Kamikaze Attacks (1944–1945): Japan's Special Attack Units

Kamikaze attacks were deliberate suicide strikes by Japanese airmen who crashed aircraft loaded with bombs or fuel into Allied ships between October 1944 and August 1945. Organised as “special attack units” (tokkōtai), they began at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines and reached their peak off Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Around 3,800–4,000 Japanese airmen died in these missions, and their attacks killed several thousand Allied sailors.

Origins

By 1944 Japan was losing the war in the Pacific. Its experienced pilots had been killed at Midway, in the Solomons and at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and newly trained airmen in obsolete aircraft had little chance against American fighters and anti-aircraft fire. Some officers argued that a pilot who crashed his plane into a ship would at least be certain of causing damage.

The name kamikaze, or “divine wind”, recalled the typhoons that had destroyed the fleets of the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281. In Japanese the term was usually read shinpū, and the units were officially called tokubetsu kōgekitai, “special attack units”.

In October 1944 Vice Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, newly appointed to command the First Air Fleet in the Philippines, organised the first formal units to support the navy’s attempt to stop the American landings on Leyte. On 25 October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Shikishima unit led by Lieutenant Yukio Seki attacked US escort carriers off Samar. The USS St. Lo was sunk, the first major warship lost to a planned suicide attack.

Tactics and weapons

Most kamikaze sorties used ordinary aircraft, such as the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter or the Yokosuka D4Y dive bomber, carrying a 250 kg or 500 kg bomb. Pilots flew in small groups escorted by fighters, approaching at very low or very high altitude to evade radar, and tried to strike the flight decks of carriers or the vulnerable superstructure of smaller ships.

Japan also developed purpose-built suicide weapons. The Ohka was a rocket-powered piloted bomb launched from a bomber; the Kaiten was a manned torpedo launched from submarines; and the Shin’yō was a small explosive motor boat. Most of these weapons had limited success, because their carriers were easily intercepted or their attacks poorly coordinated.

Okinawa: the peak of the campaign

The greatest kamikaze effort came during the Battle of Okinawa from April to June 1945. Japan launched ten mass attacks, called kikusui (“floating chrysanthemums”), between 6 April and 22 June 1945, involving more than 1,400 suicide aircraft in total as well as many conventional raids.

The destroyers on radar picket duty around the island, whose job was to give early warning of incoming raids, suffered especially heavily. On 11 May 1945 two kamikaze aircraft struck the carrier USS Bunker Hill within less than a minute, killing nearly 400 of its crew. British carriers of the Pacific Fleet were also hit, but their armoured flight decks allowed them to resume operations within hours.

On 7 April 1945 the battleship Yamato was sent on a near-suicidal mission to Okinawa with a small escort and no air cover; it was sunk by American carrier aircraft before it came close to the island. On 15 August 1945, after the Emperor’s surrender broadcast, Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki led a final flight of aircraft towards Okinawa and was lost.

Allied countermeasures

The US Navy responded by changing the way its fleets fought. Carriers embarked more fighters and fewer bombers, standing fighter patrols were kept over the fleet from dawn to dusk, and destroyers were stationed far out on radar picket lines to detect raids early. Ships were fitted with many more 20 mm and 40 mm anti-aircraft guns, and carrier aircraft repeatedly bombed the airfields on Kyushu and Formosa (Taiwan) from which the attacks were launched.

These measures reduced, but never eliminated, the danger. For several months the US Navy also restricted press reporting of the attacks, partly to deny Japan information about their success; detailed accounts reached the American public only in the spring of 1945.

The pilots

Most kamikaze airmen were young men in their late teens or early twenties. Many were student conscripts who had been taken from universities after deferments were cancelled in 1943, or boys from naval and army flying schools. They received short training, often focused only on take-off and the final dive.

Official accounts presented them as willing volunteers inspired by loyalty to the Emperor. Letters and diaries, many published after the war, show a more complicated picture: pride and duty mixed with doubt, grief for families and quiet despair. Formally, men were asked to volunteer, but social pressure made refusal extremely difficult.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: Kamikaze pilots were given only enough fuel for a one-way trip. Aircraft usually carried enough fuel to reach the target area and search for ships. Pilots who failed to find a target were often expected to return, and some flew several sorties before their final one.

Myth: Kamikaze pilots were all fanatics. Surviving writings show that many had doubts or were deeply troubled by their fate, even as they carried out their missions.

Myth: Kamikaze tactics began at Pearl Harbor. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a conventional air raid. Organised suicide attacks began almost three years later, in October 1944.

Consequences and legacy

The kamikaze campaign failed to stop the Allied advance, but it caused heavy losses and deeply affected Allied sailors. It also influenced American planning for an invasion of Japan, where far larger numbers of suicide aircraft and boats were being prepared, and so formed part of the background to the decision to use the atomic bombs.

Ōnishi took his own life on 16 August 1945, the day after the announcement of the surrender of Japan. In Japan the special attack units are remembered at sites such as the Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots in Kagoshima Prefecture, which displays the letters of young airmen. The dead are also enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, whose role in remembering the war remains a sensitive issue in Japan and in neighbouring countries. Outside Japan the word kamikaze passed into everyday language to describe any reckless or self-destructive act.

Timeline

• 1944, 19 October: Ōnishi proposes forming special attack units in the Philippines.
• 1944, 25 October: First organised kamikaze attacks; USS St. Lo is sunk.
• 1945, 21 March: First Ohka missions; the bombers are intercepted and destroyed.
• 1945, 6 April: First of ten kikusui mass attacks off Okinawa.
• 1945, 7 April: The battleship Yamato is sunk on its final sortie.
• 1945, 11 May: Two kamikaze aircraft strike USS Bunker Hill.
• 1945, 15 August: Vice Admiral Ugaki leads a final flight after the surrender broadcast.
• 1945, 16 August: Ōnishi dies by suicide.

Why it matters

The kamikaze campaign showed the desperation of Japan’s leaders in the final year of the war and the lives they were willing to spend. It cost thousands of young Japanese and Allied lives and remains one of the most painful and debated memories of the Pacific War.