Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [122]
It was never plausible that suicide attacks could alter the outcome of the war, but American casualties increased as tactics were refined. The Japanese noted that their own losses were no worse than those incurred by conventional bombing or torpedo missions. Between October 1944 and August 1945, 3,913 kamikaze pilots are known to have died, most of them navy pilots, in a campaign that peaked with 1,162 attacks in April. Around one in seven of all suicidalists hit a ship, and most inflicted major damage.
Some Japanese were deeply dismayed by the kamikaze ethic. The letters and diaries of more than a few pilots reveal their own reluctance. Yet the young men who agreed to sacrifice themselves became celebrated as national heroes. One day the wife of a high court judge, whose pilot son had fallen ill and died in training, appeared at Kijin base. She brought a lock of the boy’s hair and a scarf, and asked that these should be carried as mementoes by a kamikaze on his mission. She had inscribed the scarf with the words: “I pray [that you will achieve] a direct hit.” A group leader duly carried the relics to his own death. Mamoru Shigemitsu, one of the more rational among Japan’s political leaders, nonetheless wrote in stubborn admiration after the war: “Let no man belittle333 these suicide units and call them barbaric.”
The cultural revulsion which kamikazes inspired in Americans was intensified by sailors’ bitterness at finding themselves exposed to increased peril of mutilation or death, when the war was almost won. “If you were below decks, you could tell when the fight moved in closer by the type of gunfire,” wrote Emory Jernigan. “First the five-inch, then the 40mm, and then the 20mm would cut loose. When the 20mm fired all sixty shots and stopped for a second to reload, you could tell the fight was close and getting closer. There was nothing to do except suck your gut and, in my case, I would recite my own little motto from boyhood: ‘I don’t give a damn if I do die, do die; just so I see a little juice fly, juice fly.’”
It can be argued, in the spirit of the Royal Navy’s staff study, that only a narrow line separated the deeds of Japan’s suicide pilots from the sort of actions for which the Allies awarded posthumous Medals of Honor and Victoria Crosses. A significant number of American and British sailors, fliers and soldiers were decorated after their deaths for hurling themselves upon the enemy in a fashion indistinguishable from that of the kamikazes. But Western societies cherish a distinction between spontaneous individual adoption of a course of action which makes death probable, and institutionalisation of a tactic which makes it inevitable. Thus, the Allies regarded the kamikazes with unfeigned repugnance as well as fear. In the last months of the war, this new terror prompted among Americans an escalation of hatred, a diminution of mercy.
Rear-Admiral Robert Carney, Third Fleet’s chief of staff, shared Halsey’s disdain for wasting humanity on the enemy: “We ran afoul of Japanese334 hospital ships, some were sunk, some couldn’t be identified, some were adjacent to proper military targets and suffered as a result…It would seem to be an unnecessary refinement to worry too much over these incidents. The Japanese hospital ships have undoubtedly been used for illegal purposes and they are caring for Nips which we failed to kill in the first attempt. Every one who is restored to duty potentially costs the life of many of our people.”
Captain Tom Inglis of the cruiser Birmingham glimpsed enemy sailors in the water off Mindanao: “I was somewhat puzzled335 as to the proper treatment to accord these Japanese. I suggested that some should be taken prisoner. The admiral told me that would be done after we were sure the ships had been sunk, and I understand