“An honorable death in their countries eyes”

“An honorable death in their countries eyes” is the name I have produced for the story “ Japan’s Kamikaze Pilots And Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War And Terror” by Yuki Tanaka. The author is a Japanese born research professor at the Hiroshima peace institute and holds a PhD from the university of Australia. In addition to these accomplishments Tanaka is usually noted for writing a collection of war themed books with internal messages (Ackley, Blank, Hume, pg 294).

            As I soar into the opening of the story, I notice the organizational statistics of the Japanese Imperial navy and armed forces. The further I read into the story I start to notice comparisons between the Japanese kamikaze pilots and Palestinian suicide bombers, I identify the thesis. The main idea of the story is: the thoughts and ideas of kamikaze pilots have a direct correlation with the thoughts and ideas as terrorists or suicide bombers authorized by organizations outside a state structure.

            The purpose of this paper was to show or highlight the differences between the kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers even though in the eyes of the enemy they appear to have the same goal. The intended audience is society or maybe military historians, with the hope to display the thoughts of these young Japanese soldiers who were thought to be crazy and classed as inhumane. I also feel that the author is letting the reader know how being a kamikaze pilot in Japans eyes was an honorable way to die.

            The first quote I enjoyed and found effective was “ As surviving former kamikaze pilots point out, in contrast to contemporary terrorist bombers, their targets were always military planes, ships and personnel, never civilians”(Tanaka, 298). I found this quote really relayed the purpose of this paper. It perfectly illustrates a key difference between the two variables. This story is full of convincing quotes, however another quote that I found very interesting was “Another similarity between kamikaze and suicide bombing is the huge technological gap in military capability between suicide attackers and their enemies”(299). This quotes goal was to illustrate the reader on how little technology went into these ideas of suicide or kamikaze pilots as it was usually created by lack of technology and by default. On the other hand, the quote I felt was least effective was “ Rather religion and ideology are used to justify and formulate their cause of self sacrifice and to rationalize the killing enemies, whether military or civilians”(299). I found this quote going into the religion terms and sort of putting both variables in the same category, which might be correct for one but not the other.

            “ Japan’s Kamikaze Pilots And Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War and Terror”(294), is a pretty detailed description into the minds of these individuals who sacrifice their own lives, which in turn rattles the norms of society.

Do you think that the Kamikaze pilots of Japan and the suicide bombers of Palestine have the same goal in mind?