Peace loving Kamikaze Pilots

BEIJING (Reuters) - China condemned on Monday plans by a Japanese city to ask the U.N. world heritage organisation to register letters by World War Two kamikaze suicide pilots alongside documents that include the diaries of Anne Frank and the Magna Carta.
The southern Japanese city of Minami Kyushu had last week asked UNESCO to register the wills and farewell letters of the pilots who had carried out attacks on allied ships to highlight the importance of world peace.
The city hosted an airfield from which hundreds of pilots launched suicide missions in 1945, the final year of the war.
China's Foreign Ministry, however, said kamikaze pilots deserved no such recognition.
"The design behind the so-called application for the kamikaze pilots is very clear, which is to try and beautify the Japanese militarist history of invasion," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing.
"This intention is diametrically opposed to UNESCO's objective of maintaining world peace, and must be strongly condemned and resolutely opposed by the international community," Hua added.

Now I expect Iraq to apply send a couple of Late Wills and Testiments from Jihadi suicide bombers - in the name of international peace of course.

I do wonder what planet Japan is on!

 

I don't think that planet even exists in our solar system anymore. I find it hard to believe that they refuse to take responsibilty for any wrongdoing. And whenever I see Japanese officials mention their part in the PTO, where numerous atrocities were commited, they try to appear justified. It's amazing.

 

I have been thinking on this for most of the day and I almost went with my first gut reaction to the OP, but glad now I didn't.

I see two separate issues with this. The first is the perception of sensitivity, and the other, the inherent value of the preservation of history, good and bad. It is our history after all and we should embrace it warts and all.

By western standards Japan has never been seen as sufficiently apologetic for her actions during WWII, certainly not in comparison to the perception of Germany's attitude. Then again there is the People's Republic of China and her deep reverence for the preservation of Human Rights, dignity, and her desire to see non communist inspired cultural treasures preserved for posterity.....I'll give you all a moment to compose yourselves after that one.


Back with me? Good.

What is sometimes lost, in my opinion, is the particular nature of the Japanese psyche, especially as it pertains to the issue of responsibility and guilt. No one likes to admit fault, guilt or mistake's in public, something to do with what the meaning of is, is. (those who don't get it, Google is your buddy). This is particularly true within the Japanese culture. For them failure or guilt is atoned by suicide (in the past) and one formal, official apology given from the most senior person responsible (present). Then after it is the past and while not forgotten, it is not dwelt upon.

There are two versions of a meeting between MacArthur and Hirohito in 1945. One where Hirohito took 'responsibility" for the war and offered himself up for judgement and one where he tried to do this but was rebuffed by MacArthur before he could say it publicly, by refusing to see him. Then there were the post war trials and executions/incarcerations that followed. In the Japanese psyche this atoned for their act's and the constant demand for more apologies are difficult to understand. After all how often do American Presidents apologize for our history with Native American's or the Queen to the various non voluntary members of her Empire?

Yes Imperial Japan did some unspeakable things in China, then again so did both the Nationalist's and Communist's and the only constants where that it was the defenseless people of China who suffered.

Much of China's indignation of late has as much or more to do with geo-political concerns and their perceived need to keep Japan isolated and weak in the face China's desire to be the top dog in the region. With the smaller democratic (more or less) nations of the region Japan is a natural choice that possesses the economic and political glue to hold any alliance together, other than the US who can't be everywhere all the time.

I can't say if it was Minami Kyushu or the Chinese press release who brought up Anne Frank and the Magna Carta but it does have the flavor of China's sometimes heavy handed hyperbole. If it was the Japanese, then yes they didn't comprehend how insensitive it was and they too have trouble understanding our psyche.

I can't condone the actions of Kamikaze's but they can not be equated to the modern Islamic suicide bombers. One attempted to trade their lives to prevent a American victory by openly attacking Armed and Vigilant military targets. The other targets unsuspecting, unprepared and undefended civilian targets solely to inspire terror.

