"This book details more than 400 kamikaze attacks performed by Japanese aircraft, manned torpedoes, suicide boats and suicide swimmers against U.S. ships during World War II. Part One focuses on the traditions, development and history. Part Two details the kamikaze attacks on ships. Appendices list all of the U.S. ships suffering kamikaze attacks"--Provided by publisher.

**Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner** An incredible, untold story of survival and acceptance that sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history. This book tells the story of Kazuo Odachi who--in 1943, when he was just 16 years-old--joined the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a pilot. A year later, he was unknowingly assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps--a group of airmen whose mission was to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into enemy ships. Their callsign was "ten dead, zero alive." By picking up Memoirs of a Kamikaze, readers will experience the hardships of fighter pilot training--dipping and diving and watching as other trainees crash into nearby mountainsides. They'll witness the psychological trauma of coming to terms with death before each mission, and breathe a sigh of relief with Odachi when his last mission is cut short by Japan's eventual surrender. They'll feel the anger at a government and society that swept so much of the sacrifice under the rug in its desperation to rebuild. Odachi's innate "samurai spirit" carried him through childhood, WWII and his eventual life as a kendo instructor, police officer and detective. His attention to detail, unwavering self-discipline and impenetrably strong mind were often the difference between life and death. Odachi, who is now well into his nineties, kept his Kamikaze past a secret for most of his life. Seven decades later, he agreed to sit for nearly seventy hours of interviews with the authors of this book--who know Odachi personally. He felt it was his responsibility to finally reveal the truth about the Kamikaze pilots: that they were unsuspecting teenagers and young men asked to do the bidding of superior officers who were never held to account. This book offers a new perspective on these infamous suicide pilots. It is not a chronicle of war, nor is it a collection of research papers compiled by scholars. It is a transcript of Odachi's words.

The destruction of much of the remainder of the Japanese fleet and its air arm in the later half of 1944 left the Japanese Home Islands vulnerable to attack by US naval and air forces. In desperation, the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed using “special attack” formations, or suicide attacks. These initially consisted of crude improvisations of conventional aircraft fitted with high-explosive bombs that could be crashed into US warships. Called “Divine Wind” (Kamikaze), the special attack formations first saw action in 1944, and became the scourge of the US fleet in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. In view of the success of these attacks, the Japanese armed forces began to develop an entire range of new special attack weapons. This book will begin by examining the initial kamikaze aircraft attacks, but the focus of the book will be on the dedicated special attack weapons developed in 1944. It also covers specialized suicide attack weapons such as anti-tank lunge mines.

Drawing on years of research and firsthand interviews with both American and Japanese survivors, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy draws a gripping portrait of men bravely serving their countries in war and the advent of a terrifying new weapon, suicide bombing, that nearly halted the most powerful nation in the world. In the closing months of World War II, Americans found themselves facing a new weapon: kamikazes--the first men to use airplanes as suicide weapons. By the beginning of 1945, facing imminent invasion, Japan turned to its most idealistic young men and demanded of them the greatest sacrifice. On May 11, 1945, days after Germany's surrender, the USS Bunker Hill--with thousands of crewmen and the most sophisticated naval technology available--was 70 miles off the coast of Okinawa when pilot Kiyoshi Ogawa flew his plane into the ship, killing 393 Americans in the worst suicide attack against America until September 11.--From publisher description.

A classic and poignant treatment of Japan's struggle between recognition of the kamikaze's futility and the country's pride in having made the attempt to stem the tide of the American advance in 1944-1945, this account, given by two former Kamikaze pilots, testifies to Japanese perspective of the last days of World War II. This book stands out among English-language translations of Japanese accounts of the Pacific war, and was translated by a former American officer who fought against the Japanese in the Pacific.

From acclaimed historian John Wukovits, the untold story of the USS Laffey and her crew, who heroically withstood twenty-two kamikaze attacks at Okinawa which the US Navy describes Òas one of the great sea epics of the warÓ

In May 1945, with victory in Europe established, the war was all but over. But on the other side of the world, the Allies were still engaged in a bitter struggle to control the Pacific. And it was then that the Japanese unleashed a terrible new form of warfare: the suicide pilots, or Kamikaze.Drawing on meticulous research and unique personal access to the remaining survivors, Will Iredale follows a group of young men from the moment they signed up through their initial training to the terrifying reality of fighting against pilots who, in the cruel last summer of the war, chose death rather than risk their country's dishonorable defeat—and deliberately flew their planes into Allied aircraft carriers.