It’s one of the most infamous images of World War II. A lone Japanese aircraft, smoke trailing, diving straight into an American warship. No attempt to pull up, no last-minute ejector seat. Just a fiery explosion, a pilot willingly riding the plane to oblivion. The Kamikaze.
To us in the 21st century, the idea seems incomprehensible. Why would a young man, barely trained, volunteer for certain death? Were they all fanatic warriors, blinded by ideology and eager to die for the emperor? Or was something else at play?
As with most things in history, the reality is far more complex, and far more tragic. The Kamikaze weren’t a monolithic group of eager martyrs. They were human beings, caught in the tides of a collapsing empire, forced into an impossible decision—one that would often leave them no choice at all.
The Great Hypocrisy: A Death Sentence in Disguise
One of the most staggering revelations about the Kamikaze program is that Japan’s top military brass never made it an official part of the Imperial Navy or Army. Why? Because that would mean issuing direct orders for men to commit suicide in the name of the Emperor—something that was legally and ideologically problematic.
Instead, they wrapped it in the illusion of choice. The Kamikaze squadrons were framed as volunteer corps, allowing the government to claim that these young men were eagerly offering their lives for Japan. In reality, it was a brilliantly crafted form of coercion.
Young pilots weren’t told, You must die for your country. Instead, they were summoned to a hall, given a passionate speech about duty, honor, and patriotism, and then told, Step forward if you wish to volunteer.
Now imagine being a 19-year-old airman in 1944, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with your fellow pilots. You’re in a room full of your peers. Your superior officers are watching. Some step forward immediately. Others hesitate. And then it dawns on you:
If you don’t step forward, what does that say about you?
What if the process was reversed, and you had to step forward to refuse? Who would dare?
What if you were blindfolded, asked to raise your hand if you wanted to volunteer—but the sound of shifting uniforms told you that nearly everyone else had done it? What if you alone refused?
In some cases, men who refused were placed on suicide missions anyway, their names added to lists by commanding officers who were proud to report that their entire unit had volunteered.
This wasn’t volunteering. It was social entrapment.
And it wasn’t just peer pressure. There were material consequences, too. Soldiers who refused would often be reassigned to the most dangerous frontlines, places like Okinawa, where death was just as certain—but far slower, far uglier.
When the only options are a quick, honored death or a prolonged, brutal one, can you really call that a choice?
The Psychological Toll: Trapped in Brotherhood
Many of these young pilots weren’t just afraid of their superiors—they were afraid of abandoning their comrades.
Soldiers who had already seen their friends take off on one-way missions couldn’t bear to be the ones left behind. It was one thing to question your commanding officers. It was another to live with the knowledge that while your comrades had given their lives, you had chosen to stay alive.
This mindset appears again and again in the letters left behind by Kamikaze pilots. One airman quoted an old Japanese poem:
“Falling cherry blossoms, remaining cherry blossoms also be falling cherry blossoms.”
The message? If one soldier died, the others were expected to follow.
Some pilots didn’t want to die, but they convinced themselves that they had to—because the others had.
And this emotional manipulation worked.
Even those who didn’t fully believe in the mission rationalized it by convincing themselves that death was inevitable anyway. One third of Kamikaze recruits in 1945, according to military surveys, remained undecided about their mission—but they still went through with it, because what else were they supposed to do?
The Corruption in Selection: Who Really Went to Die?
Here’s something that never shows up in wartime propaganda: not all Kamikaze volunteers were actually sent on suicide missions.
There were unspoken exemptions—and they had nothing to do with skill or patriotism.
- Sons of elite families—military officers, politicians, businessmen—were quietly left off the final lists.
- Firstborn sons were often spared because they were expected to care for their parents.
- Pilots with valuable technical skills were passed over because their expertise was needed elsewhere.
Who was left?
- The youngest, second and third sons who weren’t necessary for family survival.
- The poorer recruits, who didn’t have family influence to shield them.
- Those who were physically fit but lacked strategic value elsewhere.
One airman, Fujii Masaharu, was disliked by his superior officer—so he was “tapped” to lead a Kamikaze squadron purely out of spite. When the order was given, he knew he had no choice. He sarcastically told his fellow doomed pilots, “Let’s bite into the ground of Okinawa together.”
This wasn’t a glorious sacrifice. This was a death lottery rigged against the powerless.
The Collapse of Morale
By mid-1945, even Kamikaze pilots themselves had lost faith in the war.
There was a time when patriotic songs were sung before missions. But by the Battle of Okinawa, a strange thing happened:
Pilots stopped singing about glory.
Instead, the song most often sung in the barracks was “Lullaby from Itsuki,” a children’s folk song about a lonely girl longing to return home.
That tells you everything you need to know.
By June 1945, some Kamikaze pilots weren’t proud of what they were about to do. They weren’t eager warriors ready to die for the Emperor.
Many were exhausted, defeated, and emotionally dead long before they stepped into their cockpits. Some admitted in their diaries that they simply wanted their deaths to come quickly—just to end the agony of waiting.
Kamikaze weren’t Japan’s secret weapon. They were its final confession—an admission that the war was lost and that the only thing left was to send its youngest generation to die pointlessly.
The Aftermath: Japan’s Complicated Reckoning
After the war, Japan had no idea what to do with the legacy of the Kamikaze pilots.
At first, they were viewed as an embarrassment—symbols of a desperate, failed strategy that had accomplished nothing. The term Kamikaze became derogatory, shorthand for reckless and suicidal behavior. Even former Kamikaze pilots who had survived criticized the strategy as useless slaughter.
But over time, the public memory of these pilots softened. Not because they had achieved victory, but because they had been victims, too—young men coerced, pressured, and manipulated into dying for an empire that had already lost.
Today, in places like Chiran, Japan, nearly a million people visit the Kamikaze memorial each year. Not to celebrate them as heroes, but to honor them as lost sons, sacrificed for a doomed cause that they never truly had a choice in serving.
Because in the end, that’s the real story of the Kamikaze.
It wasn’t about volunteers. It was about trapped men with no way out.