Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Kamikaze

Starting point is 00:00:00 In the last year of the Second World War, things were not going well for the imperial Japanese military. They had lost several major naval battles against the United States. They were losing territory, and they had no capability to rebuild the ships that they were losing. They were desperate to find something to turn the tide of the war. What they settled on was one of the most terrifying tactics of the entire conflict for participants on both sides. Learn more about kamikaze pilots and why Japan adopted such a desperate tactic on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:49 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Most of you are probably familiar with what a kamikaze attack is. But if you don't know what it is, I'll briefly explain it. A kamikaze attack occurs when a pilot purposefully flies a bomb-laden plane into an enemy target,

Starting point is 00:01:25 killing the pilot, and in theory, causing tremendous damage. They were, in a very real sense, a human-guided missile. Despite what many people think, Kamakazi attacks were not a staple part of Japanese strategy. When the war began, and in fact for most of its duration, kamikaze attacks were not even in the Japanese play. playbook. Kamikaze attacks are something that most people, even the vast majority of Japanese people today, don't understand and could never think of doing. So why did the Japanese military adopt such a dramatic tactic that required young men to kill themselves? If you remember back to

Starting point is 00:02:04 some of my past episodes on the attack on Pearl Harbor and the story of Admiral Yamamoto, Japan went into the war assuming that they would win quickly. And if history has taught us anything, it's that assuming victory in your planning, especially a swift victory, is usually a bad idea. If things don't go according to plan, it's a very difficult hole to work yourself out of. The attack on Pearl Harbor was supposed to take out the American aircraft carrier fleet, but it didn't. In June of 1942, the Battle of Midway saw the Japanese carrier fleet take a devastating hit with the loss of four fleet carriers. Campaigns in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Island saw heavy losses to Japanese fighters

Starting point is 00:02:46 and corresponding losses to train Japanese fighter pilots that couldn't be easily replaced. Compounding those problems was the fact that Japan didn't have the industrial capacity or natural resources to rapidly build ships and planes in the way the United States could. The Japanese were forced to resort to using older planes and less experienced pilots,

Starting point is 00:03:08 whereas the United States was rolling out new or more advanced planes and had an unrivaled system of pilot-trained. training. In June 1944, at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese lost the ability to conduct aircraft carrier operations. They lost two more of their fleet carriers, and

Starting point is 00:03:26 perhaps even worse, they lost somewhere between 550 and 650 aircraft. The Japanese aircraft losses were so lopsided that the Americans called it the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. In July of 1944, the Japanese lost the island of Saipan, and this

Starting point is 00:03:44 was significant because it was the first time that territory where Japanese civilians lived had been lost. And also, Saipan was close enough to Japan to strike the Japanese mainland via long-range bombers. So things did not look good for Japan, and they needed to do something. The person who's usually credited with the idea of suicide attacks is Captain Moduharo Okomura. Okomorah was the commander of the Tadiyama Air Base in Tokyo and of the 341st Air Group. After the Battle of the Philippine Sea, he began to investigate the idea of suicide air attacks. He is reported to have said, quote, In our present situation, I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes. There is no other way. And here, I should

Starting point is 00:04:36 briefly give the history of suicide air attacks. As I mentioned, they were never part of any official military strategy up until this point, but they were also not unheard of. Previous cases were all done by pilots whose planes were about to crash anyhow and who made the last second decision to do as much damage as possible in the process. One of the earliest recorded cases was by First Lieutenant Fusada Ida. He was a pilot in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. His plane was hit and was leaking fuel. Knowing he couldn't return to his aircraft carrier, he decided to crash his plane at the Naval Air Station in Kanahoe, Hawaii, doing as much damage as he could. It's believed that what he did was on purpose, as other pilots reported him saying before the

Starting point is 00:05:22 raid, quote, in case of trouble, I will fly straight to my objective and make a crash dive into an enemy target rather than make an emergency landing, end quote. It's believed that he tried to fly his plane into a hangar, but he actually missed and hit a hillside. Japanese pilots were not the only ones who exhibited this sort of behavior. At the Battle of Midway, an American bomber is believed to have done the same thing, diving at the bridge of the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi as it was in the process of crashing. Likewise, during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, the USS San Francisco was struck by a Japanese bomber that had been hit, causing extensive damage.

Starting point is 00:06:03 These cases, however, were few and far. between. Moreover, there's a big difference between crashing an airplane into something in a last second act of defiance if you're going to crash anyway, and asking pilots to do this as an intentional strategy. The initial investigations into using suicide pilots as a strategy had taken hold, and by August 1944, the official Japanese New Day Agency was reporting that a flying instructor named Takiotagata was training pilots for missions. Takiotagata, I should note, survived the war and lived into his 80s. He was scheduled to fly a kamikaze mission the day after Japan surrendered. According to Japanese military documents, the first kamikaze attack may have taken

Starting point is 00:06:46 place on September 13, 1944. First lieutenant, Takeshi Kosa and another pilot were selected to fly a mission with two 100-kilogram bombs attached to their fighters and to fly into an enemy aircraft carrier. The pilots left their base on Negros Island in the Philippines and never returned. There were no reports of kamikaze attacks that day, so they were either shot down or crashed before they could find their target. The first verified kamikaze mission, and the start of wide-scale kamikaze attacks began on October 15, 1944. Rear Admiral Masafumi Arima personally led an aircraft attack on the USS Franklin, an

Starting point is 00:07:24 SX-class aircraft carrier. Supposedly, according to legend, he took off his rank insignia before entering his plane, a Mitsubishi G4M Betty twin-engine bomber, and he said he would never return. The USS Franklin was in fact hit by such a bomber, and it caused devastating damage, killing 807 sailors. The Franklin didn't sink, but it was the most heavily damaged aircraft carrier that survived the war. Admiral Arima didn't survive the raid, and it isn't known if his plane was the one that hit the Franklin, but his story was used by the Japanese command for purposes of propaganda.

