Of course, the appearance of such pilots cannot be explained simply by the coincidence of a number of random circumstances. Even despite the fact that the Japanese had developed their own military code of honor over the centuries, according to which it was just as honorable to die in battle as to win, it took quite a powerful propaganda for young people to go to kamikaze schools. You can even say that the echoes of this propaganda are still present. For example, such a moment that young men lined up at the recruitment points for kamikaze schools is now very widespread. But the reality was somewhat different, there were those who clearly did not want to be a one-time pilot.
Proof of this are the recollections of Kenichiro Onuki, one of the few failed (by chance) kamikazes. As Kenichiro himself recalls, enrolling in schools was voluntary and, when he was offered to enroll in one of the schools, he could refuse. However, such a refusal could be perceived not as a sensible act, but as a manifestation of cowardice, which could lead to not the best consequences for both himself and his family. Because the school had to go.
Onuki managed to survive Kenichiro only thanks to a favorable coincidence of circumstances: when other graduates went on their last flight, the engine of his plane refused to start, and soon Japan surrendered.
The word "kamikaze" is associated mainly only with the pilots, but not only the pilots went to their last fight.
In addition to the training of suicide pilots, in Japan there was another project that prepared young people from a lively homing part for torpedoes. The principle was exactly the same as with the pilots: driving a torpedo, the Japanese soldier had to send it to the vulnerable position of the enemy vessel. This phenomenon was indicated in stories as kaiten.
The technical capabilities of that time did not allow the use of guidance tools available and widespread today, although in theory it was already possible to create a similarity to homing, but this is only from the height of modern knowledge and achievements. In addition, such a development would be very expensive in production, the human resource is free and completely aimlessly walking the streets.
Several variants of torpedoes with a suicide bomber were built on board, although none of them could give an advantage to the Japanese on the water, although they had high hopes for the project. Paradoxically, but the weak point was precisely the impossibility of normal targeting, although it seemed like a man with this task had to cope with a bang. The reason was that the torpedo controller was actually blind. Of all the means that would allow him to focus on the battlefield, there was only a periscope. That is, first it was necessary to note the goal, and after that, without the ability to navigate the swim forward. It turns out that there was no particular advantage over conventional torpedoes.
To close proximity with the enemy, such submarine mini-torpedoes "tossed" the submarine carrier. After receiving the order, the kamikaze submariners took their places in torpedoes and set off on their final journey. The maximum known number of such torpedoes with a live guidance system on one submarine was 4. An interesting feature: in the first versions of such torpedoes there was a bailout system, which, for obvious reasons, did not work normally and was basically meaningless, since the speed of mass-produced torpedoes reached 40 nodes (slightly less than 75 kilometers per hour).
If you look at the situation as a whole, a lot is unclear. Among the kamikazes there were not only poorly educated, in fact, still children, but also personnel officers, respectively, simple mathematics shows not only the ineffectiveness of such attacks both in the air and under water, but also a clear financial cost. Whatever one may say, an experienced pilot could bring much more benefit precisely as a pilot, and not as a suicide bomber, taking into account the cost of his training, not to mention the cost of the aircraft. In the case of kaiten, which showed even lower efficiency, often passing goals, it is still more strange. It seems that in Japan at that time a group of people actively worked, whose main goals were to undermine the economy and promote the most unpopular ideas in the army, which even when they were silent about the real situation were not always perceived well.
Parallels between kamikazes and other suicide bombers can be infinitely long, but we will try to focus on the period of the Second World War, without taking into account the display of heroism in a hopeless situation, and consider the targeted destruction of the enemy along with them, after all these are several different things.
Speaking of Japanese kamikazes, I did not mention the “live” anti-tank grenades. It would be unfair to say how the Japanese tied anti-tank grenades to poles and in this way tried to fight American tankswhile keeping silent that in North Africa one could observe the same picture, only the struggle was already waged with German armored vehicles. The same method of dealing with Japanese armored vehicles was used in China. In the future, the Americans had to deal with anti-tank kamikazes already in Vietnam, but that's another story.
It is a well-known fact that by the end of the Second World War, kamikaze training was launched on the territory of Iran, but they didn’t have time to prepare or use the half-trained pilots because of the end of hostilities, although later they resumed training in 80's, but without use in battle.
And what happened at this time in Europe? And in Europe, for some reason, people absolutely did not want to die in this way. If you do not take into account the use of fauststrons, which were not much better than sticks with a grenade and were only suitable for fighting in the city, if you do not take into account isolated cases, then we can say that the Europeans really wanted to live. At the same time, the airplanes were sent to enemy ground targets and enemy ships were attacked, with the help of light boats filled with explosives, only people had the opportunity to evacuate, which they used and, in most cases, very successfully.
It is impossible to ignore the mention of the preparation of kamikazes, in one form or another, in the USSR. Recently, articles with an enviable regularity have appeared, for which in a decent society they can also be given in person, telling about such things. It all boils down to the fact that, based on the experience of the Japanese and individual examples of the heroism of Soviet soldiers, the possibility of creating fanatics who could sacrifice themselves without any consideration was considered. Such articles usually refer to the foreign press of the Cold War period, and not to actual facts or documents. The absurdity of the idea itself lies in the fact that in the Soviet Union there was simply no religious teaching or ideology conducive to the emergence of kamikazes.
As history shows, as well as modern events, kamikaze as a phenomenon may arise not from scratch, but with a sufficiently long cultivation of certain religious ideas and with corresponding traditions, and they are often not enough without propaganda and the threat of reprisals against relatives and friends.
In conclusion, it should be noted once again that the difference between a kamikaze who was trained and trained morally for one purpose only - to kill yourself with the enemy, and self-sacrifice in a hopeless situation - there is a huge difference - the size of an abyss. The same abyss, as between the feat of Nikolai Frantsevich Gastello and the death of Ugaki Matome.