Speaker 1: It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Another hour of The
Speaker 1: Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, fantastic Tuesday. And like
Speaker 1: we do from time to time, not all the time,
Speaker 1: not often, we're driving the show off the rails tonight.
Speaker 1: No more politics, at least for this hour. I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to get it all done tonight. I don't
Speaker 1: know how long it will take me, but we are
Speaker 1: going to do the history of the comic Colze in
Speaker 1: World War Two, per your request. It was overwhelming how
Speaker 1: many people wanted to talk about this and learn about this.
Speaker 1: So if you missed last night's third hour, that is
Speaker 1: a good primer to get where we are now.
Speaker 2: You don't need it, but it would help. And it's free.
Speaker 1: iHeart Spotify iTunes, go download that, listen to it. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to cover all the background again of the
Speaker 1: Mongol invasion and the culture and the different things, so
Speaker 1: tonight we are going to begin essentially where we left
Speaker 1: off last night. Allow me to recap in about thirty
Speaker 1: seconds to a minute. Though Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, they
Speaker 1: are not under the impression, contrary to popular belief, that
Speaker 1: they were going to knock us out of the war.
Speaker 1: They knew that we were going to get in the war.
Speaker 1: They knew that was going to get us into the war.
Speaker 1: The intention was to slow us down enough so they
Speaker 1: could dig in and take all the territory they wanted, Philippines,
Speaker 1: places like that, and then they would make it too
Speaker 1: bloody for us to take it back. We would do
Speaker 1: what countries had really always done, sue for peace. Even
Speaker 1: if they lose, they win because at the end they
Speaker 1: have more territory than they originally did. It works out
Speaker 1: great for them. Now here's what some people may not know.
Speaker 1: Most people have heard of the Battle of Midway, But
Speaker 1: the Japanese were It's hard not to admire this about them.
Speaker 1: When you look at World War Two. There's all kinds
Speaker 1: of things to hate about the Japanese and all kinds
Speaker 1: of things to love and admire. They were majorly aggressive.
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor was awful, right, it was terrible. I hate it,
Speaker 1: you hate it. That's quite an aggressive move. That's a
Speaker 1: bold move. Load up your fleet, sneak it across the Pacific,
Speaker 1: which they did. They took off in the fog, sneak
Speaker 1: it across the Pacific and attack. So I had mentioned
Speaker 1: that early in World War Two, it was going poorly
Speaker 1: for us, really for all the Allies. Nineteen forty one
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, these were bad years, and Japan was
Speaker 1: running into something. They were beating us, or at least
Speaker 1: getting us to withdraw on many occasions, certainly in naval battles,
Speaker 1: we would square off with the Japanese navy, you know,
Speaker 1: our navy squaring off against their navy. We lost a
Speaker 1: lot of those engagements. We lost a lot of them.
Speaker 1: We were losing men. They were really good. Are planes
Speaker 1: in the sky. Mitsubishi Everyone knows who Mitsubishi is, the
Speaker 1: car manufacturer of Mitsubishi well as Japanese, and they created
Speaker 1: a World War two fighter plane for the Japanese known
Speaker 1: as the Zero. You would known as a zero if
Speaker 1: you know anything about it. It's a Mitsubishi Zero. It
Speaker 1: was really good. These guys were good. We were running
Speaker 1: into good good ships, good navy, good air.
Speaker 3: These people are good at what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And the Japanese thought, well, I mean, we're winning a
Speaker 1: lot of these engagements. Why don't we keep going? But
Speaker 1: here was always the problem lurking underneath the surface for
Speaker 1: the Japanese. They did not have the industry They did
Speaker 1: not have the economy that could rebuild the things they
Speaker 1: would lose. Even good things will get broken in combat.
