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177-537: The shrine lists the names, origins, birthdates and places of death of 2,466,532 men. Among those are 1,066 convicted war criminals from the Pacific War , twelve of whom were charged with Class A crimes (the planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of the war). Eleven were convicted on those charges with the twelfth found not guilty on all such charges though he was found guilty of Class B war crimes. The names of two more men charged with Class A war crimes are on

354-461: A Mitsubishi Ki-51 of the 6th Flying Brigade, Imperial Japanese Army Air Force . The attack killed 30 personnel, including the cruiser's captain, Emile Dechaineux , and wounded 64, including the Australian force commander, Commodore John Collins . The Australian official history of the war claimed that this was the first kamikaze attack on an Allied ship. Other sources disagree because it

531-455: A kamikaze hits a Limey carrier it's just a case of 'Sweepers, man your brooms'." Twin-engine aircraft were occasionally used in kamikaze attacks. For example, Mitsubishi Ki-67 Hiryū ("Peggy") medium bombers, based on Formosa, undertook kamikaze attacks on Allied forces off Okinawa, while a pair of Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu ("Nick") heavy fighters caused enough damage for the destroyer USS  Dickerson to be scuttled. The last ship in

708-494: A kamikaze in the Tao'an area. The personnel were unharmed, as they managed to evade the raid. On 19 August, nine aircraft raided the tanks of the 21st Guards Tank Brigade. Seven were shot down, but two planes broke through; one tank was destroyed and the other damaged. About the raid, the author of the book Tanker on a foreign vehicle D. Loza recalls six Japanese aircraft attacked the convoy, which damaged one Sherman tank and destroyed

885-429: A kamikaze , as were the carrier HMS  Victorious and the battleship HMS  Howe . The British were able to clear the flight deck and resume flight operations in just hours, while their American counterparts took a few days or even months, as observed by a US Navy liaison officer on HMS  Indefatigable who commented: "When a kamikaze hits a US carrier it means six months of repair at Pearl Harbor . When

1062-497: A kamikaze . In the middle of August the Japanese military planned to dispatch a group of 30 kamikaze pilots from Japan to Korea to attack Soviet warships, but the Japanese leadership decided to surrender and the operation was cancelled. Kamikazes also operated against Red Army ground units. On August 10, three kamikazes attacked a tank column of the 20th Guards Tank Brigade. The paratroopers succeeded in shooting down two of

1239-574: A Japanese Ki-45 flown by Lieutenant Yoshira Tsiohara attacked a tanker in the port of Vladivostok. The plane was shot down and the pilot was killed. He was found to have orders to attack the largest tanker in Vladivostok, and if he failed, to ram the biggest house in the city. On the same day, the Soviet minesweeper KT-152 was sunk during the Battle of Shumshu . It is believed to have been attacked by

1416-744: A Japanese unit, the 33rd coast guard squad in Zamboanga in Mindanao in which Akira Makino served in. Moro guerillas armed with spears were the main enemies of the Japanese in the area. Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a " Three Alls Policy " ( Sankō Sakusen ) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "kill all, burn all, and loot all", which caused many massacres such as

1593-496: A combined total of 15 bomb hits, most of 500 kg (1,100 lb) weight or greater, and one torpedo hit on four carriers caused 193 fatal casualties earlier in the war—striking proof of the protective value of the armored flight deck. The resilience of well-armored vessels was shown on 4 May, just after 11:30, when there was a wave of suicide attacks against the British Pacific Fleet. One Japanese aircraft made

1770-494: A declaration of war or an ultimatum. Both the United States and United Kingdom were neutral when Japan attacked their territories without explicit warning of a state of war. The U.S. officially classified all 3,649 military and civilian casualties and destruction of military property at Pearl Harbor as non-combatants as there was no state of war between the U.S. and Japan when the attack occurred. Joseph B. Keenan ,

1947-475: A declaration of war, but was instead about sending a message to U.S. officials that peace negotiations between Japan and the U.S. were likely to be terminated. Japanese officials were well aware that the 14-Part Message was not a proper declaration of war as required by the 1907 Hague Convention III – The Opening of Hostilities . They decided not to issue a proper declaration of war anyway as they feared that doing so would expose their secret attack on Pearl Harbor to

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2124-707: A desire to show former colonial subjects the impotence of their former rulers. The Japanese executed all the Malay Sultans on Kalimantan and wiped out the Malay elite in the Pontianak incidents . In the Jesselton Revolt , the Japanese killed thousands of native civilians during the Japanese occupation of British Borneo and nearly wiped out the entire Suluk Muslim population of the coastal islands. During

