"Well, if you dare to act, the devil may avoid you."


Japanese Imperial Navy Admiral Matome Ugaki's philosophical response to projected suicide attack on US invasion fleet off the Philippines 66 years ago this October...

Meanwhile, Admiral Takijiro Onishi was organizer of a Kamikazi Special Attack Corps -- to help the Japanese fleet action against American vessels involved in the Philippines operation.

"Onishi was the brilliant, volatile air expert who had once slapped a geisha and dispatched Japanese POWs to their deaths, each for the same crime -- insufficient attention to duty..."

NOTE: We read elsewhere that the geisha in question was sullen. And in public to boot!

And as for the Japanese POWS?

Even worse! They were experienced Japanese combat pilots who had escaped from an Allied POW camp and were mistakenly convinced they would be welcomed back home to fly again.

They were, so to speak!

To fly one - way daylight reconnaissance missions over Port Moresby, and be automatically blown out of the sky in the process.

Their crime?

They forgot that Japanese military were forbidden to allow themselves to be taken prisoners by the enemy.

Source for both of these items: Page 183 of Evan Thomas' Sea of Thunder, published in 2006.


Yet, the Kamikazes came to do damage aginst the American Fleet off Okinawa in 1945!


Source: the footnote on the bottom of page 332:

"At Okinawa, the Japanese sunk thirty - four war ships, the largest a destroyer.

"Another 368 ships were damaged, including eight carriers, four escort carriers, ten battleships, five cruisers and sixty - three destroyers..."