Download or read book At War With The Wind written by David Sears and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last days of World War II, a new and baffling weapon terrorized the United States Navy in the Pacific. To the sailors who learned to fear them, the body-crashing warriors of Japan were known as "suiciders"; among the Japanese, they were named for a divine wind that once saved the home islands from invasion: kamikaze. Told from the perspective of the men who endured this horrifying tactic, At War with the Wind is the first book to recount in nail-biting detail what it was like to experience an attack by Japanese kamikazes. David Sears, acclaimed author of The Last Epic Naval Battle, draws on personal interviews and unprecedented research to create a narrative of war that is stunning in its vivid re-creations. Born of desperation in the face of overwhelming material superiority, suicide attacks-by aircraft, submarines, small boats, and even manned rocket-boosted gliders-were capable of inflicting catastrophic damage, testing the resolve of officers and sailors as never before. Sears's gripping account focuses on the vessels whose crews experienced the full range of the kamikaze nightmare. From carrier USS St. Lo, the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by an orchestrated kamikaze attack, to USS Henrico, a transport ship that survived the landings at Normandy only to be sent to the Pacific and struck by suicide planes off Okinawa, and USS Mannert L. Abele, the only vessel sunk by a rocket-boosted piloted glider during the war, these unforgettable stories reveal, as never before, one of the most horrifying and misunderstood chapters of World War II.
Download or read book Blossoms in the Wind written by M. G. Sheftall and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory and groundbreaking account of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze—the suicide pilots of World War II—as told through the eyes of the survivors In the final year of World War II, a horrific new weapon was unleashed in the Pacific: the kamikaze. Idealistic, young Japanese men had been taught that there was no greater glory than to sacrifice one’s life to defend the homeland. Now, with the war all but lost, thousands of these determined warriors were hastily trained in the basics of piloting an airplane, then sent out in waves to crash into enemy warships, suicide attacks that killed altogether some seven thousand American sailors. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle and lived? In the wake of 9/11, ethnographer M. G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cloistered community of Japan’s last remaining kamikaze survivors. As an American fluent in Japanese, Sheftall was the only westerner to ever sit face-to-face with these men and hear their stories. The result is a fascinating journey into the lives, indoctrination, and mindsets of the kamikaze, through the eyes of participants who are now lost to time.
Download or read book Kamikaze Destroyer USS Hugh W Hadley DD774 written by Jeffrey R. Veesenmeyer and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merriam Press World War 2 History. The Hadley was a destroyer which served in the U.S. Navy and in early May 1945 was assigned to radar picket duty at Okinawa. On 11 May, a large force of Japanese aircraft attacked. Hadley fought off these attackers, but not without damage to itself. Hadley fought on, but was hit by a bomb and three kamikaze aircraft. Hadley shot down a record 23 aircraft that day and aided in splashing many others, but lost 30 crew members. A determined crew kept her afloat and she was towed back to the States. This new book by a relative of a crew member killed that day off Okinawa, tells the story of the ship, and that fateful day, through the words of many of the survivors, which the author interviewed. This is not just a story about a ship, but about the men that made that ship a legend in the annals of Navy history. 9 appendices, bibliography, 112 photos, 7 illustrations, 6 maps.