2301-483: A different category from POWs, it is reasonable to think that there was a "spill-over" effect from the tenets of Bushido . Propaganda depictions of the Japanese military as superior and of others such as the Chinese or Koreans as cowards, pigs, rats or mice occurred in the use of woodcuts produced for wide consumption which were intended to provide a cruel amusement. The Myrdal-Kessle woodcut cartoon collection donated to

2478-542: A directive ratified on 5 August 1937, by Emperor Hirohito —the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed. Only 56 Chinese prisoners of war were released after the surrender of Japan . After 20 March 1943, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered and encouraged the Navy to execute all prisoners taken at sea. According to British historian Mark Felton , "officers of

2655-569: A festival on July 13. There are several different torii and mon ( 門 ) gates located on both the causeway and shrine grounds. When moving through the grounds from east to west, the first torii visitors encounter is the Daiichi Torii ( Ōtorii ). This large steel structure was the largest torii in Japan when it was first erected in 1921 to mark the main entrance to the shrine. It stands approximately 25 meters tall and 34 meters wide and

2832-420: A general rule, the enshrined are limited to military personnel who were killed while serving Japan during armed conflicts. Civilians who were killed during a war are not included, apart from a handful of exceptions. A deceased must fall into one of the following categories for enshrinement in the honden : Although new names of soldiers killed during World War II are added to the shrine list every year, no one who

3009-534: A gruesome manner constitutes a massacre, affirming without doubt that Japanese soldiers indeed committed such atrocious acts. According to Werner Gruhl, approximately eight million Chinese civilian deaths were attributable directly to Japanese aggression. According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among prisoners of war from Asian countries held by Japan was 27.1%. The death rate of Chinese prisoners of war were much higher because—under

3186-578: A infantry platoon that entered a Chinese town. In Makihara's diary, he recorded that his Machine Gun Company followed orders to indiscriminately kill all civilians in the town. During the Second Sino-Japanese War , the Japanese followed what has been called a "killing policy", including killings committed against minorities such as Hui Muslims in China. According to Wan Lei, "In a Hui clustered village in Gaocheng county of Hebei ,

3363-547: A medical vehicle. Japanese commanders ordered weapons depots to be secured and the propellers of aircraft on airfields to be removed to stop these sorties. Supposedly, the kamikazes carried out more than 50 suicide attacks against the Soviet Red Army in August 1945. That is the number of aircraft the Japanese attributed to "other losses". Overall, the kamikaze airstrikes proved ineffective and had little or no effect on

3540-528: A mosque in the aftermath of the Jesselton revolt . In the Pontianak incidents , the Japanese justified their mass execution of the twelve Arab and Malay Muslim Sultans by claiming they were planning to rebel and that the Arabs, Sultans and Chinese were all working to "massacre Japanese". The Japanese report on the incident noted that there were anti-Dutch Chinese independence movements before and linked them to

3717-500: A mother aircraft, should be developed. The First Naval Air Technical Bureau ( Kugisho ) in Yokosuka refined Ohta's idea. Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka rocket-powered aircraft , launched from bombers, were first deployed in kamikaze attacks from March 1945. US personnel gave them the derisive nickname " Baka Bombs" ( baka is Japanese for "idiot" or "stupid"). The Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi was a simple, easily built propeller aircraft with

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3894-523: A private donation from Emperor Shōwa. In addition to Yasukuni's main shrine buildings, there are also two peripheral shrines located on the precinct. Motomiya ( 元宮 ) is a small shrine that was first established in Kyoto by sympathizers of the imperial loyalists that were killed during the early weeks of the civil war that erupted during the Meiji Restoration . Seventy years later, in 1931, it

4071-588: A probable number of Japan's war victims who died is difficult for several interesting reasons, which have to do with Western perceptions. Both Americans and Europeans fell into the unfortunate habit of seeing WW1 and WW2 as separate wars, failing to comprehend that they were interlaced in a multitude of ways (not merely that one was the consequence of the other, or of the rash behavior of the victors after WW1). Wholly aside from this basic misconception, most Americans think of WW2 in Asia as having begun with Pearl Harbor ,

4248-487: A professor of political science at the University of Hawaii , estimates that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly three to over ten million people, most likely six million Chinese, Indians, Koreans , Malays , Indonesians , Filipinos and Indochinese , among others, including European, American and Australian prisoners of war. According to Rummel, "This democide [i.e., death by government]

