By late 1944, Japan’s war strategy was collapsing. The Battle of the Philippine Sea that June—often called the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot—had destroyed hundreds of Japanese aircraft and most of the Navy’s remaining veteran aircrew. Japan could still build planes, but under the strain of total war it could no longer train new pilots to pre-war standards. Its conventional air power had become a hollow shell.

In this desperate situation, a drastic solution emerged: organize special attack units to crash-dive aircraft into enemy warships. The idea of turning pilots into human bombs became plausible, then policy, and finally doctrine. Suicide attempts had occurred earlier in the war, when crippled planes tried to hit targets rather than ditch at sea, but those had been isolated, spur-of-the-moment decisions. Now desperation formalized the tactic and built an entire operational doctrine around it.

The first organized kamikaze missions began in the Philippines after American landings on Leyte in October 1944. The Imperial Japanese Navy created a Special Attack Force, and Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi, newly appointed to lead the First Air Fleet in the Philippines, approved the unit for combat operations. Most kamikaze pilots flew outdated fighters or dive bombers modified for suicide missions, usually with a bomb of 250 to 500 kilograms slung beneath the fuselage. Guns were removed, sometimes radios and other equipment too, all in an effort to reduce weight and increase speed.

Many of these pilots had been drafted into flight training straight out of high school or college. With no time for months of advanced instruction or realistic combat exercises, training was brief and focused only on basic flying skills. Some pilots spent as little as forty hours in the cockpit before their final mission. Accidents were common.

Before taking off, the pilots took part in elaborate sendoff ceremonies. They were given white headbands bearing slogans of courage and the rising sun symbol. Schoolgirls and local civilians gathered to wave cherry blossom branches or flags, framing the mission as both sacred and communal. The reasons individual pilots flew cannot be reduced to a single motive.

Survivors describe a wide range of pressures: loyalty to comrades, fear of social shame, patriotic duty, fatalism, and, for some, sincere conviction that the mission was essential. Some pilots wrote passionately about giving their lives for the emperor or defending their families from invaders. Others expressed sorrow and regret, worrying more about the pain their deaths would cause loved ones. Several survivors stated that many pilots did not want to die but saw no other alternative under the pressures of wartime Japan.

To refuse a kamikaze mission would be seen not just as personal cowardice but as a betrayal of family and country. On October 25, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, kamikaze aircraft from the Shikushima squadron attacked American escort carriers off Samar. One crashed into the escort carrier USS St. Lo, detonating its bomb load and sinking the ship with heavy casualties.

Other attacks damaged several more carriers and destroyers. The Japanese high command, desperate for signs of hope, was overjoyed. What began as a limited experiment quickly became a permanent system. Both the army and navy established kamikaze units, assigning them airfields in Taiwan, the Philippines, and eventually Japan.

The Americans were initially shocked by the savagery of the tactic. Radar and combat air patrols could often detect incoming raids, but kamikaze pilots dove straight through fighter defense and antiaircraft fire at high speed and low altitude, leaving very little time to react. A fuel-laden aircraft slamming into a ship at several hundred kilometers per hour could penetrate decks and start catastrophic fires. Between October 1944 and January 1945, kamikaze attacks sank or helped sink numerous combat ships and transports and severely damaged many more, including fleet carriers.

But these successes came at a staggering cost, with thousands of Japanese aircraft and pilots lost. The attacks caused havoc among American forces in the area, but they did not prevent the capture of the Philippines and did nothing to stop Japan from being cut off from its southern resource areas. The Battle of Okinawa, Japan’s final major defensive battle before the planned invasion of the home islands, marked the peak of the kamikaze campaign. Beginning in late March 1945, waves of kamikaze aircraft from bases in Japan and Formosa attacked Allied ships around Okinawa.

Over the next three months, more than 1,500 kamikaze sorties were launched in a series of massive, well-planned strikes. It was the deadliest location US naval forces encountered during the war. Over the course of the Okinawa campaign, kamikaze attacks sank 36 ships and damaged 368 more, causing roughly 10,000 casualties, about half of them killed. Destroyers and smaller ships stationed on radar picket duty in outlying positions were especially vulnerable.

These ships sat far from the main fleet to provide early warning of incoming raids, and they bore the brunt of large-scale assaults. Yet even this level of savagery could not shift the strategic picture in Japan’s favor. The US Navy adapted by implementing a layered defense in depth. Radar picket ships on the fleet’s perimeter directed combat air patrols to intercept raids much farther out than before.

Improved antiaircraft fire and better damage control kept many badly damaged ships afloat. Combined with America’s vast industrial capacity, even serious losses could be absorbed. The Allied fleet off Okinawa continued operations, and the Marines and Army soldiers on the island kept receiving supplies and fire support. The battle ended in an Allied victory.

By mid-1945, Japan’s air and fuel resources were so depleted that major kamikaze operations became difficult to sustain. The campaign did not change the outcome of the war. It caused significant tactical damage and placed Allied forces under tremendous stress, particularly off Okinawa, but in the end it only squandered thousands of young lives in one-way missions.

It increased Japan’s losses while providing no long-term advantage.