"As for kamikaze attacks, those who ordered and encouraged them, those in commanding positions, lied. Every pilot volunteered for a kamikaze unit? 'I go! I go! I go!' -- did everyone say that? That's a lie!
It was not until November [of 1944] that we first heard about it. We were summoned to listen to a special speech from the commanding officer. He explained to us that the army was to set up its own tokkotai, and that it was starting to train pilots for the purpose at Hokota Air Base, on the Pacific coast [of Japan].
else in the squad did the same thing. No one really wanted to join the tokkotai. Of course we knew that, as pilots, we had a 99 percent chance of being killed anyway, but that 1 percent hope of surviving made all the difference in the world.
*The first officially planned kamikaze mission was carried out on 25 October, 1944, by a tokkotai set up by the naval air force at Clark Field, in the Phillippines.