Now I’m worrried that when I’m flying back from japan, they’ll declare war on the US and the plane will be flown into a battleship or aircraft carrier lol
They thought they were dying with honour for the good of their country. In principle it's what active combat military personel, and police, firemen etc who risk their lives as part of their job do. They may not be blowing themselves up, but if for example you're part of a platoon of a couple dozen people and you're defending a location against an invading force of hundreds it amounts to the same, you're going to die.
To his credit thought, Admiral Onishi, regretful of his failure to change the outcome of war and even more regretful for sending thousands of young men to their violent deaths, committed ritual seppuku... it took many hours for him to finally bleed to death
@YouvY that's true in most cases, but in this case Takijiro Onishi chose not to have a "kaishakunin," as part of his penance, and reportedly died over the course of 15 hours. Which honestly seems a little crazy to me, knowing how traditional Sepukku usually involves plunging a tanto (dagger) into the belly to the hilt, then cutting all the way across the belly and back again and again until death. He must have used a different method. @@joechinchar9833 yes, that can be considered "to his credit," as Sepukku is extremely painful and the most courageous way to go, and considering his suicide note said he was doing it for the 4,000 young men he sent to their deaths in vain showed he truly had a conscience about it. Also noting that, at the time and for a long time before that, apology via suicide (especially such an excruciating method) was considered the most sincere form of apology. And to use this method rather than a painless method when you had to die was considered to be a sign of courage, and maintaining honor after death was important for them. Nowadays in Japan, such old methods are being questioned as to whether they can really be authentic today or if, in many circumstances, it can just be the coward's way of avoiding responsibility.
@john sevens don't forget that Japan's main source of oil was the United States. Then the state's cut off Japan. They chose sides even though the t laws said that the states would trade with anyone during time of war. Japan's only choice was to take the oil in the Philippines. The politicians knew this would happen but they wanted to get into the war despite the people being against it.
The amount of money given to a pilot's family is not inflation adjusted. In the 1940s 1JPY (Japanese Yen) was equal to about $0.25. Meaning If a pilot's family were given 10,000¥ this would be $2500 at the exchange rate of the time, adjusted for inflation that equates to about $38,000 today. A far, far, cry from the ~$100 quoted in this video.
@icantstopbeingme I mean, it's at least a few months of good wages. The problem isn't that it's nothing, the problem is that it's intended to pay for something immeasurably valuable.
I wonder what typical annual wager for the standard Japanese soldier is today In comparison to back then And what a "modern" kamikaze pilot's family would receive if it were to happen again. Though im fairly certain Japan learned what not to do that said event. With that said, im just curious is all....
@@cherrydragon3120 oh, sure, without a doubt. But remember that prices for things don't change just based on inflation. I think a short hospital visit would cost more than this now. For $38k my parents could have bought a house. For me, just a few decades later, that's barely enough for the down-payment. My primary point in posting was to highlight a problem with the information in the video.
My dad knew a lady who's father was a kamakazi pilot. He asked her how that was possible because she was born after the war. She said that his plane refused to start when it was his turn to go and because of that He survived the war.
I once met the son of a Japanese airman. I asked what his father did during the war. His response was, he used to be a Kamikaze Pilot. He flew four missions but weather and mechanics, meant he survived.
Steve Green Well if it were me, that damn plane would always have a problem, even if I had to create it. "Damn where did all these paint scratches come from? These deep gouges might affect the aerodynamics, I better turn around... I can't be dying in a plane with scuffs and uneven paint!"
Will wap496 you know I wish I could feel bad about them, but the reason I don't feel bad about Japan is that Japan has always been imperialistic as hell. They slaughtered and butchered many Chinese forcefully invading their country for no reason other than Conquest. Those people suffered extreme poverty and injustice so karma comes back around. That doesn't mean that I don't feel bad for the innocent and the young airmen that were just teenagers and wanted to protect their country. Honestly anybody less than 25 to me is still a child.
The Japanese also built a rocket for kamikaze attacks called "Oka" (cherry blossom). It was basically a rocket in which a pilot would sit , which would be dropped from a bomber, glide towards the target, ignite its rocket engines and scream towards the intended target with insane speeds. The problem of kamikaze attacks was that, apart from being cruel, wasteful and ineffective, was that the Japanese high command had taken a single successful attack as proof that you could trade a single plane for an entire battleship or carrier. If I recall correctly, one attack really managed to succeed at that level and the simple calculation was adopted as a strategy. American gunners soon learned and set up picket lines of ships equiped with radar to scan for attacking kamikazes. Their ships also fired a literal wall of shells into the air which obliterated most attacking planes or forced them to break off their attack. And since most pilots were novices with lightly armored planes (usually stripped down Zero fighters due to their speed), many couldn't retarget the ship or evade incoming fire. It was a desparate strategy which was doomed to fail from the start. To really illustrate how desparate Japan had become in the end: Young schoolchildren were equiped with bamboo spears and tools used to tune pianos to attack invading American soldiers. They were literally throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the Americans.
actually looking at loses of conventional air attacks versus loses from kamikaze attacks compared to enemy ships damaged and sunk, kamikaze action lead to a lower loss of life than the former. precisely because of the effectiveness of american air defences. So purely from a tactical perspective it made sense to use kamikaze attack, at least short-term. Still not a great thing to be forced to do though.
I expected "hey! Vsauce Michael here." But I got: "Hello Im Simon whistler. Your watching today i found out and we are looking at how kamikaze pilots were chosen."
Just a footnote: I saw a bee dying from stinging my cookiebox the other day. If there is such a thing as a Darwin Award for insects, I will nominate that bee.
you do not know how google ads work? They take keywords from the video to select an appropriate ad. The keywords were Japanese and Pilot. The algorithm is not any smarter than that. The point is, it is not a coincidence.
Fun fact: The germans had a "kamikaze" unit too, known as "Sonderkomando Elbe". The pilots where expected to ramm their planes into enemy bombers... The difference is, that nearly all pilots survived these maneuver because of the advanced design of the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs so it was not a real kamikaze mission...
the Germans also had a human guided torpedo program. Neger (German for Negro) was a torpedo-carrying craft generally described as a human torpedo which could not submerge, but was difficult to see during night operations. The vessel was used by Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine between 1943 and 1945. The name comes from the constructor Richard Mohr whose surname means Moor.
There is a Japanese Tea Ceremony Master called Sen Sōshitsu XV (十五代目千宗室) who was a Special Attack Squad (Kamikaze) pilot during the war. He survived and is currently a leader of a sect of tea ceremonies. Very interesting, e? He is 95 years old as of 2018.
@@jefferykennedy919 I care for that random tidbit and I am grateful he posted. your negative comment is mute, especially since you care enough to comment...
I knew a Japanese exchange student at university whose grandpa went on a Kamikaze mission, got lost and ditched his plane on the beach. As he told me, his grandpa hid in shame in a monastery till his death.
@PricklyTrees that just ain't true m8. If they couldn't find suitable targets or had problems with the aircraft, they could return to their carrier or airfield, LAND, and go off to fight another day. Also if your ditching on a beach the sand would catch the landing gear And make the plane nosedive forward as it is obviously soft. So in his case it would be better to just land on the belly of the plane which is completely possible as long as he makes touch down at a slow enough airspeed. Not like he's going to try and land at 200 mph
My father was in WWII in the pacific theater. A Kamikaze crashed into his ship. My father could see the man's eyes. He said that the man never flinched or showed any emotion at all as he crashed to his death. He said the Kamikaze looked soulless like he had already died.
I know he was injured but I can't ask him more. He passed away in 2010 at 86 years. I know he thought he'd be dead if they hadn't dropped the nuclear bombs. That's about it. He didn't talk about the war that much and I didn't ask. I did inherit all the paper work which I kept.
Margaret Moore One of my great grandfathers and one of my grandfather fought in WW2 as well and the both died before my birth. Too bad that your father and others didn't speak a lot about the war (as is usual with traumatic experiences) or have died already. We are lucky that at least some veterans are still around, the next generation will propably not be able to meet them anymore. I guess I should try to interview those I can find in my area.
Margaret Moore i belive you. In such a high stress situation, it is not uncommon to get a lot more attentive to anything around you. It might just have been for a fraction of a second, that he saw the the face of that pilot, but it embeded itself in his memory.
There were also the Italian manned torpedoes, the frogmen sat on the outside however for a bit easier escape and in general they were quite effective in Mediterranean harbours
I love the contrast between the professional, almost news-reporter like feel of this channel and the down-and-dirty more personal and brash feel of the Fact Fiend channel. I love both channels, subscribe to both, and look forward to new content from each! Karl is an excellent asset to any project on which he works.
