Divine Thunder
The Life and Death of the Kamikazes
Millot, Bernhard
During the battle for Okinawa 40 American ships were either sunk or damaged beyond repair, and 368 were damaged in some degree, mainly as the result of suicide attacks by Japanese pilots. Not only was this toll of material alarming, but the effect on the morale of the American Navy was unprecedented. Men immune to the expected terrors of battle, began seriously to doubt whether anything effective could be done to stop an enemy prepared to use this ultimate form of attack.
At the time it seemed to most people that those taking part in such attacks must be mere robots or fanatics lacking in all normal human feelings. Bernard Millot shows them, on the contrary, as clear-thinking volunteers of the highest courage and their action as the outcome both of their traditions and of the particular circumstances with which Japan found herself confronted at this juncture of the war. These men had to die because Japan had neither the quantity nor the quality of planes to stop the American advance across the Pacific by orthodox means. They were able to die because the code of the Samurai - that one should never outlive disgrace - and religious teaching counselling liberation from all earthly ties, were still realities to them.
Divine Thunder is the story of how, almost accidentally, these attacks began in successful acts of individual bravery by pilots wounded or trapped in fatally damaged aircraft. It traces their development through the campaigns waged in the Philippines and at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The largely unsuccessful attempts to carry out similar attacks undersea with specially adapted types of midget submarines are also fully described, and there are interesting sidelights on military "suicide" defensive tactics and on the way in which the general policy gradually gained its often unwilling acceptance at the highest military and political level.
Hardcover with dust jacket
243 Seiten / pages
photos
good condition
London - 1971 - Mcdonald
Art.Nr. 19996
