Japan–Culture (Kamikaze)

 

Toward the end of World War II, some Japanese aviators, sensing the likely defeat of the Japanese Empire and taking the samurai-era sentiment “death before dishonor” to heart, crashed their planes into Allied warships hoping to inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible with their final living act. “Kamikaze” usually refers to an attack by air, but has also been used to refer to other potentially suicide-rather-than-surrender acts, such as the banzai charge, even though a kamikaze mission is different from a banzai charge in the fact that the latter is only potentially fatal.

More information:
Wikipedia on kamikazes | 2worldwar2.com’s overview of kamikazes | Kamikaze Images explores the different ways Americans and Japanese portray kamikazes

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