At War With The Wind: The Epic Struggle with Japan's World War II Suicide Bombers - Hardcover

Sears, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806528931 ISBN 13: 9780806528939

Publisher: Citadel Press, 2008

Synopsis

A Main Selection of the Military Book Club and a Featured Alternate of the History Book Club

In the last days of World War II, a new and baffling weapon terrorized the United States Navy in the Pacific. To the sailors who learned to fear them, the body-crashing warriors of Japan were known as suiciders; among the Japanese, they were named for a divine wind that once saved the home islands from invasion: kamikaze. Told from the perspective of the men who endured this horrifying tactic, At War with the Wind is the first book to recount in nail-biting detail what it was like to experience an attack by Japanese kamikazes. David Sears, acclaimed author of The Last Epic Naval Battle, draws on personal interviews and unprecedented research to create a narrative of war that is stunning in its vivid re-creations. Born of desperation in the face of overwhelming material superiority, suicide attacks by aircraft, submarines, small boats, and even manned rocket-boosted gliders were capable of inflicting catastrophic damage, testing the resolve of officers and sailors as never before. Sears s gripping account focuses on the vessels whose crews experienced the full range of the kamikaze nightmare. From carrier USS St. Lo, the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by an orchestrated kamikaze attack, to USS Henrico, a transport ship that survived the landings at Normandy only to be sent to the Pacific and struck by suicide planes off Okinawa, and USS Mannert L. Abele, the only vessel sunk by a rocket-boosted piloted glider during the war, these unforgettable stories reveal, as never before, one of the most horrifying and misunderstood chapters of World War II.

This is the candid story of a war within a war a relentless series of furious and violent engagements pitting men determined to die against men determined to live. Its echoes resonate hauntingly at a time of global conflict, when suicide as a weapon remains a perplexing and terrifying reality.

November 1, 1945 Leyte Gulf

The destroyer Killen (DD-593) was besieged, shooting down four planes, but taking a bomb hit from a fifth. Pharmacist mate Ray Cloud, watching from the fantail, saw the plane a sleek twin-engine Frances fighter-bomber swoop in low across the port side. As its pilot released his bomb, Cloud said to himself, He dropped it too soon, and then watched as the plane roared by pursued and chewed up by fire from Killen's 40- and 20-mm guns.

The bomb hit the water, skipped once and then penetrated Killen's port side hull forward, exploding between the #2 and #3 magazines. The blast tore a gaping hole in Killen's side and water poured in. By the time Donice Copeland, eighteen, a radar petty officer, emerged on deck from the radar shack, the ship's bow was practically submerged and the ship itself was nearly dead in the water.

Practically all the casualties were awash below decks. Two unwounded sailors, trapped below in the ship's emergency generator room, soon drowned. The final tally of dead eventually climbed to fifteen.

About this title

About the Author:

David Sears is a New Jersey-based business consultant and author. A former United States Navy officer with extensive sea duty aboard a destroyer, as well as a Vietnam war veteran, he is the author of The Last Epic Naval Battle: Voices from Leyte Gulf. In researching and writing At War with the Wind, he carried out extensive original research and hundreds of personal interviews.

Review:

A victor's-eye view of the desperate suicide-bombing campaign in the closing months of World War II.Former naval officer Sears (The Last Epic Naval Battle: Voices from Leyte Gulf, 2005) writes affectingly of the terror the "divine wind" campaign wrought on American sailors. Contrasting the fate of several American ships to that of USS Cole in the 2000 al-Qaeda terror attack, he demonstrates the damage that the Imperial Navy suicide bombers wrought. That campaign, he observes, was a mark of having no other options, the American fleet having destroyed most of Japan's and forcing "a stunning new 'backs-against-the-wall' paradigm for modern warfare." The author focuses on U.S. forces, though with considerable attention to the Japanese side of the equation, for which readers will also want to consult Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's provocative Kamikaze Diaries (2006) and Albert Axell's Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods (2002). Sears does a particularly good job of bringing in the various voices of the fast-dwindling corps of American survivors of hellish engagements at Leyte and Okinawa, among other places. Drawing on interviews, diaries and other sources, the author depicts men such as a Marine junior officer who, his soldiers suspected, slept at attention, in contrast with one of those fighters who weighed only 135 pounds and was "quiet, introspective, and mild mannered." Both served valiantly, as did most of their comrades, even though, by the closing months of the war, recruits were pushed through training and sent into the field as "90-day wonders fresh from Midshipman School." The horror of kamikaze steeled them - those who survived, that is, for the attacks took a terrible toll on American sailors, Marines and soldiers, which left "even the healthiest veterans perplexed and embittered at a nation, culture, and people capable of devising such attacks." Sears closes with a look at how veterans on both sides bridged the gulf between them.Of considerable interest to students of the Pacific War. (Kirkus Reviews) --Kirkus Reviews

A work of power and passion . . . The finest account of the American reaction to the furious suicide raids that attempted to turn the course of the War in the Pacific. --Donald L. Miller, author of D-Days in the Pacific

A real stunner . . . A superb narrative of life, death, and incredible heroism. --Jim Hartz, former host of Today

"Thorough and vivid . . . A timely, absorbing book." --John C. McManus, author of Alamo in the Ardennes

"Gripping naval combat writing . . . Sears pulls no punches in this powerful account of the sheer terror that was kamikaze warfare." --M. G. Sheftall, author of Blossoms in the Wind

Mesmerizing . . . With history like this, who needs fiction? Simply thrilling. --Kenneth Sewell, author of Red Star Rogue

Powerful . . . David Sears salutes American heroism in the bleakest days of the war. --H. Paul Jeffers, author of Command of Honor

Gripping . . . Sears puts readers beside the heroic American sailors in the bull's eye. --Jerome Preisler, author of All Hands Down Well-researched . . . a must for World War II book aficionados. --Steve Jackson, author of Lucky Lady --The experts praise At War With The Wind

About this edition

• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0806528931
• ISBN 13: 9780806528939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 502