Last Letters of Young Kamikaze Pilots Japan’s Feared Special Attack
When one imagines a kamikaze pilot, one most often pictures a screaming pilot taking a fatal drop while wearing goggles. Or maybe there would be no face at all, just a fighter jet slamming into a cruiser.
Most likely, it's not a youngster sobbing with his bedsheets drawn up over his head in a musty, partially subterranean bunker.
And most definitely not a group of happy high school students cuddling a dog a few hours before they were supposed to burn to ashes while sinking a US aircraft carrier.
However, the walls of the Chiran Peace Museum and the Kanoya Air Base Museum, both situated on the island of Kyushu in Japan, display some of the actual faces of the kamikaze.
They number in the hundreds.
Their final words, frequently written in letters to their moms, are seen in man...