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For Kamikaze pilots, capture was never an option. They were supposed to go down with their plane.
Explores the desperate tactics of Japan's Kamikaze pilots and surprising treatment of survivors by the U.S. Navy during WWII.
Key Takeaways
- Kamikaze attacks were a desperate but tactically effective measure by a losing Japan.
- Most Kamikaze pilots were coerced rather than truly volunteering.
- Japan's industrial and training limitations made conventional victory impossible.
- Special Kamikaze weapons were largely ineffective and costly.
- Surviving Kamikaze pilots experienced unexpected humane treatment by the U.S. Navy.
Summary
- By mid-1944, the Japanese Navy was severely weakened with few planes and inexperienced pilots.
- American forces had overwhelming superiority in pilot training and aircraft production.
- Kamikaze tactics involved pilots deliberately crashing planes into enemy ships to maximize damage.
- These suicide missions were framed as a divine sacrifice but were mostly forced upon pilots through social pressure.
- Most Kamikaze pilots were young, poorly trained, and flew outdated or obsolete aircraft.
- Special weapons like the Ohka rocket glider and Kaiten human torpedo had limited success and high costs.
- The first major Kamikaze attacks occurred during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, causing significant damage.
- Surviving Kamikaze pilots were unexpectedly treated well by the U.S., including leisure activities in California.
- The video contrasts the grim reality of Kamikaze missions with the humane treatment of survivors.
- It highlights the desperation and tragic human cost behind Japan's late-war military strategies.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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They'd rather die than fall into the hands of the barbaric Americans they heard so many horror stories about from their government.
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But no one could have imagined captivity meant playing ping-pong and drinking beer in a Hot Springs Hotel in California.
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So to understand how that happened, we have to start from the beginning.
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By mid-1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy existed more as a concept than an actual fighting force.
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And what I mean by that, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Americans destroyed over 600 Japanese aircraft in two days, while losing only 29 of their own.
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That ratio is so absurd, it literally got a nickname, the Marianas Turkey Shoot.
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Three Japanese carriers were sunk, and by fall, the remaining carriers had so few planes left, they were being used as floating decoys, just empty ships sailing around to draw fire.
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And the pilot shortage was, if anything, even worse than the ship situation.
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Japan's pre-war training system had produced genuinely excellent pilots, but it took two years to produce one.
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And there was simply no way to speed that up given their circumstances.
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On top of that, they flew their pilots with no rotation system and had no effective search and rescue.
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So every single mission just reduced an already shrinking pool of experienced men.
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With absolutely no way to replace them.
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And just to see the difference, America was producing 8,000 new pilots per month.
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Each with over 500 hours of flight time.
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While Japanese replacement pilots were lucky to get 100 hours before they were sent to combat.
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Strategically, the war was already lost.
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After Saipan fell in July 1944, American B-29 bombers could reach Tokyo.
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Japanese High Command pretty much admitted the only option left was for Japanese soldiers to quote, sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight.
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Japan's industrial capacity was about 1/10th of America's, and there was no path to winning a conventional war, none.
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And once Vice Admiral Onishi Takajiro arrived in the Philippines in October 1944, he had quite a sight before him.
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He had an enormous fleet of 41 semi-functional planes and pilots that could barely fly solo.
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But then he looked at the even more encouraging math that about 60% of their planes were getting shot down before ever reaching enemy ships.
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And of those that got through, another third were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire.
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Those that survived managed to hit something only about 10% of the time.
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So when you run those numbers, you get about 18 planes destroyed for a single scored hit on enemy ship.
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And that made them rethink everything.
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And Onishi did.
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He figured he could get the same result and lower the losses from 18 to five planes per hit.
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By implementing a tactic never seen before on such a scale.
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By sending pilots to deliberately crash into enemy ships.
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He loaded Zero fighters with bombs and sent 23 volunteer pilots to crash into the enemy and die for their country.
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The tactic was called Kamikaze, and you can guess how enthusiastic Japanese pilots were when they heard about it.
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But from a cold, numbers only perspective, these one-way attacks actually made sense.
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Kamikaze attacks later achieved a hit rate of about 25% compared to just 2.7% for conventional attacks per sortie.
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Making them almost 10 times more effective.
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Now, the word Kamikaze translates to divine wind, referencing typhoons from Japanese mythology.
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That destroyed a massive Mongol invasion fleet in the 13th century.
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And that's how it was framed to the soldiers.
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You're not dying pointlessly, you're the divine wind protecting Japan.
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But not every Kamikaze pilot bought this philosophy.
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Even though the selection process was technically voluntary, in reality, a Japanese pilot would receive a form with three options.
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You could choose between I passionately wish to join, I wish to join, and I do not wish to join.
