Odachi wanted to fly and he wanted to be in the Navy rather than the army. At the age of 17 he was piloting Zero's against American fliers in the Pacific. When he joined, Japan was already in trouble because the Zero was already out classed by the F6F Hellcat and parts for damaged aircraft were in short supply. Then the Japanese military leadership decided to create Kamikazi units sending young men on one way missions to destroy the American carriers.

What I found interesting is that these young men accepted this order without question. It was an order that you would execute to serve your country and prevent invasion of the homeland. Eventually Odachi noticed the leadership didn't fly on these one way missions and he became disillusioned in the his leaders and the purpose of the strategy. One question one might have is how he survived and the answer is that they were ordered to return to base if they could not find a carrier and he never found the American fleet. Japanese communication between planes and the planes and base was very poor by this stage of the war. His last mission on August 15, 1945 was aborted by a truck racing in front of his taxing aircraft with news of the war's end.

The book contains history of the different stages of the war and where the author was at those moments and what he was feeling. The author claims these flyers weren't fanatics but rather just doing their duty serving their country. He does not hold back on his criticism of the military leadership. ( )

Kazuo Odachi was just 16 years old when he joined the Imperial Japanese Navy as a pilot. From late 1944 to August 1945, he was assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps, whose main task was to sacrifice themselves by crashing their planes into enemy targets. Being part of a group whose raison d’être is to kill themselves for their country takes a huge psychological toll, and survival was often a question of “I wasn’t picked for this mission, but my friend was”. This book is a portrait of one individual from that time, who feels lucky to have survived and who tries to honour the lives of those who did not share his fortune.

This book was put together from interviews with Odachi and covers pretty much his entire life: not just the kamikaze pilot period, but also his time in the police force and his main hobby, Kendo. The book includes footnotes by the authors to provide additional context and explanations for non-Japanese readers, as well as sidebars to provide additional history notes. It contains two sets of photo plates, which is a nice bonus (I always like when non-fiction books have at least one set of photo plates, so two is even better).

I was reading primarily for the planes, so I have to admit my attention slowed during the later chapters, especially the ones that focused mainly on Kendo — the police force chapters were interesting in their own way.

The biggest drawback to this book was the fact that there were sufficient proofreading errors of the “missing word and words that spellcheck won’t catch” variety to distract me. I don’t generally comment on typos when I write book reviews — I’m an editor myself, and if I’m not being paid to edit something, I don’t sweat the typos. Also, even the best editors aren’t going to be able to catch every last error, because they’re (we’re) human. But the frequency, pattern, and type of error that came up in this book did jump out at me and suggested that either the second-to-last draft was printed instead of the last draft, or the book didn’t get a final copyedit, which it might have needed.

I would recommend this book if you’re interested in reading about Japanese history or little-told stories of the Second World War. ( )

An incredible story to sure, browsed upon a copy at the Museum of Flight on our first visit back since COVID.

There is a simply false assertion in a footnote that the Hull Note was equivalent to a Declaration of War. Uh, no, though I understand that might make Pearl Harbor more palatable looking back after the fact.

I was of course less interested in his later life, but that seemed petty and he earned the full telling. ( )