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Documents an astronaut who launched himself into a black hole. With the recovered fragments of his mind organised alphabetically, this is a deranged dictionary, a poem for the open minded and the unconventional thinker.
A revelatory and groundbreaking account of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze—the suicide pilots of World War II—as told through the eyes of the survivors In the final year of World War II, a horrific new weapon was unleashed in the Pacific: the kamikaze. Idealistic, young Japanese men had been taught that there was no greater glory than to sacrifice one’s life to defend the homeland. Now, with the war all but lost, thousands of these determined warriors were hastily trained in the basics of piloting an airplane, then sent out in waves to crash into enemy warships, suicide attacks that killed altogether some seven thousand American sailors. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle and lived? In the wake of 9/11, ethnographer M. G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cloistered community of Japan’s last remaining kamikaze survivors. As an American fluent in Japanese, Sheftall was the only westerner to ever sit face-to-face with these men and hear their stories. The result is a fascinating journey into the lives, indoctrination, and mindsets of the kamikaze, through the eyes of participants who are now lost to time.
**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.
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.
“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.
The classic World War II autobiography describes the horrors of war and the author's brutal training and experiences as a kamikaze pilot.
In this brand new publication from eminent historian Peter C. Smith, we are regaled with the engaging and often incredibly disturbing history of the Kamikaze tradition in Japanese culture. Tracing its history right back to the original Divine Wind (major natural typhoons) that saved Japan from invaders in ancient history, Smith explores the subsequent resurrection of the cult of the warrior in the late nineteenth century. He then follows this tradition through into the Second World War, describing the many Kamikaze suicide attacks carried out by the Emperor's pilots against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign.??These pilots were at the mercy of an overriding cultural tradition that demanded death over defeat, capture or perceived shame. Despite often being under-trained and ill-prepared psychologically for the sacrifices they were about to make, they were nonetheless expected to make them. The dedication of sacrifice for the Emperor and the Nation is explored by dissecting the traces left behind by these pilots. Smith provides a detailed look at the heartbreak of the pilot's families and the men themselves, the notes they left and the effects on those who did not share their philosophy. The views of individuals under attack are also included in this balanced history.??Countless attacks carried out over the Philippine Islands (including the sinking of the St Lo) are analyzed and the Okinawa campaign is afforded particularly strong coverage, with the sinking of HMAS Australia explored in detail. The collective sacrifice is then summed up, with reflections from survivors on both sides appraising events in a humane historical context. A detailed appendices then follows, featuring units formed, sorties mounted, ships sunk and damages inflicted.
The best-selling memoir Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy tells the fascinating story of actor Dirk Benedict’s journey from the big sky country of Montana to the hustle and hype of Hollywood. It also describes his odyssey of self-discovery and growth as he changes from struggling actor to celebrity, from meat eater to vegetarian, from cancer victim to cancer victor. Brilliantly written—insightful, witty, and always challenging—Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy may change the way you perceive actors, and even make you reconsider the truths in your own life.
"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.
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.