The Kamikaze: Japan's Desperate Gamble

By late 1944, Japan was losing the war. The American advance across the Pacific was relentless. The Japanese navy had been crippled. Their air force was depleted. In desperation, they turned to a new tactic. The Kamikaze. Divine Wind. Pilots would fly their planes directly into American ships, crashing them in suicide attacks. The first organized Kamikaze attacks came during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. The results were devastating. The attacks continued through the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Over 3,000 Kamikaze missions were flown. They sank or damaged hundreds of ships. For the Japanese, it was a matter of honor. Young men volunteered, or were pressured into volunteering, to die for the emperor. They wore white headbands and wrote farewell poems. They believed their deaths would protect their homeland. The Americans watched these attacks with a mixture of horror and respect. A young man diving his plane into your ship, screaming as he came down. It was hard to comprehend. The Kamikaze showed how far Japan was willing to go. And it foreshadowed what an invasion of the home islands would cost. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of lives. That calculation weighed heavily when the decision to use the atomic bomb was made.