Although the death of his comrades meant little to him at the time, a former World War II reserve kamikaze pilot says a remark by a ranking officer after Japan's surrender that the country had fought the war in vain troubled him greatly. Now, Tomokazu ...
As young army pilots took off on suicide missions in the closing days of World War II, the schoolgirls in this Kyushu town waved handkerchiefs and branches of pink blossoms. "Remembering that still makes me tremble," said Chino Kuwashiro, now a tiny 86-year-old with a ...
The pilots filed into the room and were presented with a form that asked if they wanted to be kamikaze. It was multiple-choice, and there were three answers: "I passionately wish to join," "I wish to join" and "I don't wish to join." This was ...
JBC sits down for an interview with Dr. M.G. Sheftall of Shizuoka University about the kamikaze phenomenon and what makes this exhibition unique.
A kamikaze exhibition opened Saturday aboard the USS Missouri, now a memorial in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor, to mark the 70th anniversary of a Japanese pilot's suicide attack on the battleship during World War II. The exhibition shows how young Kamikaze pilots lived before crashing their ...
Hisashi Tezuka knew his life had been spared when he heard the Emperor's voice crackling through the wireless. As Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's wartime surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, the young kamikaze pilot was on a train to the island of Shikoku to carry out ...
Seventy years after Japan formed its first kamikaze unit in the Philippines, one local resident remains adamant that the suicide pilots were noble warriors who should be honored in the nation their military occupied. Daniel Dizon, 84, is co-founder of the Kamikaze Memorial Society of ...
Many Japanese people remember Aug. 15 as the day World War II ended. Sixty-nine years ago today, in a speech broadcast on the radio, Emperor Hirohito announced that Japan had notified the Allied powers of its acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. But the war did ...
Toward the end of World War II, following a series of military defeats, and faced with a rapidly deteriorating ability to defend the homeland, Japan began launching aerial suicide attacks on Allied forces in the Pacific. These were called kamikaze attacks, which had a dramatic ...
To suggest that history is shaped by chance weather events and climatic variation doesn't lend it quite the same gravitas as if it were wrought by great leaders. It certainly isn't as inspirational. But such processes can be just as important — and the ...
In 1401, barely a century after the Mongols' aborted invasions of Japan, and 600-odd years before Japan and China fell out over the Senkaku islets, a Chinese emperor conferred upon a Japanese shogun the title "King of Japan." Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) was overjoyed at this ...
As a child growing up in California in the 1980s, I learned my share of Japanese words. Sushi, which my family would get for a treat on birthdays. Mochi (chewy rice cake), ramen and karaoke — all encountered at the Japanese shopping arcade downtown. And ...