The Kamikaze was a soldier who played by the then understood laws of war. We Americans didn't like it, didn't entirely understand it but we never saw it as a war crime or a crime of any type then or post war. Further we, and not China, are the ones who have the most right to object if anyone does.

Personally I see these last documents from these men doomed to die pointlessly for a lost cause as worth preservation. Yes they served a unsupportable cause, but these young men did not start the war as they were for the most part still in school before Pearl Harbor and doing what their culture demanded of them, giving their lives for the greater glory of the Emperor and the Empire.

A multitude of sins have been undertaken by those kind of thoughts, sometimes in the name of Manifest Destiny or for Queen and Country.

I can't say if UNESCO is the correct body because I don't know what criteria they use, but yes by studying our past actions and mistakes it has had the effect of modifying the way we perceive how war should be fought, if fought at all.

As an example Richard the Lionheart is still respected deeply in the eyes of western culture, especially in the UK and America but his massacres in the Holy Land, acceptable by the standards of the period, can not be seen today as anything less than a war crime. Indeed the acts of Crusader Knights as a whole are beyond the pale, yet I wish that we knew better the thoughts of those Knights and Men at Arms marching to their fate at the Horns of Hattin.

 

I can't add much to what Belasar said. His words are clear, concise, and even elegant. But I'll add a little bit of math. Whatever Japan's actions at the beginning of the war, they were being invaded by a hostile and misunderstood world power at the end. I don't find it particularly surprising that they were willing to do virtually anything to prevent that terrible fate, and given their peculiar military and industrial circumstances the Kamikaze strategy actually made military sense: it was an efficient use of scarce resources and it had the added bonus of demoralizing their opponent. The U.S. was increasingly war weary by early 1945. The USN suffered more casualties off Okinawa than in any previous battle. By that time Japanese aerial attacks tended to be one way trips no matter what the plan. While it sounds barbaric to our sensitive modern ears, I would suggest the strategy was working. The Japanese had an enormous stock of pilots and aircraft remaining in the home islands against the coming invasion. If the strategy was effective in spring at Okinawa, it can't have been less so off Kyushu with larger waves of attackers in a more target rich environment defended by only marginally more aircraft. (The addition of Yonton airfield and new construction carriers would have been at least partially offset by the losses at Okinawa.)

And all that would have occurred just as the original Kamikaze, the North Pacific typhoon season, was heating up. Japan could hardly have expected nuclear holocaust. With the information available, I don't think it was unreasonable to believe they could possibly, even then, have fought the U.S. to a standstill and gotten a more favorable settlement out of it . . . at great cost.

But I'm inclined to believe that had the Emperor asked it they would have paid.

 

I'm a bit puzzled by the suggestion that the kamikaze strategy was working for the Japanese at Okinawa. Granted it increased Allied losses, but it didn't stop or delay our operations. Did the kamikaze attacks have any impact on the completion of the campaign? Has anyone read anything like "The attack was delayed because kamikazes had sunk vital supply ships"? "....lack of air cover due to kamikaze attacks on the carrier force"? Anything to suggest that the divine wind delayed the conquest of Okinawa by even a day?

At most one might say that some Japanese thought the kamikazes' sacrifice was accomplishing something. For many, especially in the military, it was inconceivable that such noble sacrifice wasn't making a difference. And of course they were desperate to believe that something would spare them the necessity of acknowledging defeat. But wanting something to be true doesn't make it true.

