Kamakazis

[jon_j_rambo]

This game better have Kamakazis.

[Retributar]

Mispelled Title by Mistake!,...should have been...> Kamakazi's!...IE: "Divine Wind!".

The game "SHOULD HAVE KAMAKAZI'S!",...as it was really 'In-Fact!'...'A-Fact!',...a REAL...'Historical-Reality'!...and beside's that!,...who could really 'Resist!!!'...knocking out an Aircraft-Carrier-Group with a Banzai-Force of these Play-Thing's???.

[Colin I]

I have an idea. Kamikaze should be a mode setting (like HQs have manual, automatic and fighters have grounded, intercept etc.).

Use of K-mode should require high morale but not high supply (isolated units quite often fought well but cannot imagine a demoralized unit making kamikaze attacks).

I would allow it for corps and fighters and special forces but maybe not much else.

Setting to Kamikaze increases damage dealt AND taken in certain situations (land units vs other land units, fighters vs naval).

Kamikaze units per se are not strategic units but this simulates elements of this doctrine without making whole units one-shot wonders.

Japanese did try and use a battleship in Kamakaze mode (at Okinawa?) but this was so ineffective should not be simulated here.

[jon_j_rambo]

One of my golfing buddies died last year. He was a gunner that had the pleasure of watching a Jap Kamakazi crashing & burn 100 yards in front of him.

[scottsmm]

interesting concept on "divine wind" but I think there should be some sort of a setting so that it happens only when Japan is losing since it was an act of desperation done by the japs at the end not when things were going well.

[Battleboy]

The affect of the Kamakazi attacks was of minum value to Japan though it had caused negitave moral and some shipping damage for the Americans it did not stop or destroy and American advance. It should be something that you could build up but not allowed until you acheive a maximum number and it's damage should be of little affect on ships hit. It cost Japan more then it's value in destroying American ships was worth. It was the same when they sent the Yamato on it's Kamakazi mission to Okanowa

[Nupremal]

disagree - they caused a lot of damage and were cheap because they had the aircraft and bombs but no good pilots, so it worked turning them into human-guided missiles

[Kuniworth]

disagree - they caused a lot of damage and were cheap because they had the aircraft and bombs but no good pilots, so it worked turning them into human-guided missiles

And what if they stated to use them early in the war

[SeaMonkey]

Kuni...they're still going to get nuked. It was over, before it started, Yamamato knew and he wasn't the only one.

It was one bad decision. Humans are notorious for bad decision making........And...what's worse...is they make the same ones ...over and over again.

A bunch of damn idiots...so don't ask me!

[Rocko1]

I wouldnt say it was a bad decision, it did what the Japanese Military wanted it to do. That was delay and make us re allocate resources. Case in point the US Navy had to reconfigure its standard fleet deployment with auxillary flak protection. Also remember this was the first smart bomb, the fact that a human guided the plane/bomb to target is a sign of genius and not just desperation. Remember that the hit % of bombs or torpedoes was not that great with technology back then.

[arado234]

Kuni I would also think that if the Japs.started using Kamakazes right away the probably would have run out of pilots and it would have been pretty expensive to have to replace all those aircraft losses.

[scottsmm]

arado234,

Most of the Kamikazes were japs picked off the streets with little combat experence or no combat experence so they most likely wouldn't run out of pilots but as for aircraft production your absolutely right it would have been to expensive.

[Colin I]

Kamakaze is pretty cost effective if it takes down capital ships. Its the equivalent of suicide bombers today - also hard to stop and potentially devastating.

More broadly, I would never let Japanese morale fall below 30% - it really held up very well under stress.

[scottsmm]

what about after the atomic bombs (for Japs morale) and not all kamakazes hit the target it was more of bring 30 or so planes and hopefully 4 to 5 will hit the target if they all hit there mark the world could look diffrent then what it is today.

[Colin I]

I would reduce morale but also give a chance of surrender for the atomic bomb. Japanese morale wasn't unshakable but did stay surprisingly solid even when cut off and isolated.

Kamikaze certainly were wasteful but I'd argue still cost effective if they take down major targets.

[SeaMonkey]

Do you think that the use of suicidal tactics by the Japanese might have led to the decision to use the A-bomb?

And "if so" then do you concur they brought it upon themselves?

[arado234]

scottsmm I would think though if you tried to win a war by guaranteeing the death of hundreds of pilots everyday that in long run you would run out of people?When did Japan and China start fighting,1937?If you start kamakaze attacks from that point on I cant see how you could sustain the losses.

SeaMonkey I agree with you in that in order to save Allied lives you do whatever is necessary during a major conflict to win in order to keep your own losses as low as possible.(In this case I believe the Japanese brought it on themselves).One has to also wonder that if we didnt use the A.bomb how many Japanese lives would have been lost overall through the continuation of the Allied fire bombings and blockade?