Speaker 1: They didn't have the economy they could rebuild it, and
Speaker 1: they didn't have the economy that could improve it. When
Speaker 1: I say improve it, you've heard of a Panzer tank.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's a German tank, one of the German
Speaker 1: tanks that tigers and panzers and all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: There were several different versions of a panzer. A panzer
Speaker 1: didn't exist. There was version one, and version two, and
Speaker 1: version three and version They were always improving it. As
Speaker 1: combat goes along, your enemy learns what you can do,
Speaker 1: learns what you can't do, learns your weaknesses, and so
Speaker 1: they're improving their counter weapons. So you have to improve
Speaker 1: your weapons. Japan couldn't do that. Their first punch was brutal,
Speaker 1: of course brutal. They didn't really have a second one.
Speaker 1: I say that because Midway Comes. Midway is a tremendous
Speaker 1: victory for America. We cannot really fully understand what a
Speaker 1: catastrope loss it was for Japan. You already know the
Speaker 1: story of Midway. Midway Island. It's an island about midway
Speaker 1: between Japan and US. It's out in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ocean, so it got its name. We had broken
Speaker 1: their codes. We were reading their transmissions. We found out
Speaker 1: they were going to attack Midway and they were going
Speaker 1: to keep going. Remember the Japanese were coming for Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Did you know that, not just Pearl Harbor, they were
Speaker 1: coming back to take it. Midway was part of the
Speaker 1: step to do that. We found out they had this
Speaker 1: big fleet coming to Midway. We brought our big fleet
Speaker 1: out to Midway, and essentially, on a large scale, we
Speaker 1: ambushed them, and we slapped them around good, and we
Speaker 1: sunk their carriers, and we took not only their planes
Speaker 1: out of the sky. This is going to matter for
Speaker 1: our kamikaze purposes, not just their planes, their pilots. The
Speaker 1: Japanese had excellent pilots and excellent planes. We had more.
Speaker 1: Ours were getting better by this point in time, and
Speaker 1: we won that engagement. Don't get me wrong, we lost
Speaker 1: a lot of great men. The Japanese knew what they
Speaker 1: were doing. But at the end of Midway, yes, we
Speaker 1: had some damage, plenty of damage. They had plenty of damage.
Speaker 1: But we are in were America. We'll go back and
Speaker 1: make more planes.
Speaker 2: We have an.
Speaker 1: Amazing training system. Because of our financial situation in the country,
Speaker 1: our train you know, finances helped training too. Our pilots
Speaker 1: would get six hundred hours of training time before they
Speaker 1: went to combat. By the end of the Japanese involvement
Speaker 1: in World War Two, their pilots were going out with
Speaker 1: two hundred hours. All right, we just had better training,
Speaker 1: We had better more planes, more ships. We quickly replaced
Speaker 1: everything they couldn't After midway, they have to surrender all
Speaker 1: their plans. No more trying to take Hawaii, no more nothing.
Speaker 1: Now Here is the situation for pan And we look
Speaker 1: at this understandably as Americans as we begin our long, brave,
Speaker 1: hard slog across the Pacific Island, hopping on our way
Speaker 1: to Japan to finally defeat the evil Japanese who sucker
Speaker 1: punched us. And that is the correct way for an
Speaker 1: American to look at that. You and me, that's correct.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you're wrong or I'm wrong. How I
Speaker 1: look at it too. Flip this, because you have to
Speaker 1: flip this to understand the concept of kamikaze and how
Speaker 1: it came to be for the Japanese. As we discussed
Speaker 1: last night. These islands are sacred to them. They're not
Speaker 1: just land. It's not just an island. The Emperor is sacred.
Speaker 1: The islands themselves are sacred. And now after Midway, you
Speaker 1: have this huge American navy that's getting bigger by the day. Remember,
Speaker 1: by the end of World War Two, America's navy was
Speaker 1: over built.
Speaker 2: We had too many. We just we covered the oceans.
Speaker 2: You have this.
