Kamikaze: A Japanese Pilot's Own Spectacular Story of the Famous Suicide Squadrons

by Yasuo Kuwahara and Gordon T. Allred

Book Overview

Originally published in 1957, this enduring classic--the first-ever English publication cowritten by a Japanese suicide pilot--remains a touching and insightful look into the world of the kamikaze.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976154757
• ISBN13: 9780976154754
• Release Date: March 2013
• Publisher: American Legacy Media
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

My favorite book in all the world.

I'm an avid reader, and this is my favorite book ever. Read it, and you'll never watch grainy footage of Kamikaze attacks without tears in your eyes and understanding in your heart. This is a brilliant book.

The Unbelievably brutal and brave world of Japanese soldiers

In basic training, Kuwahara and the other cadets were beaten with clubs, learning to endure pain and to disregard their own lives. In flying school, physical abuse was encouraged and Kuwahara was nearly beaten to death by his hancho. When these loyal young cadets finally graduate, they are no longer boys, but hardened men willing to plunge their bomb-laden planes in a suicide dive onto the deck of U.S. Navy carrier. Some Kamikaze pilots lived for only one purpose -to die for the emporer. Although inwardly doubting the cause, all were willing to do anything in defense of their homeland. Yasuo Kuwahara was one of them, amd he tells this extraordinary story of life and death in the last nine months of World War II. This excellent book will percolate within you, and elicit a visceral response to this young mans incredible journey. For me, I gained a tremendous insight into the desperate young pilots of the suicide squadrons. That he survived to tell this heartwrenching story makes it among the most incredible stories of World War II. This book reads like a novel. It is a literary work like no other biography I've ever read. The fact that it is true makes it even more compelling.

The sense of common humanity

A dignified gentleman visited young Kuwahara's household of an evening in 1943 to congratulate the family on the youngster's exceptional academic achievements. After some further civilized speechifying, the gentleman revealed that he served in the Emperor's air force, and would like to honor the family by inducting the youth in that organization. " 'Ah so', remarked my father, with carefully manufactured surprise'". This book tells an extraordinarily convincing story of Kuwahara's experiences in boot camp and as a pilot who watched many of his friends die in the final assaults on Allied forces in the Pacific. Moreover, it contains an early description of the hellish scene after the American atomic attack on Hiroshima, where Kuwahara was spending some leave time when the bomb was dropped. Readers will find that there was indeed dissent against Tokyo's war inside Japan, and in fact within the military. I read this book when I was still a child, and have ever since been proof against the Japan-baiting so common here in America.

The ways of the war...

Very intense description of the author's military life during WWII, as a Japanese army fighter pilot. Details reffering his relation with the Kamikaze phenomenom are deep and impressive. Although certainly thrilling, I wonder to which extent the author kept himself to the real facts, throughout the narrative. Some passages seem to be too perfect, almost "novelistic", to be true. However, it certainly gives the emotional experience of what was like to be a 16 year old suicide pilot in 1945.

A great book, an insight into the Japanese Army Air Force

This autobiographical work by a Japanese Army Airforce pilot is a must for anyone with an interest in World War Two. Detailed, often brutal descriptions of Japanese training and discipline shed a new light on the war, in that POW's were treated only slightly worse than military recruits. Don't miss this one!