Risa Morimoto’s Wings of Defeat is a documentary on Japanese World War II Kamikaze pilots who survived. The American-born Morimoto travels to Japan to learn more about her deceased uncle who survived his Kamikaze service, but never spoke about it for the rest of his life. Wings of Defeat focuses on the often overlooked psychological and emotional aspect of World War II from the position of the vanquished Japanese. Through a series of interviews with both former Kamikaze (some of which were speaking about their experiences for the first time in sixty years) and American seamen, Morimoto provides the viewer with a firsthand account of the final days of World War II in the Pacific.
I feel that Wings of Defeat is appropriate for high school upperclassmen and college students. Since the documentary shows a few disturbing photographs of burned corpses and dead bodies, the subject matter is more appropriate for older students to handle psychologically. I would be comfortable showing the film in my eleventh grade classroom. Before doing so, I would like more statistical information on the Kamikaze attacks. According to the PBS website on Kamikaze attacks -(http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/psychology/the_kamikaze_threat/) 300 American warships were sunk or damaged by Kamikaze pilots, resulting in 15,000 American casualties and several thousand Japanese deaths. Morimoto claims that over 6,000 Kamikaze pilots died during their missions. My question is how many survived? Morimoto shows that Japanese men were embarrassed by their service as Kamikaze. Were all of the survivors embarrassed as time passed and Japan westernized? How can a nation that was so nationalistic and militaristic during World War II ignore men who gave such a sacrifice? These questions would come up in class discussion, and I would like to be able to give accurate answers to my students.
As previously stated, Risa Morimoto tells the story of Kamikaze pilots who survived World War II. Each man interviewed has a different story to tell. Some of these men survived because they were not deployed on an actual mission before war’s end. One man crashed landed on a Japanese island during his mission, and actually went back to the mainland to fly again. None of these men actually volunteered to be Kamikaze. All served as pilots, and were transferred to the Kamikaze division of the Japanese Air Wing. While each man seems to look at their service differently, none of them seem to feel guilty that they survived. Morimoto’s interviews show that these men were not crazed warriors who wanted to die for the Emperor. Rather, they were men trapped in a situation spiraling out of control. Some realized that the war was lost for Japan, and some did not tell their parents that they were Kamikaze. After being pumped full of sake, and given a one-way ticket to the afterlife, they did not back down from the challenge.
During the last year of World War II, the Japanese Empire was crumbling. The Japanese military was losing battle upon battle while Japanese industry could not keep close to America’s industrial production. As a result, Japan relied upon the only thing they had left: manpower. By strapping a 550 pound bomb on an aircraft, they created one of the most terrifying psychological weapons in military history: the Kamikaze. While the Kamikaze cost the United States countless lives and a tremendous amount of military supplies, they proved to be unable to stop the American onslaught. Morimoto’s interviews with American naval servicemen show the psychological impact the Kamikaze had upon the enemy. While all American sailors feared the Kamikaze, some felt sorry for their attackers did deliberately and not shoot them down, especially during the final days of the war.
Morimoto is most effective in showing the age and innocence of the Kamikaze pilot. Most of these men were not old enough to drink or vote in the United States. One man took off on his mission after learning that his wife had taken his two children and jumped into a raging river to meet him in the afterlife. They key to using Wings of Defeat in the classroom is focusing on the human element. These men knew that they were going to die, but took off anyways. What makes men do such things? They were the same age as my students, so it will be very easy to put today’s high school student in their shoes. In today’s post-Vietnam world, I will ask my students if any of them would be willing to follow in the Kamikaze’s example and die for their nation. After the vast majority of my class said no, I would explain that these Japanese men being interviewed did not have a choice. I would like them to think about what it would be like posing for a funeral portrait, and what thoughts would be going through their head as they took off from the runway, and when the enemy ships came into view. After viewing and discussing the documentary, I would ask my students to compose a 1-2 page paper explaining how they would feel and what they would be thinking about as they took off on their own Kamikaze mission. I would like them to focus on emotions and thoughts, thereby placing themselves in the cockpit of their own plane carrying one 550-pound bomb. Teaching history in today’s classroom is much more then memorizing names and dates. In my opinion, placing students in a part of our past and asking them to describe it obtains a higher level of learning. Risa Morimoto’s documentary Wings of Defeat is a useful tool in accomplishing this objective.