Ive also read where Japan was working on and claimed they expolded an Atomic device(who knows how true it is).If it was and we chose to attack and invade just think of how many lives would have been lost(not to mention all the Allied P.O.W.s that were still being held).End it as fast as you can and in the long run you save more lives.

One more thing, because us humans tend to do stupid things from time to time(like start wars in the first place or believe we can settle disputes by blowing the you know what out of eachother)The fact that the Atomic bomb WAS used removes any doubt about its effectiveness and its overall destructive capabilties.You know the saying:That seeing is believing.Ill bet if it wasnt used there would probably be some knuckleheads that would want to try it out because they dont know for sure what will happen.Using those two little firecrackers(compared to todays weapons)imho saved us from a much bigger disaster latter on.

[SeaMonkey]

Mightily insightful arado!

[thetwo]

I don't think the kamikazis had a direct impact on the decision to use the atomic bombs.

In my opinion, the proximate causes of the decisions were two-fold.

1. The well-known tenacious defenses of all islands in the cross-Pacific campaign. Estimates of American casualties if the Japanese home islands kept being adjusted upward.

2. In a purely American or western response to the horrendous civilian casualties the Okinawans suffered in that campaign. I've never seen an actual estimate of what the American military estimated the Japanese civilian death toll to be if the home islands had to be captured. Remember, the decision rested with only one person and his personal values were involved in the decsion. We were already embarked upon a campaign of terror bombing (fire bombing) with vociferous, some might say rabid advocates circulating around the president. Then, newsreels from some Pacific islands unashamedly showed the suicides of Japanese civilians hurling themselves off cliffs as American forces neared them, then the bodies piled up on the rocks. Then the hundreds of thousands of Okinawans killed.

Truman was confronted with the reality of the bomb cold. He had had no time to prepare himself over time. Stalin knew more about the bomb project than our new president did. With his western values engaged and projections of American casualties climbing with each estimate I think he made the right and only call he could make, being who he was. He was no saint. (He was about as dirty a machine politician as you could have found for the time, but that is another discussion. You could research the role and relationships of machine judges in organized crime in pre-WWII Missouri for more information.)

Your last question, I think answers itself, SeaMonkey. Truman would have found the question much harder to answer if the circumstances had been different. Roosevelt would not.

[SeaMonkey]

No doubt you contribute viable points t2.

I think the establishment of an American "attitude" with regards to the Japanese interpretation of the Bushido code started a bit earlier than just the Okinawa incidences.

Saipan was, IIRC, one of the first displays of massed civilian suicides and of course in breeching this outer perimeter of Imperial defence(Marianas) insighted greater ferocity of defence and noncombatant interactions.

So I'm saying, coupled with the somewhat racist orientation of Americans towards Asians in that period, subscribing to the additional propaganda of wartime, it was a slow unveiling of a barbaric cataclysmic conclusion.

I understand why it was done but that does not remove the detestable degree that war had progressed to.

[thetwo]

Racist is a word that carries a freight-load of meaning and is ill equipped to do so by design. Maybe "prevailing views" would be better? I don't think anyone here wants to get into a discussion of Japanese versus American "racism" and their relative expressions.

The "cataclysmic conclusion" (nice turn of phrase by the way) was what the Japanese militarists had been aiming for since the early twenties. Track through the death of Japanese democracy, the demise of the free press, the overhaul and corruption of the Bushido code. In my readings about early Samurai, there was brutality, but the total self-annihilation was not present. This was a new, twisted, sick element. (I posted once about this. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83129&highlight=bushido. So it wasn't an American interpretation of Bushido. It was a Japanese distortion of Bushido then expressed through actions. Substantial difference.)

There was a revulsion among Americans who fought the Japanese. They had to fight them on their terms or they couldn't fight them at all. There wasn't a way around it. I don't know if you've had the chance to hear some of the WWII Pacific vets talk about their experiences rather than reading them out of books. For the American or Australian veterans, it was difficult to talk about. Even so, there is no mistaking they were shaken by what was required. Their core values remained intact, hence the personal turmoil.

Much of this was caused by how many casualties the Allies took when trying to root out Japanese holdouts or when surrendered prisoners blew themselves up killing their captors. These kinds of things were so far outside Western cultural experiences that they left deep trauma behind. After a while filling every hole in the ground with kerosene and popping grenades became commonplace. As did distrust of surrendering Japanese. How many buddies had to die or have their arms blown off before it became rational to act prudently?

It still required behaviors that were culturally unacceptable. That's part of what PTSD is about.

An often unreported aspect of the island hopping campaign was the number of suicides among Allied soldiers. There were others who just disappeared into the jungle and were never seen again. I remember one account of a Marine who took off all his clothes and ran into the jungle. For a few weeks he reappeared in the distance, once in a while, then disappeared. The psychological toll was as bad or worse than the physical.