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But you had to sign your name, which is where the manipulation begins.
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It was basically impossible to refuse, as it would instantly label you as a coward, which is not a small thing in Japan.
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Commanders would call out those who decided not to volunteer to publicly humiliate them in front of their comrades.
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Their families were on the line for facing social shame and possibly losing their jobs.
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Those who tried to refuse were told to choose the correct answer.
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And those who stuck by their decision found themselves on the list anyway.
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So in the end, everyone quote unquote volunteered.
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Japanese scholars today estimate that genuinely willing volunteers made up maybe 1% of all Kamikaze pilots.
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Everyone else was forced into it one way or another.
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And when you survive a suicide mission you were forced into, you're not going to be very loyal to the country that sent you there.
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About 6,000 Japanese flew these attacks, mostly aged 17 to 26.
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With the youngest confirmed as young as 16.
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And to show you just how desperate Japan was, almost 90% of killed Kamikaze Navy pilots were former college students.
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Conscripted through the student mobilization of October 1943.
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Late war Kamikaze pilots sometimes went into their final missions with fewer than 20 hours of total flight time.
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With their training barely covering takeoff, formation flying and steep diving.
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In case you haven't noticed, landing wasn't part of it.
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Japan was so low on planes that some pilots were provided with a glider for training.
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And told to use their imagination for the instruments on a plane.
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After all, the only skill required was flying straight, right?
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Physical abuse during training was constant, and surviving pilots mentioned they were punched in the face so often they began to look unrecognizable.
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Once pilots arrived at bases, there was usually twice as many men as available aircraft.
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And the planes they were given tell you just how disposable they were considered.
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Obsolete types were common.
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Some flew fixed gear Nakajima Ki-27 fighters without machine guns.
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Others flew the wooden fabric Yokosuka K5Y biplane, which was a training aircraft barely capable of 140 miles an hour.
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And this is where it gets interesting.
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One of those wooden biplanes actually sank the destroyer USS Callahan, which was the last American ship lost in the war.
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The most common Kamikaze plane was simply the most produced one, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.
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It became outdated against new American fighters by 1944, which made it expendable for Kamikaze use.
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And it usually carried a 550-pound bomb.
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Then there was the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka.
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Translated to cherry blossom, which was purpose-built for these one-way missions.
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It was basically a rocket-powered glider with a massive 2,600-pound warhead that could reach over 600 miles per hour in its final dive.
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But it had a major flaw.
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It had to be carried under a bomber.
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And that bomber had to fly within 23 miles of a heavily defended fleet.
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Its combat debut was a complete disaster.
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All 16 carrier bombers were shot down before a single Ohka could even be launched.
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The weapon sank only three ships total throughout the entire war and never touched a capital ship.
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And the Americans called it the Baka bomb.
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Baka meaning fool in Japanese.
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But it gets worse.
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The Kaiten, which translates to return to heaven, was essentially a human-guided torpedo.
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It was 48 feet long, carried a 3,400-pound warhead, and a single pilot steered it with a periscope toward the target.
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About 100 of them were launched in combat, confirmed sinking just three ships, while the program cost Japan eight submarines and over 1,100 lives total.
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A massive price to pay for a nation already losing the war.
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So then, what did these attacks actually look like?
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The first organized Kamikaze attacks hit during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in late 1944.
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Five bomb-loaded Zeros flew toward an escort carrier group and hit the USS Saint Lo directly.
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The bomb penetrated the flight deck and exploded in the hangar right next to planes that were being refueled.
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She sank in about 30 minutes, killing 113 men.
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That same day, six Kamikazes damaged six more carriers, while 150 conventional attackers beforehand inflicted no damage whatsoever.
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That contrast right there is why the program kept going.
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The destroyer USS Laffey was swarmed in 1945 by 22 Japanese aircraft over 80 minutes.
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She took six Kamikaze crashes and four direct bomb hits, killing 32 sailors and wounding 71, which is almost a third of her crew.
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But the real horror came at Okinawa, when Japan launched hundreds of suicide planes at the American fleet.
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Just a month later, two Zeros struck the fleet carrier USS Bunker Hill within 30 seconds of each other.
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Igniting plane fuel and killing 346 crewmen with 43 missing.
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Overall, the Kamikaze campaign sank 47 Allied ships and damaged around 350 more.
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They killed roughly 4,900 Allied sailors and wounded just as many.
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All for the price of just under 4,000 Japanese pilots.
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And yet, no fleet carriers, battleships, or cruisers were ever sunk.
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They only managed to sink smaller ships.
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And even though they caused a lot of damage in battles, it didn't actually change the overall outcome of the war.