Speaker 1: Huge American Navy with the Marines obviously in the army
Speaker 1: as well. Think about it like Godzilla, because that's how
Speaker 1: the Japanese thought about it. That concept came from us
Speaker 1: slowly swimming across the Pacific, this gigantic monster of destruction
Speaker 1: swimming its way across the Pacific towards your sacred island
Speaker 1: and your sacred Emperor, and they're coming to wipe all
Speaker 1: of you out. They're coming to wipe your existence off
Speaker 1: the map. You have to understand that's how Japan saw
Speaker 1: this before we understand how they conducted themselves. Next, with
Speaker 1: the next few things that are coming, the next big one.
Speaker 1: There there are many land backs. I'm skipping over huge
Speaker 1: parts of this because it's more Comma cause he focused.
Speaker 1: But the next big one is the Battle of the
Speaker 1: Philippine Sea. But before we get to the Battle of
Speaker 1: the Philippine Sea, since we're talking about suicides and kamakazis
Speaker 1: and suicide planes and suicide subs and suicide boats and
Speaker 1: suicide torpedoes and all these other things, we keep countering
Speaker 1: things with the Japanese during this that we can't wrap
Speaker 1: our minds around. In fact, there's video of this. You
Speaker 1: can actually go look it up on YouTube and look.
Speaker 1: It's ugly and it's dark, but it is safe for kids.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'll warn you if something's not safe
Speaker 1: for kids. There's video in color. You can go look
Speaker 1: at a Japanese pilot who had been shot down. He's alive,
Speaker 1: he's intact, he's fine. A US Navy ship pulls up
Speaker 1: beside him to pull him out of the water. He
Speaker 1: pulls out a grenade and holds it to himself and
Speaker 1: blows himself up right beside the ship. It is the
Speaker 1: Jesse Kelly Show on a Fantastic Tuesday. Remember you can
Speaker 1: email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Not
Speaker 1: really a political show. Right now, we're talking history. We're
Speaker 1: talking the history of the Japanese comic coze in World
Speaker 1: War Two.
Speaker 3: And not the least bit sorry about it.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to politics maybe next hour, maybe tomorrow,
Speaker 1: I don't know. All right, So we just had Midway
Speaker 1: Japanese loss. But it was a more catastrophic loss than
Speaker 1: we understand. Because if the Japanese send fifty planes after
Speaker 1: our fifty planes, and let's say each side loses twenty
Speaker 1: five planes, that sounds even, right. It was an even battle,
Speaker 1: not even close to an even battle, because we can
Speaker 1: replace twenty five planes like it was nothing. Jewish producer
Speaker 1: Chris looked up the specific number. Here's a number for you.
Speaker 1: Out of one plant, one American plant, the United States
Speaker 1: of America could put out twenty to twenty five Hellcats
Speaker 1: in one day. The Japanese couldn't come close to matching
Speaker 1: anything like that. If we're losing the same number of
Speaker 1: things we're winning, they can't replace them. Midway happens, and
Speaker 1: now the Japanese know the gigantic monster Godzilla. He is
Speaker 1: crossing the Pacific, he's working his way across the islands,
Speaker 1: and he's coming for their homeland. Now along the way,
Speaker 1: as we're talking about suicide and throwing your life away,
Speaker 1: for Japan, for the Emperor. Americans encounter a shocking amount
Speaker 1: of this during their fighting. This is not something the
Speaker 1: Allies in Europe encountered in mass In any way. Yes,
Speaker 1: there was lots of bravery over there on both sides
Speaker 1: and self sacrifice on both sides. This is nothing like
Speaker 1: they encountered in Europe. This is a This is completely
Speaker 1: unique to the Pacific. The Japanese would be wounded or
Speaker 1: not wounded and pretending to be wounded, and they would
Speaker 1: just lay there until you would come up to them,
Speaker 1: and they'd pull a grenade. I watched eb Sledge didn't.