1 - The best Japanese pilots continued to fight until killed. In other countries, the best pilots were rotated out to become instructors to teach the next crop of pilots. 2 - The early years lead to "victory sickness," which resulted in the Japanese military thinking that they would never lose. So they never produced enough pilots to replace losses later in the war. 3 - The military emphasized honor and spirit above training and technology. The planes flown throughout the war were the same model that they flew at the beginning of the war. When they finally realized they needed new models, they produced some new and innovative aircraft designs, but they arrived too late. 4 - By 1944, most of the experienced pilots were dead, and the ranks were full of barely trained cadets. It takes year to develop skilled pilots, to make use of the standard bomber and fighter tactics. 5 - The "special squadrons" could use pilots that knew how to take off and land, with no other training. 6 - The "special squadrons" could use outdated or mechanically unreliable planes, since they only needed to make it one way. 7 - The success reports, number and types of ships sunk, were massively over inflated as a way to boost morale. Ships were sunk, but not as many as the higher ups were lead to believe.
Is the calculation in the video correct? Wikipedia says that 1 yen equaled $0.23 in 1941. Assuming that stayed about the same throughout the war (edit: which it did not; apparently there was significant wartime inflation), 10,000 yen would have been $2,300 back then, which is worth about $39,000 today according to the inflation calculator I used. Edit: With further research, I find I might be wrong for thinking the conversion was wrong. The wartime inflation really could have been that bad.
Samar Nadra On second thought, I may be wrong. For one, I forgot to account for the terrible inflation the yen experienced in and after the war. For another, further reading shows that the Japanese military was usually paid in Japanese military yen, which was worth even less than the yen. It would have been cruel of the Japanese military to have paid the families the 10000 in JMY, but quite possible. (If that was the case, though, I would hope that the video would have made the distinction.)
Also, Japan's bureacracy was so horrible and so strapped for cash at the time you just know they might have made every legalistic excuse they could to not pay anyone. "Oh, your claim is still being verified..." "This office only deals with blood type O, your father had blood type B, that's a different office and it's in Osaka..." we're so sorry...
When thinking about inflation, them bucks back in the day might of been a lot. Listen to old folks stories and they will have 20bucks and spends an entire weekend living the life down town and that was in the 70s or something. How much would a buck buy in 1900? How much would it be worth in Japan during the war when they have to eat grass to survive? Few decades ago you could work in Cali a year with a place to crash so you didn't waste it on rent then spend two in Texas not working at all. Kinda changed with all them moving to Texas for a better life.
Find out how much gold you could buy with 1 yen in 1941. That's a better way to measure value than through some inflation calculator. You'll be within an order of magnitude of being right.
You can't really have an honest conversation about kamikaze without acknowledging the origin of the word and what it meant to people at the time they came up with the "kamikaze" as a war-time strategy. Kamikaze means "Divine Wind' and this "wind" was believed to have defended Japan from a Mongol naval invasion not once, but TWICE! The Mongols invasion were each sunk by typhoons before they could land their invasion force. Fast forward to world war 2, when things once again looked dire for them, the kamikaze made sense for their beliefs. They believed that not only were they becoming the manifestation of the divine wind by once again sinking the ships invading their country, but also believed due to their religion that once they died they would actually become a spiritual part of that same wind.
But he is not wrong. It is very likely that the same explanation he gave could be use to ease the fear of the soldiers and convince them. To dive into enemy ships.
"as shown by this video" You know this isnt the only video, nor the most detailed. Which is why I offered information he seemed to be missing. Simons great, but you know this channel doesn't know everything right? So "As shown by this (even more detailed and accurate) video" you are dead wrong. th-cam.com/video/uAJe6jsIKUc/w-d-xo.html Stop spewing ignorant nonsense.
TheCptCoy It's not actually true that the kamikaze typhoons stopped the mongol invasions of Japan. In both invasions, the mongols managed to land soldiers before they were hit by the typhoon. In the second invasion, the mongols landed thousands of soldiers and took some territory in Japan. There were numerous land battles over a period of weeks. The Japanese were relentless and drove out or killed most of the invaders before the typhoon struck. Between the ferocity of the Japanese soldiers and the subsequent typhoon, the mongols were beaten so badly that they permanently gave up the idea of taking Japan. No one managed to invade Japan again until 1945. The Mongols were also badly beaten by the Vietnamese. They invaded Vietnam three times, and were destroyed each time.
People forget. Just a while back they were asking to nuke Russia. Before that in EU they were like just shoot down a 'few' of their planes. It's like they don't even know any better. Keep it cold, fight small scale somewhere else. Don't bring all the heat and vaporize everything 300 times over. lol People don't believe that but once it starts escalating where will it stop and who is there to stop it? Best to let it be trash talk and entertainment news.
The point that seems to have been missed here is that of the The Great Marianna's Turkey Shoot. For ANY Japanese air crew getting in a plane and taking off to attack the allies - WAS - a suicide mission. They got slaughtered. So - if you're going to die anyway - why not at least do all you can to see if you can get a hit? It takes a lot more skill to drop a bomb and hit a ship with it than it does to just fly your plane into the ship. Yes. I'm sure there were some who were reluctant to go, some who went because of peer pressure and some who were simply "volunteered" by their chain of command. But a lot of them went, I believe, simply because it was all they could do to try and protect their country from the inevitable. The Germans fought right up to the bitter end and the Japanese would have too - make no mistake - if Hirohito - the Emperor they all revered - hadn't asked them to stand down - they would have fought to the bitter end too - just like on all those islands. Desperate people do desperate things. One of the things that was different about the Japanese dive bomber pilots was that they released lower than the Americans. I'm pulling this from memory from way, way back - but - the point remains. The American's doctrine called from them, iirc, to drop at 2,000 ft. Japanese doctrine called for release at 1500 ft. At Midway - when it really counted - the Americans were dropping at 1200 ft. We'll never know how many American Dive Bombers went into the water because they couldn't pull out at Midway - but they were going to go in there and get a hit. They sank four Japanese carriers. That level of performance was never again equaled by the Americans - because they didn't have to but at Midway - they had to - and they did. So - it isn't just Japanese that can do things like this. Different cultures have different ways of manifesting it but human beings in general are not strangers to self sacrifice. History is replete with examples of men going into battle - knowing they will die - but they go any way - and they die. Suicide is a much more accepted part of Japanese culture, so - in the state Japan found itself at the end of WWII - it would be surprising if there were NOT Kamikaze's. .
They had the ability to turn down the request but most of them didn't because of peer pressure or the fact they would be misstreated for not joining a kamikaze corp.
The bit about soldiers who refused being sent to the Southern islands pretty much seals it. By that point in the war the Japanese navy was crippled to the point that it couldn't make regular supply runs. Soliders sent to those islands were given a small ration of rice and ordered to scavenge for the rest of their food from the islands themselves, and couldn't be evacuated if (when) they were overwhelmed by Allied forces. The choice was essentially "Volunteer to die in a blaze of glory, or be sent to starve on a worthless chunk of dirt."
the young kamikaze pilots were teens, and according to records found in the kamikaze museum in Japan as they were on their final kamikaze run before they died instead of saying long live the emperor they were crying out for their okasans (mothers) an author by the name of Will Ferguson confirms this in his book hitching rides with Buddha.
Yes, though it was traditional for orphans to volunteer, after their homes were firebombed etc they had nothing left - and it is... not the Japanese way to be a burden to other people. There was age restrictions enforced though - many were forbidden but many were allowed in- I guess if you could reach the pedals you were assumed old enough if you have a cynical mind. So yeah, most were coming of age and volunteering for the kamikaze right away. It was similar to the jihadis though- Japan was ravaged by firebombing. many were already suicidal, and hated america etc. extremely passionately at that point.
Hatred, get millions of people to join the suicidal force known as the army wherein they can march you to your death. Not ever enough so there is conscription too. Then training where they beat the civilian outta ya. Good times. Younger you are, easier it is to hate too. Easy pickings.
Really informative video! I've always been suspicious of the idea that kamikaze pilots were all fearless patriots; people are, after all, generally fans of being alive. That being said, it was never something I went out of my way to look up until this popped into my recommended feed. Good stuff!
Having just finished reading the Novel Shogun, I feel like understanding the ambivalent emotions of Japanese soldiers. On another note I am pleased with the way this video was researched and narrated. Top of the line work.
The kamikaze actually were not effective - as you noted, only one in ten damaged a ship and one in one hundred sunk a ship. The problem though wasn't the idea, instead, it was the manner in which they were deployed since when one did hit a ship, it did do some very serious damage. The basic problem was that rather than having someone coordinate the attacks, instead, the pilots were assigned specific targets, meaning that once the kamikaze assigned to a particular ship were all used up then that ship was safe. Additionally, little or no attention was paid to the ships in the defensive ring, the picket, around the fleet, meaning that these ships were free to fire at the kamikazes with impunity every time they were passed. As such, the proper tactic would have been to punch a hole in the picket first by taking out one or two of those ships with focused attacks so as to create a corridor for the remaining planes to safely fly through and then to keep throwing planes at a particular ship until it was sunk. Another problem was the tendency to send the kamikaze at their targets one at a time so as to "not waste them" thus allowing all defensive measures to be focused entirely on a single kamikaze. Had they sent multiple planes at the same ship at the same time then this would have divided the defensive measures and given each pilot a far better chance to hit his target and the far greater likelihood of one or more planes hitting their target combined with the greater probability of sinking instead of simply damaging the target would have more than made up for any 'wasted' planes, especially in light of the fact that nine out of ten kamikaze planes were effectively wasted anyway by being shot down before reaching their target. So while the idea of hitting a ship with five thousand pounds of guided plane, bomb and fuel was a good one, the tactics used sucked.
