I have been fascinated with the kamikaze pilots and what made them do what they did, i.e. motivations for becoming suicide pilots. The obvious link is through Japanese culture at that time, and I believe this book helped me gain a better understanding of why these young men felt the need to do what they did, even as they obviously had mixed emotions for doing so. I am glad the author started with a discussion about Admiral Ugaki and the feelings he had for helping create and enforce the kamikaze as a vital weapon against the U.S. Navy towards the end of the war in the Pacific.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Penguin Group Dutton for an advanced copy of this history on World War II and the Japanese pilots who survived when they were not supposed to.

Desperate times call for drastic measures. That is what many a government official has told themselves as they make decisions that will lead to people dying. The nation of Japan was in desperate straits during the year of 1944. Ships were sinking, resources were stretched, and the Allied forces were closing in on the home islands. A decision was made that planes, fully loaded with explosives would be used to crash into American ships, carriers, tankers, and ships that were considered valuable to the war effort, using the resources that Japan still had. Human pilots. This kamikaze program sent hundreds of men, in older planes against the Allies, sinking many, and ending many American lives. However not all the men who were chosen died. During the shadow of 9/11 the question of what motivated suicide bombers was one that was asked alot by people. And M. G. Sheftall was interested in finding out. Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze is the story of those who remain, what they learned, and how their lives changed by living when asked by their governments to be human weapons.

After 9/11 M. G. Sheftall began a project that he hoped would illuminate on why people would choose to become suicide bomber by interviewing Japanese pilots from World War II. Sheftall spoke Japanese, had lived in Japan for many years and was familiar with the politics of Japan as well as the cultural views the military was viewed in Japan. Sheftall was given access to many of the reports dealing with the kamikaze, from its early beginnings to flight records and interviews with many of the pilots who survived. Pilots would have planes that wouldn't start, or crash on the way, as much of Japan's war machines were suffering from lack of decent fuel or parts. Many of this pilots have lived long lives, with business success, families, and in some cases an appreciation for life. Though they are haunted. Sheftall goes into the history that lead up to the war, and what the motivation was for suicide planes. Sheftall also talks to a group of woman whose jobs during the war was to take care of the barracks for pilots expected to die, seeing new pilots almost monthly, and what this did to them over the years.

There is a tremendous amount of research in this book, and Sheftall does a very good job of bringing this all together in a book that is far more than just a history book. There is a little bit of imagination in some conversations on the historical side, but this fills up gaps in the story so this is excusable. Everything else seems to be footnoted, and cross-checked. The stories about the men are the most interesting. Readers learn quite a bit about their lives before the war, and how they found themselves where they were. And what happened after. Planning to die with your friends, while stopping the Americans from destroying your home, your family, and suddenly the plant won't start. Or the gas makes the engine seize in midair. These men planned for death, and suddenly were alive. They are haunted about why them. Why did they live, and yet friends, colleagues, even idols, died sometimes succeeding, other times being shot down. Sheftall is very good at letting the men speak, and from this readers learn a lot. Some might say that Sheftall became too close to his subjects, which I can see. However one could see why.

A different history of World War II, one where great acts of courage were almost denied by the hand of fate. Reading this one does wonder why things happen the way they do. Thousands of men might be dying in a battle, boats sinking or on fire. And yet a plane doesn't start, a pilot gets lost in the system, and a man tasked to die is given a long life, and left with many questions. Not many history books leave one wondering about fate, this one does.

I liked how this book combined personal reflection with personal scholarship. I thought that this would be more of an analytical book than a narrative history, and as I dug in, I realized that it would be just as capitvating as reading someone's academic argument about why men became suicide bombers.
I found it interesting how the first edition was written in 2002, shortly after religious extremists crashed planes into American buildings and landscape on September 11. That fact guided me as I read the author's uncovering of the stories behind some of the men who gave their lives.

While I never think destruction and death, especially in this context, should never be glorified, I found the book a great exercise in intellectual and historical humility. A country whose way of life and sheer existence seemed to be under threat, men who flew kamikaze missions certainly didn't see themselves as crazed militants bent on destroying as many lives as they could. It might be said that no matter what the situation, we can learn a lot more by looking objectively at the other side, to understand how it was seen from the enemy's view. I'm not advocating that they should be empathized with, nor am I saying what they did was noble- I wouldn't say this about any group, period, but I think it helps us understand the objective nature of the struggle being faced by both sides in World War II. It helps us not simply castigate the enemy as monsters bent on taking lives for the sake of it. After all, would we think it fair if the same view was taken by Japanese about the atomic bomb? Undoubtedly, there are many Americans who do, but after reading this book, perhaps we may be more willing to adjust our judgements

I have to give this a five star rating simply for the amount of research and care that went into this book. It reads smoothly and well--and can almost function as a book on the Japanese culture and mindset of the earlier Showa Era.
The author has a thorough understanding of the mindset of the Japanese soldier. He sees it as almost noble. Indeed like the cherry blossoms, there is something very beautiful here. Whether or not you agree that love for one's country is a good or bad thing, you can admire the kind of character it took to make the decision that these young men did. But was it youth, brainwashing, culture, stupidity, bravery, or something else? I don't think we can really decide that. What we can admire is the determination and resolution to follow one's convictions (be they right or wrong) and make the ultimate sacrifice. And that is what the author has captured here.
What is really amazing is how these men and women opened up to the author and were willing to tell their stories. But for the most part, the Japanese don't seem to hold any grudges against their former enemy. There is a realization that Occupation could have been far worse.