Speaker 1: Eugene Sledge didn't write about this in his book, which
Speaker 1: is Wonderful with the Old Breed, but he didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't read it in his book, but I watched an
Speaker 1: interview with him where he talked about how the Japanese
Speaker 1: would surrender and they would tuck a grenade with a
Speaker 1: pin pulled in each armpit, and they would have their
Speaker 1: hand up, their hands up, but their elbows would still
Speaker 1: be kind of pressed to their side, and as soon
Speaker 1: as they got close, woo, pop the elbows out, grenades
Speaker 1: come down, kill themselves. These the Japanese would strap explosives
Speaker 1: to themselves. When they couldn't slow down our tanks and
Speaker 1: throw themselves onto our tanks, they used to have to
Speaker 1: go out on what were known by some of the.
Speaker 2: Troops as.
Speaker 1: Possum patrols. You know what a possum patrol is. You
Speaker 1: know what playing possum means. Playing possu means you pretend
Speaker 1: to be dead. The American troops, especially when unsupervised, they
Speaker 1: were so tired of Japanese soldiers coming back to life
Speaker 1: and killing themselves to kill an American. They would go
Speaker 1: out after a battle when they had a moment when
Speaker 1: you saw a Japanese soldier quote dead, you shot him
Speaker 1: in the head. You didn't walk up, You didn't try
Speaker 1: to render aid, you didn't none of those things. You
Speaker 1: learned very early on that guy can kill you and
Speaker 1: will kill you. He'll kill himself to kill you. So
Speaker 1: they's just stopped even trying. Boom you put one in
Speaker 1: his head right away. Japanese troops, in every form, killing
Speaker 1: themselves to kill you was part of their culture. It
Speaker 1: was ingrained in their military culture. The Kamikazi. As we
Speaker 1: work our way towards them, it's treated as some radical
Speaker 1: new concept. They came up with and you may consider
Speaker 1: it radical. I may consider it radical. It was radical.
Speaker 1: It is not a huge departure from how the Japanese
Speaker 1: fought that war the entire time. And keep this in mind.
Speaker 1: They just lost midway. Godzilla is swimming towards the islands,
Speaker 1: and they are getting more and more desperate the closer
Speaker 1: Godzilla gets there, as you would be as well, desperate,
Speaker 1: desperate in.
Speaker 2: A way you can't imagine.
Speaker 1: And then comes the Battle of the Philippines Sea.
Speaker 2: It all adds up.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong. All this stuff adds up. But
Speaker 1: if I had to point to one battle, one significant
Speaker 1: thing that led directly to the creation of the Kama Kaze,
Speaker 1: the special attack units, we'll get to that, but the
Speaker 1: Kama Kaze, it would be the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
Speaker 1: I won't break down all the details. Will do that
Speaker 1: another time. We've talked about it kind of before. But
Speaker 1: our Navy, our forces are marching across the Pacific, sailing
Speaker 1: across the Pacific. Obviously they're not Jesus, They're not walking
Speaker 1: on water, sorry, Chris. They're marching across the Pacific, and
Speaker 1: the Japanese by now, as we discussed, they can't really
Speaker 1: replace their ships. They can't replace their good pilots. They
Speaker 1: don't have the money, the resources for a good pilot
Speaker 1: training program, and so they're really down to kind of
Speaker 1: the last of their good planes. And they've lost already
Speaker 1: most of their good pilots, but not all of their
Speaker 1: good pilots.
Speaker 2: And they look at.
Speaker 1: This fleet and they decide, we have to throw all
Speaker 1: of our ships, all of our planes at the American
Speaker 1: Now we have to fight the Battle of the Philippines
Speaker 1: Sea as if it is everything. And so they loaded
Speaker 1: up everything they had and they sent it at the Americans.
Speaker 2: Will continue in a moment.
Speaker 1: It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Remember you can email us Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com.
