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Towards the end of World War II, as US troops advanced across the Pacific, Japan resorted to a desperate strategy: kamikaze attacks. Thousands of Japanese pilots, with an average age of just 21, were ordered to crash their explosive-laden planes into enemy ships. More than 3,800 pilots gave up their lives, killing over 7,000 allied naval personnel. Our reporter Mélodie Sforza met one of the last surviving former kamikaze pilots.
Kamikaze literally means "divine wind". But since 1945, the word has come to represent the Japanese pilots who laid down their lives to defend Japan at the end of World War II. The conflict was coming to an end, and with the advance of US troops and the exhaustion of Japanese forces, it was a radical, desperate strategy.
Thousands of young pilots, with an average age of 21, were told to deliberately crash their explosive-laden planes into enemy warships. It's estimated that almost 4,000 pilots sacrificed their lives and killed over 7,000 allied naval personnel, as well as sinking several dozen warships and damaging many more.
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At the time, the pilots were elevated by propaganda to the status of gods of war. But some survivors describe a much more complex reality.
Kunitake Toriya is one of the last surviving kamikaze pilots. In the spring of 1945, he too received his mission order and trained for several months for a suicide attack. But just as his deployment was approaching, Japan surrendered. Taken prisoner by the Soviets, he spent nearly two years in captivity before returning to Japan.
Now 99 years old, he remembers exactly how his comrades felt during the war. "Nobody wanted to die. Ninety-nine percent of them took off because it was an order. They had no other choice."
More than 80 years on, the legacy of the kamikaze pilots is deeply controversial. For some, they remain heroes who died for their country. For others, they are unwelcome symbols of Japan's militaristic past.
