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After we ran out of petrol we had to make do with methane. When they were delivered, our own engineers practically had to take them apart and rebuild them again. "By the end there were no engineers left to build the planes, which were put together by the girls of the Volunteer Corps. He studied flying for two years, but by the time he was ready to go the War had turned ugly. Hitomaru Nakayama, now a telephone engineer on the outskirts of Tokyo, volunteered for the navy when he was 20 and was inducted into the Air Force Training School, "much the flashiest branch of the armed forces". So as there seemed to be no alternative, they got us to dig these holes." In Okinawa they had tried having soldiers with explosives hurling themselves at the tanks, but of course all tanks have machine guns so the soldiers were blown away and the tanks unharmed.
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However many Japanese bullets you fired at them, they wouldn't do more than chip the paint and bounce off. "The reason the army settled on this method of defence was because the steel of the American tanks was so thick. I was the commanding officer of this unit. When an American tank rolled over the hole, the plan was to hit the fuse with the hammer - clang! - and - whump! - the dynamite would explode and blow up the tank. The idea was that when the American troops came, the soldier would get in the hole and fasten the lid. Each soldier was also issued with a hammer. We put a lot of dynamite in the hole, then a plank on top of which the soldier was to stand, and we attached a fuse to the dynamite. Here was the beach, and here we each had to dig a hole 2.5 meters deep. "Here was the sea, from which the Americans were expected to invade. "The duty I was chosen for was as follows," he said. Kako Senda, later to become a journalist and historian, underwent seven months' officer training in Kyushu and then, in the last year of the War, was put in charge of a platoon of middle-aged conscripts in the city of Kagoshima, near the expected site of the American invasion. But the Japanese equivalent of Dad's Army had no need to feel left out. Young hotheads were tailor-made for blasting at American aircraft carriers. There was a way of death to suit every Japanese. Once the suicide idea had been conceived, it was capable of almost infinite variation. Twin-engined bombers were adapted to carry piloted bombs known as "cherry blossoms" which, once released, zoomed at speeds of more than 400 mph (they were rocket-powered) towards enemy ships. The navy trained men to become human mines, swimming in diving suits to enemy ships and striking the hulls with "stick bombs". Midget submarines were developed, with crews of two or five, to attack Allied submarines and die in the attempt.
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But as Japan's situation worsened and conventional tactics became futile or impossible against the vast might of America, the idea spread. The original kamikaze, the Tokkotai or Special Attack Force, first deployed in the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines in January 1945, was perhaps the most spectacular form that the idea took, launching themselves in great waves of Zero fighters at American warships. There were numerous ways of doing it, and great ingenuity was exercised in developing new ones. By the final months of the War, the entire population of Japan was primed to die for the emperor. What is less well known is that suicide duty was not the exclusive prerogative of that fanatical elite. At midday, standing respectfully to attention, eyes on the ground, the Japanese nation listened - for the first time in history - to "the voice of the Crane", as the Emperor was poetically termed the voice of the incarnate god who was their leader.Įveryone knows about the kamikaze, the mad young pilots who in the last year of the War mounted suicide attacks on the Allied fleet as it blasted its way towards the Japanese home islands. The order was obeyed throughout what remained of the Japanese empire: in the home islands, in Korea, Manchuria, occupied China, Formosa and elsewhere in South East Asia, wherever a ragged band of survivors of Japan's military rout still laid claim to a radio. Receivers should be prepared and ready at all railway stations, postal departments and offices both governmental and private." Power will be specially transmitted to those districts where it is not usually available during daylight hours. Let us all respectfully listen to the voice of the Emperor. When people in Japan turned on their radios on the morning of 15 August 50 years ago, they heard a more than usually solemn voice announce, "His Majesty the Emperor has issued a Rescript.