Gosh, civillians in the 1930s weren’t acting like battle-hardened soldiers in the 1940s? Who would have thunk it?
Good or bad isn’t a national or ethnic trait.
You may not like the tactic but there is no doubt it was effective Kamikaze Tactics - Insane or Rational? - YouTube . Also i don’t have a source except that I remember watching it on a documentary when I was young but the idea of using these suicide tactics was not one that came from the admiralty rather the lower ranks presented it to them. Initially the Admirals were aghast at the idea and it took quite a bit of convincing to allow the program to go forward.
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Effective in getting a lot of people killed and injured, not so much in terms of degrading American naval power (which was so overwhelming at that point that its superiority was not seriously affected, nor did the Japanese win a single battle using kamikazes).
I haven’t seen documentation that “lower ranks” urged kamikaze tactics on their superiors - rather that military leaders planned a range of suicide tactics (also including such things as kamikaze torpedoes and motorboats), and at least initially found eager volunteers - not so much later on.
“For each one willing to crash-dive the bridge of a US ship mouthing militarist one-liners, others lived and died less gloriously: cursing their leaders, rioting in their barracks or forcing their planes into the sea. A few took their senninbari – thousand-stitch sashes, each stitch sewn by a different well-wisher – and burned them in disgust. At least one pilot turned back on his final flight and strafed his commanding officers.”
A question for you, Jackmannii: would you still be as bothered by the Japanese tactics if they were using them against non-American attackers?
I’m not Jackmannii, but I believe he’s mentioned the attrocities committed against the Chinese?
Japan’s war crimes were right up there with the Holocaust. That doesn’t excuse the wrong things that Americans did, but playing, “oh yeah, well so and so did X!!!” is NOT a good defense. (Especially as none of our crap was nearly on that level. Racist propaganda and internment camps are bad. Death camps, massacres and human medical experimentation? That’s a different story.)
WWII was the most devastating war in all of history. This wasn’t Happy Fun Time
As I’ve cited Chinese, Sikh and Japanese victims of such tactics, your question has already been answered.
In specific reference to the obsession on the part of Japanese leaders and others with glorious suicide (including kamikaze attacks*, defense of hopeless positions to the last man and satisfied contemplation of the entire Japanese civilian population being wiped out (the “100 million smashed jewels” theme), its main victims were undoubtedly Japanese, both in battle and on the home front.
Across the sea, water-drenched corpses;
Across the mountains, grass-covered corpses.
We shall die by the side of our Emperor,
We shall never look back.
—“Umi Yukaba” (Across the Sea)
Anthem of the Imperial Japanese Navy**
Beats hell out of “Anchors Aweigh”, doesn’t it?
*it should be noted that among those killed and wounded by kamikaze attacks were British and Australian servicemen, not just Americans.
**translation courtesy of Ian Toll’s “The Conquering Tide”.
It seems like this discussion has gone far away from the original intent of the thread. I wanted to know what actual Japanese people think about the men who went and willingly crashed their planes into enemy ships in order to save their homeland. It’s not really important how effective the attacks were or if they were misguided in their beliefs. Yes there were some who may have been forcibly recruited into the program but I believe the vast majority believed in their cause and that their leaders had the best interest of Japan at mind, not necessarily their own personal best interests. I don’t think the fact that they swayed by government propaganda or feelings of nationalism/racism is really important to the question. I can respect Stonewall Jackson without believing in the confederacy or slavery just like I can respect these men who willingly gave up their lives to serve the greater, in their mind, good. I’m curious if a modern Japanese person looks back at them with such respect or if they just have pity or anger.
Do you have any questions concerning my posts specifically addressing your OP?
I think i must have missed it the first time around. It does speak quite a bit to my question and I appreciate your answer. It does make me sad how many seek to erase the past and overlook the crimes of history. A large part of that I’m sure is that I love to study history and also am aware that trying to erase it is a tactic of tyrants who seek to remake cultures in their own image.
Is this just a comment in general or do you believe that there are tyrants leading Japan now?
Unfortunately, the desire to whitewash history seems to be pretty universal. I don’t see it limited to monsters.
I was refering specificly to suicide attacks and nothing else. I’m wondering if you picked up a history book and read about Dead Culture A, losing in a war with Dead Culture B, turned in desperation to suicide attacks in defense of their homelands. That’s what I’m wondering about–your insistance that suicide attacks are “evil” rather than “desperate.”
I won’t get into the war crimes the Japanese committed other to say that historically we are the oddballs in being “nice” to enemies, not the Japanese for slaughtering them. You can come up with any number of instances of other wars where the other side was slaughtered (though the use of enemies for wide-scale medical experimentation by the Japanese and the Germans was probably more of a modern innovation.)
I used the word “evil” (in post #22) as follows:
That’s a wee bit different from what you’re claiming I said.
Do you really believe that hoping for the entire civilian population to die is not evil?
More than one, actually. I suggest you try it.