4425-749: A quick war and lacked comprehensive programs to replace the losses of ships, pilots, and sailors. The Battle of Midway, the Solomon Islands campaign (1942–1945) and the New Guinea campaign (1942–1945) – notably the Battles of Eastern Solomons (August 1942) and Santa Cruz (October 1942) – decimated the IJNAS veteran aircrews, and replacing their combat experience proved impossible. During 1943–1944, US forces steadily advanced toward Japan. Newer US-made aircraft, especially

4602-436: A reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war" and Article 2 further stated that "[t]he existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without delay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of a notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph." Japanese diplomats intended to deliver the notice to the United States thirty minutes before

4779-555: A record-breaking flight from Tokyo to London in 1937 for the Asahi newspaper group was named Kamikaze . She was a prototype for the Mitsubishi Ki-15 ("Babs"). In Japanese, the formal term used for units carrying out suicide attacks during 1944–1945 is tokubetsu kōgekitai ( 特別攻撃隊 ), which literally means "special attack unit". This is usually abbreviated to tokkōtai (特攻隊). More specifically, air suicide attack units from

4956-631: A result. On 11 March, the U.S. carrier USS  Randolph was hit and moderately damaged at Ulithi Atoll , in the Caroline Islands, by a kamikaze that had flown almost 4,000 km (2,500 mi) from Japan, in a mission called Operation Tan No. 2 . On 20 March, the submarine USS  Devilfish survived a hit from an aircraft just off Japan. Purpose-built kamikazes , opposed to converted fighters and dive-bombers, were also being constructed. Ensign Mitsuo Ohta had suggested that piloted glider bombs , carried within range of targets by

5133-420: A secret ceremony. Emperor Shōwa, who visited the shrine as recently as 1975, was privately displeased with the action, and subsequently refused to visit the shrine. In 1979, the details of the enshrinement of war criminals became public, but there was minimal controversy about the issue for several years. No Emperor of Japan has visited Yasukuni since 1975. The head-priest Junna Nakata at Honzen-ji Temple (of

5310-410: A steam line) before coming to rest in a fuel tank near the aircraft park, where it started a major fire. Eight personnel were killed and 47 were wounded. One Corsair and ten Grumman Avengers were destroyed. The fires were gradually brought under control, and the crater in the deck was repaired with concrete and steel plate. By 17:00, Corsairs were able to land. On 9 May, Formidable was again damaged by

5487-426: A steep dive from "a great height" at the carrier HMS  Formidable and was engaged by anti-aircraft guns. Although the kamikaze was hit by gunfire, it managed to drop a bomb that detonated on the flight deck, making a crater 3 m (10 ft) long, 0.6 m (2 ft) wide and 0.6 m (2 ft) deep. A long steel splinter speared down through the hangar deck and the main boiler room (where it ruptured

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5664-509: A time when the war was looking increasingly bleak for the Japanese. They had lost several important battles, many of their best pilots had been killed, their aircraft were becoming outdated, and they had lost command of the air. Japan was losing pilots faster than it could train their replacements, and the nation's industrial capacity was diminishing relative to that of the Allies. These factors, along with Japan's unwillingness to surrender, led to

5841-418: A war of aggression and the criminality of the attack on Pearl Harbor: The concept of aggressive war may not be expressed with the precision of a scientific formula, or described like the objective data of the physical sciences. Aggressive War is not entirely a physical fact to be observed and defined like the operation of the laws of matter. It is rather an activity involving injustice between nations, rising to

6018-619: A wooden airframe that used engines from existing stocks. Its non-retractable landing gear was jettisoned shortly after takeoff for a suicide mission, recovered, and reused. Obsolete aircraft such as Yokosuka K5Y biplane trainers were also converted to kamikazes . During 1945, the Japanese military began stockpiling Tsurugi , Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, other aircraft and suicide boats for use against Allied forces expected to invade Japan. The invasion never happened, and few were ever used. In early 1945, US Navy aviator Commander John Thach , already famous for developing effective aerial tactics against

6195-592: Is "[h]ard to say from the perspective of international law that exercising the right of self-defense against economic pressures is considered valid." While Japan felt that its dreams of further expansion would be brought to a halt by the American embargo, this "need" cannot be considered proportional with the destruction suffered by the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, intended by Japanese military planners to be as devastating as possible. The estimated number of people killed by Japanese troops varies. R. J. Rummel ,