Speaker 1: Back to our story about the Kamakazie Godzilla is getting
Speaker 1: closer to the islands of Japan soon, the Japanese decide
Speaker 1: they need to throw everything at us in the Philippine Sea. Now,
Speaker 1: the Philippines we will get to in a few minutes,
Speaker 1: because that's really where this whole thing kind of kicks off,
Speaker 1: the kamakazi stuff kicks off. But the Philippines are now
Speaker 1: and were then a wild, wild place. I heard or
Speaker 1: read a stat on the Philippines that they have something
Speaker 1: like seven thousand islands. Isn't Isn't that completely bonkers? You
Speaker 1: don't think about the Philippines in that way whatever you
Speaker 1: know about at least I did, And obviously I knew
Speaker 1: it's an island chain thousands. That seems crazy. But not
Speaker 1: only was it crazy, it's crazy rich in resources. The
Speaker 1: Philippines they have all the resources Japan wanted. And it's
Speaker 1: not an accident. You know, the Baton Death March, that
Speaker 1: was the Philippines. Okay, that was the Philippines. Why would
Speaker 1: the Japanese pounce on us in the Philippines right after
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor? Why were they so hot to take this place?
Speaker 1: It was maybe the place they prized the most as
Speaker 1: far as resources go. They wanted to take it, They
Speaker 1: wanted to hold it, and frankly, as the war fought on,
Speaker 1: they had to hold it. Besides the Japanese home islands themselves,
Speaker 1: they valued the Philippines probably more than anything else because
Speaker 1: they had to have those rears horses. They had to
Speaker 1: have them, which brings us to the Philippine Sea. They
Speaker 1: drag up whatever navy they have left, they drag up
Speaker 1: the planes they have left, they drag up the pilots
Speaker 1: they have left, and they throw them at us in
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The Battle of the
Speaker 1: Philippine Sea, maybe you haven't heard of before, because you
Speaker 1: know what the Americans called it, the Great Marianna's Turkey Shoot.
Speaker 1: That's what they called it. Why would they call it that?
Speaker 1: We just completely annihilated them the Japan of early nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two. They could take out our ships. They're pilots
Speaker 1: who could take out our pilots. That Japan was gone.
Speaker 1: The ships were rotted, the shoot, the gasoline was bad,
Speaker 1: the pilots were bad. The planes. Remember that great Mitsubishi zero,
Speaker 1: which was great in the beginning, Well they still had
Speaker 1: some Mitsubishi zeros. But you know what I mean, Erica
Speaker 1: was doing with all of its money, with all of
Speaker 1: its resources, advancing getting better planes.
Speaker 2: Better.
Speaker 1: This better that we're churning out course airs now in hellcats.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about specifically what those are. Just know they're better, bigger, stronger, faster.
Speaker 1: The Mitsubishi Zero as the same as it ever was.
Speaker 1: They couldn't improve it didn't have the materials, didn't have
Speaker 1: the money, didn't have anything. They rolled out all their
Speaker 1: best stuff that they had in the Philippine Sea and
Speaker 1: got completely wiped out, swept off the ocean, in the air,
Speaker 1: in the sea. Now, that is not a huge battle
Speaker 1: for US historically. I mean, people know about it, who
Speaker 1: know about World War Two. But I'm going to describe
Speaker 1: that battle. This is the best way I'll describe that battle.
Speaker 1: I want you to picture this as an American. You
Speaker 1: an American. Let's say we have in our military is
Speaker 1: much bigger than this. Let's say we have five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand troops, Army, Marines, all those things. Five hundred thousand troops.
