Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Samurai [Hardcover]

Raymond Lamont-Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

Why did Japan resort to Kamikaze attacks from air and sea? Was it a long-standing policy founded in history or a last-ditch action by a nation facing defeat? How were the recruits found and trained? Why were trainers held back from missions? Did the tactic bring any success? How were the raids reported at home and by the enemy? What were the views of those who encountered such attacks? This volume deals with all these questions. All elements of the aviation and naval actions are described, but the traditions, nationalism and psychologies of the policy are not ignored.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Raymond Lamont-Brown, an Orientalist, lectures on Eastern history and philosophy at St Andrews and Dundee, and has been widely published in aviation magaz

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Arms & Armour; 1st Ed. (U.K.) edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1854093673
• ISBN-13: 978-1854093677
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,838,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Kamikaze was much more than you thought it was, October 20, 2008

By 

Marvin D. Pipher (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Samurai (Hardcover)

This book is interesting on two different levels. On one: it provides a great deal of information concerning World War II (WWII) as fought in the Pacific and as seen from the perspective of Japan's military leaders; I.e., what they were thinking, how they saw the war progressing, what their plans were, and how they tried to implement those plans. The primary thrust of the book, however, is to broadly explore the history of Japan's Kamikaze, with emphasis on WWII.

I suspect that most readers, coming new to this subject, will know very little about the Japanese Kamikaze and what little they do know will likely be based on film footage shot by U.S. Navy photographers during Kamikaze attacks toward the end of WWII. From this footage, one might conclude that these attacks were largely ineffective, and, when viewed from a Western perspective, that these suicide pilots were crazy or had been forced into such action. As this book makes clear, however, although done partly out of national desperation, these attacks were effective to some degree and the pilots were volunteers who knew exactly what they were doing.

As a case in point, consider the woman whose husband's application to become a Kamikaze pilot had been turned down several times because he had a wife and three children. To free him to become a Kamikaze, she killed her three children and committed suicide. Crazy? Perhaps, but that was the Japanese mind-set at the time.

The thing which interested me most about this book, however, was that it examined the history of the Kamikaze in Japan and then explored the Kamikaze in its larger sense. In doing so, it explained how the well known Kamikaze attacks came about and delved into lesser known Kamikaze. For example: I had never considered that the Banzai attacks carried out by Japanese soldiers on various islands in the Pacific were actually Kamikaze attacks, nor did I know that the two-man mini-subs which attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, were essentially Kamikaze, nor that Japanese fighter planes which rammed U.S. bombers during WWII were considered Kamikaze, nor that the Japanese built and deployed a fleet of torpedoes manned and guided by Kamikaze volunteers, nor that the small balloons launched from Japan and carried to the United States, 7000 miles away by the "Divine Wind" were by definition "Kamikaze," "Kami" (Japanese pantheon of Gods) "Nishi Kaze" ((West Wind).

I have only one complaint about this book. The author uses way too many repetitive and italicized Japanese words, which makes for difficult reading by a Westerner. But, if you're interested, that's the price you'll have to pay. So, if you are interested in learning a bit more about WWII history, especially from the Japanese perspective, and would like to learn about Japan's extended Kamikaze force, you should enjoy reading this book. In doing so, you'll likely find that the Kamikaze was much more than you thought it was.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book in English on the Subject, November 12, 2007

By 

theleme1421 "theleme1421" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Samurai (Hardcover)

I have read many works on Japan's special attack units, and this is the best. The book is lucid, fact-filled, and objective.

As for the so-called "spelling errors" mentioned by the other reviewer, the author is British! British spelling is different!

6 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lots of information but not much care into the book., June 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Samurai (Hardcover)

This book has many spelling errors and format errors in it. This is terribly unexceptable for such an important topic. The editor of the book obviously did not read the book carefully. This book does, however, have lots of information.