I heard that a Kamikaze landed back at Kadena in Okinawa and was captured.
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Kamikazi survivors questions...
There was a thread on the Japanese Forum within the last 90 days that covered kamikazi plane relics. In that discussion, there was information about Kamikazi survivors as well. It may have been that they were some of the guys who never left the ground. I can't remember.... MikeComment
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The May 2006 issue of World War II magazine has an interview with a Kamikaze pilot, who was trained and scheduled to launch August 23, 1945. The war ended before he got his chance. Interesting article.Comment
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The book , The Cherry Blossom Squadrons “BORN TO DIE”, Ohka Pilots with their families and surviving family members of dead pilots gather at the Yasukuni Shrine for reunions. A film “Horror in the East” has an interview with Kenichiro Oonuki, IJA pilot. His plane was shot down by the Americans before he had a chance to crash his plane into a warship. The Japanese authorities said he was dishonorable and imprisoned him, he was denied another kamikaze mission.
RodneyOComment
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When I attended the Japanese language course at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, in 1964-65, one of my instructors had trained as a Special Attack Unit (Kamikaze) pilot in the last year of the war but was unable to fly because of a fuel shortage. He told us that for many years after the war, he was consumed with guilt at having failed to fulfil his duty. Only after becoming a Zen Buddhist priest was he able to overcome these feelings. There is an old Japanese Samurai poem that contains the lines "Death is as light as a feather but duty is as heavy as a mountain." I think that pretty well answers the question of how one could commit suicide by crashing his aircraft into a ship.Comment
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I remember seeing a History Channel interview with a Kamikaze pilot now in his old age. He was shot down over the water before he could hit his target. Couldn't take his own life floating in mid ocean and was captured much to his chagrin. He went on to tell of how him and his family were disgraced for decades after the incident and that only the wisdom of his older years has managed to convince him of the value of his own life. There is little reason to doubt his account and I see no reason why a forced landing over the water would necessarily kill the pilot. Catching one of these guys still kicking though, well that's a different matter.Comment
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Wasn't there an Irish Kamikaze pilot who kept crashing into his brother's scrap yard?Comment
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Years ago I interviewed a U.S. WWII vet who told me about his ship shooting down a kamikaze off of Okinawa, then attempting to rescue/capture the surviving pilot. He said that as they approached the pilot the pilot began screaming and cursing at the Americans in English and, in the course of the dialogue that ensured, the pilot indicated that he had studied at a university in the U.S. pre-war. The ships crew attempted to get the surviving pilot to surrender but to no avail; he evantually began shooting at them with a pistol, so they returned fire and the pilot was killed.
Anyway, for what it is worth, this is the story that the vet passed along to me.Comment
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