@@jeffreydavidconner I'm not disputing the effectiveness of the concept, it's the effectiveness of the execution of it. With better execution they could have damaged/destroyed far more ships than they did.
Or they could just make a really strong bomb, pick off the ship defenses, then blow up the ship with no suicide run and waste of military vehicles required.
They lost roughly 2000 pilots in those suicide missions but sunk over 280 US ships and 15000 US lives. It was extremely successful from a Japanese point of view.
Not defending the war criminals, but it is interesting to know that kamikaze tactics were less suicidal than conventional attacks. A conventional attack required some 150 lanes with dive bombers and torpedo planes. They would usually get a single hit to an 80% casualty rate. Kamikaze attacks were done by air wings of some 80 planes with fighter escort and everything else. They would score some 5 hits with 60% casualty rate. Many reasons for this like being massively outgun and outmatched, with no profesional pilots remaining. Regardless it is interesting that kamikaze tactics were less suicidal and immensely more effective.
Speaking of ultra dedicated Japanese soldiers during WWII- A Japanese Soldier Who Continued Fighting WWII 29 Years After the Japanese Surrendered... Because He Didn't Know th-cam.com/video/U6rOSe3EsdM/w-d-xo.html -Daven
Some of the pronouncations were unrecognizable to a Japanese person (me). But, most certainly 特別部隊 (とくべつ ぶたい) was the noun you butchered the hardest. :D I actually had to look up what word you were saying.
You can say that, but most people won't understand what that means. 'kami' is God in japan, they believed that the kamikazes actions were lifted by God
@@tryfan4705 I am a Japanese person myself, 'kami' is God and 'kaze' is wind. Window would be まど, or 'mado'. Not sure where your friend got that from...
Derek Charette Holy shit so cringy. You didn't do shit and everyone involved in WW2, including the enemies, should be respected apart from those who comitted war crimes. You're probably just some privileged kid who doesn't have any right to disrespect others.
you would think some people would get an obvious reference but every day im suprised by how many fucking retards and inbreds who have access to the internet
Military aviation history did a great video on kamikazes. They were far more effective then conventional torpedo or dive bombing methods. The aircrew/aircraft loss to enemy damage ratio was far higher for the Japanese using kamikaze methods. Generally they would loose the same amount of aircraft as conventional means but their loss would actually cause damage .
That depends on how you calculate it. If you do it based on a percentage of people in the service who died vs those that lived, kamikazes would have a higher rate. If you did it based off of total number of crew dead out of each operation, then maybe the U-boat and Bomber Command *would* have a higher rate.
@@Killamofongo actually, yes. They usually get a distinctive name to imply the Navy affiliation and the extra skill set, like Marines in the US or Fuzileiros in Brazil.
Years ago I met a man who had been a young recruit in the Kamikaze program. Tears came to his eyes when he spoke of that time, and his unending shame that the war had ended before he had his chance to die for the Emperor. That was more than 50 years after the end of WW2 and that was still the single important event of his life... Many Japanese were committed to the Empire in a way that defies western imagination.
If you guys need help with foreign pronunciations, I feel like reaching out to your fan base won't hurt. You had that one Top Tenz where you had your Canadian fan send in an audio clip of the different variations of "eh". I'm sure we'll gladly help you out again and again.
Japanese is actually pretty easy to speak, it doesn't have very many sounds that don't exist in English. Here's a quick pronunciation guide: A = ah, E = eh, I = ee, O = oh, U = oo. Simple as that.
Thank you, Simon. I've read alot/watched alot of docs concerning the "Divine Wind", or Kamikaze. In Shinto belief, EVERYTHING has a "kami', or resident spirit: trees, rocks, flowers, the Samauri katana, or swords...you get the idea. This belief taught its believers immense reverence for EVERYTHING, living or inanimate. Sadly, that reverence was evidently NOT extended to include reverence for the kami of those poor, choiceless pilots. Thank you for yet another excellent informational video. And, by the way, your pronunciation of those Japanese words, names and terms was beautifully done! If they weren't absolutely correct, they WERE so WELL-pronounced, any boo-boos still sounded right! Bravo!
And I wonder if those poor, choiceless pilots respected the kami of the sailors they were ordered to fly the planes into? Maybe if they'd had their choice instead they could just shoot the sailors with the planes instead of suicide crashing into them.
Surprised he didn't mention Kamikaze translates to divine wind and was originally used for the storms that wrecked the mongols before being used in WW2.
I heard one reason allied prisoners were treated so badly is that Japanese soldiers were regularly hit or beaten by their superiors. So harming allied prisoners was just another day of cruelty. Add some fanatical emperor worshippers and a culture that thought surrender was unthinkable and you see what we were up against. A Japanese man back then likely didn't want to ever express his own thoughts. I'm so glad japan is nothing like that now.
Suicide Squad was a lousy movie and a lousy military strategy. It's self dehumanizing and tends to make the enemy go harder at the general population, since you've declared that you're no better than a guided bomb.
The irony that I found Fact Fiend and Today I found out seperately, have watched both videos for months, and only just now learned how they are tied together.
HAHA I think i saw that bee thing in a different one of your videos, and actually thought about it at that point when you referenced the analogy to bees. So it was really funny that you took the time to address this tangential point about bees during a video about kamikaze pilots at the moment it was running through my head.
I'm sure the greatest irony was when the Kamikaza pilots started their airplanes and fuel loaders and signal crew said, "Good luck!" This makes so much more sense now. Men are a disposable class.
isn't that what we praise our soldiers for? For dying for their country? What is the difference? Oh I see, our soldiers did not intend to die. So if that is the case, why do we praise them as if they did?
Mark S the difference is that our soldiers aren’t massacring 3,000,000 innocent citizens and pows. Do you seriously think that the Japanese were just dying for their country?
@@antonioricci5465 you can say our soldiers had a more moral cause, but that does not change the fact that they did not intend to die, and the Japanese soldiers did.
@@marks6663 This isn't anything close to Spartan culture. The Allied forces weren't in a do or die situation. It wasn't desperate. Courage, is something we revere. Our soldiers were and are still praised for their courage. Heroic and courageous figures aren't so, because of their willingness to die out of desperation. It's their ability to face the unknown and be unmoved by it. Steadfast in their convictions - even if it means to surely die. I could make the case that the very few pilots who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country or emperor were perhaps courageous. The over-whelming majority of them were bound either by duty, blind servitude or fear of social reprise. This isn't courage or heroism. This is desperation. Not something to hold up in high regards.
Good Resource: A book entitled I WAS A KAMIKAZE. This fellow was very late recruit. He took off twice but never found a target. USS Benjamin Franklin, an aircraft carrier, was probably the most successful attack.
Thats a good point as i didnt even think of that. I was like wtf, that is insulting as fuck to get for literally killing your child. Thats how much i spend on my phone bill a month or to get my license plate sticker each year or a doctor visit or my health insurence each month . Obviously i know things were different then and that money could probably go a long ways during war and in the 40s but it was just decieving regardless when saying they got $120 and reflecting it on how worthless that is in my life.
honey bees die from stinging you as their hooked stinger gets caught in skin often like they said, but other bees do okay. Wasps however, over half of the species die when they sting you.
Frankly, Iwatani was wrong. In the horrible maths of war, kamikaze attacks cost less lives than conventional attacks would have. To achieve the same results it was estimated that 300 attack aircraft would be needed, of those roughly half could expect to be intercepted before they reached the target. Of the survivors maybe half again would be shot down or fended off by the targets AA defences. Of the remainder, between a quarter and a third would hit the target and of those only half would survive the return trip to their base. So out of 300 initial attackers, something like 15 would survive the ordeal. Obviously that is an unsustainable rate of attrition in terms of aircraft even if their crews survived. However if the kamikaze could be used they could use 60 aircraft to achieve the same results, the pilots required far less training (barely enough to fly in formation) and older aircraft that were no longer useful in any other role could be used thereby saving the hard to replace frontline aircraft.
The sentiment went more along the lines of 'If this is the best we can do, we obviously aren't trying hard enough'. The upper echelons of command literally believed they could win by having a stronger 'fighting spirit' than their enemies.
@@steweygrrr Read John Toland's "The Rising Sun". Japanese leaders knew they could not win against the US. They had crossed a line with the Americans (who they were buying their oil from) and been embargoed so it was either back down in China and be on a slippery slope to becoming a colony (so they believed) - or attack them and die. Once they made the decision to attack and die - they began to bullshit themselves that they wouldn't die. The basic idea they had was to occupy all these islands and then make those soft, weak Americans bleed until they quit. That worked in Vietnam - so it wasn't just a stupid strategy - but the Americans then weren't the Americans they had been and it didn't work for the Japanese. That - and Pearl Harbor (like 9/11) pissed us off. .
fighting someone who isn't afraid to die is alot easier than someone who is, that person who is afraid to die will fight to keep themselves alive to their last breath. someone who is willing to die and not afraid will just fight to win
In many ways, it was a disastrous strategy for the Japanese. They lost a lot of good pilots, these suicide attacks led U.S. war planners to consider the atomic bombs and the fact there was little to no aircraft let to both attacks succeeding.
