Japanese Kamikaze Manual

[Catching Spies]

Notes from a suicide manual (just incase any of you want to practice in the privacy of your home)

The introduction of Japanese kamikaze pilots was one of the most dramatic developments of the second world war. But what motivated these young men to fly their fatal missions? There are some clues in the manual they carried in their cockpits for inspiration, and which is now published in English for the first time. Here are some extracts.


The mission of to-go units
Transcend life and death. When you eliminate all thoughts about life and death, you will be able to totally disregard your earthly life. This will also enable you to concentrate your attention on eradicating the enemy with unwavering determination, meanwhile reinforcing your excellence in flight skills.
Exert the best in yourself
Strike an enemy vessel that is either moored or at sea. Sink the enemy and thus pave the road for our people's victory.

Take a walk around the airfield
When you take this walk, be aware of your surroundings. This airstrip is the key to the success or failure of your mission. Devote all your attention to it. Look at the terrain. What are the characteristics of the ground? What are the length and width of the airstrip? In case you will take off at dusk, or early morning, or after sundown, what are the obstacles to be remembered: an electric pole, a tree, a house, a hill?

How to pilot a fully dressed-up [heavily equipped] aircraft that you dearly love
Before taking off. (After taxiing the plane from the camouflaged emplacement to the airstrip.) You can envision your target firmly in your mind as you bring your plane to a standstill.

Breathe deeply three times. Say in your mind: "Yah" (field), "Kyu" (ball), "Joh" (all right) as you breathe deeply. Proceed straight ahead on the airstrip. Otherwise you may damage the landing gears.

Circle above the airstrip right after take-off. Do so at the minimum height of 200m. Circle at an angle within five degrees and keep your nose pointed downwards.

Principles you should know
Keep your health in the very best condition. If you are not in top physical condition, you will not be able to achieve an ideal hit by tai-atari (body-crashing).

Just as you cannot fight well on an empty stomach, you cannot deftly manipulate the control stick if you are suffering from diarrhoea, and cannot exert calm judgment if you are tormented by fever.

Be always pure-hearted and cheerful
A loyal fighting man is a pure-hearted and filial son.

Attain a high level of spiritual training
In order that you can exert the highest possible capability, you must prepare well your inner self. Some people say that spirit must come first before skill, but they are wrong. Spirit and skill are one. The two elements must be mastered together. Spirit supports skill and skill supports spirit.

Aborting your mission and returning to base
In the event of poor weather conditions when you cannot locate the target, or under other adverse circumstances, you may decide to return to base. Don't be discouraged. Do not waste your life lightly. You should not be possessed by petty emotions. Think how you can best defend the motherland. Remember what the wing commander has told you. You should return to the base jovially and without remorse.

When turning back and landing at the base
Discard the bomb at the area designated by the commanding officer. Fly in circles over the airfield. Observe conditions of the airstrip carefully. If you feel nervous, piss. Next, ascertain the direction of the wind and wind speed. Do you see any holes in the runway? Take three deep breaths.

The attack
Single-plane attack. Upon sighting a target, remove the (bomb's) safety pin. Go full speed ahead towards the target. Dive! Surprise the enemy. Don't let the enemy take time to counter your attack. Charge! Remember: the enemy may change course but be prepared for the enemy's evasive action. Be alert and avoid enemy fighters and flak fire.

Dive attack
This varies depending on the type of the aircraft. If you are approaching the enemy from a height of 6,000m, adjust your speed twice; or from a lower height of 4,000m, adjust speed once.

When you begin your dive, you must harmonise the height at which you commence the final attack with your speed. Beware of over-speeding and a too-steep angle of dive that will make the controls harder to respond to your touch. But an angle of dive that is too small will result in reduced speed and not enough impact on crashing.

Where to crash (the enemy's fatal spots)
Where should you aim? When diving and crashing on to a ship, aim for a point between the bridge tower and the smoke stack(s). Entering the stack is also effective.

Avoid hitting the bridge tower or a gun turret. In the case of an aircraft carrier, aim at the elevators. Or if that is difficult, hit the flight deck at the ship's stern.

For a low-altitude horizontal attack, aim at the middle of the vessel, slightly higher than the waterline. If that is difficult, in the case of an aircraft carrier, aim at the entrance to the aircraft hangar, or the bottom of the stack. For other vessels, aim close to the aft engine room.

Just before the crash
Your speed is at maximum. The plane tends to lift. But you can prevent this by pushing the elevator control forward sufficiently to allow for the increase in speed. Do your best. Push forward with all your might.

You have lived for 20 years or more. You must exert your full might for the last time in your life. Exert supernatural strength.