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But even then, Allied sailors couldn't take them lightly, as they constantly expected an incoming Kamikaze attack.
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Never knowing when they'd appear in the sky.
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Just imagine someone's flying a bomb-loaded plane straight at you, knowing they're going to die.
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And their last intent is to take you with them.
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And the aftermath is not a pleasant sight either.
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Survivors described flames shooting 1,000 feet in the air, shipmates with pieces of aircraft through their bodies, and sharks attacking men in the water after ships sank.
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Studies decades later found that survivors showed significant post-traumatic stress from a single combat experience that lasted for the rest of their lives.
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So then, why were pilots responsible for this given the all-inclusive spa treatment?
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To fully understand that, we need to explain what the preparation looked like on the Japanese side first.
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Pilots had rituals before takeoff, where they received the best food available, shared ceremonial cups of sake, wore headbands and specific belts handmade by their mothers, and made death poems.
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They also wrote letters that were officially censored, but many secretly entrusted them to friends for private delivery.
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What they talked about on their last nights varied a lot.
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And many admitted how scared they were.
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Pilots were suddenly bursting into tears and calling for their mothers in the middle of ceremonies.
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And the whole story that Kamikaze fighters were filled with bravery and joy was later confirmed to have been nothing more than propaganda.
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And honestly, can you blame them?
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Every soldier risks his life in war, but they were just waiting in line for their turn, like sheep in a slaughterhouse.
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Some were even unable to stand up and had to be carried and pushed into their aircraft.
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Workers clearing their rooms afterward reported that the bedding was soaked with tears.
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And the letters they left behind are one of the most extraordinary archives of wartime testimony that exists.
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The Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima holds photographs of all 1,036 Army Special Attack Corps pilots who died.
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Along with roughly 5,000 items, letters, poems, and personal belongings.
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A lot of the letters mixed duty with love.
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One pilot wrote to his daughter that when she grew up and wanted to see him, she should go pray at Kudan and he would appear to her.
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He even kept one of her baby dolls in his cockpit for luck.
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Corporal Yukio Araki, who was only 17, wrote to his little brothers, telling them to study hard and eat well, leaving a strong example for them to follow.
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But not all letters sounded patriotic.
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Second Lieutenant Ryoji Uehara left what became the most famous anti-war document in the Kamikaze archive.
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He wrote that dictatorships, even though they seem strong and successful for a while, cannot last forever.
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He also hid a love confession in his marked-up books in code.
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Saying goodbye to his beloved Kiyoko-chan.
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Others found relief in religion and carried a Bible on their final flight, singing a hymn upon hitting the target.
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Many others made it clear in their letters that they were not going willingly.
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When historians studied the full collection later, they found references to about 1,400 different books.
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From Descartes to the Bible and many in between.
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And what's interesting, there's barely any reference to their enemies.
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And very little of loyalty to the emperor.
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They were mostly emotional goodbye letters.
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These weren't fanatics brainwashed into an ideology.
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But just normal people saying their goodbyes.
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And more of them came back than people think.
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In one specific roster of about 1,200 pilots, roughly half of them returned due to bad weather.
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Inability to find targets, or being intercepted by enemy fighters.
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So what happened then?
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Returned pilots were generally rescheduled for new missions.
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Generally, not always.
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For Kamikaze pilots suspected of returning with no clear external cause, there was a confinement facility operated by the Japanese Army in Fukuoka City.
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Surrounded by barbed wire with armed guards.
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It held up to 80 pilots with no outside contact allowed.
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And here's the cruel part.
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Their families, who had already held funerals for their sons, believing they were dead, had no idea what was happening.
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Surviving pilots revealed how the commander screamed at them, calling them scum, cowards, and military garbage, while beating them with bamboo swords.
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And forcing them to write reflections until they agreed to die on the next mission.
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Japan's official records contain zero mention of this facility.
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The commander denied it existed and claimed it was just a sewing room.
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But consistent survivor testimony confirmed its reality beyond doubt.
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First publicly revealed through a 1993 film and subsequent documentaries.
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The most famous Kamikaze survivor is Corporal Sasaki Tomoji, who flew nine sorties from the Philippines and returned every time.
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And the reason he came back is fascinating.
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His original commander had secretly modified the squadron's planes to allow bomb release instead of forcing a deadly crash.
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Telling his men to drop the bomb and come back without crashing.
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Sasaki followed that order nine times and was reported dead to the emperor twice.
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His superiors were furious and staff officers told him he was not allowed to return.
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But he was never executed.
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He survived the war, lived quietly in Hokkaido, and didn't speak about it for 70 years.
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He died in February 2016 at age 92.
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And if Sasaki was hiding from his own people, just imagine how far Japanese pilots were willing to go to avoid capture by Americans.