Fascinating! Having been stationed in Japan in the early 1990's, I must admit that their country is the most FOREIGN one I have ever visited! John in Texas
Hey can you talk about how the French (and other countries) during the Napoleonic War maintained discipline and ranks whilst getting shot by foes. Was it propaganda? The will to defend country? Training? In all honestly I have hard time imagining myself just standing still with thousands of barrels pointed towards me and comrades dropping by my side, it's another "suicidal method" to fight against enemies.
Back in those days a sergeant could and likely would kill you or severely beat you themselves for disobeying orders, especially in a battle. Soldiers would often be more scared of their sergeant than the enemy. It might seem crazy and suicidal by today's tactics but that method of warfare was very effective for the technology they had available. Smooth bore muskets were barely accurate, with maximum effective range being roughly 80 meters, so the idea was to basically get as close to your enemy as you can, and hail them with as much lead as possible in the shortest amount of time, which is where discipline and training came into play. The more well rehearsed and drilled the units were, the more effective they were and more likely to win a skirmish and hold or advance a position. Often these men had lived pretty miserable lives, many being convicts and criminals, or conscripts and poor people just trying to earn a wage. Many occupations were very hazardous in those days and life expectancy was low, so dying on a battle field likely wasn't seen as all that bad. Also consider that many armies would march for months, even years at a time to meet their foes in battle, so by then you'd imagine many of the soldiers had come to grips with the reality of it all, and after marching thousands of miles would hold fast till they heard a retreat call or saw a mass route of their fellow soldiers.
I would guess - that you can't imagine this because you weren't in the military. Military's since the dawn of time have known how to train soldiers to obey the commands of their officers and fight the way they fought in their day. If you had somehow ended up in a military unit back in time some where - once you'd been trained - you'd probably do just what you were told to do. Now - there were units that broke and tried to run away. The idea is - "If I throw down these heavy weapons I can just run away!" but that's not really true. For one thing they had Cavalry back then and one of the jobs of the Cavalry - was to run down enemy units that had broken. They don't have cavalry today - because they've got vehicles. Units that hung together and didn't break had a much better chance of surviving. In ancient battles - it was all about trying to get the other side to break - and most of the casualties, took place AFTER the battle, when all the units that had broken were run down and slaughtered. So - just standing there and taking whatever the enemy could dish out - was better than trying to run away. Trying to run away - just made it easier for the enemy to kill you. .
Fire by Rank/Massed infantry lines were the doctrine of the day. You closed until you saw the whites of your foes eyes and fired. After the next ranks fired you fixed bayonet and charged. Musket shot was woefully inaccurate so really morale and discipline was the key.
Since it seems the official name for the kamikaze squad wasn't literally "suicide squad," did the volunteers really know what they were getting themselves into? I have a feeling they wouldn't have been allowed to back out if they changed their mind.
Joining the air force in general was suicide, their survival rates increased with this strategy. Yes, they were all told, and they all knew what the headband meant etc, (meant to be a thousand individual stitches by a thousand virgins? something like that.) a lot of ceremony went into it, they got the knife etc. Got their names on plaques or whatever, they wrote death haiku, yeah, they knew. I doubt many if any tried, the Japanese are controlled by guilt and societal responsibility.
10:45 correction: 10000 yen today is $120 USD today, but back then, 10000 yen would be worth around 5 million yen today or $44000 USD today. Back then, weekly wage was around 3 yen, so 10000 yen was a great amount.
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Kamikaze instructor: *Alright guys look closely I'll only do this once.*
madlad
Daaaaamn
LMFAO XD
Umm teacher I have a question?
Teacher?
I knew this was going to be the very first comment I’d see here.
I got an ad from Japanese Airlines........
So have you decided to be a volunteer?
tickets to okinawa now %50 off
Now I’m worrried that when I’m flying back from japan, they’ll declare war on the US and the plane will be flown into a battleship or aircraft carrier lol
i don't see how anybody still doesn't use adblock
Me two, twice
It's so disturbing to think about somebody's entire life experiences leading up to their ultimate purpose of simply being used as a human bomb.
terrorists be like
War doesn't change.
Old men and women disagreeing.
Young men and women dying.
They do be exploding tho 😳
They thought they were dying with honour for the good of their country. In principle it's what active combat military personel, and police, firemen etc who risk their lives as part of their job do. They may not be blowing themselves up, but if for example you're part of a platoon of a couple dozen people and you're defending a location against an invading force of hundreds it amounts to the same, you're going to die.
And so happy to do it
2:40 “Provide me with 300 planes and I will turn the tide of war.”
*Loses*
To his credit thought, Admiral Onishi, regretful of his failure to change the outcome of war and even more regretful for sending thousands of young men to their violent deaths, committed ritual seppuku... it took many hours for him to finally bleed to death
@@gotmilk91 that's to his credit lol?
@YouvY that's true in most cases, but in this case Takijiro Onishi chose not to have a "kaishakunin," as part of his penance, and reportedly died over the course of 15 hours. Which honestly seems a little crazy to me, knowing how traditional Sepukku usually involves plunging a tanto (dagger) into the belly to the hilt, then cutting all the way across the belly and back again and again until death. He must have used a different method.
@@joechinchar9833 yes, that can be considered "to his credit," as Sepukku is extremely painful and the most courageous way to go, and considering his suicide note said he was doing it for the 4,000 young men he sent to their deaths in vain showed he truly had a conscience about it. Also noting that, at the time and for a long time before that, apology via suicide (especially such an excruciating method) was considered the most sincere form of apology. And to use this method rather than a painless method when you had to die was considered to be a sign of courage, and maintaining honor after death was important for them.
Nowadays in Japan, such old methods are being questioned as to whether they can really be authentic today or if, in many circumstances, it can just be the coward's way of avoiding responsibility.
Yep, he was a terrible leader!
@john sevens don't forget that Japan's main source of oil was the United States. Then the state's cut off Japan. They chose sides even though the t laws said that the states would trade with anyone during time of war. Japan's only choice was to take the oil in the Philippines. The politicians knew this would happen but they wanted to get into the war despite the people being against it.
The amount of money given to a pilot's family is not inflation adjusted.
In the 1940s 1JPY (Japanese Yen) was equal to about $0.25. Meaning If a pilot's family were given 10,000¥ this would be $2500 at the exchange rate of the time, adjusted for inflation that equates to about $38,000 today.
A far, far, cry from the ~$100 quoted in this video.
@icantstopbeingme I mean, it's at least a few months of good wages. The problem isn't that it's nothing, the problem is that it's intended to pay for something immeasurably valuable.
@icantstopbeingme basically a participation trophy
I wonder what typical annual wager for the standard Japanese soldier is today
In comparison to back then
And what a "modern" kamikaze pilot's family would receive if it were to happen again.
Though im fairly certain Japan learned what not to do that said event.
With that said, im just curious is all....
38.000 is still very Little to get for losing a family member. Funerals today are like 20% of this money in cost
@@cherrydragon3120 oh, sure, without a doubt. But remember that prices for things don't change just based on inflation. I think a short hospital visit would cost more than this now.
For $38k my parents could have bought a house. For me, just a few decades later, that's barely enough for the down-payment.
My primary point in posting was to highlight a problem with the information in the video.
My dad knew a lady who's father was a kamakazi pilot. He asked her how that was possible because she was born after the war. She said that his plane refused to start when it was his turn to go and because of that He survived the war.
Good friends with the mechanic eh?
Carbon 12 lol maybe. According to her though, he was pretty upset that he didn't get to go. I'm sure he doesn't regret it now.
Was a honda prob
I think they had Mitsubishis. Zero? That?
*wink, wink*
I once met the son of a Japanese airman. I asked what his father did during the war.
His response was, he used to be a Kamikaze Pilot. He flew four missions but weather and mechanics, meant he survived.
Steve Green Well if it were me, that damn plane would always have a problem, even if I had to create it.
"Damn where did all these paint scratches come from? These deep gouges might affect the aerodynamics, I better turn around... I can't be dying in a plane with scuffs and uneven paint!"
Be VERY good friends with your mechanic.
Will wap496 you know I wish I could feel bad about them, but the reason I don't feel bad about Japan is that Japan has always been imperialistic as hell. They slaughtered and butchered many Chinese forcefully invading their country for no reason other than Conquest. Those people suffered extreme poverty and injustice so karma comes back around. That doesn't mean that I don't feel bad for the innocent and the young airmen that were just teenagers and wanted to protect their country. Honestly anybody less than 25 to me is still a child.
Will wap496
Correct and probably even more kamikaze pilots were more or less forced into it.
If that was me I'd pretend other troops were getting in my way
The big question on my mind...
Why did Kamikaze Pilots wear Helmets
For saftey, duh. Killing yourself could be deadly.
@@JohnnyUnderscore1981 pfft, no use
Because a kamikaze pilot who is knocked out by wanging his head in the cockpit during turbulence is a useless kamikaze pilot.
