Michael Slade