Speaker 1: Let's say the Chinese they land a couple million troops
Speaker 1: on the shore of California and they start making their
Speaker 1: way towards Washington, d C. To wipe out our government
Speaker 1: and take over our country. We take all five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand troops and we send them out to California. We're
Speaker 1: gonna stop the Chinese here. In fact, this is all
Speaker 1: we have. We have to stop the Chinese here. If
Speaker 1: they take out all these troops, what stands between them
Speaker 1: in Washington, D C. We have to stop them here,
Speaker 1: and then you wake up tomorrow morning. You roll over,
Speaker 1: wipe the sleep out of your eyes. You pick up
Speaker 1: your phone and the headline, the first headline you read
Speaker 1: is all five hundred thousand troops lost in California. That's
Speaker 1: what the Battle of the Philippine was for Japan. You
Speaker 1: just threw all you had left at us and we
Speaker 1: wiped it out without even losing that much. That was
Speaker 1: the last of your traditional I want to stress this,
Speaker 1: that was the last of your traditional forces. Our destroyers
Speaker 1: taking on your destroyers, our fighters taking on your fighters
Speaker 1: are subs versus. You tried one last big traditional battle
Speaker 1: and you didn't even scratch us. You got crushed and
Speaker 1: now you have nothing left. What are you thinking now
Speaker 1: in Japan. Well, here's the thing about warfare, and it
Speaker 1: is one thing I definitely have learned in all my
Speaker 1: time reading about history and watching history, geeking out on
Speaker 1: it the same way you geek out on it. You
Speaker 1: know who wants to fight traditionally and insists on fighting
Speaker 1: traditionally the more powerful country every single time.
Speaker 2: You know who.
Speaker 1: Resorts to tactics that are thought of as dirty gorilla,
Speaker 1: not fair, the weaker power. Everybody wants to fight. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: I don't want to become a gorilla fighter. You don't
Speaker 1: want to become a gorilla fighter. I want to raise
Speaker 1: my army and raise my ships, and raise my air force,
Speaker 1: and I want them to be more powerful than yours
Speaker 1: and wipe you off to sea, and wipe you off
Speaker 1: the land, and wipe you out of the air. But
Speaker 1: if those options become no longer available to me, then
Speaker 1: I either lay down my arms and quit, or I
Speaker 1: throw out tradition and I have to go with other means.
Speaker 1: So Japan had a choice to make. Now what are
Speaker 1: those other means? Well, as we discussed last night, you
Speaker 1: would kind of need the third hour of last night show,
Speaker 1: or at least no what I'm talking about to really
Speaker 1: fully understand this. What is the thing that Japan still has.
Speaker 1: They may not have the.
Speaker 3: Ships, they may not have the fuel, they may not have.
Speaker 1: All the fight and all the modern fighter planes and
Speaker 1: the bombs and everything else. But what do they still have.
Speaker 1: They still have an entire country of people who have
Speaker 1: been nurtured and trained, you'd call it indoctrinated, probably in
Speaker 1: a willingness to die for the emperor, in a willingness
Speaker 1: to die for the country. And that may not be
Speaker 1: as valuable as an American aircraft carrier, It may not
Speaker 1: be as valuable as fifty hellcats with well trained pilots.
Speaker 1: But it's all you've got. If it's all you've got,
Speaker 1: then you better lead with that. You better use it
Speaker 1: because it's all you've got. When I was in sales
Speaker 1: and selling RBS, I didn't know anything about our vs,
Speaker 1: no that nothing. I had never sold r v's before.
Speaker 2: I knew nothing. You know what I could do. I
Speaker 2: could make you laugh.
Speaker 1: I could make you relax, make you laugh and talk.
Speaker 1: Guess what I didn't want to do. I didn't Well,
Speaker 1: the wall is actually three quarters of.
Speaker 3: An m stick. Nope, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: I don't have that option available to me. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you a stupid joke. I'll make you laugh. You lead
Speaker 1: with whatever you've got. After the Battle of the Philippine Sea,
Speaker 1: they had to lead with their people, but they also
Speaker 1: didn't have the pilots left. As we talked about America, really,
Speaker 1: I mean, we really did it so smart. Our pilots
Speaker 1: are experienced pilots.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We'd have these pilots and they'd go, they'd fight, they'd
Speaker 1: get these kills and fight and get kills, and fight
Speaker 1: and get kills, and then we would rotate them out.