Can't be too careful I guess....
Communication so they know where to stri
The Japanese also built a rocket for kamikaze attacks called "Oka" (cherry blossom). It was basically a rocket in which a pilot would sit , which would be dropped from a bomber, glide towards the target, ignite its rocket engines and scream towards the intended target with insane speeds.
The problem of kamikaze attacks was that, apart from being cruel, wasteful and ineffective, was that the Japanese high command had taken a single successful attack as proof that you could trade a single plane for an entire battleship or carrier. If I recall correctly, one attack really managed to succeed at that level and the simple calculation was adopted as a strategy.
American gunners soon learned and set up picket lines of ships equiped with radar to scan for attacking kamikazes. Their ships also fired a literal wall of shells into the air which obliterated most attacking planes or forced them to break off their attack. And since most pilots were novices with lightly armored planes (usually stripped down Zero fighters due to their speed), many couldn't retarget the ship or evade incoming fire.
It was a desparate strategy which was doomed to fail from the start. To really illustrate how desparate Japan had become in the end: Young schoolchildren were equiped with bamboo spears and tools used to tune pianos to attack invading American soldiers. They were literally throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the Americans.
Corristo89 exactly why we had to drop the bombs, and why I’m not opposed to it.
@@047Kenny indeed.
actually looking at loses of conventional air attacks versus loses from kamikaze attacks compared to enemy ships damaged and sunk, kamikaze action lead to a lower loss of life than the former. precisely because of the effectiveness of american air defences. So purely from a tactical perspective it made sense to use kamikaze attack, at least short-term. Still not a great thing to be forced to do though.
Wait, oka means cherry blossom? I'm confused
@@jdzspace33 oka (丘) means hill, not cherry blossom (桜)
I expected "hey! Vsauce Michael here."
But I got:
"Hello Im Simon whistler. Your watching today i found out and we are looking at how kamikaze pilots were chosen."
I thought he was Vsauce as well lol
Hey! MiSauce! Vchael here.
Kobe Kola me too
I never knew it was mostly stinging humans that killed bees.
Jim Fortune same. I always thought they knew they risked their lives, now I am sad knowing that thet think they will survive when they sting us.
Jim Fortune same
Just a footnote: I saw a bee dying from stinging my cookiebox the other day. If there is such a thing as a Darwin Award for insects, I will nominate that bee.
What flavor of cookies was it that they hated enough to die to sting the box of?
We got a two for one today. Very interesting.
got an add for japan airlines before this started
don't expect another.....probably will but that's there business
what
aah oooh *ad
Are you lying ?
It's a meme not a lie
"When the rich wage war, its the poor who die"
Heel spurs
No they did it because there was no rich wage
And when the comments wage war, its the original who die under a relentless onslaught of cliche
This reminds me of a sentence I once read: "All men would be cowards if only they had the courage."
No kidding, but I actually got a Japan Airlines advertisment before the video began. 🤦♂️
Same
No you didn't, and nobody asked you
you do not know how google ads work? They take keywords from the video to select an appropriate ad. The keywords were Japanese and Pilot. The algorithm is not any smarter than that.
The point is, it is not a coincidence.
I didnt
You know why...
I HAVE YT PREMIUM BOIs
@@SepticsCamera I also didn't. I have an ad-blocker xD
I haven't seen this channel for a while so I thought it was vsause
Raihan Islam saaaaammmmmmeeeeee bbbbbrrrrrrrroooooooo
same
Raihan Islam same lol
Hey, Vsauce
Michael here.
I haven’t seen that channel in a while either...
Fun fact:
The germans had a "kamikaze" unit too, known as "Sonderkomando Elbe".
The pilots where expected to ramm their planes into enemy bombers...
The difference is, that nearly all pilots survived these maneuver because of the advanced design of the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs so it was not a real kamikaze mission...
the Germans also had a human guided torpedo program.
Neger (German for Negro) was a torpedo-carrying craft generally described as a human torpedo which could not submerge, but was difficult to see during night operations. The vessel was used by Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine between 1943 and 1945. The name comes from the constructor Richard Mohr whose surname means Moor.
Because there were no automatic targeting system and human life was so cheap so they thought why not soldiers as targeting computers.
Miktecrep no 😹
They were damned inaccurate too, their hit rate was way lower than what was expected of them.
Still this was more effective than if they were used conventionally.
It wasn’t that life was cheap, but to fail is a worse fate than death.
mobspeak well they were drugged up and forced to commit suicide.
There is a Japanese Tea Ceremony Master called Sen Sōshitsu XV (十五代目千宗室) who was a Special Attack Squad (Kamikaze) pilot during the war. He survived and is currently a leader of a sect of tea ceremonies. Very interesting, e? He is 95 years old as of 2018.
No one cares
@@jefferykennedy919 I care for that random tidbit and I am grateful he posted. your negative comment is mute, especially since you care enough to comment...
The word you were looking for is moot. Mute means something else.
@@robertthomas5906 maybe I meant his comment falls silent or on deaf ears... but yeah, I was thinking moot when writing mute... lol
Jeffery Kennedy
Hello. I am no one.
8:38 Thats so dark 😖
Turtle TwisT Very dark
Just like that ugly rash on my anus.
What the fuck
The fuck mate?
r/cursedcomments
I knew a Japanese exchange student at university whose grandpa went on a Kamikaze mission, got lost and ditched his plane on the beach. As he told me, his grandpa hid in shame in a monastery till his death.
KrautGoesWild Poor guy.
Disgrace is sin for japan people
Cant really help but have mad repect Jappense and how honorable they are.
@PricklyTrees that just ain't true m8. If they couldn't find suitable targets or had problems with the aircraft, they could return to their carrier or airfield, LAND, and go off to fight another day. Also if your ditching on a beach the sand would catch the landing gear And make the plane nosedive forward as it is obviously soft. So in his case it would be better to just land on the belly of the plane which is completely possible as long as he makes touch down at a slow enough airspeed. Not like he's going to try and land at 200 mph
Japanese take "honor" way too far.
My father was in WWII in the pacific theater. A Kamikaze crashed into his ship. My father could see the man's eyes. He said that the man never flinched or showed any emotion at all as he crashed to his death. He said the Kamikaze looked soulless like he had already died.
Margaret Moore How could he have been close enough to see the pilots eyes but at the same time so far away that he wasn't killed in the blast?
I know he was injured but I can't ask him more. He passed away in 2010 at 86 years. I know he thought he'd be dead if they hadn't dropped the nuclear bombs. That's about it. He didn't talk about the war that much and I didn't ask. I did inherit all the paper work which I kept.
Margaret Moore One of my great grandfathers and one of my grandfather fought in WW2 as well and the both died before my birth. Too bad that your father and others didn't speak a lot about the war (as is usual with traumatic experiences) or have died already.
We are lucky that at least some veterans are still around, the next generation will propably not be able to meet them anymore.
I guess I should try to interview those I can find in my area.
Margaret Moore i belive you. In such a high stress situation, it is not uncommon to get a lot more attentive to anything around you.
It might just have been for a fraction of a second, that he saw the the face of that pilot, but it embeded itself in his memory.
Margaret Moore probably because the dudes drugged or drunk.
There were also the Italian manned torpedoes, the frogmen sat on the outside however for a bit easier escape and in general they were quite effective in Mediterranean harbours
I love the contrast between the professional, almost news-reporter like feel of this channel and the down-and-dirty more personal and brash feel of the Fact Fiend channel. I love both channels, subscribe to both, and look forward to new content from each! Karl is an excellent asset to any project on which he works.
1 - The best Japanese pilots continued to fight until killed. In other countries, the best pilots were rotated out to become instructors to teach the next crop of pilots.
2 - The early years lead to "victory sickness," which resulted in the Japanese military thinking that they would never lose. So they never produced enough pilots to replace losses later in the war.
3 - The military emphasized honor and spirit above training and technology. The planes flown throughout the war were the same model that they flew at the beginning of the war. When they finally realized they needed new models, they produced some new and innovative aircraft designs, but they arrived too late.
4 - By 1944, most of the experienced pilots were dead, and the ranks were full of barely trained cadets. It takes year to develop skilled pilots, to make use of the standard bomber and fighter tactics.
5 - The "special squadrons" could use pilots that knew how to take off and land, with no other training.
6 - The "special squadrons" could use outdated or mechanically unreliable planes, since they only needed to make it one way.
7 - The success reports, number and types of ships sunk, were massively over inflated as a way to boost morale. Ships were sunk, but not as many as the higher ups were lead to believe.
I applied and they said I couldn't get the job cause of my lack of experience
Is the calculation in the video correct? Wikipedia says that 1 yen equaled $0.23 in 1941. Assuming that stayed about the same throughout the war (edit: which it did not; apparently there was significant wartime inflation), 10,000 yen would have been $2,300 back then, which is worth about $39,000 today according to the inflation calculator I used.
Edit: With further research, I find I might be wrong for thinking the conversion was wrong. The wartime inflation really could have been that bad.
