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    Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers
    Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers
    Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers
    Ebook240 pages5 hours

    Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers

    By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    “We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives.” So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or tokkotai, who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II. 

    This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. 

    A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateMar 1, 2007
    ISBN9780226620923
    Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      One of the main aims of this book is to dispel the myth that kamikaze pilots were fanatical nationalists, eager to die in the name of the Emperor. As it turns out, there were 4000 kamikaze pilots trained. 3000 were children - schoolboys - and 1000 were students who had been granted early graduation to enable them to be drafted. Huge amounts of peer pressure were put on them to 'volunteer'. Sickeningly, the whole process was done at arms-length from the regular army and navy because they took their orders from the Emperor, and it could not be seen that the Emperor was ordering men to die.The schoolboy pilots have left few traces, but many of the the students kept lengthy diaries, which are the subject of this book. Many of them came from prestigious universities and they have a remarkable breadth of education - at high school they all learnt Latin and two of English, French and German, as well as reading huge amounts of political and social philosophy, with Marxism and German Rationalism being particularly influential.Their diaries track their responses to their reading, as well as their views about their own situation - both the war itself, and their inevitable oncoming death which they are expected to receive with joy.Some of them are supporters of making peace from the start. Others begin with strong patriotic sentiments which are eroded by the brutal, oppressive treatment they receive on the military bases. But the overall picture is a complex mixture of pride in the national culture, a sense of impending doom (whether or not they are in the army), an idealised view of masculinity and sacrifice, and an often naively adolescent view of the ills of the world.Ohnuki-Tierney argues that all of these responses were attempts to rationalise the fact that they were going to die young, and they didn't want to. I don't think that the texts themselves demonstrate this clearly - some of the patriotic emotions were surely genuine. I can understand her intentions, but I think that this complexity is already enough to demonstrate that the stereotype of kamikaze pilots is inaccurate.Overall, there was some fascinating information in this book. However, for my tastes it spent too much time analysing the philosophical thinking of the students. The diary entries about their fears and their families were extremely moving, and it was interesting to hear about their influences - much less so to read their detailed thoughts about their reading of Novalis or their response to the painting of Degas. Also, the sections dealing with each individual are very repetitive.Recommended for: I would recommend the introduction to anyone with an interest in the subject. The full text more for someone who wants to know about their responses to the political philosophies of the time.NB: I should mention that despite the title not all the diaries are of kamikaze pilots, although they were all young ex-students serving in the Japanese military.
    • 5/5
      I really, really wanted to read this book but the font is too small. I can't enlarge it at all! Pity because I really need to read this book for a paper for school. Yes, I do know to enlarge the font-but it doesn't work. WHY?

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