The vice-admiral began launching his kamikaze missions against U.S. Navy ships on 21 October. That day his pilots failed to locate their targets and returned to their Philippine base, where they had to watch helplessly as many of their precious aircraft were destroyed in a U.S. bombing attack. The outcome was different, though certainly not all good, for Japanese forces the next day. Conventional bombing aircraft of Japan’s Second Air Fleet struck at U.S. ships in a massive raid, sinking one carrier and three smaller ships. For the day though, Japan had to endure the loss of three battleships, six cruisers, seven destroyers, and more than a hundred aircraft. And by this time, most Imperial Japanese Navy pilots were dead and the role of the kamikaze had to be carried on by Army Air Force pilots, the Tokko Tai. On 25 October kamikaze pilots succeeded in sinking a U.S. carrier and damaging several others. In Japan, the Emperor sent his congratulations to the suicide unit on its latest achievement, but disquieting rumors were circulating that the kamikaze claims of destruction and damage of U.S. ships were wildly exaggerated and that perhaps fewer than ten percent of such claims were actually valid. A belief seemed to prevail that the pilots of the Divine Wind were reluctant to admit to any sacrifices that had been in vain.
Onishi launched a frenzy of kamikaze activity in November. On the 5th of the month a group of his aircraft was en route to strike at a U.S. landing force at Leyte when it encountered a stream of U.S. bombers. All of the Japanese pilots rammed their American adversaries. Then, in an attempt to stave off the U.S. invasion of Luzon, Onishi diverted his pilots from primary attacks on U.S. carriers to hitting transport ships. He also began employing heavy bombers loaded with explosives in his suicide units. His most important achievement of the period came in the third week of November, when his forces flew against the U.S. carriers again, seriously damaging four and causing them to be withdrawn for repairs. The U.S. naval command was then compelled to add many new destroyers as pickets around the carriers, and to double the number of fighters in the carrier air wings for greatly increased combat air patrols. Sailors given shore leave were ordered not to discuss the kamikaze attacks. U.S. saturation bombing of Japanese airfields on Luzon was intensified, leading to the grounding of all locally-operating Japanese aircraft for several days. At this point the weather became a crucial factor, as a typhoon struck the Philippines on 15 December, damaging many ships from the U.S. fleet. Three destroyers were lost and much of the fleet was forced to withdraw for repairs.
A kamikaze suicide attack of 25 October 1944, in which the U.S. Navy escort carrier St Lo was lost when torpedoes stored on the hangar deck exploded, blowing the stern off the ship.
The fortunes of Onishi’s kamikaze units continued to dwindle too. He now had fewer planes than pilots and decided that, when the enemy forces landed on Luzon, he would order all pilots without planes to fight on as infantry.
On 9 January, “Mike One,” the U.S. invasion of Luzon, began. The Americans met stiff resistance, including a lot of attention from suicide motor boats as well as the kamikazes. For the crews of the U.S. ships, the only option was to bring maximum concentrated gunfire on the incoming suicide planes. By 13 January the kamikaze campaign had cost the lives of 1,208 Japanese pilots. Vice Admiral Onishi was shifted to Formosa where he quickly organized new kamikaze units. These units were soon to engage a U.S. fleet which had gathered off Formosa as a part of the American effort to take the island of Iwo Jima where it needed to establish a base for Mustang fighters to put them within a range to escort B-29s on their Japan raids.
Japan’s urgent goal now was to destroy the U.S. fleet in order to force some sort of honorable peace settlement, and the kamikaze were key to this objective. In retaliation for the huge B-29 strike on Tokyo of 9 March, which took nearly 100,000 lives and made more than one million people homeless, the Japanese launched Operation Tan, a bomber and kamikaze strike on U.S. Navy ships anchored in the harbor at Ulithi. It too failed.
