World War II

CNN has posted an interesting feature story entitled, “Japanese Look for New Meaning from Kamikaze Sacrifice.” Back in the day when I was teaching freshman history in college I tried to emphasize to my students that the identity of the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in any conflict is purely a point of perspective.

I knew a man whose ship survived a kamikaze attack. He described watching the plane plummeting toward the deck. The pilot had the canopy thrown back and his excited screams carried clearly across the sounds of the battle. I’ll confess my friend ended the story with the words “crazy S.O.B.”

In today’s world we still grapple with the concept of the suicide mission, now carried out almost daily on another field of battle for very different reasons. The act is inconceivable to most of us, yet in Japan the memory of the approximately 4,000 kamikaze pilots is increasingly honored and cited as an example of the kind of focus and dedication the nation requires. The story makes for a fascinating read and I highly recommend it, but I want to leave you with a slightly different tale.

Sitting in the company of a World War II vet one afternoon I asked if he’d ever seen any of his buddies crack up. He’d fought in several island battles in the South Pacific, brutal campaigns that resulted in carnage on both sides. “Yeah,” he said, smoking the cigarette I’d just watched him roll. “We had a guy got shipped home. They caught him with a Jap major’s head in a sack.”

Swallowing down the sickening bile that rose in my throat I asked, “What was he planning to do with it?”

“Said he was going to boil it down and make a lamp when he got home. Had a bunch of ears in a sack too.”

War brutalizes both sides, a fact we as historians and enthusiasts must embrace these many years afterwards in our attempts to keep alive the legacy of the conflict.

Kamikaze, Japan, South Pacific