SeaMonkey, I am not sure I can use the word "detestable" or some of the other value-laden (and somewhat ill-defined) words. I can say I regret perhaps, but in no way do I minimize the need for the actions taken. The world was much better off with men of good conscience winning than men of no conscience. Men of good conscience will choose to live with their demons. Men of no conscience become demons.

/ /

The following is included for those who don't know the backstory on Bushido in WWII. I've provided it because it may sound as if I've been talking around the subject.

If you try to do an Internet search for Bushido in WWII you won't find much. The Japanese are very much of one mind about hiding (or not recognizing) the past. There are some good English language books on the death of Japanese democracy, but I'd have to dig through boxes to look for a bibliography.

There is a nice, fairly recent book that can take you a long way toward understanding how some of the propaganda worked and how Bushido morphed. Zen at War, by Brian Victoria, 1997. Very very solid and scary. It resonates well with today's nut cases and how they motivate the masses to wanton violence.

Victoria called the process, "the samuriazation of the nation." Brutality was ritualized and became a sacred religious act. Suppressing dissent whether in the media or in the universities was required for good Buddhists. Buddhism, Bushido, and the Emperor's Law became one and inseparable. This message was heard from the radios, on street corners, in schools, in military training, in the markets, and from the military equivalent of chaplains. If you want to know the proper method for beheading Chinese, go to the chaplain, he'll tell you. It became not only the province of soldiers to die for the Emperor, but of the nation. The disgrace of defeat similarly was expanded to encompass civilians.

/ /

I did find one Internet reference by a Japanese author. The article itself is rather arcane about the history of the samurai. I've included the relevant quote. http://samurai-archives.com/hrj.html

"The samurai Tokugawa Bakufu arguably held back progress for Japan for 264 years, with it’s Sakoku (Closed/Chained country) foreign affairs, which isolated Japan for two centuries. 17 This not only made the Japanese a xenophobic people, but also held them back from attaining further technological advancements. It allowed Japan to develop a sense of national superiority, and eventually led to the misapplication and propaganda of Bushido in World War II. 18 Quite unlike the nihon-to (Japanese sword), Bushido, Kokutai, Sakoku, and other ideas were double-edged swords, with the power to bring about change as well as great harm, not only to the Japanese themselves, but others around them. It even can cause cultural shock amongst the Japanese. Mishima Yukio, (Sun and Steel, The Sound of Waves), a popular writer who committed seppuku in the early 70’s after storming a police station’s commandant’s office, wrote often of Bushido and the ideas of being a warrior. That, along with the distortions of World War II, made the rich military tradition of Japan a taboo topic for discussion for nearly half a century." by Inoue Kazuki

[scottsmm]

Arado 234 when I said what I said about those losses I was mainly talking about maybe from guadalcanal on. Although the Japs could with stand those losses if you think about it by having chinnese fly for them (I know this didn't happen but neither did kamakazes in 37') Truth is the Japs just wanted Jap men reguardless of there combat experence so I would imagine that the Japs would do something similar to as the German Home Army because your right if they did kamakazes from 37' on they simply would run out of men. of course it wouldn't be an army it would be an air force.

[SeaMonkey]

I can agree with all you have presented, two. A couple of clarifications on my part may be appropriate. Racism is nothing but a form of prejudice, my catch all definition, a preconceived unjustified opininon, usually negative and we all are susceptible from one time to another. Bigotry, idolatry, obsession, etc. , there are so many forms that tag along behind Big Brother(prejudice).

Racism was the term used so liberally from my studies of that era, seemed to endear a nostalgic essence to this discussion as the ugly misconceptions of one society for another(Japanese and American).

Detestable....yeah I thought about that for one fleeting moment..but in my context, I was comparison shopping with the past history of warfare versus this present scent(not too aromatic), the 20th century as well as the 21st, where civilians(esp. women & children) weren't so victimized. But if you travel far enough back it was that way before, not on the modern scale perhaps, but none the less as barbaric. I was comparing to a time of a code of conduct, sometimes refered to as a degree of chivalry(Geneva Convention), a mutual respect of killing, of uncrossed boundaries between combatants..what a paradox ehhh.

Believe me..did I know way intend to draw any ill feelings to the Americans for their use of any means necessary....it is as you alluded to...we'll capture the moral high ground again later.... there's a job to be done!

As there is today that sanctimonious pursuit of idealogy, unjustifiably imposing itself upon the innocent, especially when man is without clarity, and masquerades in many forms....but we know it well....

In the words of Church Lady..."Could it be Evil"?:mad:

[arado234]

Scottsmm I dont know when they really started Kamakazis(but your right,It wasnt in 1937).To me suicide attacks are a sign of desperation done by the loosing side.So your probably right about them starting around Guadalcanal.

As far as getting Chinese to fly for them,I can see the chinese pilots just taking off and never coming back(Thats probably why the Japs.never used them).

[Battleboy]

The Banzi attack was a form of Kamakazi a human wave attack with no concern for your own life Kill or be Killed