3
In 1945 the Japanese had been fighting American soldiers for six
years. They had known they could not lose. Their gods2 had made
them a superior people. They had swept through China and the Pacific
Islands in the 30's like an avenging wind, taking vast territories,
conquering hordes of "inferior" peoples, showing the heaven-given
supremacy of their race. The enemy who faced them was a
contemptible lot--unblessed by the divinity that buoyed Japan, and
crippled by racial impurity.
Yet the mongrels from the West were accomplishing the un-
thinkable. They were beating down the warriors of Japan. By the time
the Americans reached Okinawa, the Japanese could see that heaven
had deserted them. The shame was unendurable. Four thousand
Japanese killed themselves in Okinawa's underground naval
headquarters. Another 30,000 military men and civilians threw
themselves from a nearby cliff.3
On the Japanese homeland, pilots volunteered to keep the
American marines in Okinawa from getting supplies. Those flyers
were promised honor...and death. Their mission was to guide their
planes to the enemy and stay at the controls as the explosive-laden
aircraft slammed into the enemy's ships. "I will be doing my duty by
dying," they wrote in final letters to their families. Fifteen thousand of
them fulfilled that fatal obligation. One commentator, describing the
kamikaze experience forty years after the fact, explained that, "Japan is
a society of groups, not individuals."
To us the kamikazes' ultimate devotion seems baffling, alien,
something that could never happen here. But it has happened here.
Patrick Henry was declaring his loyalty to his fellow revolutionaries
and their cause when he said, "Give me liberty or give me death." He
was confessing that the social organism of which he was a part was
more important than his own existence.
Suicides in 1929, the year of The Great Crash, tended to be
flamboyant and highly publicized. There was the head of the
Rochester Gas and Electric Company who asphyxiated himself with
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3
In 1945 the Japanese had been fighting American soldiers for six
years. They had known they could not lose. Their gods2 had made
them a superior people. They had swept through China and the Pacific
Islands in the 30's like an avenging wind, taking vast territories,
conquering hordes of "inferior" peoples, showing the heaven-given
supremacy of their race. The enemy who faced them was a
contemptible lot--unblessed by the divinity that buoyed Japan, and
crippled by racial impurity.
Yet the mongrels from the West were accomplishing the un-
thinkable. They were beating down the warriors of Japan. By the time
the Americans reached Okinawa, the Japanese could see that heaven
had deserted them. The shame was unendurable. Four thousand
Japanese killed themselves in Okinawa's underground naval
headquarters. Another 30,000 military men and civilians threw
themselves from a nearby cliff.3
On the Japanese homeland, pilots volunteered to keep the
American marines in Okinawa from getting supplies. Those flyers
were promised honor...and death. Their mission was to guide their
planes to the enemy and stay at the controls as the explosive-laden
aircraft slammed into the enemy's ships. "I will be doing my duty by
dying," they wrote in final letters to their families. Fifteen thousand of
them fulfilled that fatal obligation. One commentator, describing the
kamikaze experience forty years after the fact, explained that, "Japan is
a society of groups, not individuals."
To us the kamikazes' ultimate devotion seems baffling, alien,
something that could never happen here. But it has happened here.
Patrick Henry was declaring his loyalty to his fellow revolutionaries
and their cause when he said, "Give me liberty or give me death." He
was confessing that the social organism of which he was a part was
more important than his own existence.
Suicides in 1929, the year of The Great Crash, tended to be
flamboyant and highly publicized. There was the head of the
Rochester Gas and Electric Company who asphyxiated himself with
<< < GO > >>