At this point the Japanese position was truly desperate. After the fall of Iwo Jima, most in the Japanese military believed that they had but two choices left—surrender or fight to the death utilizing the suicide weapon to the fullest extent. Their anger and frustration at the relentless B-29 fire raids over their homeland reinforced their determination to win the war that they had clearly already lost. They refocused on the kamikaze concept with a grim new dedication. But they were rapidly running out of time, aircraft, and fuel, and the forced restrictions on pilot training had resulted in a relatively small corps of airmen who were barely able to fly at all. On 17 March, with the U.S. fleet only 100 miles south of the Japanese mainland, Admiral Yugaki ordered his diminished force of kamikaze and conventional bombers up to strike at the enemy with the greatest intensity. In the attack fifty-two of his aircraft were lost. The U.S. carrier Franklin was badly hit and the Americans suffered more than 1,000 casualties. Yugaki, however, saw the attack as yet another failure and levelled blame on inferior training practices.
In a display of unusual enmity within the ranks, some kamikaze airmen began referring to their conventional bomber colleagues as “lechers” who seemed to prefer earthly delights over those of the spiritual resting place of their dead heroes. The bomber types, in turn, called the kamikaze madmen.
On 21 March another new development in the Tokko Tai program appeared. Ships of the U.S. fleet were about to be attacked by Japanese bombers carrying manned flying bombs called Ohkas (suicide attack aircraft). Before they could release the ohkas, the bombers were spotted by U.S. Navy combat air patrol aircraft and all of the Japanese planes were shot down.
The island of Okinawa was of major importance to the Americans, as it would provide them with the closest base yet from which to strike with B-29s at the Japanese home islands. As the U.S. fleet, minus some of its carriers that had been significantly damaged in the recent kamikaze attacks and had been withdrawn for major repair work, made its way toward Okinawa, the last major Japanese-held island, an odd thing happened. Japanese reconnaissance reports led them to conclude that the absence of a number of U.S. carriers from the current enemy fleet composition meant that the carriers had been sunk and the fleet was no longer on the offensive. They soon found, however, that this was not the case. The American invasion of Okinawa was moving ahead at full steam. On the morning of 1 April U.S. landing forces arrived on the Okinawan beaches. The Japanese defenders were well established in caves on the island and lay in wait for the enemy troops who were met with little initial resistance during the landings. In the afternoon, though, kamikaze attacks began and by 6 April the Japanese had launched what they called “the holy war” against the American enemy.
In 1956, Jean Larteguy’s edited version of the George Blond description of a typical kamikaze attack in Le Survivant du Pacifique appeared in Larteguy’s The Sun Goes Down: “On 14 May, at 6:50 am, the radar plotter reported an isolated ‘blip,’ bearing 200° at 8,000 feet, range about twenty miles. The rear guns were pointed in that direction, ready to fire as soon as the ‘phantom’ should appear. At 6:54 it came into sight, flying straight for the carrier. It disappeared for a moment in the clouds; then, after approximately three-and-a-half miles, it emerged again, losing altitude. It was a Zero. The 5-inch guns opened fire. The Japanese aircraft retreated into the clouds. The batteries continued to fire. The crew had been at action stations since four in the morning. All the aircraft that were not in the air had been de-fuelled and parked below decks.
“The Japanese machine approached from the rear. It was still not to be seen, as it was hidden by the clouds. Guided by radar, the 5-inch guns continued to fire at it, and soon the 40mm guns began to fire as well. It was very strange to see all these guns firing relentlessly at an invisible enemy.
“The Japanese aircraft emerged from the clouds and began to dive. His angle of incidence was not more than 30°, his speed approximately 250 knots. There could be no doubt—it was a suicide plane. It was approaching quite slowly and deliberately, and manoeuvring just enough not to be hit too soo
n.
“The pilot knew his job thoroughly and all those who watched him make his approach felt their mouths go dry. In less than a minute he would have attained his goal; there could be little doubt that this was to crash his machine on the deck [of the carrier Enterprise].
“All the batteries were firing: the 5-inch guns, the 40mm and the 20mm, even the rifles. The Japanese aircraft dived through a rain of steel. It had been hit in several places and seemed to be trailing a banner of flame and smoke, but it came on, clearly visible, hardly moving, the line of its wings as straight as a sword.
“The deck was deserted; every man, with the exception of the gunners, was lying flat on his face. Flaming and roaring, the fireball passed in front of the ‘island’ and crashed with a terrible impact just behind the for’ard lift.
