Now there is a new level of insanity, islamofacism.
p.s. Anyone here know Jeff 'Kamikaze' Kantz from the 'burgh?
Posted on 09/30/2004 7:16:16 AM PDT by billorites
CHIRAN, Japan — These are the dusky days of old age that kamikaze pilots like Shigeyoshi Hamazono were not supposed to see.
Three times during the final months of World War II, Japanese officers sent Hamazono off to die, ordering him to crash-dive a single-engine plane stuffed with bombs into an American warship.
Bad weather aborted the first mission, an oil leak the second. On his final attempt in April 1945, he encountered three American pilots over the sea off Okinawa. In the ensuing dogfight, Hamazono was burned and took shrapnel in his shoulder, but his plane limped home.
You could call him the luckiest man in Japan, though Hamazono didn't see it that way at the time.
"I was, of course, ready to die," says Hamazono, who instead has aged into a bent but dignified 81-year-old. Fate allowed him to see his hair turn wispy and gray. And fate made him part of one of history's strangest and most exclusive brotherhoods: "kamikaze survivors."
Most were still waiting for orders to fly when Japan surrendered to the Allies in September 1945. A few others were spared because they did not reach their intended targets — a failure Hamazono found intolerable at the time. He was on standby to fly a fourth mission when Japan capitulated. Denied the opportunity to redeem his honor, he felt disgraced.
"I wished I had died," he says.
In the postwar years, a traumatized nation treated the kamikaze survivors like pariahs. But in the last decade, their reputation has recovered. Publishers clamor for memoirs. Scholars pick over their backgrounds in search of an explanation for their willingness to die for a lost cause. Japanese nationalists buff and shine their memory like medals.
"Kamikaze" has ceased to be a slur in Japan.
< SNIP >
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
They were fighting uniformed soldiers, not women and children.
Not only upon themselves, but upon their families - because honor is of the family, as well.
But, THIS comment strikes me:
Scholars pick over their backgrounds in search of an explanation for their willingness to die for a lost cause.
If these "scholars" understood the warrior code, they wouldn't have to ask.
There you go.
These guys had some honor.
Besides, if they didn't manage to full-fill thier mission, they aren't kamikazi!
You got that right.
"A samurai must live his life as if he were already dead."
Agreed.
I was watching PBS a few months ago. There was a program showing how a Japanese scientist had discovered there were upper atmosphere winds that traveled to the U.S. So they launched balloons with bombs attached. They landed in the northwest somewhere (Idon't remember exactly where). Some children and a pastor's wife were killed during a picnic from the bombs that landed here from those balloons. They showed the trees that still bore the scars from it. I don't know why the Japanese did not launch more "balloon bombs", those were the only ones we seemed to have discovered.
The homicide bombers and 9/11 highjackers hate life. They gladly give up lives they do not value, to slaughter the innocent.
There's a world of difference.
Spot-on, Sarge. Those "scholars" don't seem to know "kuso" about Kamikaze or Bushido.
Two reasons:
(1) They could not be coordinated effectively to hit sensitive US targets.
(2) Since the vast majority were likely to explode harmlessly in the ocean, it was an inefficient waste of needed munitions that could be used far more effectively in the defense of the homeland.
That makes sense. (I'm never awake, I work 2 jobs.)
Chicken Teriyaki was the most notable of these WWII Japanese warriors, having completed 50 kamikaze missions before retiring to a popping corn farm outside Hiroshima. The corn in the area was famous for the unusual ability to pop IN the husk, simplifying harvest and packaging.
He died in 1968. His body was dissected into small pieces and are still being used as nightlights all over Japan today.
There was actually a project to manufacture and launch jet-stream-borne baloon incindiary bombs against America. The US response was to hush up any effects of these attacks so that the Japanese got no positive feedback from their efforts. And the effects weren't all that significant in any event.
The Japs were madly savage to their POWs. I will never forget this. But still, they conducted war a thousand times more honorably than Mohammedan savages who feed their Aztec like blood lust with murder of innocents. And this savage conduct is all laid out in their Koran. Shinto holy books have nothing comparable.
Two-seconds on Google is all it would take:
BUSHIDO, WARRIOR CODE OF CONDUCT
"The unwritten Samurai code of conduct, known as Bushido, held that the true warrior must hold that loyalty, courage, veracity, compassion, and honor as important, above all else. An appreciation and respect of life was also imperative, as it added balance to the warrior character of the Samurai. He was often very stoic with a deep and strong philosophical passion. He could be deadly in combat and yet so gentle and compassionate with children and the weak."
Suicide bombers are simply vermin.
There is a big difference between attacking a warship, or even a merchant vessel bearing war cargo, and a schoolbus full of kids.
So only 285 out of 9,000 were known to have hit the US.
That's a 3% hit ratio.
No wonder they quit in April, 1945. They sure had other problems much closer to home by then.
At any rate, they should be grouped with the "Miserable Failure" of a Suicide Bomber group.
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