Speaker 1: We didn't want them staying in combat till they died.
Speaker 1: We'd rotate them back to America. And so these super
Speaker 1: experienced pilots were training the next generation of pilots, getting
Speaker 1: the ultimate education. Japan didn't and Japan couldn't. They didn't
Speaker 1: have the numbers. Their experienced pilots are gone. What do
Speaker 1: you do? What do you do as Godzilla swims towards
Speaker 1: the Philippines which you need? You create a special attack force.
Speaker 1: Next it is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wonderful Tuesday,
Speaker 1: talk in the history of Japanese kamic cozies. If you
Speaker 1: miss any part of the show last night and at
Speaker 1: the beginning of it, well it was a third hour
Speaker 1: of last night.
Speaker 2: Any part of the.
Speaker 1: Show ever, iHeart Spotify iTunes. Japanese lose the Battle of
Speaker 1: the Philippines Sea. They can't fight traditionally anymore, and so
Speaker 1: they come up with a plan. They decide to use
Speaker 1: what they have, and what they have is a country
Speaker 1: full of people who will will die for it, will
Speaker 1: die for the Emperor, including young pilots and they even
Speaker 1: start scarfing up people who had previously been exempted from
Speaker 1: military service. And this is something that happens in every
Speaker 1: country when it starts to lose a war. And whenever
Speaker 1: a country does this, when we read about it or
Speaker 1: talk about it, we always kind of look down on them. Oh,
Speaker 1: look at that they're conscripting teenagers. Look at that they're
Speaker 1: conscripting older people.
Speaker 3: How could they do that?
Speaker 1: But the truth is every country does it when that
Speaker 1: country gets desperate enough. When the situation gets desperate enough,
Speaker 1: countries will do it. Countries will well, they'll grab what
Speaker 1: they have. They started grabbing young Japanese men, some of
Speaker 1: whom were completely exempted from this, some of whom were
Speaker 1: already in pilot school. And they handed them a sheet
Speaker 1: of paper. And on this sheet of paper it had
Speaker 1: three choices on it. It's kind of hilarious, but the
Speaker 1: three choices were I will enthusiastically they're asking them, if
Speaker 1: you'll be a kamakzi pathot, I will enthusiastically die for
Speaker 1: the emperor, I will die for the emperor, or I
Speaker 1: refuse to die for the emperor. Two of the three
Speaker 1: were I'll die for the emperor and I do not
Speaker 1: want to sit here and act as if they were
Speaker 1: all forced or coerced.
Speaker 2: Many were all.
Speaker 1: We have to really figure out what's inside of their minds.
Speaker 1: Are the letters they wrote back home. The stories will
Speaker 1: differ depending on which book you're reading, or which documentary
Speaker 1: you're watching or podcast you're listening to. But the number
Speaker 1: I kept hearing fairly consistently was about two thirds of
Speaker 1: the Kamakzies were volunteers, willing, completely willing. As it went on,
Speaker 1: the volunteer became less and less and they had to
Speaker 1: kind of force more people, but they did find a
Speaker 1: willing population. Now pause on everything, and let's describe the
Speaker 1: few different kinds of kamakazis, because we're only really going
Speaker 1: to focus on the one really main one, the one
Speaker 1: most successful one.
Speaker 3: There were.
Speaker 1: Kama Kazi boats. These are tiny little boats. They're not
Speaker 1: very big. Japan was so hurting for parts at this
Speaker 1: time that they were putting car engines in these little boats.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to sink any money into
Speaker 1: the material of the boat. You just have to get
Speaker 1: it to where it's going, and you have to load
Speaker 1: enough explosives into it. It was paper mache. I mean
Speaker 1: it was lightwood with a car engine and a bunch
Speaker 1: of explosives in it.