Download or read book Kamikaze Nightmare written by Ron Burt and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOK REVIEW BY: Tin Can Sailors - The National Association of Destroyer Veterans Reviewer: Bernie Ditter Overall Rating: Four Stars: Highly recommended. An excelllent book. Ron Burt writes a compelling story about his older brother's heroism and injuries received at the hands of Kamikaze direct hits on two ships, about his brother's recovery from those injuries and about his own efforts to gather the information necessary to support the process to have his brother awarded the Navy Cross and Silver Star. His brother, Pete Burt, was on the USS OMMANEY BAY (CVE-79) when it was sunk by a Kamikaze attack. While he was in the water following the order to abandon ship he gathered ten non-swimmers and kept them together until rescued. The officer on the whaleboat told Pete that he planned to recommend him for the medals. Following his rescue he was transferred to the USS COLUMBIA (CL-56) where two days later it too was struck by a Kamikaze attack resulting in the injuries sustained by Pete Burt. He was to survive fifty surgeries and twenty-two and one half months in hospitals and nearly a lifetime of post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). During much of this time his brother Ron, a four year Navy veteran of the Korean Conflict and a tin can sailor (USS SHELTON (DD-790), spent years of research and writing his account of his efforts to locate veterans who could corroborate Pete's heroism. He contacted the Navy, veteran's organizations, his congressman, placed ads in veterans magazines and contacted numerous veterans by phone, mail and in person. He went to the reunion of the survivors of the OMMANY attack in 1990 and spoke to the nearly 120 veterans and their families who were there. The result is a book that is unique in that it puts a face to the Kamikaze pilots who committed these atrocities, provides vivid first person accounts of the experience (as painful as they are) and gives us a hero that we can all identify with, one who was there and who lived through it with grace. This is a book that will make you think about war in all of its ugliness. Availability: Amazon.com * * * This book (with 28 photographs) is about my brother, Pete Burt, a survivor of four Japanese kamikaze crashes while on board the USS Ommaney Bay (CVE-79) and the USS Columbia (CL-56). These two ships encountered countless attacks from the kamikazes. The Ommaney Bay was sunk while the Columbia sustained three hits, seriously injuring Pete. He was pronounced dead twice, unconscious for 7 days and hospitalized for 22 1/2 months, undergoing 50 operations during that period. He suffered from PTSD for 32 years. For 44 years, he contended that the kamikaze pilot was a woman. Research uncovers a unique aspect of the kamikaze that has remained dormant for years. * * * The Dept. of The Navy has deposited "Kamikaze Nightmare" in their Operational Archives Branch to allow for its preservation and availability to researchers. The book is a fine addition to the Center's World War II Collections and is especially valuable because it adds a personal dimension that is lacking from the official records. Ltr. Aug 1995. * * * Ron Burt holds a Bachelor of Science in Commerce degree from Texas Christian University. A Korean War Veteran, he served on board two vessels, a patrol frigate, the USS Burlington (PF-51) and a destroyer, the USS Shelton (DD-790), from December 1950 to May 1954. He made four cruises to the Far East during that period and earned five combat stars while in Korea. He was on board the Shelton on February 22, 1952, while that ship was defending the island of Yang Do, near Songin, North Korea, from further invasion attempts by the North Korean Communists. The Shelton suffered four direct hits and fifty near hits from five mobile shore battery guns resulting in twelve casualties.
Download or read book The Sacred Warriors written by Denis Warner and published by Avon Books. This book was released on 1984 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Kamikaze Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms written by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to convince people that it was their honor to "die like beautiful falling cherry petals" for the emperor. Drawing on diaries never before published in English, Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and even defiance against the imperial ideology. Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically brief lives. Using Japan as an example, the author breaks new ground in the understanding of symbolic communication, nationalism, and totalitarian ideologies and their execution.
Download or read book Rain of Steel written by Stephen Moore and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last Pacific campaign of World War II was the most violent on record. Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58 carriers had conducted air strikes on mainland Japan and supported the Iwo Jima landings, but his aviators were sorely tested once the Okinawa campaign commenced on 1 April 1945. Rain of Steel follows Navy and Marine carrier aviators in the desperate air battles to control the kamikazes directed by Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki. The latter would unleash ten different Kikusui aerial suicide operations, one including a naval force built around the world’s most powerful battleship, the 71,000-ton Yamato. These battles are related largely through the words and experiences of some of the last living U.S. fighter aces of World War II. More than 1,900 kamikaze sorties—and thousands more traditional attack aircraft—would be launched against the U.S. Navy’s warships, radar picket ships, and amphibious vessels during the Okinawa campaign. In this time, Navy, Marine, and Army Air Force pilots would claim some 2,326 aerial victories. The most successful four-man fighter division in U.S. Navy history would be crowned during the fight against Ugaki’s kamikazes. The Japanese named the campaign tetsu no ame (“rain of steel”), often referred to in English as “typhoon of steel.”
Download or read book Divine Wind written by Rikihei Inoguchi and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic and poignant treatment of Japan's struggle between recognition of the kamikaze's futility and the country's pride in having made the attempt to stem the tide of the American advance in 1944-1945, this account, given by two former Kamikaze pilots, testifies to Japanese perspective of the last days of World War II. This book stands out among English-language translations of Japanese accounts of the Pacific war, and was translated by a former American officer who fought against the Japanese in the Pacific.