At the very moment of impact: do your best. Every deity and the spirits of your dead comrades are watching you intently. Just before the collision it is essential that you do not shut your eyes for a moment so as not to miss the target. Many have crashed into the targets with wide-open eyes. They will tell you what fun they had.

You are now 30m from the target
You will sense that your speed has suddenly and abruptly increased. You feel that the speed has increased by a few thousand-fold. It is like a long shot in a movie suddenly turning into a close-up, and the scene expands in your face.

The moment of the crash
You are two or three metres from the target. You can see clearly the muzzles of the enemy's guns. You feel that you are suddenly floating in the air. At that moment, you see your mother's face. She is not smiling or crying. It is her usual face.

All the happy memories
You won't precisely remember them but they are like a dream or a fantasy. You are relaxed and a smile creases your face. The sweet atmosphere of your boyhood days returns.

You view all that you experienced in your 20-odd years of life in rapid succession. But these things are not very clear.

In any event, only delightful memories come back to you. You cannot see your own face at that moment. But because of a succession of pleasant memories flashing through your mind, you feel that you smiled at the last moment. You may nod then, or wonder what happened. You may even hear a final sound like the breaking of crystal. Then you are no more.

Points to remember when making your last dive
Crashing bodily into a target is not easy. It causes the enemy great damage. Therefore the enemy will exert every means to avoid a hit.

Suddenly, you may become confused. You are liable to make an error. But hold on to the unshakeable conviction to the last moment that you will sink the enemy ship.

Remember when diving into the enemy to shout at the top of your lungs: "Hissatsu!" ("Sink without fail!") At that moment, all the cherry blossoms at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo will smile brightly at you.

· Extracted from Kamikaze by Albert Axell. To be published this month by Pearson Education Ltd, price £19.99. http://www.history-minds.com.

[Don]

What a freaking bill of goods those kids were sold!:mad:
And to think they were advised about what they would be feeling just before impact! As if the criminal who wrote that drivel would know! Their lives were wasted by criminals who didn't have to pay the price they expected of those kids. A blasted shame IMO.

[midnight Target]

"If you feel nervous, piss."

Damn good advice.

[Kweassa]

The military commanders were filthy murderers.

 Too bad only about 25% of them went through trial, and the rest 75% spared on the condition they help out with the occupying forces.

 You aren't gonna believe what they did in their colonies. Pacific POW camps? Man, that's a Hilton compared to the colonial rule.

[popeye]

Wasn't the suicide thing a voluntary mission?

[T0J0]

Seems to be a Bill of goods that is still being sold.... dieing for a national cause is not something the japanese are alone in ever doing...

[Maverick]

Originally posted by popeye
Wasn't the suicide thing a voluntary mission?

It was no more voluntary than was military service for Japaneese. The closest you came was being told you had the honor to volunteer. There was no way to unvolunteer or to refuse this "honor".

[Soviet]

They were proud men who died for their country and I respect them for that.  It may seem they were victoms of propaganda but if your country was on the verge of defeat you would do ANYTHING to try and reverse the tide.

It seems very awkward to us but you must understand, the East is a different culture.  They are a little more "Westernized now" but Japanese pilots had the "samurai" spirt in WW2, as a warrior of Japan they would view surrender as a disgrace and dying as an honor.

Japanese aren't the only ones who did this.  Russians were taught ramming tactics and even used them on several occasions, a lot of proud VVS pilots died from a "taran" attack (what ramming attacks were).

I only hope there truly is a life after death for these men who died for their country, all the men who fought so bravely in WW2.

[Shiva]

What a freaking bill of goods those kids were sold!

Another demonstration that you cannot understand why someone behaves in a particular way without understanding the culture they belong to.

The Japanese see themselves as a "spiritual" people attuned to the way of the gods, to the true nature of reality, which gives them a moral force transcending the merely physical. When events were going badly for the Japanese in World War II, they spoke of "the spirit of Japan" that would prevail against America's industrial might.

The kamikaze pilots were seen as possessing great makoto. The usual English translation of makoto as "sincerity," "honesty," or "purity" does not capture the emotional complexity of this Japanese word. In the West, we assume that when one is "honest" or "sincere," he states fact as accurately as he can. We prize mental lucidity, "objectivity," and faithfulness to "reality." Ivan Morris in The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan writes: "Rejecting this grossly material world in which he finds himself, the man of makoto proceeds not by logical argument, pragmatic compromise, or a common-sense effort to attune himself to the 'movement of the times,' but by the force of his own true feelings. Instead of depending on careful, rational plans and adjustments, he is propelled by unquestioning spontaneity. This aspect of makoto is reflected in that eager, undaunted strain which is common to Pure Land Buddhism, Zen, Wang Yang-ming philosophy, and other approaches to life that have been prominent in the Japanese tradition. "Sincerity" in the words of a modern Western observer [Kurt Singer] 'spells readiness to discard everything that might hinder a man from acting wholeheartedly on the pure and unpredictable impulses that spring from the secret center of his being.' Selfless dedication or, in more accurate psychological terms, belief in one's own selflessness, is a further mark of the sincere man."