As someone who lived in Japan for 13 years and married into the culture, I found this to be an absolutely fascinating read. Admittedly I skimmed over some of the aircraft details. For the reader truly interested in the aircrafts and piloting of them, this will be a true gem. For the rest of us, it is another viewpoint on an aspect of Japanese culture that may be gone or still lurking under the surface.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. I learned a lot!

Having read accounts by Kamikaze pilots before, I can tell that the best part of this book about the <i>Tokku</i> is the stories of the pilots themselves, both those that died on mission and those that survived and told the tale to the author.

But the problem, for me, is that there's less of them than you'd expect from a history book dedicated to them. The stories are very few for a book of this length, fewer than a dozen, and many of them already dead, and even so, there's needless filler. There's more about the author himself than necessary, for example, and the Americans' side almost reads like it's a view of the Kamikaze filtered through the personal opinions of the winning side, which for me defeats the purpose of the book's stated goals to discover what kind of society and culture could produce men willing to die crashing a bomb-loaded plane into American ships. The book starts not with the Kamikaze themselves, but from the POV of the American Seventh Fleet's Taffy 3, their reaction to the Kamikaze post-Battle of Samar, and nothing about the pilots themselves, which will come a few chapters later.

And when the parts with the pilots themselves come, there's a lot of assumptions about thoughts and feelings and even emotional responses, that the author would have no way of knowing because all those people are dead. I get that many readers love this "reads like a novel" style of non-fiction, but to me it isn't either very academic or professional to delve into the personal emotions of dead people for the sake of writing beautifully. Those people didn't leave their emotions registered, you're ascribing that to them, and by default there'll be projection.

As for the pilots that survived and told their story, they're the most interesting and the portions of the book most worth reading, because of their war experiences, how they survived and that they had to live to deal with the shame and conflicted feelings of the crushing defeat of Japan. It's interesting how many of them have a rather whitewashed view of the war, that Sheftall readily relies forth, in which it's all about emperor, duty, honour, and country, riding Asia of the white conquerors. I understand that is their way of thinking, not the author's, but you know why it's uncomfortable? Because Sheftall doesn't challenge them, and he doesn't merely act like a recorder relaying the pilots' version of history either, because even though he doesn't agree with them, he does write like he sympathises. There's a lot of admiring, borderline Japanese culture hero-worship, passages here in which Sheftall talks on and on about samurai, warrior's spirit, the incomprehensible-to-Westerners sense of sacrifice of the Japanese, etc. No rebuttal there.

And that's what made me feel uncomfortable. At one point, Sheftall clearly states that this mentality was a product of decades of indoctrination and societal norms that aided in compliance of the population, all those young men who died with a <i>Banzai!</i> on their lips were the product of indoctrination, which included ideological grooming and falsities created to support the whole <i>Tokku</i> system and the willingness of the whole country of 100 million to go down in flames rather than surrender to the US. Why does he not challenge this? When German veterans are interviewed, they are relentlessly challenged in their assumptions, and those who were young at the time of recruitment are readily acknowledged to be a product of heavy indoctrination. Plus, Hitler gave orders for Germany to go down in flames with him rather than surrender, too. So why the different approach? Why challenge Germany and not Japan? Why call German veterans indoctrinated by an evil ideology but excuse Japanese veterans with "oh, it's their culture, samurai, ya know" type of arguments? We all understand a boy growing up in the Hitlerjugend and becoming a fanatical SS-man willing to fight to the end is an awful outcome of indoctrination, so why do we try to explain away as a matter of culture a Japanese boy growing up with militaristic and ultranationalistic propaganda that tells him his race is the superior one and turns him into a pilot that slaps a bomb on to himself to at best maim a ship?

Yes, I do get that Japanese culture has unique differences that set it apart. Fanaticism born of indoctrination is the same across cultures, however, a point that needs be stressed. Furthermore, I have seen at least a couple of other accounts by Kamikaze that survived, and I can tell that not every veteran ex-pilot of the Imperial Japanese Navy has this view expressed by the pilots in this book. There are Japanese veterans who do understand the futility of the war, the indoctrination they were subjected to, and that they were used by their government, and don't have this romanticised "lost cause" view. It would've been nice for variety at least, to have some of them included too.

The avoidance on the part of the author to delve into the Yasukuni Shrine controversy didn't sit well with me either, more so since he visited it. It just adds to the book's feel of not wanting to touch on thorny issues and just go with the sanitised sacrifice, duty & honour narrative to interpret the whole point of the Kamikaze existing.