6372-431: Is the first torii . The current iteration of this torii was erected in 1974 after the original was removed in 1943 due to weather damage. This torii was recently repainted. The Daini Torii ( Seidō Ōtorii ) is the second torii encountered on the westward walk to the shrine. It was erected in 1887 to replace a wooden one which had been erected earlier. This is the largest bronze torii in Japan. Immediately following

6549-425: Is the flowers of yamazakura [mountain cherry blossom ] that are fragrant in the Asahi [rising sun]. A less literal translation is: Asked about the soul of Japan, I would say That it is Like wild cherry blossoms Glowing in the morning sun. Ōnishi, addressing this unit, told them that their nobility of spirit would keep the homeland from ruin even in defeat. Several suicide attacks, carried out during

6726-400: Is usually translated as "divine wind" ( kami is the word for "god", "spirit", or "divinity", and kaze for "wind"). The word originated from Makurakotoba of waka poetry modifying " Ise " and has been used since August 1281 to refer to the major typhoons that dispersed Mongol-Koryo fleets which invaded Japan under Kublai Khan in 1274 and 1281. A Japanese monoplane that made

6903-654: Is where the shrine's priests perform Shinto rituals. The building is generally closed to the public. The building located on the right side of haiden is the Sanshuden ( 参集殿 ) (Assembly Hall), which was rebuilt in 2004. Reception and waiting rooms are available for individuals and groups who wish to worship in the Main Shrine. The building located directly behind the Sanshuden is the Tochakuden ( 到着殿 ) (Reception Hall). The building located directly behind

7080-570: The Kenpeitai , which resembled the Nazi Gestapo in its role in annexed and occupied countries, but which had existed for nearly a decade before Hitler's own birth. Perceived failure or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating all

7257-874: The 1921 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children which prohibited human trafficking , and other agreements. The Japanese government also signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact (1929), thereby rendering its actions in 1937–45 liable to charges of crimes against peace , a charge that was introduced at the Tokyo Trials to prosecute "Class A" war criminals. "Class B" war criminals were those found guilty of war crimes per se , and "Class C" war criminals were those guilty of crimes against humanity . The Japanese government also accepted

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7434-406: The 40 mm Bofors was preferred, and though their high rate of fire and quick training remained advantageous, they lacked the punch to take down a kamikaze bearing down on the ship they defended. It was found that heavy anti-aircraft guns such as the 5"/38 caliber gun (127 mm) were the most effective as they had sufficient firepower to destroy aircraft at a safe range from the ship, which

7611-720: The Battle of Okinawa . On 6 April 1945, waves of aircraft made hundreds of attacks in Operation Kikusui ("floating chrysanthemums"). At Okinawa, kamikaze attacks focused at first on Allied destroyers on picket duty, and then on the carriers in the middle of the fleet. Suicide attacks by aircraft or boats at Okinawa sank or put out of action at least 30 US warships and at least three US merchant ships , along with some from other Allied forces. The attacks expended 1,465 aircraft. Many warships of all classes were damaged, some severely, but no aircraft carriers, battleships or cruisers were sunk by kamikaze at Okinawa. Most of

7788-841: The Boeing B-29 Superfortress to strike at the Japanese home islands. After the fall of Saipan, the Japanese High Command predicted that the Allies would try to capture the Philippines , strategically important to Tokyo because of the islands' location between the oilfields of Southeast Asia and Japan. Captain Motoharu Okamura , in charge of the Tateyama Base in Tokyo , as well as the 341st Air Group Home, was, according to some sources,

7965-655: The Daini Torii is the shinmon ( 神門 ) . A 6-meter tall hinoki cypress gate, it was first built in 1934 and restored in 1994. Each of its two doors bears a Chrysanthemum Crest measuring 1.5 meters in diameter. West of this gate is the Chumon Torii ( 中門鳥居 ) (Third Shrine Gate), the last torii visitors must pass underneath before reaching Yasukuni's haiden . It was recently rebuilt of cypress harvested in Saitama Prefecture in 2006. In addition to

8142-666: The Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II , intending to destroy warships more effectively than with conventional air attacks. About 3,800 kamikaze pilots died during the war in attacks that killed more than 7,000 Allied naval personnel, sank several dozen warships, and damaged scores more. Kamikaze aircraft were pilot-guided explosive missiles , purpose-built or converted from conventional aircraft. Pilots would attempt to crash their aircraft into enemy ships in what