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After being fed all the horror stories about them barbarically torturing their prisoners.
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Japanese feared capture so much that the pistols they officially carried for self-defense were used only on themselves, as instructed by their commanders.
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On top of that, they were taught surrender is a disgrace.
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And the capture was never an option in their minds.
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But how were they captured in the first place?
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Capture usually happened in ways that left the pilot no choice.
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Some were shot down over water and fished out unconscious.
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While others crash-landed on Allied territory due to mechanical failure.
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And there were those rescued at sea after a failed attack on the very ships they had just tried to destroy.
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Every captured pilot expected to be tortured and then executed.
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This was based partly on how Japan treated Allied prisoners, partly on propaganda about Western barbarism.
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And partly on genuine wartime experience.
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And the Americans weren't always willing to accept surrender either, following their own bitter past experiences with Japanese soldiers.
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As their tactics had systematically destroyed trust.
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Dead bodies were booby-trapped, wounded soldiers hid grenades and detonated them when medics approached.
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And fake surrenders lured Marines into ambushes.
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This only fueled hate, followed by many atrocities on both sides.
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Life magazine published a photo of an American woman posing with a Japanese skull sent as a souvenir.
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And Japanese media used it as proof of American barbarism, portraying capture as worse than death.
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And to understand how far this went, once American forces closed in on Saipan and Okinawa, the local population massively chose to end themselves to prevent the savage Western treatment.
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Japanese soldiers even gave civilians grenades, which entire families used on themselves.
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While others jumped off cliffs deliberately.
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Tens of thousands of civilians took this route rather than face the horrors described by their government.
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And even when the US Army implemented programs to change this, and Japanese American soldiers walked with the front line with loudspeakers and leaflets.
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Trying to convince Japanese soldiers and civilians that surrender didn't mean torture or execution.
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It took a lot of time to change this belief.
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They avoided words like surrender, as it carried a lot of weight.
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And tried with phrases like stop fighting instead.
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And this actually worked.
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Slowly and gradually, but it worked.
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Now, Japan's Field Service Code was never suffer the disgrace of becoming a prisoner.
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And soldiers carried a pocket-sized copy of it as a constant reminder.
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With all this in mind, what actually happened upon their capture was completely unexpected, to say the least.
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As capture was never even considered, soldiers received absolutely zero training in how to behave if it actually happened.
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They had no idea the Geneva Convention rules said prisoners only had to give name, rank, and service number, nothing else.
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Captured prisoners who believed themselves already dead to Japan anyway, after being forced into suicide missions, and who discovered that Japan's government refused to notify their families of their survival.
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Felt no remaining loyalty to protect Japan's secrets.
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Allied interrogators who deliberately exaggerated what they already knew and asked prisoners to simply confirm details.
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Found this technique extremely effective.
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And on top of that, the Japanese concept of On and Giri, obligation and reciprocity, only helped the cooperation.
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When they were given food, medical care, cigarettes, and decent treatment, prisoners felt a deep, culturally ingrained need to give thanks with something in return.
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And once Allies understood this dynamic, they built specific interrogation tactics around it.
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And even converted a luxury Hot Springs Hotel near Tracy, California into a main interrogation center for Japanese prisoners.
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Around 2,000 Japanese prisoners of war passed through during the war.
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The philosophy at Camp Tracy was simple.
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Kill them with kindness.
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Japanese chefs prepared them home-cooked meals.
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Prisoners had access to hot springs and spa facilities with beer, cigarettes, and table tennis available.
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Interrogations were relaxed, conversational, and conducted by a Japanese American interrogator.
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Fluent in the language and the culture.
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But the kindness was entirely strategic.
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Rooms were bugged with at the time sophisticated listening devices.
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And conversations were recorded in the basement.
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Vents between rooms let prisoners see each other and talk whenever they felt like it.
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There was no pressure, and Japanese were eased into it.
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Sometimes an American pretending to be a prisoner was placed with real POWs to start conversations.
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Allies gathered intelligence like ship details, weapons research data, factory locations, and military code names.
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There was another facility like this, called Fort Hunt in Virginia.
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Handling over 3,400 prisoners using similar methods.
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And because Japanese prisoners widely cooperated, no evidence of physical torture ever emerged from either facility.
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The irony of them expecting barbarism and getting a luxury spa hotel stay instead is just shocking.
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All records were destroyed the day after the war ended.
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And servicemen swore to secrecy.
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The history wasn't declassified for decades until the 1990s.
Topics:KamikazeWorld War IIJapanese Navysuicide pilotsBattle of Leyte GulfMitsubishi ZeroOhkaKaitenU.S. NavyWWII aviation
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