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Kamikaze - To Die for the Emperor.
Named after the Divine Wind which twice intervened to prevent invasion by Kubla Khans armies in the 13th Century, the Kamikaze pilots symbolised the lengths the Japanese Imperial Forces were prepared to go to when faced with defeat. Opposed by the might of the American Fleet rebuilt after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial seal of approval was given to suicide air attacks on the enemy stalking them in the Pacific. Honoured for its purity, suicide was shrouded in ceremony and mysticism, capturing the Samurai spirit. It took several military forms when Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after occupying Manchuria in 1931. Ramming techniques were refined alongside the development of human bombs, bullets, torpedoes, flying bombs as the suicide tactics struck terror into the hearts of men fighting to live confronted by men determined to die. But it was the suicide pilots, dubbed Black Edged Cherry Blossoms who were the central figures in this savage saga. Rare archive action film captures the nightmare chaos of the Pacific War as the air becomes thick with tracer bullets and belching smoke as the sea foams with destruction. Defeat followed the gradual depletion of men and machines, as the Banzai tactics led to mass suicide, but not before the American Navy had been forced back by the Japanese onslaught, and the world had caught a glimpse of the Samurai mentality as a whole nation from the Emperor downwards were ready to die, and frequently did. |