Download or read book Dying to Win written by Robert Pape and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes a new Afterword Finalist for the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award One of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject of suicide terrorism, the esteemed political scientist Robert Pape has created the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today. In Dying to Win, Pape provides a groundbreaking demographic profile of modern suicide terrorist attackers–and his findings offer a powerful counterpoint to what we now accept as conventional wisdom on the topic. He also examines the early practitioners of this guerrilla tactic, including the ancient Jewish Zealots, who in A.D. 66 wished to liberate themselves from Roman occupation; the Ismaili Assassins, a Shi’ite Muslim sect in northern Iran in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; World War II’s Japanese kamikaze pilots, three thousand of whom crashed into U.S. naval vessels; and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a secular, Marxist-Leninist organization responsible for more suicide terrorist attacks than any other group in history. Dying to Win is a startling work of analysis grounded in fact, not politics, that recommends concrete ways for states to fight and prevent terrorist attacks now. Transcending speculation with systematic scholarship, this is one of the most important studies of the terrorist threat to the United States and its allies since 9/11. “Invaluable . . . gives Americans an urgently needed basis for devising a strategy to defeat Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants.” –Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris “Provocative . . . Pape wants to change the way you think about suicide bombings and explain why they are on the rise.” –Henry Schuster, CNN.com “Enlightening . . . sheds interesting light on a phenomenon often mistakenly believed to be restricted to the Middle East.” –The Washington Post Book World “Brilliant.” –Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc.
Download or read book The Kamikazes written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-07-23 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes diary entries and other accounts written by kamikaze pilots *Includes a bibliography for further reading One of the most fascinating aspects of World War II was Japan's use of suicide pilots known around the globe as kamikazes, though the Japanese referred to them as Tokubetsu kogekitai (“Special Attack Units”). Translated as “God Wind,” “Divine Wind” and “God Spirit,” kamikazes would sink 47 Allied vessels and damage over 300 by the end of the war, but the rise in the use of kamikaze attacks was evidence of the loss of Japan's air superiority and its waning industrial might. This method of fighting would become more common by the time Iwo Jima was fought over in early 1945, and it was especially prevalent during the invasion of Okinawa in April 1945. The “privilege” of being selected as a kamikaze pilot played directly into the deep-seated Japanese mindset of “death before defeat.” The pilot training manual assured each kamikaze candidate that when they eliminated all thoughts of life and death, fear of losing the earthly life can be easily overcome. Still, not all cases of those chosen to be kamikazes were equally noble. Recruits were trained with torturous regimens or corporal punishment, and stories of mental impairment caused by drugs or saki abound. Some were described as “tottering” and dazed, being carried to their planes by maintenance officers, and forcibly pushed in if they backed down. Pilots who could not find their targets were told to turn around and spare their own lives for another day, but if a pilot returned nine times, he was to be shot. At the moment of collision, he was instructed to keep his eyes open at all times, and to shout “Hissatsu” (“clear kill”). Altogether, nearly 4,000 kamikaze pilots died in combat between October 1944 and August 1945, and about one in seven managed to hit his target. At their peak, they did far more damage to the American Navy than did conventional air attacks, and they undoubtedly placed a significant new obstacle in the path of the American forces slowly encircling the Japanese home islands. However, the widespread use of kamikaze tactics darkened and hardened attitudes toward Japan within the American military and helped to set the stage for the total war on Japanese civilians that the American military waged in the closing months of the war. The Marine Corps Gazette noted, “The ruthless atrocities by the Japanese throughout the war had already brought on an altered behavior (deemed so by traditional standards) by many Americans resulting in the desecration of Japanese remains, but the Japanese tactic of using the Okinawan people as human shields brought about a new aspect of terror and torment to the psychological capacity of the Americans.” As one sailor aboard the USS Miami recalled about kamikaze attacks at Okinawa, "They came in swarms from all directions. The barrels of our ship's guns got so hot we had to use firehoses to cool them down." The kamikazes were the most effective weapon the Japanese had in terms of sinking ships, but they only appeared in the final year of the war. The fact that Japan's military leadership concluded it was both necessary and justified to establish special units of pilots trained to sacrifice their own lives by crashing their planes into enemy vessels was a mark of their own desperation. In the heat of battle, individual soldiers occasionally risked certain or near-certain death to protect their comrades or advance their mission, but organized unites devoted to suicide tactics were virtually unknown before 1944. They appeared only once the course of the war had turned decidedly against the Japanese. The Kamikazes chronicles the history of Japan's famous suicide pilots and explains when, why, and how Japan resorted to their use near the end of war. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the kamikazes like never before.
