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KAMIKAZE PILOTS Kamikaze pilots were the first pilots known in history to deliberately employ suicide bombings to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. They i0nflicted heavy damage on high value enemy assets, particularly aircraft carriers, destroyers, and other naval vessels. About 3,913 Kamikaze pilots between the ages of 17 and 24 died in the "special attack" missions against US and Allied forces during the Japanese Pacific War (World War II). The Kikusui operation against Okinawa alone damaged 368 US warships and sunk 32. Suicide planes killed 4,900 American sailors and wounded over 4,800. These were the heaviest losses incurred in any naval campaign in World War II. The psychological effect on Allied military personnel was deliberate, calculated, and significant. Kamikaze suicide bombers typically employed small fighter planes, equipped with about a half ton of explosives each, loaded into the fusilage to inflict greater damage on their targets. A variety of other suicide terrorist tactics were also used by Japanese Army, Navy, Air Force, and civilians. Small Kamikaze submarines were less visually spectacular than planes, but likewise equipped with explosives, and used as human-guided torpedo-like bombs against naval targets. There are no accurate records of how many Japanese servicemen died in individual, spontaneous suicide attacks during the war, but this number was also apparently significant. |
The Japanese had a "no-surrender" policy throughout the war, and even civilians were prepared to take up pitchforks, or any other makeshift weapons they could find, to fight to the death against the invading Allied forces. In the US today, the prevalent historical view is that in terms of terror, only the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could effectively trump the suicical no-surrender policy of Japan, and bring about an earlier and less bloody end to the war. This justification is widely debated internationally, and the US remains to this day as the only nation to have ever used atomic weapons against either civilian populations or military targets.
A number of comparisons have inevitably been drawn between Japanese Kamikaze pilots and the September 11 terrorist suicide bombers.
Japanese people as a rule cringe at such comparisons. They say that the Kamikaze should not be called terrorists, because they were only regular military pilots, doing their legal and patriotic duty, in the conduct of war. They say that Kamikaze pilots never attacked civilian targets, but only legitimate military targets, such as naval warships and enemy military aircraft. These are distinctions which have been blurred by the changing definition of terrorism, over the last few years since September 11, 2001.
Some years back, terrorism was broadly defined in most dictionaries, as any type of coersion through terror, or fear. Such a loose definition could be construed, however, to encompass a lot of violent and coersive civil crimes, as well as any number of legal military actions, and even some police activities. Over time, newer dictionaries gradually started to narrow the definition of terrorism, to imply at least three distinctions:
( 1.) Terrorism is generally conducted by groups operating outside of any government, whereas military and police activities are conducted by governmental agencies and forces. In other words, fear-mongering and other acts of terror commited by non-governmental groups is terrorism, but the same actions, if conducted by military forces, are considered to be acts of war, or warfare. If such actions are conducted by the police, then they're called police actions, or peacekeeping activities.
( 2.) Terrorism is generally regarded to be illegal, whereas warfare and police activities can be conducted in accordance with various national and international rules and laws governing the use of military force.
( 3.) Terrorism is usually aimed at innocent civilian targets, but military forces primarily engage other military forces and military targets. The police engage criminals, but not law-abiding, or innocent civilians.
The first distinction is harder to apply in the wake of September 11, because of terms such as "state-sponsored terrorism," "terrorist regimes," and "terrorist dictators," which have been applied frequently by the US President and his administration to various nations and rulers, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Saddam Hussein. Clearly, then, the fact that the Kamikaze pilots were "state-sponsored," and operating as government employed forces, can no longer be used as an argument which precludes them from being called "terrorists."
Likewise, the second distinction, that terrorism is illegal, no longer makes as much sense, not when we freely speak of "terrorist states" and "state-sponsored terrorism," where any nation or state can pass it's own laws, approving any terrorist or black operations they choose, without any real regard to any questions of whether or not international laws, or the laws of other nations, are violated. The United States also has such laws, which "legitimize" the illegal but plausibly deniable activities of the CIA, DIA, and other government agencies, who routinely violate international laws and the national sovereignty and laws of various foreign nations, all in the service of our own secret "national security" concerns. England, Spain, Australia, France, Germany, Israel, Pakistan, and other US allies all have similar laws, as do Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, and many other countries, inside and outside of the so-called "axis of evil." Basically, any country which employs spies and "intelligence agencies" or runs covert operations has such laws.
Thirdly, the September 11 terrorist suicide bombers struck the Pentagon, clearly a military target. Terrorists do make strikes at the military, and the military, likewise, in waging war against terrorist "insurgents," has hit quite a few innocent civilians in the process. Innocent civilians have long been considered to be an unfortunate but unavoidable form of "collateral damage" to military actions, such as carpet-bombing, cruise missle strikes, "shock and awe" campaigns, and just about any type of "counter-insurgency" campaign which has taken place, in the recent past or now. Whether in Vietnam, New York, Iraq, or elsewhere, civilians are getting caught up in our wars --- in the so-called "Vietnam conflict" which was not to be called a war, or in the so-called "war on terrorism" which is called a war, but is not. Civilians on our side, civilians on their side, and foreign, unaffiliated civilians alike, are all being killed, maimed, and terrorized.
Neither the Japanese in World War II, who freely bombed civilian targets collateral to military bases in Pearl Harbor, Guam, Malay, and other targets in the Pacific and elsewhere, or any other military force since, can honestly and accurately claim that civilian targets are always excluded.
There are many who will argue to justify why civilians cannot be excluded, as casualties of war, as well as of terrorism. You can see them on TV sometimes, propagandizing us and pursuading us, like Hirohito or Hitler would, as to why we must war and make sacrifices for them.