We see an example of makoto, "sincerity," in Heike Monogatari when the aging warrior Sanemori dyes his white hair black and goes into hopeless battle against a young and vigorous enemy.

The concepts of aware and makoto emphasize an intuitive, supra-rational grasp of an inner reality. The Japanese value highly a person's unyielding adherance to his subjective "truth." Ironically, Japanese culture also insists upon social conformity. Decisions should be made by compromises worked out within the group. "Individualism" and "doing your own thing" are not virtues. The floor of a traditional Japanese building is nailed down with wooden pegs that may work up over time. Schoolchildren know that the classic saying "the nail that pokes up must be hammered down" refers to the person who calls attention to himself rather than working within the group for the common good. Such an "egoist" must be corrected by his or her neighbors. A paradox of Japanese society is that it tends to hero-worship individualists in history and literature while demanding "selfless" committment to the group.

Of all the possible bad deaths none is more odious to the warrior than capture and execution by the enemy; for this means intolerable humiliation not only for himself but, far more damaging, for the reputation of his family both retroactively and in generations to come. The most cataclysmic defeat will not mar the reputation of a hero or his kinsmen. Far from it: in the mystique of Japanese heroism nothing succeeds like failure. But, however hopeless the hero's situation may have become, to be held captive even for a short time is an irremediable disaster. The honourable status of prisoner of war, which was established at an early stage in Western warfare and included special understandings about the custody of important captives, ransom, and the like, was never accepted in Japan. The soldier who allowed himself to be captured automatically lost his dignity as a warrior and could expect only the most brutal treatment: savage torture, a humiliating form of execution, mutilation of his corpse, and, worst of all, the epithet of toriko -- "prisoner".

A strong tradition in the West is that the hero gets the girl; he wins his goal, often living to enjoy the fruits of victory. To the Japanese, the hero who wins is a contradiction in terms: the hero--in history and in fiction--dies trying to achieve the impossible. At the outset of World War II, many Japanese military leaders realized that their country would deliver a highly successful attack against Pearl Harbor, but eventually would be defeated by the superior industrial capacity of the United States. This insight made the Pearl Harbor attack very enticing to the Japanese psyche. The psychology of makoto was operative in the Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen during World War II. Lieutenant Ryuji Nagatsuka, a kamikaze pilot, survived the war because weather prevented him from spotting the American task force that was his target. These were his thoughts before he took off on what he believed to be his last mission: "Do I really believe that suicide attacks are effective? Aren't they, in fact, a foolhardy enterprise for flyers like us without any escort planes or any armaments of our own? . . . Is it true that self-sacrifice is the only thing that gives meaning to death? To this question the warrior is obliged to reply 'yes,' while knowing full well that his suicide mission has no meaning.

During World War II, pilots of Japanese army kamikaze squadrons sang this song in which the cherry blossom image represents the beauty of self-sacrifice and the death that gives meaning to one's life:

Flowers of the same cherry-tree, you and I
Bloom in the courtyard of the same squadron.
Opening our petals on the same day,
So shall the day we fall be the same;
We are destined to scatter our sweet blossom
Bravely, and together, for our country.

This cherry blossom image was perpetuated in the MX7 'Okha' piloted bomb ('okha' means 'cherry blossom') and 'Kaiten' piloted torpedo, derived from the Type 93 'Long Lance' torpedo. About 4,000 Japanese airmen and submariners died in suicide missions in World War Two. But the Japanese saw these men as samurai warriors attacking the enemy with invincible cherry blossom boughs, the visible incarnation of "the spirit of Yamato."

I strongly recommend that you read Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture by Ruth Benedict; without understanding giri, gimu, and on -- the first two of which are inadequately translated as 'duty', and the latter equally inadequately translated as 'debt' -- you cannot understand how being a kamikaze was the ultimate distillation of gimu chu and idealized out of all connection to reality.

[Karnak]

I saw an interview with a Kamikaze pilot who was shot down and lived.

He made the following points:

• It was technically voluntary, but there was so much pressure that nobody in his class could say no.
• Nobody in his class bought the line about "Dying gloriously for the Emperor" or any of the other BS.  They were all scared and wanted to live badly.  He claimed that those who instituted the policy were criminals, throwing away lives for a lost cause.

