Last letters from young kamikaze pilots provide rare insights into Japan’s feared special attack unit

ForumCategory: OtherLast letters from young kamikaze pilots provide rare insights into Japan’s feared special attack unit
komatkamit asked 11 months ago

Last letters from young kamikaze pilots provide rare insights into Japan’s feared special attack unit
Kagoshima, Japan

Think of a kamikaze pilot and the image that comes to mind is probably a screaming face obscured by goggles embarking on a death plunge.
Or perhaps no face at all and just a fighter plane plowing into a warship.
It’s probably not a teenager weeping in a dank, half-underground bunker with his bedsheets pulled up over his head.
And surely not high schoolers cheerfully petting a puppy just hours before they were expected to turn themselves into ash while sinking a US aircraft carrier.
But these are some of the real faces of the kamikaze that line the walls of the Kanoya Air Base museum and the Chiran Peace Museum, both located on Japan’s Kyushu island.
There are hundreds of them.
In many of the images, you can see their last words, often in letters to their mothers, apologizing for their youthful indiscretions and pledging to make them proud.

The youngest kamikaze pilot was Yasuo Tanaka, just 16. He flew an Okha – essentially a bomb with wings but no wheels dropped from a mother aircraft. He died on May 11, 1945. You can see his photograph at the Kanoya museum, on the grounds of a current Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force base.
A museum official said they didn’t have the teenager’s last letter, but the letters of other young kamikaze show the bravado of youth.
Torao Kato, an 18-year-old second lieutenant, wrote in Japanese in bold brush strokes:
“Dearest mother, please live a long life full of vigor. I will try to destroy a big one.”
The oldest kamikaze – at age 32 – was Army Lt. Col. Yoshio Itsui, a unit commander who led the first flights from the Chiran air base on April 1, 1945.
Itsui left behind a wife and three small children, including an infant son. A book from the Chiran museum, “The Mind of the Kamikaze,” includes Itsui’s last letter to the infant, which is on display at the museum.
“Work hard and please grow up to be an excellent Japanese man and son of the Emperor,” Itsui wrote.
His son would never read the letter, according to the book. When the pilot’s wife learned of his death, she could no longer produce milk for the boy, who died of malnutrition four months later.
‘They did not hesitate to accept their duty’
In an auditorium at the Chiran museum on a sunny October morning, stories like Itsui’s bring tears to almost everyone in the audience of 30 or so people listening to a presentation on the history of the kamikaze. Even for a non-Japanese speaker, the pictures on the screen and the emotions of others in the theater are enough to produce watery eyes.
Among the pictures in the presentation is one of a young kamikaze petting a puppy, an image many consider the most striking ever made of the suicide units.
The fliers ranged in age from 17 to 19 and all were so-called Young Boy Pilots, youth who joined the air force training corps at the age of 14, before the kamikaze units were even established.
“Most likely they did not know that they were going to be kamikaze pilots,” according to “The Mind of the Kamikaze.”
“However, once they knew their fate they did not hesitate to accept their duty,” the book says, adding, “they believed it would be worth dying for their country and for their parents.”
The five youths in that puppy photo died on May 27, 1945, among the 335 Young Boy Pilots who gave their lives as kamikaze.
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