Note: There was one earlier post where I used the word “evil”, again to describe the death cult in all its manifestations that permeated wartime Japan.
Darren, in comparing the “100 Million Smashed Jewels” ideology to “death before dishonor”, apparently believes there is nobility in such an aim. I do not.
I believe that the word “evil” comes burdened with assumptions of cultural absolutes that I don’t share. The idea of a culture choosing self-destruction rather than capture sems tragic to me, but more in a “romantic” sense. And this idea isn’t one I haven’t thought about–in fact, one of the books I have wished I could write if I had the talent is an alternate history novel taking place in a world where the cultural suicide had taken place, and a number of people of Japanese descent from around the world tried to recreate in Japan a (peaceful) pre-Meiji Restoration culture. (My ideas influenced largely from the culture and geography described in Lafcadio Hearn’s books. I lack that writing talent, though, so don’t expect to find that book on the shelves.)
The way you trimmed out the rest of that sentence completely misrepresents what I was saying in it and I take it as intentional. I was in no way trying to imply that you were ignorant of history and was presenting a hypothetical and take issue with your personal attack.
Except that it wasn’t a “culture” that chose anything. Japanese was an authoritarian country. Instead of soldiers and civilians deciding to die, it was officers and politicians *ordering *them to die while they themselves lived. As both a soldier and a citizen in a democratic society I find that attitude abhorrent. Leaders should try to protect the lives of their charges, not view them as disposable game pieces to be wasted on their own misguided search for glory. THAT is evil.
What are you talking about here, the suicide attacks? Or the proposed mass suicide? Because I was talking about the second in that reply–a concept that never got past a few politicians proposing it and others saying that it was crazypants.
Datapoint : I remember watching an anime movie called The Cockpit a long time ago, which is actually three shorter movies rolled up in one - the first is about a Luftwaffe pilot who winds up, along with his entire family (as hostages) on board a captured US bomber carrying a nazi nuclear bomb and who eventually lets RAF planes shoot it down so he doesn’t have to drop the bomb ; the second is about the last hours of a young kamikaze pilot who, after failing his first mission due to faulty plane, successfully crashes into a US carrier. The kicker being that unbeknownst to him the Bomb has just been dropped on Hiroshima.
In both cases, the protagonists were portrayed as generally good, honourable guys put in shitty hopeless situations with no right answers and trying to do the right thing. The kamikaze short in particular is poignant, not just for the “and his sacrifice was all for nothing, cheers !” ending but also because he struggles a lot between his shame at having failed his first mission (while also knowing the mission is insane) but also leaving his girl behind and having to spend time with other pilots (escorts and the crew of the bomber that’ll carry his flying missile into launch range) who all vow to help him do his job after first trying to dissuade him. He knows they’re not coming back either and it’s quite visibly tearing him apart - yet he feels it’s something he has to do to try and save his country. They all spend their last night in a strange mix of celebration and mourning.
Notably, the film also features an American fighter pilot who IIRC ends up crashing his plane into the bomber when out of ammo to try and save the fleet before the Ohka can be launched - tinges of “both sides did it” there.
But then Japanese literary and media culture is full of these Cornelian dilemmas of duty/honour/social expectations vs. personal aspirations/the pursuit of happiness ; and they all end in tragedy. Kamikazes slot right into that. All in all, the movie is very much anti-war while at the same time honouring/mourning the warriors. It feels a lot like Hamburger Hill in tone - “war is absurd, everyone involved hates it, taking this hill is the pinnacle of obscene futility. Let’s do it”.
Good thing no-one in this thread has actually defended the wartime Japanese, then…
Racist propaganda was only brought up specifically in response to the idea that the Japanese were unusual in being indoctrinated in racial hatred. It was not a counter to the idea that the Japanese committed atrocities. Not even the actual American atrocities are counter to that.
I think you’re forgetting the firebombing of civilians and , oh, 2 atomic bombs…
…and the being perfectly happy to use the results of that medical experimentation after the war, of course. But otherwise, yeah, no way the American government would have conducted its own unethical human medical experiments at that time. No way.
The wartime Japanese military were absolutely very shitty on the human rights front, shittier than anyone bar the Nazis, and Stalin. But they weren’t inhumanly so, or particularly unique for their time and circumstances. Casting them as “different” is just “It couldn’t happen here”-style thinking.
The idea that it was “romantic” for Japanese military and political leaders to choose to lead their people down this road - well, not much can be said about such a view other than with descriptive terms like “crazypants”.
I think you’ve overlooked that it was overwhelmingly the prospect of enormous Allied casualties in any invasion of Japan (due to the death-before-surrender-fight-to-the-last-‘crushed jewel’ mentality) that led to these bombings.
You were the one who decided that mentioning Japanese racial indoctrination meant denying any racist values among Americans, which was not the case.
It seems the tu quoque temptation is just too much for you to resist. Mustn’t mention bad acts by any other powers because We Did It Too, even when that’s a grotesque exaggeration or outright false.