{"id":13349,"date":"2015-06-08T12:47:27","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T22:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=13349"},"modified":"2015-06-08T15:05:58","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T01:05:58","slug":"asia-pacific-journal-japan-focus-extended-interview-with-dr-m-g-sheftall-japans-kamikaze-suicide-pilots-exhibit-at-the-uss-missouri-in-honolulu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=13349","title":{"rendered":"Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus extended interview with Dr. M.G. Sheftall: “Japan\u2019s Kamikaze Suicide Pilots Exhibit at the USS Missouri in Honolulu”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog.\u00a0 Now up with critique from an unexpected quarter<\/a> is an extended interview I did with Dr. M.G. “Bucky” Sheftall on the WWII Japan Tokk\u014d “Kamikaze” suicide missions, which appeared in an abridged version in the Japan Times as my JBC column on May 4, 2015<\/a>.\u00a0 This longer version features more questions from me and more candor from Bucky.\u00a0 Here’s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s Kamikaze Suicide Pilots Exhibit at the USS Missouri in Honolulu: an interview with M.G. Sheftall<\/strong>
\n The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 22, No. 1, June 08, 2015<\/strong>
\n Dr. ARUDOU Debito, Dr. M.G. Sheftall<\/strong><\/p>\n

M.G. Sheftall, Professor of Modern Japanese History at Shizuoka University and author of Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze<\/a> (Penguin 2005), was in Honolulu, Hawaii, aboard the battleship USS Missouri (site of the Japanese surrender in World War II) speaking at the dedication of a temporary exhibition of the Tokk\u014d Kamikaze suicide pilots on April 10 and 11, 2015. <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

[…]
\n4) You mentioned earlier about other Tokk\u014d missions, including the suicide motorboats. But we hear mostly about the pilots, hardly ever about the other types of Tokk\u014d. Tell us a little more about these other branches, and why you think the pilots have garnered all the attention, especially in popular culture and at Yasukuni Shrine, where they are more famously enshrined as heroes?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sheftall<\/strong>:\u00a0 In addition to the iconic self-immolating bomb-laden fighter plane version of Tokk\u014d almost anyone inside or outside of Japan associates with the term \u201cKamikaze\u201d, there were three other major Tokk\u014d platforms that we could deem significant in terms of: 1) the expenditure involved in their development and production; 2) the initial expectations the Japanese military had for their success; and 3) the loss in human lives caused by their deployment. These were the Kaiten (\u201cFortune-reverser\u201d) manned torpedo, the Shin\u2019y\u014d (\u201cOcean-shaker\u201d) rammer-motorboat, and the \u014cka (\u201cCherry Blossom\u201d) manned rocket bomb \u2013 which was essentially a 1940s cruise missile with a human being in place of a computerized guidance and target acquisition system. Really brutal contraption.<\/em><\/p>\n