Samar Nadra On second thought, I may be wrong. For one, I forgot to account for the terrible inflation the yen experienced in and after the war. For another, further reading shows that the Japanese military was usually paid in Japanese military yen, which was worth even less than the yen. It would have been cruel of the Japanese military to have paid the families the 10000 in JMY, but quite possible. (If that was the case, though, I would hope that the video would have made the distinction.)
It sounds bad, like "sorry your husband died, here's a $100 Amazon gift card"
Also, Japan's bureacracy was so horrible and so strapped for cash at the time you just know they might have made every legalistic excuse they could to not pay anyone. "Oh, your claim is still being verified..." "This office only deals with blood type O, your father had blood type B, that's a different office and it's in Osaka..." we're so sorry...
When thinking about inflation, them bucks back in the day might of been a lot. Listen to old folks stories and they will have 20bucks and spends an entire weekend living the life down town and that was in the 70s or something. How much would a buck buy in 1900? How much would it be worth in Japan during the war when they have to eat grass to survive?
Few decades ago you could work in Cali a year with a place to crash so you didn't waste it on rent then spend two in Texas not working at all. Kinda changed with all them moving to Texas for a better life.
Find out how much gold you could buy with 1 yen in 1941. That's a better way to measure value than through some inflation calculator. You'll be within an order of magnitude of being right.
You look like michael from vsauce
Big_Stupid_Wolf fax
I clicked on this video to see if it was
That's cultural appropriation.
It's called clickbait 😂
Is he Vsauce or are we Micheal?
History professor here! Excellent video! Minor details lost, however you have the bulk of it!
I'd highly recommend the movie "eternal zero". It's about the kamikaze pilots.
You can't really have an honest conversation about kamikaze without acknowledging the origin of the word and what it meant to people at the time they came up with the "kamikaze" as a war-time strategy. Kamikaze means "Divine Wind' and this "wind" was believed to have defended Japan from a Mongol naval invasion not once, but TWICE! The Mongols invasion were each sunk by typhoons before they could land their invasion force. Fast forward to world war 2, when things once again looked dire for them, the kamikaze made sense for their beliefs. They believed that not only were they becoming the manifestation of the divine wind by once again sinking the ships invading their country, but also believed due to their religion that once they died they would actually become a spiritual part of that same wind.
TheCptCoy well, i can see how this could give a lot of comfort to those who where about to give their lives.
Except they didn't, even the few that were willing, as shown by this video. Stop spewing weeaboo nonsense
But he is not wrong.
It is very likely that the same explanation he gave could be use to ease the fear of the soldiers and convince them. To dive into enemy ships.
"as shown by this video"
You know this isnt the only video, nor the most detailed. Which is why I offered information he seemed to be missing. Simons great, but you know this channel doesn't know everything right?
So "As shown by this (even more detailed and accurate) video" you are dead wrong. th-cam.com/video/uAJe6jsIKUc/w-d-xo.html Stop spewing ignorant nonsense.
TheCptCoy It's not actually true that the kamikaze typhoons stopped the mongol invasions of Japan. In both invasions, the mongols managed to land soldiers before they were hit by the typhoon. In the second invasion, the mongols landed thousands of soldiers and took some territory in Japan. There were numerous land battles over a period of weeks. The Japanese were relentless and drove out or killed most of the invaders before the typhoon struck. Between the ferocity of the Japanese soldiers and the subsequent typhoon, the mongols were beaten so badly that they permanently gave up the idea of taking Japan. No one managed to invade Japan again until 1945.
The Mongols were also badly beaten by the Vietnamese. They invaded Vietnam three times, and were destroyed each time.
I really cannot imagine being put into the position of these poor soldiers. War is hell, and i feel like currently we're not doing enough to avoid it.
People forget. Just a while back they were asking to nuke Russia. Before that in EU they were like just shoot down a 'few' of their planes. It's like they don't even know any better. Keep it cold, fight small scale somewhere else. Don't bring all the heat and vaporize everything 300 times over. lol People don't believe that but once it starts escalating where will it stop and who is there to stop it? Best to let it be trash talk and entertainment news.
Liked for the bonus bee fact
The point that seems to have been missed here is that of the The Great Marianna's Turkey Shoot.
For ANY Japanese air crew getting in a plane and taking off to attack the allies - WAS - a suicide mission. They got slaughtered. So - if you're going to die anyway - why not at least do all you can to see if you can get a hit?
It takes a lot more skill to drop a bomb and hit a ship with it than it does to just fly your plane into the ship.
Yes. I'm sure there were some who were reluctant to go, some who went because of peer pressure and some who were simply "volunteered" by their chain of command. But a lot of them went, I believe, simply because it was all they could do to try and protect their country from the inevitable.
The Germans fought right up to the bitter end and the Japanese would have too - make no mistake - if Hirohito - the Emperor they all revered - hadn't asked them to stand down - they would have fought to the bitter end too - just like on all those islands.
Desperate people do desperate things. One of the things that was different about the Japanese dive bomber pilots was that they released lower than the Americans. I'm pulling this from memory from way, way back - but - the point remains. The American's doctrine called from them, iirc, to drop at 2,000 ft. Japanese doctrine called for release at 1500 ft. At Midway - when it really counted - the Americans were dropping at 1200 ft. We'll never know how many American Dive Bombers went into the water because they couldn't pull out at Midway - but they were going to go in there and get a hit.
They sank four Japanese carriers. That level of performance was never again equaled by the Americans - because they didn't have to but at Midway - they had to - and they did.
So - it isn't just Japanese that can do things like this. Different cultures have different ways of manifesting it but human beings in general are not strangers to self sacrifice. History is replete with examples of men going into battle - knowing they will die - but they go any way - and they die.
Suicide is a much more accepted part of Japanese culture, so - in the state Japan found itself at the end of WWII - it would be surprising if there were NOT Kamikaze's.
.
Bob Smith, did you write this for school?
Lol, you sound like you’re trying to sound smart. Or for a paper
The letter about his mother hit me in the feels. Man.
Their instructor was so good, he never left Tokyo Airport!
"all 23 people who were asked to join volunteered" so in other words, not volunteers
They had the ability to turn down the request but most of them didn't because of peer pressure or the fact they would be misstreated for not joining a kamikaze corp.
Darkg 63 Pressuring people to do something isn't them volunteering.
The bit about soldiers who refused being sent to the Southern islands pretty much seals it. By that point in the war the Japanese navy was crippled to the point that it couldn't make regular supply runs. Soliders sent to those islands were given a small ration of rice and ordered to scavenge for the rest of their food from the islands themselves, and couldn't be evacuated if (when) they were overwhelmed by Allied forces.
The choice was essentially "Volunteer to die in a blaze of glory, or be sent to starve on a worthless chunk of dirt."
the young kamikaze pilots were teens, and according to records found in the kamikaze museum in Japan as they were on their final kamikaze run before they died instead of saying long live the emperor they were crying out for their okasans (mothers)
an author by the name of Will Ferguson confirms this in his book hitching rides with Buddha.
Yes, though it was traditional for orphans to volunteer, after their homes were firebombed etc they had nothing left - and it is... not the Japanese way to be a burden to other people. There was age restrictions enforced though - many were forbidden but many were allowed in- I guess if you could reach the pedals you were assumed old enough if you have a cynical mind.
So yeah, most were coming of age and volunteering for the kamikaze right away. It was similar to the jihadis though- Japan was ravaged by firebombing. many were already suicidal, and hated america etc. extremely passionately at that point.
Evangelion!
Rachael Lefler what does that have to do with ww2? Nothing.
Hatred, get millions of people to join the suicidal force known as the army wherein they can march you to your death. Not ever enough so there is conscription too. Then training where they beat the civilian outta ya. Good times. Younger you are, easier it is to hate too. Easy pickings.
clxwncrxwn I thought Ha ha ment mother ?
Really informative video! I've always been suspicious of the idea that kamikaze pilots were all fearless patriots; people are, after all, generally fans of being alive. That being said, it was never something I went out of my way to look up until this popped into my recommended feed. Good stuff!
Having just finished reading the Novel Shogun, I feel like understanding the ambivalent emotions of Japanese soldiers. On another note I am pleased with the way this video was researched and narrated. Top of the line work.
Japan:”we don’t have enough planes, let’s kamikaze our planes into stuff!”
ItalianMofo 145 actually Japan’s problem during the later war would actually be a lack of pilots rather than a lack of planes
James Laninga oh thanks man. I thought that it may have been both.
@@thegreatgoatking.kingofall4001 We don't have enough piolts, Let's Kamikaze them into stuff!
🎵 we are out gunned, out manned, and they possess certain critical technologies that we don’t have 🎵
-My favourite Hamilton song ❤️
I was looking for this
This still isn't the high demanded Simon Whistler bloopers special!
'Do not waste your life lightly'. That sentence gave me the creeps and goosebumps thank you very much.
The kamikaze actually were not effective - as you noted, only one in ten damaged a ship and one in one hundred sunk a ship.
The problem though wasn't the idea, instead, it was the manner in which they were deployed since when one did hit a ship, it did do some very serious damage.
The basic problem was that rather than having someone coordinate the attacks, instead, the pilots were assigned specific targets, meaning that once the kamikaze assigned to a particular ship were all used up then that ship was safe.