“The entire vessel was shaken, some forty yards of the flight deck folded up like a banana-skin: an enormous piece of the lift, at least a third of the platform, was thrown over 300 feet into the air. The explosion killed fourteen men. The last earthly impression they took with them was the picture of the kamikaze trailing his banner of flame and increasing in size with lightning rapidity.
“The mortal remains of the pilot had not disappeared. They had been laid out in a corner of the deck, next to the blackened debris of the machine. The entire crew marched past the corpse of the volunteer of death. The men were less interested in his finely modelled features, his wide-open eyes which were now glazed over, than in the buttons on his tunic, which were to become wonderful souvenirs of the war for a few privileged officers of high rank. These buttons, now black, were stamped in relief with the insignia of the kamikaze corps: a cherry blossom with three petals.”
The men of the U.S. Navy ships off Okinawa were surprised and amazed by the numbers and ferocity of kamikaze and escort aircraft subjecting them to this new and greatly intensified attack. These American sailors who were fighting to live were up against Japanese airmen determined to die … a shocking realization that was repeatedly brought home to them during the incessant attacks. In addition to the efforts of the kamikaze, Japanese warships, including Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, sailed to Okinawa in an attempt to destroy the U.S. transport ships. They then intended to deliberately run the Yamato aground and use her as a coastal fortress. The Japanese plan was foiled, however, when U.S. Navy PBY Catalina flying boats sighted the Japanese warships, and U.S. carriers launched air strikes sinking the Yamato, the Yahagi, and four smaller ships.
By 19 June the fight for Okinawa had reached a critical state for the Japanese defenders, and their commander ordered all of his troops to “go out and die.” When Okinawa had fallen to the Americans after eighty-two days of fighting, they had suffered 12,500 casualties; the Japanese more than 100,000. A total of thirty U.S. ships had been sunk. In Japan the people were being told that every citizen was now considered a Toko Gunjin, or special attack soldier, for the defense of the homeland.
In the Marianas, the B-29s of General Curtis LeMay’s 20th Air Force were continuing their campaign of fire raids against Tokyo and the sixty or so principal cities of Japan. It had begun in January when LeMay took command of the 20th and reorganized it for the task of efficiently bombing the Japanese into submission and, hopefully, bringing the Pacific War to an end.
The American raids were still going on in early August when U.S. President Harry S. Truman ordered the use of the first atomic bomb on a target city in Japan. This first use of a nuclear weapon in war took place on 6 August when a B-29 called Enola Gay (named after the mother of the pilot and airplane commander, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr.) released the bomb called Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima. Little Boy, together with the bomb called Fat Man which was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, led to Japan’s capitulation, but not before Russia declared war on Japan on 8 August and launched its own offensive in Manchuria, completely overwhelming the Japanese there.
In what would be the final mission of the kamikaze airmen, Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki launched what remained of his force against the U.S. carriers on 15 August. On the way to the target he sent this radio message to his headquarters: “I alone am to blame for our failure to defend the homeland and destroy the arrogant enemy. The valiant efforts of all officers and men of my command during the past six months have been greatly appreciated. I am going to make an attack at Okinawa where my men have fallen like cherry blossoms. There I will crash into and destroy the conceited enemy in the true spirit of Bushido, with firm conviction and faith in the eternity of Imperial Japan. I trust that the members of all units under my command will understand my motives and will overcome all hardships of the future and strive for the reconstruction of our great homeland that it may survive forever. Tenno hai Ka, Banzai!” That evening Vice Admiral Onishi took his own life.
The psychology behind the kamikaze attacks was too alien to us. Americans who fight to live, find it hard to realize that another people will fight to die.
—Admiral William F. Halsey, Commander, U.S. Third Fleet, after the attack on the USS Intrepid, 25 October 1944.
On Kudan Hill in the heart of Tokyo, near the Imperial Palace, stands the Yasukuni-jinja, or Shrine for Establishing Peace in the Empire. It is dedicated to Japan’s war dead and is a controversial memorial because it contains personal effects of executed war criminals, including Hideki Tojo. According to Raymond Lamont-Brown: “Even today, any government minister who makes an official visit to the shrine would be technically liable to be stripped of his office.” Displays in the Yasukuni include relics of the kamikaze pilots of the Great East Asian War, as the Japanese refer to World War II. Japanese war veterans groups, as well as representatives of the Bereaved Families Association, regularly visit the shrine and petition the public to sign for the Yasukuni to be reinstated as the official Japanese war memorial. Lamont-Brown: “As time passes, according to some sections of the Japanese press, the spirits of the dead kamikaze ‘cry out’ for honourable, official recognition through the members of the ‘Thunder Gods Association’ who meet annually at the Yasukuni-jinja on 21 March (the day on which the first Ohka suicide attack was made).”