Download or read book Hell from the Heavens written by John Wukovits and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking toward the heavens, the destroyer crew saw what seemed to be the entire Japanese Air Force assembled directly above. Hell was about to be unleashed on them in the largest single-ship kamikaze attack of World War II. On April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey were battle hardened and prepared. They had engaged in combat off the Normandy coast in June 1944. They had been involved in three prior assaults of enemy positions in the Pacific-at Leyte and Lingayen in the Philippines and at Iwo Jima. They had seen kamikazes purposely crash into other destroyers and cruisers in their unit and had seen firsthand the bloody results of those crazed tactics. But nothing could have prepared the crew for this moment-an eighty-minute ordeal in which the single small ship was targeted by no fewer than twenty-two Japanese suicide aircraft. By the time the unprecedented attack on the Laffey was finished, thirty-two sailors lay dead, more than seventy were wounded, and the ship was grievously damaged. Although she lay shrouded in smoke and fire for hours, the Laffey somehow survived, and the gutted American warship limped from Okinawa's shore for home, where the ship and crew would be feted as heroes. Using scores of personal interviews with survivors, the memoirs of crew members, and the sailors' wartime correspondence, historian and author John Wukovits breathes life into the story of this nearly forgotten historic event. The US Navy described the kamikaze attack on the Laffey "as one of the great sea epics of the war." In Hell from the Heavens, the author makes the ordeal of the Laffey and her crew a story for the ages.
Download or read book Hell from the Heavens written by John Wukovits and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From acclaimed historian John Wukovits, the untold story of the USS Laffey and her crew, who heroically withstood twenty-two kamikaze attacks at Okinawa which the US Navy describes Òas one of the great sea epics of the warÓ
Download or read book The History of Terrorism written by Gérard Chaliand and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in English in 2007 under title: The history of terrorism: from antiquity to al Qaeda.
Download or read book Kamikazes Corsairs and Picket Ships written by Robin L. Rielly and published by Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Basing his work on primary sources, including ship and aircraft action reports, ship logs, and personal interviews, Rielly delivers an engrossing narrative of the American assault on Okinawa in spring 1945.
Download or read book Kamikaze Biker written by Ikuya Sato and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-06-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this firsthand account of high-risk car and motorcycle racing in Japan, Ikuya Sato shows how affluence and consumerism have spawned various experimental and deviant life-styles among youth. Kamikaze Biker offers an intriguing look at a form of delinquency in a country traditionally thought to be devoid of social problems. "Ikuya Sato's Kamikaze Biker is an exceptionally fine ethnographic analysis of a recurrent form of Japanese collective youth deviance. . . . Sato has contributed a work of value to a wide range of scholarly audiences."—Jack Katz, Contemporary Sociology "A must for anyone interested in Japan, juvenile delinquency and/or youth behavior in general, or the impact of affluence on society."—Choice "The volume provides a sophisticated . . . discussion of changes happening in Japanese society in the early 1980s. As such, it serves as a window on the 1990s and beyond."—Ross Mouer, Asian Studies Review "Kamikaze Biker is a superlative study, one that might help liberate American social science from the simplistic notion that behavior not directly contributing to economic productivity should be summarily dismissed as 'dangerous' and 'deviant.' "—Los Angeles Times Book Review
Download or read book US Navy Ships vs Kamikazes 1944 45 written by Mark Stille and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ineffectiveness of conventional air attacks on US Navy surface ships, particularly heavily defended targets like carrier task groups, forced the Japanese to re-evaluate their tactics in late 1944. The solution they arrived at was simple – crash their aircraft into American ships. This notion of self-sacrifice fit well within the Japanese warrior psyche and proved terrifying to the American sailors subjected to it. These tactics brought immediate results, and proved effective until the end of the war. This book examines this terrifying new way of waging war, revealing how the US Navy was forced to adapt its tactics and deploy new weapons to counter the threat posed by kamikaze attacks, as well as assessing whether the damage caused to American naval strength by the loss of so many pilots and aircraft actually had a material impact.