Starting point is 00:07:59 He was posthumously promoted to Vice Admiral and is credited with the origin of the Kamakazi attack. His story was later used to recruit Kamakazi pilots. However, even if his story about not intending to come back is true, it isn't known if Admiral Arima was actually intending to fly a suicide mission. Nonetheless, just two days later, on October 17th, first Air Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Takayiro Onishi, decided to formally create what he called a special attack unit. Here I should note that the Japanese primarily used the term special attack unit during the war. The term kamikaze translates to defined wind. And if you remember my episode on the Mongol's

Starting point is 00:08:41 attempt to invade Japan, it's the historical term to reference the storms that sunk the Mongol fleet. The term kamikaze was occasionally used in Japanese press during the war, but it only became popularized after the war. A Japanese plane hit the heavy cruiser, the H.S. M-A-S Australia on October 21st, although it wasn't part of one of the special attack units. On October 24th, the USS Sonoma was sunk by a Japanese plane, although again, not from the special attack unit. On October 25th, the special attack unit finally went into effect during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Over the course of two days, 55 Kamakazi planes attacked and hit multiple ships, including seven aircraft carriers and 40 other ships. Five ships were sunk and

Starting point is 00:09:29 23 heavily damaged, including the aircraft carrier, the USS St. Lowe. The Japanese considered the special attack units a success and significantly expanded the program. Over the next several months in late 1944 and early 1945, hundreds more kamikaze attacks took place. As the Americans kept moving closer to Japan, Kamakazi attacks became more desperate and varied. In one case, a plane flew 4,000 kilometers, or 2,500 miles on a one-weigh on a one-weighed. way trip just to hit the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. Plains were encouraged to crash into American bombers as strategic bombing campaigns escalated over the Japanese mainland.

Starting point is 00:10:11 Cheap expendable Kamakazi aircraft were developed to be made out of wood and had landing gear that would drop off after takeoff so that could be reused. Kamakazi boats were also created and used in the event of an attack on the Japanese mainland that never took place. The vast majority of Kamakazi pilots were not Academy. trained military officers or soldiers from families with samurai ancestors. They were farm boys and men who had military deferments that prevented them from serving earlier in the war.

Starting point is 00:10:40 They were largely viewed as expendable cadden fodder by military commanders. The rise in kamikaze attacks also forced changes in defensive tactics by the Allies. The Americans developed a defensive system known as the Big Blue Blanket. The big blue blanket involves sending ships, usually destroy. destroyers further out from the main fleet to detect incoming enemy aircraft. This gave aircraft carriers plenty of time to send up aircraft to intercept the incoming Kamakazi aircraft. By 1945, the Allies had vastly more planes, better planes, and more experienced pilots. Intercepting the Kamakazi pilots became relatively easy so long as they had advanced warning. Likewise, anti-aircraft techniques on ships

Starting point is 00:11:26 improved, allowing them to stop Kamakazi planes before they ever got to. to the ship. Kamikaze attacks peaked during the Battle of Okinawa from April to June 1945. During this period, 1,465 planes were used in kamikaze attacks. In one 80-minute span, 20 kamikaze planes attacked the American destroyer, the USS Laffey. Six of the aircraft actually hit the Laffey, yet the ship did not sink, earning it the nickname, the ship that would not die. 30 ships were damaged or sunk during the Battle of Okinawa, but none were aircraft carriers or battleships. Kamikaze attacks decreased after the Battle of Okinawa, and then of course stopped completely after the Japanese surrender. At the time of surrender, it is believed that Japan had

Starting point is 00:12:15 9,000 aircraft ready to use in kamikaze attacks to defend their homeland. In the end, somewhere between 2,500 and 2,800 Kamakazi attacks were made from October 1944 to August of 1945. Putting aside things like ethics and morals, how successful were kamikaze attacks?

Starting point is 00:12:38 Only 18.6% of kamikaze attacks actually managed to damage an enemy ship. 34 naval ships were sunk as well as 13 merchant ships, 368 ships were damaged, killing 4,900 sailors and wounding over 4,800. Despite all the attacks, not a single fleet carrier or battleship was sunk,

Starting point is 00:13:01 the largest and most important ships in the American Navy. In the end, Kamakazi attacks did not prevent a Japanese defeat, and it's arguable if it even slowed the inevitable surrender despite the damage it inflicted. Thousands of recruited Kamikaze pilots actually survived the war. In subsequent interviews, Very few of them felt that they had truly volunteered or really wanted to fly a kamikaze mission. Most of them didn't want to die and didn't think that their deaths would have had any meaningful impact. Kamakazi attacks were a desperate attempt to try and rectify a desperate situation.

Starting point is 00:13:38 Unfortunately, they expended thousands of lives in what was ultimately a lost cause. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener LKB Fisher over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Love a Shallow Dive. This podcast is perfect for me. I love tidbits, trivia, and learning about new topics.

Starting point is 00:14:07 The shorter length is ideal. I find myself sharing random facts from recent episodes all around town. Yesterday, I shocked the lady at the coffee shack with facts about Shakespeare. Thanks for this well-researched and fascinating show. I'm married into a Packer's family, Go Pack. Thanks, LKB Fisher. allow me to congratulate you for marrying up. There are many teams you could have married into,

Starting point is 00:14:30 and you got the one with the most championships. Remember that if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Kamikaze

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