Peter Gluck <peter.gl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And the kamikaze were lead by a very peculiar rationality. A horrible business. For insight into it, see the book "I was a Kamikaze" by Ruiji Nagatsuka, and "Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze," by M.G. Sheftall. I know some pilots in the Imperial Japanese Army who would have ended up was Kamikaze pilots if the war had gone on. They were rational people. Not fanatics. As rational as you or I, which should give everyone pause. There, but for the grace of God . . . I do not think the act was so extreme. I think that if the United States had been on the verge of defeat by Nazi Germany, our soldiers and pilots would have taken equally extreme suicidal measures if they thought there was some chance of success. The fact is, the first kamikaze attacks were effective from a military point of view. They killed far more Americans than Japanese. If the success rate had been maintained, they could have wiped out the US Navy at the cost of a few thousand pilots, which is a "favorable exchange rate" in the grim jargon of the military. The US Navy quickly developed effective countermeasures. After the first few hundred attacks, there was no longer any chance of stopping the invasion by this method, so the later attacks were pointless. - Jed