In any case, all three of these platforms were bitter disappointments for the Japanese military. Each of them resulted in over a thousand \u201cfriendly\u201d fatalities involved in attempts to deploy them \u2013 this is also counting the crew members of the \u201cmotherships\u201d ferrying the Kaiten and \u014cka (specially modified fleet submarines for the former, and specially modified twin-engined bombers for the latter) into battle \u2013 while only causing a few hundred Allied casualties in total between the three of them, as compared with \u201cconventional\u201d aviation Tokk\u014d, which caused some 15 thousand Allied casualties just in the Battle of Okinawa alone. So, right off the bat I would say that this dismal operational history is certainly a sizable factor behind the rather low profile \u2013 and the poor reputation, when known at all \u2013 of these specialized Tokk\u014d weapons in the postwar Japanese public imagination.<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, there\u2019s not much \u201cstory-worthiness\u201d there from the standpoint of either the producers or consumers of entertainment media content \u2013 which is of course how and where most postwar Japanese learn about Tokk\u014d to begin with, not to mention most of their 20th century Japanese history. Also \u2013 and I hope this doesn\u2019t sound as cynical as I\u2019m afraid it might \u2013 these three Tokk\u014d platforms would not have lent themselves to economically viable cinematic depiction in the pre-computer graphics era 1950s, 60s and 70s Japanese film industry \u2013 when the postwar Tokk\u014d legacy took the decisive \u201csemi-romanticized\u201d turn in Japanese historical consciousness that has characterized it ever since, and that was itself largely the result of the influence of Tokk\u014d films of the era, which were financed by sympathetic conservatives in the entertainment industry and \u201ctechnically advised\u201d by former IJA and IJN figures. A couple of Kaiten-themed films were made \u2013 one that comes to mind starred a young Ishihara Y\u016bjir\u014d during his breakout period \u2013 but the model-making and special effects were extremely challenging and also apparently quite expensive. Much more economical to use model airplanes against a rolling \u201csky\u201d backdrop with some clouds painted on it, right? Plus the more claustrophobic, horrific, and yes, futile aspects involved with the specialized Tokk\u014d platforms could be avoided. Instead, in the stock Tokk\u014d story arc of the era, you have these dashing young men sitting around a single barracks room set, delivering soliloquys and speeches about the meaning of it all, then donning white pilot scarves and boarding their planes at the end of the movie to fly off into the clouds \u2013 literally disappearing into the heavens — as the credits roll and the stirring music kicks in. No blood-and-guts horror, no killing, no futility depicted. Fukuma Yoshiaki wrote a great media studies treatment some years back now on the postwar cinematic treatment of Tokk\u014d. I would love to translate that someday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read it all at http:\/\/japanfocus.org\/-M_G_-Sheftall\/4326\/article.html<\/a><\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now up with critique from an unexpected quarter is an extended interview I did with Dr. M.G. “Bucky” Sheftall on the WWII Japan Tokk\u014d “Kamikaze” suicide missions, which appeared in an abridged version in the Japan Times as my JBC column on May 4 2015. This longer version features more questions from me and more candor from Bucky. Here’s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s Kamikaze Suicide Pilots Exhibit at the USS Missouri in Honolulu: an interview with M.G. Sheftall
\nThe Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 22, No. 1, June 08, 2015
\nDr. ARUDOU Debito, Dr. M.G. Sheftall<\/p>\n

4) You mentioned earlier about other Tokk\u014d missions, including the suicide motorboats. But we hear mostly about the pilots, hardly ever about the other types of Tokk\u014d. Tell us a little more about these other branches, and why you think the pilots have garnered all the attention, especially in popular culture and at Yasukuni Shrine, where they are more famously enshrined as heroes?<\/p>\n

Sheftall: In addition to the iconic self-immolating bomb-laden fighter plane version of Tokk\u014d almost anyone inside or outside of Japan associates with the term \u201cKamikaze\u201d, there were three other major Tokk\u014d platforms that we could deem significant in terms of: 1) the expenditure involved in their development and production; 2) the initial expectations the Japanese military had for their success; and 3) the loss in human lives caused by their deployment. These were the Kaiten (\u201cFortune-reverser\u201d) manned torpedo, the Shin\u2019y\u014d (\u201cOcean-shaker\u201d) rammer-motorboat, and the \u014cka (\u201cCherry Blossom\u201d) manned rocket bomb \u2013 which was essentially a 1940s cruise missile with a human being in place of a computerized guidance and target acquisition system. Really brutal contraption.<\/p>\n

In any case, all three of these platforms were bitter disappointments for the Japanese military. Each of them resulted in over a thousand \u201cfriendly\u201d fatalities involved in attempts to deploy them \u2013 this is also counting the crew members of the \u201cmotherships\u201d ferrying the Kaiten and \u014cka (specially modified fleet submarines for the former, and specially modified twin-engined bombers for the latter) into battle \u2013 while only causing a few hundred Allied casualties in total between the three of them, as compared with \u201cconventional\u201d aviation Tokk\u014d, which caused some 15 thousand Allied casualties just in the Battle of Okinawa alone. So, right off the bat I would say that this dismal operational history is certainly a sizable factor behind the rather low profile \u2013 and the poor reputation, when known at all \u2013 of these specialized Tokk\u014d weapons in the postwar Japanese public imagination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,22,20,4,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-cultural-issue","category-history","category-japanese-government","category-tangents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}