Thunder Gods

Rating:
Summary: Not to be read whilst drinking sake.
Review: A simply devastating read this is, the effect of which will no doubt linger on well after the final pages have been turned. Its terse prose will hook the reader in right from the beginning, the portentous introduction and foreward only serving to heighten the dread he will feel on entering. The most potent thing about it is the simple way it grapples with its subject matter, long misunderstood in the west, which has posed the question: how could such a powerful nation, approaching the middle of the twentieth century -a supposedly enlightened age- reach such a level of decrepitude that it thrust an entire youth-generation into the cockpits of these ohka planes, sending them to their deaths? Between the pages of this book you will learn that the Empire wasn't a country of maniacal monsters hell-bent on massacre and world domination, but one of incredible pride. That the men who chose to die did not have death-wishes they were compelled to fulfil in the name of the Emporer. They were simply young men caught up in a grim campaign, naive and ill-educated enough to believe that if the Allies landed in Japan, everything they stood for tould topple; the men would be butchered, the women raped. In light of this, what more would it demand of a soldier to choose the course of death that brought with it a two-level rise in military rank and to know that he died with dignity. When the mission was first proposed, even its leaders were skeptical, as were those who designed the ohka craft, only too aware of the consequences. Such a vehicle could only ask of its pilot the sacrifice of his life. Towards the end however, one senses that the powerful, faceless machine that comprised the Navy, knowing that defeat was imminent, became a bit too zealous in its execution of the campaign. Setting the stage for the ultimate tragedy of the book which called for the drafting of military personnel to their deaths. Not a pleasant book by any means, but certainly not difficult to get through.