8319-622: The Empire of Japan committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity across various Asian-Pacific nations, notably during the Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars . These incidents have been referred to as "the Asian Holocaust ", and "Japan's Holocaust", and also as the "Rape of Asia". The crimes occurred during the early part of the Shōwa era , under Hirohito 's reign. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and

8496-588: The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23 million of these were ethnic Chinese. It is a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning. One of the major atrocities committed during this period

8673-670: The Grumman F6F Hellcat and Vought F4U Corsair , outclassed and soon outnumbered Japan's fighters. Tropical diseases, as well as shortages of spare parts and fuel , made operations more and more difficult for the IJNAS. By the Battle of the Philippine Sea (June 1944), the Japanese had to make do with obsolete aircraft and inexperienced aviators in the fight against better-trained and more experienced US Navy airmen who flew radar -directed combat air patrols . The Japanese lost over 400 carrier-based aircraft and pilots in

8850-671: The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) were responsible for a multitude of war crimes leading to millions of deaths. War crimes ranged from sexual slavery and massacres to human experimentation, torture, starvation, and forced labor, all either directly committed or condoned by the Japanese military and government. Evidence of these crimes, including oral testimonies and written records such as diaries and war journals, has been provided by Japanese veterans. The Japanese political and military leadership knew of its military's crimes, yet continued to allow it and even support it, with

9027-450: The Imperial Japanese Navy were officially called shinpū tokubetsu kōgeki tai (神風特別攻撃隊, "divine wind special attack units"). Shinpū is the on-reading ( on'yomi or Chinese-derived pronunciation) of the same characters as the kun-reading ( kun'yomi or Japanese pronunciation) kamikaze in Japanese. During World War II, the pronunciation kamikaze was used only informally in the Japanese press in relation to suicide attacks, but after

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9204-528: The Japanese occupation of the Philippines , when a Moro Muslim juramentado swordsman launched a suicide attack against the Japanese, the Japanese would massacre the man's entire family or village. However, Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia were sometimes spared if they supported the war effort, whether sincerely or not. This also applied to other ethnicities. 50 Moros were vivisected by

9381-642: The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910 , which lead to the annexation of Korea by Japan, was concluded illegally. Militarism , nationalism and racism , especially during Japan's imperialist expansion, had great bearings on the conduct of the Japanese armed forces both before and during the Second World War . After the Meiji Restoration and the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate , the Emperor became

9558-601: The Liberal Democratic Party have denied some of the atrocities, such as the government's involvement in abducting women to serve as " comfort women ", a euphemism for sex slaves. The Tokyo Charter defines war crimes as "violations of the laws or customs of war ," which involves acts using prohibited weapons, violating battlefield norms while engaging in combat with the enemy combatants , or against protected persons , including enemy civilians and citizens and property of neutral states as in

9735-739: The Ministry of Health and Welfare established a system for the government to share information with the shrine regarding deceased war veterans. By April 1959, most of Japan's war dead who were not already enshrined at Yasukuni were enshrined in this manner. War criminals prosecuted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East were initially excluded from enshrinement after the war. In 1951, government authorities began considering their enshrinement, along with providing veterans' benefits to their survivors, following

9912-570: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities , Stockholm, Sweden, was the subject of a catalogued exhibition in 2011 and includes examples of this type of material from the Meiji period. By the late 1930s, the rise of militarism in Japan created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of Germany . Japan also had a military secret police force within the IJA , known as

10089-549: The Nihon-tō Tanrenkai ( 日本刀鍛錬会 , Japanese Sword Forging Association) in the grounds of the shrine to preserve old forging methods and promote Japan's samurai traditions, as well as to meet the huge demand for guntō (military swords) for officers. About 8,100 "Yasukuni swords" were manufactured in the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine between 1933 and 1945. Japanese war crimes During its imperial era,

10266-532: The Panjiayu massacre , where 1,230 Chinese people were killed. Additionally, captured Allied servicemen and civilians were massacred in various incidents, including the following: The Japanese massacred Hui Muslims in their mosques in Nanjing and destroyed Hui mosques in other parts of China. Shen Xi’en and his father Shen Decheng witnessed the corpses of Hui Muslims slaughtered by the Japanese in Nanjing, when he

10443-839: The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 and the Asian and Pacific campaigns of World War II (1941–45). Japan signed the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War and the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Sick and Wounded , but the Japanese government declined to ratify the POW Convention. In 1942, the Japanese government stated that it would abide by the terms of the Convention mutatis mutandis ('changing what has to be changed'). The crimes committed also fall under other aspects of international and Japanese law. For example, many of

