The Divine Wind: Japan's Kamikaze Force in World War II Kindle Edition

Edited from the first-hand accounts of the officers responsible for developing the first Kamikaze corps, _Divine Wind_ was almost certainly the first clear portrait of what went on in the minds of the men who decided to face certain death with a good hope of harming the enemy, against almost certain death with little prospect of doing any harm at all.
Contrary to popular American belief, the "Divine Wind" actions were counter to the deeply-held traditions of the Japanese Navy. As the last bastion of the old samurai class, Naval officers viewed a battle death without serious chance to harm the enemy as a disgrace, not an honor. At the time of the first attacks, the Naval Air Corp's aircraft were hopelessly outclassed, their state of repair and readiness was abysmal, and their pilots were woefully inexperienced and sorely lacking in chances for flight time. Faced with these facts, and under pressure from their own men, Inoguchi and Nakajima (with difficulty) secured permission for the first suicide attacks.
The true story is far from the sensationalistic view painted on the History Channel or in War At Sea, and the two former officers paint it with as much dignity as they know how. It begins to dispell the stereotypes of contempt for life and paint a picture of what it was like to be a proud warrior in a cause you had begun to realize you could not win. This is must reading for anyone who wants to understand how it feels at the wrong end of the stick.

This is a first-hand account of the origin and development of suicide tactics by the Japanese during the Second World War. It is told by naval aviators, part of the group which proposed using themselves and their aircrcraft as anti-ship weapons, instead of continuing increasingly futile efforts to use bombs and torpedoes. It was originally published in English by the Naval Institute Press in 1958, and should be credited in part to Roger Pineau (as in the Amazon listings for some editions). It was quickly reprinted in paperback by Bantam Books (1960), and reprinted several times in that format (Amazon lists a 1985 reissue, clearly crediting Pineau). It has been in and out of print thereafter.

It is not only a source-document for military history, containing the recollections of surviving participants in the "Divine Wind" campaign, but has material of profound psychological and even philosophical interest. The (late) Princeton philosopher Walter Kaufmann called particular attention to the collection of letters from young pilots who had volunteered for the mission of dying in the hope of striking the enemy. This final chapter (followed by statistical appendices on sorties) is, to my (inexpert) knowledge, the largest single group of such documents available in English. [Note, January 2015: It turns out that a collection of such letters appeared several years after I wrote this review; "Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers" edited by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (2006).]

There are also some fascinating reflections from volunteers who survived the war, and faced a difficult adjustment not only to defeat and peace, but to life.

There are now available more detailed accounts of the main Kamikaze effort. (Which was, by the way more properly called, in formal Sino-Japanese, "Shimpu" -- the term familiar to Westerners apparently was worked up by code-breakers using dictionaries, and they missed the actual written and spoken forms). Here we have an outline, from the point when Admiral Ohnishi expressed to some senior pilots his admiration of those who had "body-rammed" enemy bombers with their fighter planes, and they responded by looking for even more profitable targets, to Ohnishi's own suicide. (A traditional formal one, in response to Japan's surrender. Some other senior promoters of the tactic were blocked from getting airborne on their own "final missions," and at least one led a suicide sortie that apparently ran out fuel.)

There have also been studies of the related suicide weapons developed by the Japanese armed forces (the "Okha" manned rocket bombs and "Kaiten" manned torpedoes), in part in response to the improvised attack planes used in the Philippines, as described here, in part from similar but independent roots. "The Divine Wind" appears to minimize the participation of the Japanese Army in the attacks, possibly because the co-authors relied on their own recollections, backed up by naval records, instead of conducting a full study of all such operations.

Although some of these efforts caused tremendous suffering, it seems clear that the Japanese commanders never received accurate information on their successes and failures, and did not make much of an effort to find better tactics for a concept which some felt had been imposed upon them by junior officers. (Note that Ohnishi initially had to act rather obliquely.) That struggle to change the official tactical doctrine to one more in line with the prevailing political ideology (and the actual practices it suggested) is in fact one of the points raised by the account from Rikihei Inoguchi and Tadashi Nakajima. Later studies have argued that the pressure to adopt the tactic came from several sources, and that the authors have inflated Ohnishi's role (and their own), although, again, their reporting of what they themselves witnessed and did is not necessarily in question.

Material, tactical and strategic issues, however, are not the main concern of "Divine Wind" -- it is the story of the naval pilots, veterans and raw recruits, from as close to their experience as it is possible to reach.

While “The Divine Wind” does explain the personal motivations of Kamikaze pilots and the initial strategic/military rationale for their actions—both of which, contrary to some opinion, may be understood by non-Japanese living many years later—these explanations are not enough to fully understand the Kamikaze phenomenon. What the book does not explain is why the Japanese continued with kamikaze attacks into 1945, when (despite a few spectacular successes) they could see that they were not achieving their professed goals; why organizationally despite the evidence the Navy persisted in pretending that these attacks could still somehow “turn the tide”; and especially why under these circumstances the pilots themselves continued their ultimate sacrifices.

Despite some muddy quasi-philosophical musings on these questions by Inoguchi and Nakajima, especially in the concluding chapters, they are for the most part simply avoided lest they shed light on the embarrassing imaginative limits and moral cowardice of those in charge. Because some Japanese at the time had the courage and professional pride to pose similar questions (as, indeed, the book relates) one comes away from reading “The Divine Wind” knowing that “Bushido spirit” (or any other supposedly unique Japanese national characteristic) did not preclude rational analysis of the circumstances and likely outcomes at the time, or fully explain the chosen courses of action. One is also therefore left to conclude that where “special attacks” are concerned Japan’s naval leadership acted in a colossal, months-long fit of pique, reflecting a blinding, furious frustration with their inability to halt or even measurably impede the American advance and with an astonishing lack of concern for the consequences.

Arguably for these reasons “The Divine Wind” only partially tells the Kamikaze story, and is at least as valuable merely as a first-hand account by Japanese authors detailing the material and operational conditions prevailing in the Imperial Navy during the last year of the war. The authors’ effusive praise for early Kamikaze backer Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi, however; their uncritical treatment of the “special attack” idea, and their conspicuously deferential treatment of the Kamikaze pilots contributes to the perception that some larger, less admirable aspect of the story has been deliberately left out. Three stars.