The Kamikaze Campaign
Section 2 World War II brought many technological advances to the world, including tanks, submarines, the atomic bomb, and improved aircraft. The increase in workforce and ability to construct vehicles and weapons quickly brought on creative techniques of warfare, often based on each nation’s ethic, particularly the kamikaze suicide attacks which spawned from the Japanese thought of no-surrender and a policy of fighting to the “bitter end”( Dower 103). Overall, because the campaign was made in a last resort attempt to turn the war around( Jacobsen 285), the United States military was caught off guard and was flooded with fear and feelings of anxiety. Unheard of by western soldiers, the idea of not being afraid of death only matched up with
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One of the reasons that the kamikaze campaign was unfeasible to even think about throughout the allied military forces was that it was impossible to fathom that the suicide pilots volunteered to sacrifice themselves( Ohnuki-Tierney 170). By the time the recruitment and volunteering began to speed up in pace, it was generally known by both allied and axis powers that Japan would be fighting a losing war( Lebra 317). And even more counter-intuitive, the kamikaze pilots were “the best informed about Japan’s impending defeat, and yet they volunteered to die without even, inmost cases, an opportunity to see family or friends a last time.”( Lebra 317) This knowledge of a lost cause and what had seemed like death for no reason scared western soldiers with a “peculiar horror”, because they would not volunteer for the same reason as the Japanese( Calvocoressi 848). It was recalled by surviving american sailors that the attacks were fueled by intense happiness and exhilaration, as if the dive into death was a parade into a “fascinating ceremony”( Calvocoressi 848). What also added to the American soldier’s fear of the suicide pilots was the schema of every Japanese pilot turning kamikaze towards the end of the war, but in actuality, normally the most skilled pilots were usually withheld from suicide missions and were used to “fly orthodox cover, reconnaissance, bombing and torpedo missions”, and most kamikaze fighters were pilots in training( Sherrod 274). Even though when the ends of the war was drawing to a finish, having ideas like this about the enemy may have hurt the confidence of American soldiers, knowing that the Japanese did not fear death, and any strategy to win the war would be taken, rather than valuing individuality, which is a key trait of American ideals. The allied forces during the Philippine Sea battle were “transfixed by this bizarre spectacle of men destroying themselves”, and even
One of the reasons that the kamikaze campaign was unfeasible to even think about throughout the allied military forces was that it was impossible to fathom that the suicide pilots volunteered to sacrifice themselves( Ohnuki-Tierney 170). By the time the recruitment and volunteering began to speed up in pace, it was generally known by both allied and axis powers that Japan would be fighting a losing war( Lebra 317). And even more counter-intuitive, the kamikaze pilots were “the best informed about Japan’s impending defeat, and yet they volunteered to die without even, inmost cases, an opportunity to see family or friends a last time.”( Lebra 317) This knowledge of a lost cause and what had seemed like death for no reason scared western soldiers with a “peculiar horror”, because they would not volunteer for the same reason as the Japanese( Calvocoressi 848). It was recalled by surviving american sailors that the attacks were fueled by intense happiness and exhilaration, as if the dive into death was a parade into a “fascinating ceremony”( Calvocoressi 848). What also added to the American soldier’s fear of the suicide pilots was the schema of every Japanese pilot turning kamikaze towards the end of the war, but in actuality, normally the most skilled pilots were usually withheld from suicide missions and were used to “fly orthodox cover, reconnaissance, bombing and torpedo missions”, and most kamikaze fighters were pilots in training( Sherrod 274). Even though when the ends of the war was drawing to a finish, having ideas like this about the enemy may have hurt the confidence of American soldiers, knowing that the Japanese did not fear death, and any strategy to win the war would be taken, rather than valuing individuality, which is a key trait of American ideals. The allied forces during the Philippine Sea battle were “transfixed by this bizarre spectacle of men destroying themselves”, and even