Speaker 2: And the idea was.
Speaker 1: You zoom this boat up to a big American ship
Speaker 1: and simply crash it into the side of it. It
Speaker 1: had a few whose sticking out the end and when
Speaker 1: the fuse hit, boom. The reason you haven't heard that
Speaker 1: much about these is, I'm sure it happened. I could
Speaker 1: not find a documented recording of a kill of one
Speaker 1: of these things. It may have happened. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: You could welcome to email me and correct me. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it didn't happen. If it happened, it was rare.
Speaker 1: The reason we know so much about these boats is
Speaker 1: after we ended up spoiler Alert, winning the war and
Speaker 1: taking over Japan, we discovered legions of these boats all
Speaker 1: over Japan. They were preparing, They were preparing for Godzilla
Speaker 1: to be ray outside of the island. Also another form submarines.
Speaker 1: Now people confuse these two. The Japanese had Kamikazi submarines
Speaker 1: and Kamakazi torpedoes. Believe it or not, those are two
Speaker 1: different things. The submarines, again, I'm sure there were hits.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were kills. It was never done that successfully. Remember,
Speaker 1: submarine technology in World War Two on every side was
Speaker 1: nothing close to what it is today. You need to
Speaker 1: set aside your modern thinking of it. When a submarine
Speaker 1: went underwater back then, because of the technology they had,
Speaker 1: it was one easily visible to a plane flying overhead.
Speaker 1: You're gonna look down and see that's a submarine. It's
Speaker 1: very obvious. Have you ever seen a helicopter flying over
Speaker 1: a beach today looking at sharks? How obvious are the sharks?
Speaker 1: You look down, you see them. That's how obvious a
Speaker 1: submarine would have been. It's not only obvious that it's there.
Speaker 1: They're super slow, majorly slow, way slower than any ship.
Speaker 1: If you were a submarine and you got seen, you
Speaker 1: were in deep trouble. So they didn't get a huge
Speaker 1: amount of success either. But also another thing we discovered
Speaker 1: when we took over at the end of the war,
Speaker 1: they were building legions of these boats submarines to take
Speaker 1: out Godzilla. There was also a Japanese torpedo. Really freaking cool,
Speaker 1: by the way, a Japanese torpedo that is exactly what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. They would put some poor sap. They
Speaker 1: created essentially a cockpit in a torpedo, and the Japanese, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Chris was amazing, and the Japanese had amazing torpedoes. They
Speaker 1: were called long lance long lance torpedoes, which I know
Speaker 1: is a cool name, long lance torpedoes. They found a
Speaker 1: way to put a pilot in one so he could
Speaker 1: I mean, torpedo is much faster than a submarine, so
Speaker 1: they could launch him from something at an American ship
Speaker 1: and he could guide it into the side of the
Speaker 1: American ship. The reason I'm mentioning all these things in
Speaker 1: passing is not because they're not cool. They're all kind
Speaker 1: of cool in a way. It's wild to think of
Speaker 1: the different ways they were planning on using their people
Speaker 1: who were willing to die. But I just kind of
Speaker 1: passed over most of these because they just were never
Speaker 1: employed in any significant way and they never did any
Speaker 1: amount of significant damage. I am not, of course, dismissing
Speaker 1: any loss of life that did come from these things,
Speaker 1: or American sailors marines who were killed by these things.
Speaker 1: I just can't find much of a record of it.
Speaker 1: And I looked, I looked at if there was a
Speaker 1: significant loss. I've never read about it ever. Maybe been
Speaker 1: a little ship here hurt or a little ship there hurt.
Speaker 1: They just didn't do very much damage. What did do
Speaker 1: unbelievable amounts of damage more than you know about are
Speaker 1: the planes as we sailed towards the Philippines, the kamikaze
Speaker 1: were deployed. Will hopefully finish up our talk next. Maybe not,
Speaker 1: but we'll try.