Additionally, little or no attention was paid to the ships in the defensive ring, the picket, around the fleet, meaning that these ships were free to fire at the kamikazes with impunity every time they were passed.
As such, the proper tactic would have been to punch a hole in the picket first by taking out one or two of those ships with focused attacks so as to create a corridor for the remaining planes to safely fly through and then to keep throwing planes at a particular ship until it was sunk.
Another problem was the tendency to send the kamikaze at their targets one at a time so as to "not waste them" thus allowing all defensive measures to be focused entirely on a single kamikaze. Had they sent multiple planes at the same ship at the same time then this would have divided the defensive measures and given each pilot a far better chance to hit his target and the far greater likelihood of one or more planes hitting their target combined with the greater probability of sinking instead of simply damaging the target would have more than made up for any 'wasted' planes, especially in light of the fact that nine out of ten kamikaze planes were effectively wasted anyway by being shot down before reaching their target.
So while the idea of hitting a ship with five thousand pounds of guided plane, bomb and fuel was a good one, the tactics used sucked.
they were basically human bombs
Profound info n well delivered. 1000 thumbs ups 👍🏽
@@jeffreydavidconner I'm not disputing the effectiveness of the concept, it's the effectiveness of the execution of it.
With better execution they could have damaged/destroyed far more ships than they did.
Or they could just make a really strong bomb, pick off the ship defenses, then blow up the ship with no suicide run and waste of military vehicles required.
They lost roughly 2000 pilots in those suicide missions but sunk over 280 US ships and 15000 US lives. It was extremely successful from a Japanese point of view.
Not defending the war criminals, but it is interesting to know that kamikaze tactics were less suicidal than conventional attacks.
A conventional attack required some 150 lanes with dive bombers and torpedo planes. They would usually get a single hit to an 80% casualty rate. Kamikaze attacks were done by air wings of some 80 planes with fighter escort and everything else. They would score some 5 hits with 60% casualty rate.
Many reasons for this like being massively outgun and outmatched, with no profesional pilots remaining. Regardless it is interesting that kamikaze tactics were less suicidal and immensely more effective.
Steve Kaczynski Or maybe surrendering was logical, but not to a high-ranking military idiot.
I was waiting for someone to bring this up lol
Speaking of ultra dedicated Japanese soldiers during WWII- A Japanese Soldier Who Continued Fighting WWII 29 Years After the Japanese Surrendered... Because He Didn't Know th-cam.com/video/U6rOSe3EsdM/w-d-xo.html -Daven
Some of the pronouncations were unrecognizable to a Japanese person (me). But, most certainly 特別部隊 (とくべつ ぶたい) was the noun you butchered the hardest. :D
I actually had to look up what word you were saying.
Maybe after those 29 years he said: "Today I found Out..."
They were exploding in popularity
(Im sorry)
Yeezy Peezy I probably shouldn’t laugh but fuck it that’s funny
Good one mate
*AND BLOOD.*
😂 oh, now I feel bad. 😅
You tried.
You know, the story of how the word “Kamikaze” came to be is actually pretty cool. The literal translation is “divine wind”, by the way.
You can say that, but most people won't understand what that means. 'kami' is God in japan, they believed that the kamikazes actions were lifted by God
It's actually 'gods window' , that's what my Japanese freind told me
@@tryfan4705 I am a Japanese person myself, 'kami' is God and 'kaze' is wind. Window would be まど, or 'mado'. Not sure where your friend got that from...
@@vivalafelix681 ah ok, well he is not the best with english because he has only just moved to england, so he may have meant wind
@@tryfan4705 understandable
I thought that you were Michael from Vsauce.
Damn, so did i
Anyone else getting ads for Japan Airlines from youtube when watching this video... lol!
What? We're some kind of suicide squad?
Derek Charette They, not we. You didn't do shit.
Derek Charette
Holy shit so cringy. You didn't do shit and everyone involved in WW2, including the enemies, should be respected apart from those who comitted war crimes.
You're probably just some privileged kid who doesn't have any right to disrespect others.
Jake West It was a joke calm down.
Carina Sandberg
Wouldn't have deleted the comment if it was only a joke.
you would think some people would get an obvious reference but every day im suprised by how many fucking retards and inbreds who have access to the internet
Japan was cold af man.
Commander: ok it’s easy guys, here is an example. [shows clip] also commander: *gone*
Military aviation history did a great video on kamikazes. They were far more effective then conventional torpedo or dive bombing methods. The aircrew/aircraft loss to enemy damage ratio was far higher for the Japanese using kamikaze methods. Generally they would loose the same amount of aircraft as conventional means but their loss would actually cause damage .
Bonus fact - The German U-boat service and British Bomber Command had higher casualty rates than the Kamikazes.
AEB1066 wow
That depends on how you calculate it.
If you do it based on a percentage of people in the service who died vs those that lived, kamikazes would have a higher rate.
If you did it based off of total number of crew dead out of each operation, then maybe the U-boat and Bomber Command *would* have a higher rate.
Just came from a 15 minute video about whistling and then the first thing I hear is "Hello, I'm Simon Whistler" XDDD
Gabe Ruszala A 15 minute video about whistling?!
I'd watch that video, shows how little of a life I have anymore, but I would find it entertaining
"Navy soldiers"... The CORRECT term is Sailors.
Not if they were infantry...
Daniel Radetic is there even infantry on the navy?
@@Killamofongo actually, yes.
They usually get a distinctive name to imply the Navy affiliation and the extra skill set, like Marines in the US or Fuzileiros in Brazil.
Daniel Radetic oh. So marines are just foot soldiers in the navy? I thought they were like seals, being a special unit or something
@@neonicplays The IJN had their own infantry just as the IJA had their own ships. The inter-service rivalry was just that bad.
Years ago I met a man who had been a young recruit in the Kamikaze program. Tears came to his eyes when he spoke of that time, and his unending shame that the war had ended before he had his chance to die for the Emperor. That was more than 50 years after the end of WW2 and that was still the single important event of his life... Many Japanese were committed to the Empire in a way that defies western imagination.
The bee fact made this whole video worthwhile on its own.
so that's it huh? we're some kind of Suicide Squad?
Recommend watching Winds of God (1995) - an amazing movie that delves into the psychology of Kamikaze volunteering.
How and where to watch?
If you guys need help with foreign pronunciations, I feel like reaching out to your fan base won't hurt. You had that one Top Tenz where you had your Canadian fan send in an audio clip of the different variations of "eh". I'm sure we'll gladly help you out again and again.
I think it was a Canadian member of their staff (apparently the one who wrote the article), but in any event, I'm sure the sentiment's the same :)
Japanese is actually pretty easy to speak, it doesn't have very many sounds that don't exist in English. Here's a quick pronunciation guide: A = ah, E = eh, I = ee, O = oh, U = oo. Simple as that.
Riceball01 I thought that was a no brainer thing.
I only hear the people who bitch about the writing system.
飛鳥「月」You would think but I constantly hear people butcher the pronunciation of Japanese words and names anyway.
Steeljaw XXI I doubt he cares enough. I wouldn’t
A great video for sure. I subscribed the minute he recommended another channel. Bless.
Thoroughly enjoy this channel.
4:07 Dude looks like a Japanese Micheal Myers xD
Suicide Squad: The DC Kamikaze Universe
Thank you, Simon. I've read alot/watched alot of docs concerning the "Divine Wind", or Kamikaze. In Shinto belief, EVERYTHING has a "kami', or resident spirit: trees, rocks, flowers, the Samauri katana, or swords...you get the idea. This belief taught its believers immense reverence for EVERYTHING, living or inanimate. Sadly, that reverence was evidently NOT extended to include reverence for the kami of those poor, choiceless pilots. Thank you for yet another excellent informational video. And, by the way, your pronunciation of those Japanese words, names and terms was beautifully done! If they weren't absolutely correct, they WERE so WELL-pronounced, any boo-boos still sounded right! Bravo!
And I wonder if those poor, choiceless pilots respected the kami of the sailors they were ordered to fly the planes into?
Maybe if they'd had their choice instead they could just shoot the sailors with the planes instead of suicide crashing into them.
thank you for providing sources! I'm just working on a homework for uni and this saves my life!
Surprised he didn't mention Kamikaze translates to divine wind and was originally used for the storms that wrecked the mongols before being used in WW2.
I heard one reason allied prisoners were treated so badly is that Japanese soldiers were regularly hit or beaten by their superiors. So harming allied prisoners was just another day of cruelty. Add some fanatical emperor worshippers and a culture that thought surrender was unthinkable and you see what we were up against. A Japanese man back then likely didn't want to ever express his own thoughts. I'm so glad japan is nothing like that now.
Suicide Squad was a lousy movie and a lousy military strategy. It's self dehumanizing and tends to make the enemy go harder at the general population, since you've declared that you're no better than a guided bomb.
Plane: Oh geez sorry buddy we are out of bombs. Looks like we ganna have to re....
Pilot: Kamikaze!
Plane: *Excuse me wtf*
The irony that I found Fact Fiend and Today I found out seperately, have watched both videos for months, and only just now learned how they are tied together.