10620-581: The Shingon sect Daigo-ha ) requested the pontiff Pope Paul VI to say a Mass for the repose of the souls of all people in Yasukuni, which would include the 1,618 men condemned as Class A, B and C war criminals, and he promised to do so. In 1980, Pope John Paul II complied, and a Mass was held in St. Peter's Basilica for all the fallen civilians and fallen dead worshiped in the shrine. The museum and website of

10797-560: The Shinten Special Unit ( Shinten Seiku Tai ) at Narimasu Airfield, Nerima, Tokyo , to defend the Tokyo Metropolitan Area . The unit was equipped with Nakajima Ki-44 Shoki ("Tojo") fighters, whose pilots were instructed to collide with United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-29s approaching Japan. Targeting the aircraft proved to be much less successful and practical than attacks against warships, as

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10974-436: The Shinto Directive , which ordered the separation of church and state and forced Yasukuni Shrine to become either a secular government institution or a religious institution independent from the Japanese government. Yasukuni Shrine has been privately funded and operated since 1946, when it was elected to become an individual religious corporation, independent of the Association of Shinto Shrines . The GHQ planned to burn down

11151-413: The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on 7 December 1941, but it was delivered to the U.S. government an hour after the attack was over. Tokyo transmitted the 5,000-word notification (commonly called the "14-Part Message") in two blocks to the Japanese Embassy in Washington , but transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese ambassador to deliver it in time. The 14-Part Message was not moreover

11328-409: The attack on Pearl Harbor . First Lieutenant Fusata Iida's aircraft had taken a hit and had started leaking fuel when he apparently used it to make a suicide attack on Naval Air Station Kaneohe . Before taking off, he had told his men that if his aircraft were to become badly damaged he would crash it into a "worthy enemy target". In late February, 1942, Imperial Japanese Headquarters mentioned, for

11505-476: The executive officer , were killed or wounded. This de facto kamikaze strike greatly changed the course of what was to happen during the infamous "Friday the 13th" battle 12 hours later. The carrier battles in 1942, particularly the Battle of Midway, inflicted irreparable damage on the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAS), such that they could no longer put together a large number of fleet carriers with well-trained aircrews. Japanese planners had assumed

11682-407: The honden (as of October 17, 2004) from each of these conflicts. The Yasukuni shrine does not include the Tokugawa shogunate 's forces (particularly from the Aizu domain) or rebel forces who died during the Boshin War or Satsuma Rebellion because they are considered enemies of the emperor. They are enshrined at Chinreisha. There are a multitude of facilities within the 6.25 hectare grounds of

11859-419: The honden is known as the Reijibo Hōanden ( 霊璽簿奉安殿 ) (Repository for the Symbolic Registers of Divinities) built in styles of Kirizuma-zukuri , Hirairi , and Doubanbuki . It houses the Symbolic Registry of Divinities ( 霊璽簿 , Reijibo ) —a handmade Japanese paper document that lists the names of all the kami enshrined and worshiped at Yasukuni Shrine. It was built of quakeproof concrete in 1972 with

12036-415: The invasion of Leyte by Japanese pilots from units other than the Special Attack Force, have been described as the first kamikaze attacks. Early on 21 October 1944, a Japanese aircraft deliberately crashed into the foremast of the heavy cruiser HMAS  Australia . This aircraft was possibly either an Aichi D3A dive bomber, from an unidentified unit of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, or

12213-438: The kamikazes were unable to turn the tide of the war and stop the Allied invasion. While on paper it may appear that kamikaze and kamikaze -assisted attacks at Okinawa only managed to sink smaller ships like destroyers, the reality is different. Kamikaze raids often included escort fighters and conventional bombers piloted by skilled aviators who were not intended to execute suicide strikes. These coordinated groups, such as

12390-456: The "spirit" of Bushido . ... The result was that the Bushido code of behavior "was inculcated into the Japanese soldier as part of his basic training." Each soldier was indoctrinated to accept that it was the greatest honor to die for the Emperor and it was cowardly to surrender to the enemy. ... Bushido therefore explains why the Japanese soldiers who were stationed in the NEI so mistreated POWs in their custody. Those who had surrendered to

12567-415: The 1950s, numerous apologies for the war crimes have been issued by senior Japanese government officials; however, apologies issued by Japanese officials have been criticized by some as insincere. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acknowledged the country's role in causing "tremendous damage and suffering" before and during World War II, particularly the massacre and rape of civilians in Nanjing by

