Customer Reviews

Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers

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This should be read by all the young people today. The book is a diary of a young university student who was drafted and forced to become a Kamikaze pilot against his will like many others in ca 1945. They had no other choice then. I could not read this book without a box of tissues. Because I lived in their generation and in the same country.

I found this to be a somewhat disappointing book.

The book title refers to the author's presentation of the personal reflections of 5 Japanese tokkôtai (i.e., kamikaze), as revealed in their diaries. The author does an excellent job of describing the historical and cultural context of the tokkôtai in the first part of the introduction. However, the latter half of introduction (pages 17-33) is less useful as it moves away from the primary focus of the book to discuss tangential issues. For example, the section of the book entitled "A long road to the point of no return" focuses on Japanese nationalism, with minimal attention to the tokkôtai.

More important, the author's actual presentation of the pilot diaries is weak. Quotations from the diaries are limited, in some places being only 1 or 2 sentences. In comparison, the author's analyses and inferences take as much space as the actual quotations themselves. Thus, the pilots' personalities and thoughts are not allowed to speak for themselves; instead, they are obscured by the author's analyses.

I will note, as a minor point, that the author uses the word tokkôtai as referring to the Japanese "special attack force." It is not until page 174 in the book, that the author notes that tokkôtai is actually an abbreviation for "tokubetsu kôgekitai," which is the full term for "special attack force."

The book provides a useful and welcome alternate perspective on the kamikaze. Recognize, however, that you will have to wade through a lot of tangents and academic analyses, rather than directly hearing what the tokkôtai have to say for themselves.

The book covers a lot of the same ground (identical content in some places) as the author's "Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms". The discussion of how Japan's leaders appropriated the cherry blossom iconography for military indoctrination is highly stimulating, though at times the author pushes her theme beyond its capacity to explain certain aspects of Japanese fanaticism. In part, the problem is that the reader has to accept the diaries and other writings of a small number of highly educated young men as "representative" of the kamikaze (the author avoids the word in her text because she says it has become a synonym for "mindlessness") when, of course, they were a minority. Nevertheless, taken together with other first-hand sources (diaries, letters, memoires, etc.) increasingly becoming available in translation, this collection makes a valuable contribution to deepening our understanding of the human dimenson of wartime Japan.

This is not a historical book that records events as they occurred. Professor Onuki-Tierney uses exerpts from the diaries of six remarkable young men. Though she calls the book "Kamikaze Diaries", several of her subjects were not technically members of Admiral Onishi's Tokkotai (Special Forces, the Kamikaze). They all however, were certain of their impending death in a war that several believed should not have happened. Of the more than four thousand Tokkotai members, three thousand were young boys, the remaining 25 percent were "student pilots" drafted from the universities. These "student pilots" or "student soldiers" were primarily humanities majors (philosophy, music, the arts, and linguistics) as the science and engineering majors were generally exempted. As such, many read heavily, particularly philosophy texts in the native language of the authors (German, French, Dutch, English). Some were Christian and, along with the thousand stitch scarves, they took Bibles and their favorite philosophy texts with them on their last flight. These diary exerpts and the Professor's interpretation of the meaning in their poems and letters give a small insight into these intelligent young men's thinking and the rationalization of their impending death.

This is a difficult book to read in many ways. Besides the emotion of seeing the mind and soul of young men about to fly out to try and kill my father by themselves dying and this being a book written by an academic about academics, the book's format adds to the difficulty. Besides a six page preamble, there is a thirty seven page introduction. This is a bit long but necessary to set the stage for non-Japanese. The Professor also uses this to point out the differences between the Kamikaze (who attacked only military targets) and today's suicide bomber, a point which needs to be made. The Professor included a references section but also put references in the text (particularly to her own earlier works) which break up the flow of the reading. She also put in a section of notes instead of using footnotes. While some readers may find this format preferable, I found it cumbersome.

Three relatively minor discrepancies appear which again detract from the reading. At one point, the professor makes the claim that some student pilots had read as many as four to five thousand books by the time they died. If they had read a book a day for fourteen years (age 10 to 24), they would have read 5110 books. Considering that they read many philosophical tomes in the author's native language, this looks very unlikely. In an anecdote about how strenuous the discipline was for these student pilots, she recounts one Tokkotai member departing and returning nine times because he couldn't find any targets. On the ninth return, he was shot by his superior officer. Throughout the text, the Professor mentions that these flights were to be one way, there was no return. They had enough fuel for one trip out. The Tokkotai went out in groups or flights. If this returnee could return nine times, why didn't the rest of his flight? One or maybe two times could be reasonable due to mechanical malfunction but nine times? And while some were trained to land, most weren't - and they were carrying 250 kg bombs. And the third discrepancy occurs when the Professor is discussing the emperor's palace as having been built by "Toyotomi Ieyasu". It was of course Tokugawa Ieyasu. Toyotomi Hideyoshi preceded the Tokugawa as shogun.

I was looking for historical impressions of what it was like in Japan during World War II. There is some of that in this text but looking into intelligent minds realizing they are about to die and watching them rationalize this fate is as valuable as any historical documentary. Those interested in philosophy, psychology, and the nature of the Japanese will find this book rewarding.

This is a very intellectual study of tokkotai pilots. The long introduction details the high level of academic learning these young men had and their philosophical beliefs. The chosen diaries are filled with questioning and rationalizations of this honorable duty to their country and with poetic longings to live and to love. If you can wade through the academic language you will discover a new and sad perspective of these brilliant young men whose lives were wasted in an effort to win a war that was already lost.

This is an amazing book. Nowadays we believe that Japan's society on the eve of WWII was just archaic and devoted to the Emperor. Maybe it was so among the people, but clearly the offsprings of the elite were as educated as in the West. Yet, they were slaughtered for the sake of the nation.
Of course, the book, which was edited by the sister of one of the Kamikaze, doe not represent a broad social section of the Japanese society. i would recommend the book to anyone that studies history, WWII and political sciences.

An enlightening perspective about the desperation for life and intimate heartfelt thoughts and ideals of a group of young Japaneese pilots, unjustly stereotyped as willing suicidal human weapons of destruction by their own inhumane and criminally insane leaders as well as our own country's propoganda, that would otherwise be lost to posterity.

within the 2nd paragraph the major military history distortions began and are rife thru out the book.if you are a literature major with a minor in jap cultural studies this is your book.if you are looking for a book that in any way adds to your knowledge of kamikaze opperations,not your book.it was well written in all fairness,just not sure about what exactly.most of the book relates to diary entries made during the pilots primary and secondary education with military entries omitted for the most part.the authors knowledge of the base topic of kamikaze and his research has to be questioned when he states that no graduate of any of the military academies ever volunteered a kamakaze/tokko mission.it is a well established fact that lt.yukio seki graduate of the IJN academey was the 1st not only to volunteer but to sortie and succeed in october 1944. while the book had an interesting aspect to cover the excluding or editing of the military subject matter was a fatal flaw in the book. a parody to this book would be "grade school essays of hitlers ss".