 

^Carronade

I no doubt overstated the case. I really don't have any hard evidence one way or the other. In fact, I'm not really in a good position to estimate. I made some assumptions that you don't seem to share and guessed based on anecdotes, which is always a bad idea. I don't have any numbers about its effect on US operational time-lines, but I would guess the impact was negligible. But I was (and am) assuming that the goal was not to save Okinawa specifically, but to wear down US resolve piecemeal, which I suspect it did rather well and fairly cheaply. (And cheap was important by that time and something quite dramatic was needed.) Japan's war goal in the fight with the U.S. was never to "win" but to wear the U.S. down to the point of accepting a favorable settlement. By 1945 favorable was not what it was in 1941, but something is always better than nothing, and if the Yankees go home you have something. (Sure, they got something, but you can't be sure of that if you surrender without conditions, as the Allies were so politely requesting.)

I'm going out on a limb. I know only what I've heard from a few people that were there and a few more in interviews, but it surely seems to me that folks were beginning to ask why we were there. The U.S. invasion of Japan isn't a precise parallel to the German invasion of Russia, but there are some analogies: it's a war on difficult foreign terrain a long way from home against a determined enemy. And what an invasion of Japan lacks in sheer numerical and territorial reserves it makes up for in logistical complications. Perhaps a farm boy from near Desoto Missouri doesn't see why we need one more piece of weird East Asian rick eight thousand miles from home. Maybe he wonders if Japan will ever give up. In 1941 a lot of Americans believed the war would be short and easy, that Japanese people wouldn't fight, couldn't see strait, couldn't make anything but cheap toys. By 1945 a lot of American people knew how wrong we'd been. In hindsight, now that everything is declassified, we all believe there was no other outcome, but I'm not at all convinced we would have won had we invaded. I know my grandfather isn't convinced of it. (And he was there at New Georgia, Guam, Okinawa, and Yokosuka. And several other places besides.) I can't believe anyone without the proper clearance could possibly have foreseen the end that was coming, so the Kamikaze things makes good sense. It might not work, but it can't hurt and it's a pretty cheap and effective tactic.

^Kodiak Beer

The Crusades were not connected to the Moorish conquest of the Iberian peninsula, which was substantially complete by 788. (The Franks continued to fight in the "Spanish March" until somewhat after the death of Charles the Great, but it was substantially a border war.) The First Crusade was some three hundred years later, by which time the Frankish Empire is fading into the legendary past. The Cordovans are more or less at peace with their neighbors and don't figure into the Crusades so far as I can tell. There is piracy and some skirmishing in the Mediteranean, but again, I'm not at all sure this was much inspiration to a bunch of Northern Europeans who likely knew little enough of it. In short, the three hundred years immediately preceding the Crusades were noteworthy for being much more quiet. The tremendous expansion of the Caliphates was nearly as ancient a history as the fall of Rome.

Further, the greatest Ottoman expansions into Eastern Europe occurred after the end of the Crusades. The final Ottoman attempt on Vienna came in 1532. The Papacy got out of the Crusade calling business after 1443 when Pope Eugene IV called the Crusade of Varna, which didn't go so well. (Most of them didn't, being poorly coordinated mutli-national efforts against a generally well organized and well led unified opposition.) If the Crusades were a tactic to prevent Muslim expansion into Europe they were a singularly ineffective one. It gets even worse when you add in Mongol converts who come late to the larger Muslim cause.

Anyway, much as Russian atrocities don't justify German atrocities or vice versa, so too Muslim atrocities do not justify Christian atrocities. They're still atrocious. And trying to connect events spaced out over five hundred years is tenuous at best. The Crusades really weren't a terribly unified thing aiming towards one coordinated end anymore than the half dozen or so waves of invasion that came from East to West over the same period. Both "sides" fought as many or more wars with their co-religionists as they fought against the assorted heretics and infidels. In reality it was a bloody period of history and we're still living with the consequences. One mans Crusade is more or less identical to another man's Jihad. The two terms are more or less translations of one another in both connotation and denotation, in virtually every way. The first Christian Jihad under Urban II, the Umayyad Crusades in Iberia . . . Christians might call Ghandi's struggle for independence a crusade against British oppression. Muslims apparently do call it a jihad.

 

Beat me to it!

