Book Review: Memoirs of a Kamikaze by Kazuo Odachi

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I just finished reading this book. I don't normally read war memoirs, but after I watched a film last year where the hero was a Kamikaze survivor, I saw this book reviewed on Amazon, so I decided to give it a go. This book was dictated by one of the few surviving Kamikaze pilots to his friends Shigeru Ohta and Hiroyoshi Nishijima, and translate into English by Alexander Bennett, all of whom knew Odachi due to a shared interest in Kendo. The author was in his 90s when he dictated these memoirs, having mostly stayed silent on his wartime experiences before then. Born in 1926, Kazuo Odachi was just 16 when he qualified to join the elite Naval Aviator Preparatory Course ("Yokaren"). He was only 18 when the war ended, having survived seven sorties as a designated Kamikaze suicide bomber. He was actually on the runway about to take off for what would have been his eigth (and almost certainly final) suicide attack when the flight he was in was stood down and everyone gathered round the radio to listen to Emperor Hirohito announcing the surrender. I've always had an image of Kamikaze pilots being crazy fanatics, but this book shows what they were really like - mostly teenaged kids who had signed up to defend their country as fighter pilots, and who were later pressured into "volunteering" for suicide missions when the war situation became increasingly desparate. Kids no different from what you would find in any military force. Odachi himself was stationed in Taiwan, the Philippines, then back to Taiwan, as he and his comrades took part in hopeless air battles against the technologically and numerically superior American bomber forces. And in between these conventional actions, Odachi was on several occasions assigned to be a Kamikaze suicide bomber. He was incredibly lucky to survive seven suicide missions - there were several legitimate reasons why a Kamikaze could abort his mission, including bad weather, engine trouble, being faced with overwhelming air defences and not being able to find a target at all. Apart from the air battles, Odach also survived a bout of malaria, malnutrition and beeing strafed on the ground twice. Truly, he was lucky to survive. After the war, he was recruited into the police force, where he had a successful career, quickly becoming a detective and serving in different departments. The second part of the book is mostly about his post-war life, partly anecdotes about his time in the police, and also a chapter dedicated to his lifelong love of Kendo - he became a dedicated Kendo instructor after retiring, and stayed active into his 90s. There's also an appendix at the end which covers a very strange incident from late in the war - in February 1945, Odachi and some of his friends were in Japan to take delivery of some new Zero fighter planes when they were asked - unofficially - to provide a fighter escort for a bomber that was transporting Prince Mikasa (Hirohito's younger brother) to Shanghai. No official record of this mission exists, but the authors speculate that Mikasa's visit to Shanghai was for a cover - and officially unauthorised - attempt to negotiate peace with the Chinese Nationalists. The authors weren't able to find proof that this happened, but believe that the balance of circumstantial evidence indicates that this was the case. Even today, there are secrets from World War 2 that have never come to light. All in all, this is a very interesting read, covering a part of the war that I had little knowledge of, and giving some insight into the mindset of a warrior who signed up to do his duty for his country (as he saw it) and was treated as a disposable tool by his superiors. He lost a lot of friends in that war, and he felt an obligation to make something of his life when he was one of the few survivors. So yes, not the sort of book I normally read, but I'm glad I read it. Hopefully Odachi found some peace from telling his story (and that of his dead friends) at last.