Japan Study Special Award
Robin L. Rielly （Researcher of U.S. Naval History）
Kamikaze Attacks of World War II: A Complete History of Japanese Suicide Strikes on American Ships, by Aircraft and Other Means (McFarland Publishing, 2010)
Recipient’s remarks
The title of my work, in English, is Kamikaze Attacks of World War II: A Complete History of Japanese Suicide Strikes on American Ships by Aircraft and Other Means. (Translated into Japanese by Otabe Tetsuya.)
It is my understanding that there has been some interest in this book on the part of Japanese people since it provides answers to some questions about the kamikaze missions. Japanese military records are well-documented with regard to Japanese units and aircraft, as well as their destinations. While the Japanese military knew about the missions prior to the departure of the airplanes as they left to fight against the American forces in the battle for Okinawa, they had no way to learn the destiny of the pilots. Did they succeed or did they fail? This work attempts to fill in the missing information. As might be expected, this is an American historian’s assessment of Japanese military activities.
I believe that the term, kamikaze, is primarily a Western invention when applied to military practice. The common usage of the term in current Japanese and American cultures is the death of a person by his own hand, usually as the result of depression or an untenable life situation. In the title of my book, the term “suicide” reflects an American military view of the act. The word kamikaze refers to the typhoon that drove the Mongol fleet from Japan’s shores in Hakata Bay, northern Kyushu in 1281. The “divine wind” ended the threat from Kublai Khan and preserved Japan’s independence from Mongol domination.
I also contend that the use of the term “suicide” is somewhat inaccurate. In what we think of as a suicide, a person ends his life by his own hand for personal reasons. Most are probably depressed or may be faced with a situation from which living is not a desirable option. Accordingly, the use of “suicide” in my title reflects an American military view, and is not necessarily reflective of what we consider suicide in current Japanese and American cultures.
How did Americans come to use this term in their description of Japanese military practices? The original name for the special-attack missions was the Shimpu Tokubetsu-Kogekitai. The kanji for Shimpu were misread by Japanese-Americans assigned to the task of translating intercepted Japanese communications and were read as “kamikaze,” leading to the use of the term in American military communications.
In addition to Japanese pilots flying their aircraft into Allied ships, the so-called “suicide missions” included those of individual soldiers, speedboats of two types, (maru-re and shinyo), and manned flying bombs known as Oka. The shinyo carried an explosive charge in its bow which detonated upon impact with an enemy vessel. On the stern of the maru-re were two explosive barrels designed to be released alongside an enemy ship as the maru-re turned away. Of course, the crew of the maru-re could not escape the detonation of the explosives.
Infantry soldiers were sometimes trained in self-destructive missions using pole charges against tanks. This technique involved running up to a tank and thrusting an explosive-armed pole against the side of a tank. The tank might be disabled, but the attack was sure to cause the death of the infantryman. In other similarly extreme instances, a hole was dug in the ground and covered with branches. When a tank passed over, the infantryman stood up with an explosive charge and detonated it under the tank.
The Oka was a piloted flying bomb. The original version was designed to glide, but by the war’s end, a rocket propelled Oka had been developed. In practice, the Oka was carried underneath a bomber and released in the near vicinity of an American ship. The Oka would then glide into the enemy vessel. These new weapons and the Japanese soldiers’ willingness to utilize them led to the concept of “suicide-missions” in defense of their country.
Japan’s youth had been encouraged to engage in military-like activities for many decades after the Meiji Restoration. Changes in the Japanese school system had grown increasingly geared toward military training beginning in the 1890s, fostered in part by the Sino-Japanese war (1894) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904). School curricula fostered militarism and group cohesiveness and reinforced reverence for the emperor, particularly focusing on the combination of Emperor and state. The trend continued and, by 1925, Japanese military officers were assigned to teach military subjects in the middle and high schools throughout the country.
