Time-Life: The Road to Tokyo

Another book in the Time-Life series, consisting of information and the normal excellent photographs.

The British wanted to make sure they were in on the Pacific phase of the war, apparently thinking that, if the US did it all alone, basically to regain their Far East land possessions.

The book talks about the plans for kamikaze usage which was named Ten-Go (Heavenly Operation). However, many of the planes were of poor quality and there was a critical shortage of aviation fuel. The remaining ships of the fleet, including at that time the Yamato (which was sunk before it could be used in defense of the homeland against the actual anticipated invasion) would be used as a form of suicide squadron. Rather than success, however, the plan failed as six of the ten ships available were sunk in the attempt before they could get into position.

One of the reasons that the kamikaze attacks were not as successful at Okinawa was that many of the pilots did not follow orders and they attacked the first ships they saw (which were destroyers), rather than waiting and attacking higher-priority targets.

The kamikaze attacks did cause a lot of psychological stress on the US forces, however. The book also says “To many sailors, the kamikazes were inhuman instruments of terror, flown by incomprehensible fanatics whose minds had been twisted by their superiors.” The book also writes about a kamikaze attack on a clearly-marked hospital ship.

The overall toll for the Okinawa kamikaze attacks was: 1,465 kamikazes dead; 120 US ships hit, 29 sunk, over 3,000 soldiers killed or missing.

There's a lot more in the book; those are just the things I found most interesting.

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