HAHA I think i saw that bee thing in a different one of your videos, and actually thought about it at that point when you referenced the analogy to bees.
So it was really funny that you took the time to address this tangential point about bees during a video about kamikaze pilots at the moment it was running through my head.
War
Why?
Murders
Politics
Lies
- Hikaru Thun
What it is this from? I can't find it. Thun cannot be a japanese name, so maybe it is misspelled?
I'm sure the greatest irony was when the Kamikaza pilots started their airplanes and fuel loaders and signal crew said, "Good luck!" This makes so much more sense now. Men are a disposable class.
isn't that what we praise our soldiers for? For dying for their country? What is the difference?
Oh I see, our soldiers did not intend to die. So if that is the case, why do we praise them as if they did?
Mark S the difference is that our soldiers aren’t massacring 3,000,000 innocent citizens and pows. Do you seriously think that the Japanese were just dying for their country?
@@antonioricci5465 you can say our soldiers had a more moral cause, but that does not change the fact that they did not intend to die, and the Japanese soldiers did.
@@marks6663 This isn't anything close to Spartan culture. The Allied forces weren't in a do or die situation. It wasn't desperate. Courage, is something we revere. Our soldiers were and are still praised for their courage. Heroic and courageous figures aren't so, because of their willingness to die out of desperation. It's their ability to face the unknown and be unmoved by it. Steadfast in their convictions - even if it means to surely die.
I could make the case that the very few pilots who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country or emperor were perhaps courageous. The over-whelming majority of them were bound either by duty, blind servitude or fear of social reprise. This isn't courage or heroism. This is desperation. Not something to hold up in high regards.
No army fights for freedom, they all fight against it
Because they had the balls to do so
This is a very quality video. You guys earned me as a subscriber!
Good Resource: A book entitled I WAS A KAMIKAZE. This fellow was very late recruit. He took off twice but never found a target. USS Benjamin Franklin, an aircraft carrier, was probably the most successful attack.
It's not the same without the second button being unbuttoned.
Hawt
Why would he not mention that the 10000 yen wasn’t adjusted for inflation?
Thats a good point as i didnt even think of that. I was like wtf, that is insulting as fuck to get for literally killing your child. Thats how much i spend on my phone bill a month or to get my license plate sticker each year or a doctor visit or my health insurence each month . Obviously i know things were different then and that money could probably go a long ways during war and in the 40s but it was just decieving regardless when saying they got $120 and reflecting it on how worthless that is in my life.
Because the default state isn’t adjusted you only mention when you adjusted a stat if you actually adjusted it
Great video, but I honestly thought the coolest part was the bee fact.
honey bees die from stinging you as their hooked stinger gets caught in skin often like they said, but other bees do okay. Wasps however, over half of the species die when they sting you.
Interesting show. Keep the good work.
fantastic content, research, presentation and beard!
Frankly, Iwatani was wrong. In the horrible maths of war, kamikaze attacks cost less lives than conventional attacks would have. To achieve the same results it was estimated that 300 attack aircraft would be needed, of those roughly half could expect to be intercepted before they reached the target. Of the survivors maybe half again would be shot down or fended off by the targets AA defences. Of the remainder, between a quarter and a third would hit the target and of those only half would survive the return trip to their base. So out of 300 initial attackers, something like 15 would survive the ordeal. Obviously that is an unsustainable rate of attrition in terms of aircraft even if their crews survived. However if the kamikaze could be used they could use 60 aircraft to achieve the same results, the pilots required far less training (barely enough to fly in formation) and older aircraft that were no longer useful in any other role could be used thereby saving the hard to replace frontline aircraft.
Bearing in mind that it was spring of 1945, perhaps his underlying sentiment was more like... If this is the best we can do we should just give up.
The sentiment went more along the lines of 'If this is the best we can do, we obviously aren't trying hard enough'. The upper echelons of command literally believed they could win by having a stronger 'fighting spirit' than their enemies.
@@steweygrrr
Read John Toland's "The Rising Sun". Japanese leaders knew they could not win against the US. They had crossed a line with the Americans (who they were buying their oil from) and been embargoed so it was either back down in China and be on a slippery slope to becoming a colony (so they believed) - or attack them and die.
Once they made the decision to attack and die - they began to bullshit themselves that they wouldn't die. The basic idea they had was to occupy all these islands and then make those soft, weak Americans bleed until they quit. That worked in Vietnam - so it wasn't just a stupid strategy - but the Americans then weren't the Americans they had been and it didn't work for the Japanese. That - and Pearl Harbor (like 9/11) pissed us off.
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Can't buy a second hand japanese plane
(FYI I have nothing against Japan or the Japanese, it was just something a mate said that made us laugh)
That is a brilliant one. Similar to deposits on Muslim truck rentals.
I am not joking but they put an advert for Japanese Airlines before this video, WTF
fighting someone who isn't afraid to die is alot easier than someone who is, that person who is afraid to die will fight to keep themselves alive to their last breath. someone who is willing to die and not afraid will just fight to win
You tell stories very well....very interesting
Check out Military history Visualized's video on Kamikazes that is quite good.
What is this, some kind of "Suicide Squad"?
William Shreckengost um kinda
But without the virgins waiting in heaven.
@@squarerootof2 lol thats islam promised by terrorist.
In many ways, it was a disastrous strategy for the Japanese. They lost a lot of good pilots, these suicide attacks led U.S. war planners to consider the atomic bombs and the fact there was little to no aircraft let to both attacks succeeding.
Fascinating! Having been stationed in Japan in the early 1990's, I must admit that their country is the most FOREIGN one I have ever visited! John in Texas
My great grandfather was a very successful kamikaze pilot, he told me stories all the time up until 10 years ago when he passed
That doesn’t sound like a successful kamikaze
Hey can you talk about how the French (and other countries) during the Napoleonic War maintained discipline and ranks whilst getting shot by foes. Was it propaganda? The will to defend country? Training? In all honestly I have hard time imagining myself just standing still with thousands of barrels pointed towards me and comrades dropping by my side, it's another "suicidal method" to fight against enemies.
Back in those days a sergeant could and likely would kill you or severely beat you themselves for disobeying orders, especially in a battle. Soldiers would often be more scared of their sergeant than the enemy.
It might seem crazy and suicidal by today's tactics but that method of warfare was very effective for the technology they had available. Smooth bore muskets were barely accurate, with maximum effective range being roughly 80 meters, so the idea was to basically get as close to your enemy as you can, and hail them with as much lead as possible in the shortest amount of time, which is where discipline and training came into play. The more well rehearsed and drilled the units were, the more effective they were and more likely to win a skirmish and hold or advance a position.
Often these men had lived pretty miserable lives, many being convicts and criminals, or conscripts and poor people just trying to earn a wage. Many occupations were very hazardous in those days and life expectancy was low, so dying on a battle field likely wasn't seen as all that bad.
Also consider that many armies would march for months, even years at a time to meet their foes in battle, so by then you'd imagine many of the soldiers had come to grips with the reality of it all, and after marching thousands of miles would hold fast till they heard a retreat call or saw a mass route of their fellow soldiers.
I would guess - that you can't imagine this because you weren't in the military. Military's since the dawn of time have known how to train soldiers to obey the commands of their officers and fight the way they fought in their day. If you had somehow ended up in a military unit back in time some where - once you'd been trained - you'd probably do just what you were told to do.
Now - there were units that broke and tried to run away. The idea is - "If I throw down these heavy weapons I can just run away!" but that's not really true. For one thing they had Cavalry back then and one of the jobs of the Cavalry - was to run down enemy units that had broken. They don't have cavalry today - because they've got vehicles. Units that hung together and didn't break had a much better chance of surviving.
In ancient battles - it was all about trying to get the other side to break - and most of the casualties, took place AFTER the battle, when all the units that had broken were run down and slaughtered.
So - just standing there and taking whatever the enemy could dish out - was better than trying to run away. Trying to run away - just made it easier for the enemy to kill you.
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Fire by Rank/Massed infantry lines were the doctrine of the day. You closed until you saw the whites of your foes eyes and fired. After the next ranks fired you fixed bayonet and charged. Musket shot was woefully inaccurate so really morale and discipline was the key.
Since it seems the official name for the kamikaze squad wasn't literally "suicide squad," did the volunteers really know what they were getting themselves into? I have a feeling they wouldn't have been allowed to back out if they changed their mind.
Joining the air force in general was suicide, their survival rates increased with this strategy. Yes, they were all told, and they all knew what the headband meant etc, (meant to be a thousand individual stitches by a thousand virgins? something like that.) a lot of ceremony went into it, they got the knife etc. Got their names on plaques or whatever, they wrote death haiku, yeah, they knew. I doubt many if any tried, the Japanese are controlled by guilt and societal responsibility.
Was one of the technologies they were missing Statistics?
Me: can we get vsauce?
Mom: no we have vsauce at home
Vsauce at home:
10:45 correction: 10000 yen today is $120 USD today, but back then, 10000 yen would be worth around 5 million yen today or $44000 USD today. Back then, weekly wage was around 3 yen, so 10000 yen was a great amount.