Imamura Shigeo, who eventually became a kamikaze pilot, recalled that as early as fourth grade, militaristic ethics courses appeared in the elementary schools in Japan and intensified throughout their education. By the time Imamura reached secondary school, students were required to wear military leggings, assemble in designated places, and march to school. Okazaki Teruyuki recalled his days at the Kurita Middle School in Nagaoka City. He entered the school in 1941 at the age of ten. Older students were screened for kamikaze pilot training and, at the age of fourteen, Okazaki was trained in how to take off in a Tachikawa Ki-9 airplane. The students also learned how to make the airplane dive, but no attempt was made to teach them how to land it. The young age of the students made it easy for them to accept the role of kamikaze pilot, for them it seemed a glorious way to serve their country. Neither Imamura nor Okazaki had the chance to act upon their training due to the end of the war.
Accordingly, the terms “special-attack” or kamikaze corps have differing views in Japan and the United States. In Japan it is understood that years of indoctrination led young men to believe that the emperor was the state, and that defending either was their duty. Some Americans simply didn’t understand their motivation while others viewed them differently. As one former American Navy sailor noted: “They were brave men.”
Recipient’s biography
Robin Rielly is the author of sixteen books and additional publications focusing on naval history, as well as martial arts history and practice.
After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Rider University and a Master’s Degree in Japanese area studies from Seton Hall University, he worked in the field of education as a history teacher and department supervisor for the Freehold Regional High School District in New Jersey. He retired after thirty-two years of service. While teaching, he also studied at Rutgers University and completed all coursework and examinations for a PhD in Japanese history.
Although the author has been a lifelong resident of New Jersey, he was exposed to Japanese history and culture beginning in his late teenage years. He joined the U. S. Marine Corps in 1961 and was stationed near Yokohama, Japan, for eighteen months. Upon arriving in Japan, he quickly found the Kobukan dojo in Yokohama where he studied Japanese martial arts. His instructor there, Sensei Nagaoka Fumio, taught Shin Kage Ryu, a combination of jujitsu and karate.
Upon returning to the United States in 1963, Mr. Rielly contacted a Nippon Karate Kyokai (JKA) instructor, Master Okazaki Teruyuki, a graduate of Tokyo’s Takushoku University. He had moved to the U.S. and was teaching in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rielly studied under Okazaki for many years as he continued his advancement in Japanese martial arts. He also began to teach karate upon entering college as a way to finance his tuition, and he is still practicing and teaching karate more than sixty years later as a hachidan.
While training at the dojo in Yokohama, he was befriended by two Japanese students who introduced him to the language and cultural aspects of Japanese family life. He was also fortunate to have answered an advertisement in the Japan Times from a college professor seeking an American to provide English language practice for his two college-age children. The family took him on outings to many cultural sites and provided him the opportunity to learn some basic Japanese language. These experiences piqued his interest in Japanese history and culture and influenced him to pursue advanced academic degrees.
Robin Rielly’s first book was published in 1970. His early works dealt with the history and practice of the martial arts. In 1989, his father introduced him to an organization of American Navy veterans who served on LCS(L) gunboats in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Through that association, he began to research the history of his father’s ship and eventually the wartime actions of all of the ships participating in the region. Five of his books depict American naval activities in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Several of his martial arts books have been translated into other languages, including Vietnamese, French, Russian, and Portuguese as well as two of his naval history books which have been translated into Japanese: Kamikazes, Corsairs and Picket Ships: Okinawa 1945 (Casemate Publishing, 2008) and Kamikaze Attacks of World War II: A Complete History of Japanese Suicide Strike on American Ships, by Aircraft and Other Means (McFarland Publishing, 2010). Expert translation of these two books into Japanese was done by Otabe Tetsuya, with whom the author has worked for many years.
His other works on WWII include: Kamikaze Patrol: The LCS(L)(3)61 at War (National Association of LCS(L) 1-130 (1996),Mighty Midgets at War: The Saga of the LCS(L) Ships in World War II (Hellgate Press (2000), American Amphibious Gunboats in World War II (McFarland Publishing (2013).
His latest book, River Warfare in Vietnam: A Social, Political, and Military History, 1945 to 1975, was published by the McFarland Publishing Company in 2024. He is currently working on a new book comparing European chivalry and Japanese bushido.