12744-470: The Americans. Some historical negationists and conspiracy theorists charge that President Franklin D. Roosevelt willingly allowed the attack to happen to create a pretext for war, but no credible evidence exists to support the claim. The diary of Henry L. Stimson , Roosevelt's Secretary of War , showed that Roosevelt believed in late November 1941 that a Japanese attack on British or Dutch soil

12921-606: The Battle of the Philippine Sea, effectively putting an end to their carriers' potency. Allied aviators called the action the " Great Marianas Turkey Shoot ". On 19 June 1944, aircraft from the carrier Chiyoda approached a US task group. According to some accounts, two made suicide attacks, one of which hit USS  Indiana . The important Japanese base of Saipan fell to the Allied forces on 15 July 1944. Its capture provided adequate forward bases that enabled US air forces using

13098-546: The British with the fall of Singapore , and so forth. The Chinese would correct this by identifying the Marco Polo Bridge incident as the start, or the earlier Japanese seizure of Manchuria . It really began in 1895 with Japan's assassination of Korea's Queen Min , and invasion of Korea, resulting in its absorption into Japan, followed quickly by Japan's seizure of southern Manchuria, etc. – establishing that Japan

13275-417: The Chinese, and verified that he had denounced the aggression in a speech addressed to Japanese soldiers in China during World War II. He discovered that military officers utilized Chinese prisoners of war for bayonet drills to bolster the resolve of Japanese soldiers. Additionally, he noted that POWs were asphyxiated and shot in large numbers while being restrained to posts. He emphasized that killing POWs in

13452-679: The Daikosan airfield and made a final aerial suicide attack against one of the Soviet armored units that had invaded Manchuria known as the Shinshu Fumetsu Special Attack Corps (Japanese: 神州不滅特別攻撃隊), The last kamikaze attacks were recorded on 20 August 1945. Shortly afterward, the main strength of the Japanese Army began to lay down its arms in surrender per the Emperor 's broadcast . The Soviet–Japanese War, and World War II, had come to an end. At

13629-437: The Emperor. Enshrinement at Yasukuni signified meaning and nobility to those who died for their country. During the final days of the war, it was common for soldiers sent on kamikaze suicide missions to say that they would "meet again at Yasukuni" following their death. Military songs created at that time often included information about Yasukuni, such as Doki no Sakura(同期の桜) and Calming the country(国の鎮め). At that time, however,

13806-758: The Faith (Propaganda Fide) of the Roman Curia issued the Instruction Pluries Instanterque, and approved visits to Yasukuni Shrine as an expression of patriotic motive. This response of the Catholic Church helped the Jesuit university avoid a fateful crisis, but it meant its bowing down to the military power and control by Emperor system. By the 1930s, the military government sought centralized state control over memorialization of

13983-630: The First Sino-Japanese War released 1,790 Chinese prisoners without harm, once they signed an agreement not to take up arms against Japan if they were released. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, all of the 79,367 Russian prisoners who were held by the Japanese were released and they were also paid for the labor which they performed for the Japanese, in accordance with the Hague Convention. Similarly,

14160-763: The German Einsatzgruppen , which carried out mass shootings on the Eastern Front in Europe and who suffered from psychological issues as a result, no such problems occurred with Japanese soldiers, as the vast majority of soldiers participated in murder and rape and seemingly enjoyed it. Much of the controversy regarding Japan's role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. Historian Sterling Seagrave has written that: Arriving at

14337-528: The Hui corpses in Jiuhua mountain, Dongguashi, Hongtu Bridge (where Guangzhou road is now located), Wutai mountain, Donguashi (where Nanjing Normal University is located). Shen Xi'en helped bury  400 Hui bodies including children, women and men. Shen recalled burying  a 7 or 8 year old boy in addition to his mother among the Hui bodies. Japanese used machine guns to massacre Muslim Suluk children and women at

14514-527: The IJA. However, the issue remains controversial, with some members of the Japanese government, including former prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzō Abe , having paid respects at the Yasukuni Shrine , which honors all Japanese war dead, including convicted Class A war criminals. Furthermore, some Japanese history textbooks provide only brief references to the war crimes, and certain members of

14691-472: The Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention." At least 12,500 British sailors and 7,500 Australians were murdered. The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered the survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats. During Naval landing parties,

14868-463: The Japanese Navy rounded up, raped, then massacred civilians. Some of the victims were fed to sharks, others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, crucifixion, drowning, hanging and beheading. Article 1 of the 1907 Hague Convention III – The Opening of Hostilities prohibited the initiation of hostilities against neutral powers "without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of

