Might could be. I know most, at least, refused to even wear them. I cant ever remember a photo of a jap pilot parachuting.
Some chose either not to wear parachutes or not use them for the reasons Shifty already mentioned. It was very common for IJN and IJAF pilots not to use them because of two major factors, it restricted movement in the cockpit during combat and a lot of the times the Japanese pilots were flying over or near enemy bases and being captured was not an option for them.
In the IJN (and probably in the IJAF as well), every pilot was given a parachute and urged, though not ordered to wear them. In some cases, base commanders made the decision and ordered their pilots to wear parachutes.
This is a comment about the use of parachutes in the IJN by Saburō Sakai.
In 1942, none of our fighter planes carried pilot armor, nor did the Zeros have self-sealing fuel tanks, as did the American planes. As the enemy pilots soon discovered, a burst of their 50-caliber bullets into the fuel tanks of a Zero caused it to explode violently in flames. Despite this, in those days not one of our pilots flew with parachutes. This has been misinterpreted in the West as proof that our leaders were disdainful of our lives, that all Japanese pilots were expendable and regarded as pawns rather than human beings. This was far from the truth. Every man was assigned a parachute; the decision to fly without them was our own and not the result of orders from higher headquarters. Actually, we were urged, although not ordered, to wear the parachutes in combat. At some fields the base commander insisted that chutes be worn, and those men had no choice but to place the bulky packs in their planes. Often, however, they never fastened the straps, and used the chutes only as seat cushions.
We had little use for these parachutes, for the only purpose they served for us was to hamstring our cockpit movements in a battle. It was difficult to move our arms and legs when encumbered by chute straps. There was another, and equally compelling, reason for not carrying the chutes into combat. The majority of our battles were fought with enemy fighters over their own fields. It was out of the question to bail out over enemy territory, for such a move meant a willingness to be captured, and nowhere in the Japanese military code or in the traditional Bushido (Samurai code) could one find the distasteful words “Prisoner of War.” There were no prisoners. A man who did not return from combat was dead. No fighter pilot of any courage would ever permit himself to be captured by the enemy. It was completely unthinkable ...
This is an account of a US sailor onboard USS Montpelier during a Japanese raid near Bougainville, November 3,1943.
A few Japs parachuted when they were hit but a few sailors and Marines on the 20 mm. opened up on the ones in the chutes and when they hit the water they were nothing but a piece of meat cut to ribbons.
This was the first time I saw Jap pilots use parachutes. Someone said that the Japs don't use parachutes.
During the last months of the war when US fighters started to conduct increased fighter raids and sweeps over the Japanese homelands, a lot of US pilots reported Japanese pilots bailing out in their parachutes instead of engaging in combat. It's just an unsupported myth that most Japanese pilots didn't bail out.
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