venetia_sassy | Divine Wind (Reply)

Tonight I watched Wings of Defeat, about the kamikaze pilots of WWII.

I knew very little about the kamikaze pilots, just that they were pilots who flew potentially suicidal missions. I didn't realise that kamikaze missions were guaranteed suicide missions. The only chance of survival was to develop engine trouble or be shot down before reaching the target (then they had to survive that.)

I thought kamikaze was more along the lines of what is actually known as banzai - a mission with a high probability of death. I didn't realise that kamikaze pilots flew their planes directly into the targets, giving themselves no chance.

This was not easy to watch but it was an excellent film. I found the start a bit slow and the timeline confusing at first but then it got rolling and it was terrific. The few surviving pilots were wonderful interview subjects and I felt so sorry for them and the pilots who died. Maybe some were gung-ho about dying gloriously but these guys knew that things were in bad shape and that their lives were being thrown away in a war they couldn't win.

The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know and how much there is to learn and I seriously wonder if I will ever feel well-educated. (Does uni give you that feeling? Is it a false feeling?) I didn't realise Japan was so heavily bombed before Hiroshima. The resources were running out, the soldiers were being slaughtered and the government was yelling, Every citizen a kamikaze! Arm the children with bamboo spears! It was interesting to see the former pilots expressing a resentment towards the Emperor they were taught to worship, who could have ended things much sooner.

Also interesting were the interviews with survivors from the USS Drexler, destroyed by kamikaze. When asked if they could understand how the kamikaze pilots did what they did, they said, sure. You love your country, you want to defend it and you're told over and over that this is how to do it ... it could happen anywhere.

(They also provided an amusing moment. Guy 1 is saying that he doesn't know how they survived, he has no idea how they managed it. Guy 2 says, I have an idea on that. Guy 1, oh yeah? Guy 2, yeah. I swam like hell! I had to laugh.)