In the last days before their final attacks, the kamikaze pilots were mostly calmed by the Bushido philosophy. They were able to relax in a seeming detachment, spending their waiting time listening to gramophone records, playing cards, reading, writing their last letters home. They gave their belongings to comrades and friends, and they all carried three sen in copper coins, their fare to cross their religious equivalent of the River Styx.
If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
—Abraham Lincoln, from a speech on 27 January 1838, Springfield, Illinois.
The question is whether suicide is the way out, or the way in.
—from Journals, Ralph Waldo Emerson
We cannont tear out a single page from our life, but we can throw the whole book into the fire.
—from Mauprat, George Sand
Everyone talks about fighting to the last man, but only the Japanese actually do it.
—Field Marshal William Slim, Commander, Southeast India in World War II.
Ensign Tommy Harris of VF-17, flying an F6F-5 Hellcat in March 1945, shot down four Japanese fighters in two days, ending the war credited with nine aerial victories. At left, a page from his flying logbook.
KEEP ’EM FLYING
Helicopter operations on HMS Illustrious in the 1990s.
At NAS Miramar in southern California, an aviator suits up for a hop in an F-14 Tomcat in 2000.
THE AVERAGE AGE OF THOSE RESPONSIBLE for carrying out the many vital tasks which keep things running smoothly on the flight deck of a United States supercarrier—is nineteen.
The men and women who do the jobs that make flight operations possible on a U.S. Navy carrier are easily identifiable by the colors of the jerseys they wear. BLUE jerseys are worn by airplane handlers, tractor d
rivers, aircraft elevator operators, and messengers / phone talkers. Air Wing plane captains and Air Wing line leading petty officers wear BROWN. Those wearing GREEN are the catapult and arresting gear crews, Air Wing quality assurance personnel, cargo handling personnel, ground support equipment trouble-shooters, hook runners, photographers, and helicopter landing signal enlisted personnel. Aviation fuel personnel wear PURPLE. Ordnance men wear RED, as do crash and salvage crews, and explosive ordnance disposal personnel. WHITE jerseys are worn by squadron plane inspectors, landing signal officers, air transfer officers, liquid oxygen crews, safety observers, and medical personnel. YELLOW jerseys signify aircraft handling officers, catapult and arresting gear officers, and plane directors.
On the aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy, none of which are currently operational, flight deck personnel wear a colored vest called a surcoat, which, as with the American jerseys, identifies personnel by function. YELLOW means flight deck officer, Chief of the Flight Deck, and aircraft directors. BLUE surcoats are for naval airmen / flight deck, and photographers. Aircraft and engine full supervisory ratings wear BROWN. Air electrical full supervisory ratings wear GREEN. GREEN WITH A BLUE STRIPE indicates air radio full supervisory ratings. Crash and salvage parties wear RED. RED WITH A BLACK STRIPE is worn by weapon supply / all ratings. Flight deck assault guides wear RED WITH A WHITE STRIPE. Medical attendants wear WHITE WITH A RED CROSS. Deck supervisors, duty aircrew, watch chiefs, and Air Engineering officers wear WHITE. WHITE WITH A BLACK STRIPE is worn by flight deck engineers. Aircraft engine mechanics wear GREY.
When a U.S. aircraft carrier is to conduct flight operations, preparations normally begin the day before. An Air Plan outlining the scheduled activity is prepared and distributed the night before and includes all the required information for those concerned, including launch and recovery times, and information on the mission itself: the number of sorties to be flown, fuel and ordnance load requirements, and the tactical communication frequencies to be used. Flight quarters are announced and manned. No crew members who are not directly involved in the flight operations are allowed to be on the flight deck or in the deck edge catwalks.
The Bird Farm Page 10