[Kuben]

Fly in circles over the airfield. Observe conditions of the airstrip carefully. If you feel nervous, piss.

And that is just returning to base!  

I hate it when I piss on landing, it always makes the rudder pedals slippery.

Kuben

[Kweassa]

Soviet, there's no difference that they were human, and humans basically want to live. The "Eastern" culture finds different ways to same problems, that's all.

 True they may have been brave men, but the Kamikaze was basically a desperate move sane people - West and East alike - would never make. That's what totalitarianism does to people. Make them do insane things in the name of "honor" "bravery" and "patriotism".

 A tragic, misguided bravery if you ask me. Even Neo-NAZI scumbags who terrorize people are in their own sense, somewhat "brave".

 ..

 As Karnak said, basically, all that 'spiritualness' 'divineness' and 'devotion for the emperor' is pure load of bullshi*. That's what the guys in power wanted people to believe. Humans, your average joe, are all the same. The concept of "Orient", IMO, is too much mystified. They didn't go and kill themselves because the Japanese "culture" was like that. Somebody just made them do it.

[Thrawn]

Good post Shiva

[Shiva]

It was technically voluntary, but there was so much pressure that nobody in his class could say no.

Playing heavily on each individual's gimu to the Emperor, their giri to their parents, and their giri to their name, plus the social pressure exerted from being the nail sticking up that needs to get hammered down.

Nobody in his class bought the line about "Dying gloriously for the Emperor" or any of the other BS. They were all scared and wanted to live badly. He claimed that those who instituted the policy were criminals, throwing away lives for a lost cause.

And, of course, the people who resisted buying into the image that the military built around the kamikaze are the ones who survive to decry their actions; the ones who believed, who accepted their portrayal as Yamato warriors, throwing themselves bodily against the enemy to defend their homeland, were the ones who went out and died first.  But the people who created the myths were as tightly bound as the people who carried out the tokko attacks -- remember that Japan is a 'shame' culture; once the shimpu had been created and deployed, to cease them was to admit failure, that the Yamato spirit was not enough to win over American arms. They had mounted the tiger and had to ride it out, and it dragged thousands of people down with it. Yonaga Hyoe, Group Commanding Officer of the 100th Wing, 6th Air Force, was sacked from his position for refusing to release half his squadron to the tokkotai, because it would gut his squadron's combat effectiveness. He speaks of his feelings on the matter:

"I objected. Kamikaze pilots were trained mainly at Akeno Flying School. Those pilots who actually flew kamikaze missions, they were innocent and pure. They were brave. Particularly those who were trained in the Akeno center and had an adequate training period. Their case was different from those who were suddenly ordered to fly kamikaze missions like a day before the attack.

"But as for my own group, I couldn't accept such an order from the center to deliver fighters for kamikaze missions only because there were not enough left in the center.

"If I had let that happen, the 100th Wing would have lost its military capability immediately. Our wing would be useless. If this wing was broken down bit by bit for kamikaze missions, what would be the point of having trained this wing, organized the wing, and taken the pain of transporting the wing? Why waste our efforts?"

However, when speaking of the American attack on the Japanese homeland, he displays his own personal loyalty to the Empire:

"If headquarters had ordered me to fly kamikaze missions when the U.S. forces attacked Japan, I, as a group commander, would have fought as a kamikaze pilot. That was my attitude."

As Karnak said, basically, all that 'spiritualness' 'divineness' and 'devotion for the emperor' is pure load of bullshi*. That's what the guys in power wanted people to believe. Humans, your average joe, are all the same. The concept of "Orient", IMO, is too much mystified. They didn't go and kill themselves because the Japanese "culture" was like that. Somebody just made them do it.

It is incredibly easier to get people to do something if the culture conditions people to believe things that support what you are trying to get them to do. Most of the trappings and traditions of the samurai class had disappeared from day-to-day life by the time that Japan started rearming prior to WWII; the military leadership deliberately reconstituted the ideals of the samurai -- insofar as the parts of it that supported their goals were concerned -- in the military, creating a subculture that declared them to be the modern samurai, dropping all of the strictures of behaviour (where it supported order, discipline, and obedience) of the samurai onto the soldiers.  Once they had done this, however, they were as bound by them as were the soldiers. By wrapping the use of tokko weapons in the myth structure that the military had inculcated into the soldiers, what they saw was that shutting down the programs and admitting that it was ineffective would gut the belief structure that they'd created and destroy the effectiveness of the military. So they continued to throw men and resources into ever more desperate measures as American production forced them into a corner that the tokkotai, despite all the cultural imperatives they could lay behind it, was unable to rescue them from.

[brendo]

Very interesting read !