 

Well I can't compete with Belasar for eloquence but I do wonder at the double standards applied to different enemies.

If you see a difference between the actions of Kamikaze pilots and Mohammed Atta, then maybe this has a closer parallel.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing


The Beirut Barracks Bombings (October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon) occurred during the Lebanese Civil War when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing United States and French military forces—members of the Multinational Force (MNF) in Lebanon—killing 299 American and French servicemen. An obscure group calling itself 'Islamic Jihad' claimed responsibility for the bombings.[1]

Lieutenant Colonel Larry Gerlach, the commander of the U.S. 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) deployed as peacekeepers in Beirut during the incident, has said that the American and the French headquarters were targeted primarily because of "who we were and what we represented"[38]and that,
It is noteworthy that the United States provided direct naval gunfire support [which fired a total of 360 5-inch rounds between 10:04 A.M. and 3:00 PM.] -- which I strongly opposed for a week -- to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq-al-Garb on September 19 and that the French conducted an air strike on September 23 in the Bekaa Valley. American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality, and I stated to my staff at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.[

Not a lot of difference here I would suggest between the Kamikaze and the Jihadi Bomber - "defending his village and homeland" against foreign aggression in his eyes at least.


But of course I would not condone tearing up the Suicide notes of Kamikaze Pilots as Belasar implies - history is history "warts and all".


I do object to these "honourable" (in my view misguided) documents being sanctified in the same collection as Anne Franks Diaries. But Belasar skates around this key point.

 

Peace keeping is one of those military operations that is never as clear cut as the troops on the ground would wish them to be as they are forced to operate on highly restrictive Rules of Engagement. Note that the MNF was deployed to separate the waring factions and at least nominally had the approval of these factions. That doesn't mean however that it was the desire of all the interested parties. The reason we send armed military forces to act as "Peacekeepers" is because sometimes a kind word is not enough to keep heavily armed enemies from breaking the peace. In a perfect world the MNF would have used a scalpel rather than saber, but shelling and bombing were safer options initially than sending troops so it was chosen.

As you point out Islamic Jihad was a obscure group, not a nation, government or officially recognized political entity with borders, laws, etc, but in effect just a small terrorist organization. Also that they used two "truck bombs" to attack both installations. One was a stake bed truck (Marines) the other a pick up (French Para's), with the first at least being stolen and driven by a Iranian national. Not a Lebanese defending his home from a "foreign invader". I don't know what the uniform of the Islamic Jihad looks like or how they adorn their stolen vehicles before they are sent into "battle", but I am willing to place a small wager no such uniforms or markings were visible to either the Marines or Para's. They were sent in looking deliberately like peaceful civilian vehicles.

A Kamikaze wore regulation military flight dress (Army or Navy), flew in a military aircraft with full national markings, under orders from a recognized national government at war with the US, who had officially and formally declared war on the US (granted bumbling caused it to be a hour late).

The difference seems clear to me.

After reading UNESCO's mission statement, which includes freedom of speech, free flow of communication and education, it seems to me that preservation of these documents from a pivotal period of history show at least some merit. Nor would I consider this as a act of disrespect to Anne Franks Diary or any comparable document. To appreciate the light, we must also acknowledge the darkness as well, certainly we must if we hope to educate.

 

Is there a double standard? In this case I don't see a huge amount of difference both attacked military targets on the orders of those they considered thier just supperiors. Both fought for causes that I would like to see permanently confined to the "dust bin of history".

I'm not even sure what an "honourable" document is much less that these qualify. I also wouldn't consider thier inclusion in a collection of primary sources as being "sanctified" in any way.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26256048

 

You're 2 weeks too late mate, they started a thread on that here.
http://www.ww2f.com/topic/52158-peace-loving-kamikaze-pilots/

 

Whoops, I did not see that thread. Can a mod merge this into that one?

 

Threads merged.

 

Hope "they" isn't your wife or girlfriend. Or both.