What's the worst job in war?

[Rising_Sun]

@kamehouse

But this is my personal opinion as a European citizen.You always hope to come back,don’t you?

You and I do.

They didn’t.

It’s the same sort of, to us (well, to me anyway), crazy desire for death that we see in Islamic suicide bombers, which represents a belief system which is so foreign to ours that neither side has any common ground upon which to engage for any useful discussion about whatever it is that provokes the Islamists to wage their curiously random and magnificently ineffective form of ‘war’.

It’s worth remembering that the earliest kamikaze pilots were probably a few Americans in some desperate early Pacific battles where they flung their machines suicidally against the enemy as their last aggressive action. There is some reseach on it but I can’t find it now.

However, the kamikaze spirit pre-dated the pilots, notably in the midget submarines (post #3 at http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8394 ), but it was conveniently re-manufactured at the end of the war for pilots when Japan was on the ropes when it was never a feature of Japanese air tactics or conduct when Japan was winning or even just holding ground.

[Dara]

Kamikaze were committed to their cause and knew what they were doing, and were proud to do it. While it might be incomprehensible to Western minds, it was a fine and noble thing in their culture and military tradition.

This was not the case with all kamikaze pilots from what I’ve read and heard. There are some, who survived, who speak of being terrified and not feeling very noble, but feeling very uncertain. They have changed their last name for fear of reprisals, because they did not end their lives. Some, after being captured, ended up committing suicide, but there are a few who did not and are alive to speak about their experiences.

I know there are many who actually succeeded, but we do not know for sure that all were committed to the cause etc…

[gumalangi]

How about,… target shooting holder?

[Cuts]

The worst job must be in the aftermath of war.

Especially reading bone posts.

[Rising_Sun]

@Dara

This was not the case with all kamikaze pilots from what I’ve read and heard. There are some, who survived, who speak of being terrified and not feeling very noble, but feeling very uncertain. They have changed their last name for fear of reprisals, because they did not end their lives. Some, after being captured, ended up committing suicide, but there are a few who did not and are alive to speak about their experiences.

I know there are many who actually succeeded, but we do not know for sure that all were committed to the cause etc…

Fair points.

We have only the survivors as post-war commentators (‘a former kamikaze pilot said’ lacks some authority as a spokesman for successful kamikaze pilots ), but there are contemporary diaries and letters by those who died which show that they operated from a sense of duty or something other, such as avoiding shaming their family, than overwhelming personal commitment to the cause of dying for the Emperor.

As for feeling uncertain, terrified etc, that is common to most men leading up to and in combat. It does not lessen, but rather increases, the bravery of their acts that they went ahead in such circumstances.

However, the kamikaze spirit in essence if not in the purely suicidal form it took in the air at the end of the war was embodied in the midget submariners early in the war. They embarked upon missions they knew had little chance of success in vessels of considerable unreliability, but the documents they left behind expressed the elements of the later kamikaze airmen’s intentions and attitude.

I think that there was a ‘kamikaze attitude’ in Japanese culture and particularly military and social conditioning under the militarists which, whether they would have chosen to or not given a free choice, resulted in many noble, honourable, patriotic and thoroughly committed young men going to their deaths as the performance of their highest duty to the nation.

[gumalangi]

@Dara

This was not the case with all kamikaze pilots from what I’ve read and heard. There are some, who survived, who speak of being terrified and not feeling very noble, but feeling very uncertain. They have changed their last name for fear of reprisals, because they did not end their lives. Some, after being captured, ended up committing suicide, but there are a few who did not and are alive to speak about their experiences.

I know there are many who actually succeeded, but we do not know for sure that all were committed to the cause etc…

I think,. it is not only those kamikazes pilots who were actually cohersed to fly,. also many of fighters for motherland in Russia,. or young GI in vietnam,.