New Kamikaze Documentary & Kamikaze Pilots Vs. Terrorists
The Japanese media has been covering the upcoming release of “Wings of Defeat,” a documentary by Americans Risa Morimoto and Linda Hoaglund that explores the history of Kamikaze pilots [trailer above]. Here is the synopsis from the film’s official site:
Internationally, Kamikaze pilots remain a potent metaphor for fanaticism. In Japan, they are largely revered for their selfless sacrifice. Yet few outside Japan know that hundreds of kamikaze pilots survived the war. By the spring of 1945, when all Japanese planes were reassigned to kamikaze (Tokkotai) attacks, Japan could no longer defend its airspace and its naval fleet was demolished. Old airplanes and inadequate training resulted in many failed engines, leaving scores of pilots stranded. When Japan surrendered, hundreds of kamikaze trainees were awaiting sortie orders that never arrived.
Through rare interviews with surviving kamikaze pilots, we learn that the military demanded pilots volunteer to give up their lives. Retracing their journeys from teenagers to doomed pilots, a complex history of brutal training and ambivalent sacrifice is revealed. As U.S. firebombs incinerated its major cities and the country ran out of weapons and fuel, Japan’s military government refused to accept the reality that it could no longer fight. Instead they sent thousands of pilots off to targets nearly impossible to reach. Sixty years later, survivors in their eighties tell us about their training, their mindsets, their experiences in a kamikaze cockpit and what it meant to survive when thousands of their fellow pilots had died. Their stories insist we set aside our preconceptions to relive their all too human experiences with them. Ultimately, they help us question what responsibilities a government at war has to its soldiers and to its people.
The gap between the Japanese and foreign image of the pilots is demonstrated in this clip from the story on the documentary’s release:
They ask some young people on the street in Tokyo what they think of kamikaze and the answers are positive. One young man says that they were amazing, and that he would never be able to make such a sacrifice. A gyaru says that Japanese people from those days put great effort into what they did (to paraphrase her crude slang). On the other hand, the word kamikaze has come to be equated with terrorism and suicide bombing in America. The most common example of this was the frequent use of the word “kamikaze” when describing the 9/11 attacks.
Similar to most Americans, director Risa Morimoto associated the word “kamikaze” with blind fanaticism and craziness. However, after she researched their history, she found that what she had been taught in America was not the full story:
Her research into creating this film truly changed the definition of the word “kamikaze” in her mind. The Japanese anchor in the above mentions how the use of the phrase “kamikaze attack” after 9/11 has made many Americans equate the kamikaze pilots as terrorists. Perhaps this documentary can convince those that watch it that the pilots were actually young members of the military who tragically sacrificed their lives in the believe that their actions might protect Japan, rather than mere fanatical terrorists?
“Wings of Defeat” will be showing at select theaters in Tokyo under the Japanese title “TOKO” starting July 21st.