15045-528: The Japanese air forces seemed impossible. The 1st Air Fleet commandant, Vice Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi , decided to form a suicide offensive force, the Special Attack Unit. In a meeting on 19 October at Mabalacat Airfield (known to the US military as Clark Air Base) near Manila, Onishi told officers of the 201st Flying Group headquarters: "I don't think there would be any other certain way to carry out

15222-608: The Japanese captured twenty Hui men among whom they only set two younger men free through "redemption", and buried alive the other eighteen Hui men. In Mengcun village of Hebei, the Japanese killed more than 1,300 Hui people within three years of their occupation of that area." Mosques were also desecrated and destroyed by the Japanese, and Hui cemeteries were also destroyed. After the Nanjing Massacre, mosques in Nanjing were found filled with dead bodies. Many Hui Muslims in

15399-597: The Japanese military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other imperialist powers. In addition to Japanese civil and military personnel, Chinese (including Manchus ), Koreans, and Taiwanese who were forced to serve in the military of the Empire of Japan were also found to have committed war crimes as part of the Japanese Imperial Army. Both South Korea and North Korea have stated that

15576-473: The Japanese such as the Thach Weave , developed a defensive strategy against kamikazes called the " big blue blanket " to establish Allied air supremacy well away from the carrier force. This recommended combat air patrols (CAP) that were larger and operated farther from the carriers than before, a line of picket destroyers and destroyer escorts at least 80 km (50 mi) from the main body of

15753-459: The Japanese war machine. If you add, say, 2-million Koreans, 2-million Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, many East European Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazi ), and others killed by Japan between 1895 and 1937 (conservative figures), the total of Japanese victims is more like 10-million to 14-million. Of these, I would suggest that between 6-million and 8-million were ethnic Chinese, regardless of where they were resident. In 1943, Prince Mikasa ,

15930-483: The Japanese—regardless of how courageously or honorably they had fought—merited nothing but contempt; they had forfeited all honor and literally deserved nothing. Consequently, when the Japanese murdered POWs by shooting, beheading, and drowning, these acts were excused since they involved the killing of men who had forfeited all rights to be treated with dignity or respect. While civilian internees were certainly in

16107-609: The Nation" and was chosen by the Meiji Emperor . The name is formally written as 靖國神社 , using the kyūjitai character forms common before the end of the Pacific War. The enshrinement of war dead at Yasukuni was transferred to military control in 1887. As the Empire of Japan expanded, Okinawans , Ainu and Koreans were enshrined at Yasukuni alongside ethnic Japanese. Emperor Meiji refused to allow

16284-659: The Red Army during the Soviet–Japanese War. Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki , the commander of the IJN 5th Air Fleet based in Kyushu, participated in one of the final kamikaze attacks on American ships on 15 August 1945, hours after Japan's announced surrender. On 19 August 1945, 11 young officers under Second Lieutenant Hitoshi Imada, attached to the 675th Manchuria Detachment, accompanied by two women of their engagement, left

16461-796: The Second Sino-Japanese War fought against the Japanese military. In addition, The Hui Muslim county of Dachang was subjected to massacres by the Japanese military. Another massacre during this period was the Parit Sulong massacre in Japanese-occupied Malaya , when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East , the Imperial Japanese Army massacred approximately five hundred prisoners of war, although higher estimates exist. A similar crime committed

16638-399: The US flagship, San Francisco , was heavily damaged during a Japanese bombing raid when a large twin-engined Japanese Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" medium bomber, which was in flames from anti-aircraft fire, most likely intentionally crashed into her backup conning tower, destroying almost all of the backup command equipment for the flagship. Most of the officers and men stationed there, including

16815-464: The Yasukuni Shrine and build a dog race course in its place. However, Father Bruno Bitter of the Roman Curia and Father Patrick Byrne of Maryknoll insisted to the GHQ that honoring their war dead is the right and duty of citizens everywhere, and the GHQ decided not to destroy the Yasukuni shrine. The Roman Curia reaffirmed the Instruction Pluries Instanterque in 1951. In 1956, the shrine authorities and

16992-592: The Yasukuni Shrine complex. The Minamimon is marked by a small wooden gateway. (from Kudanshita Station ) Yasukuni shrine is an individual religious corporation and does not belong to the Association of Shinto Shrines . Yasukuni shrine has departments listed below. The Gūji ( 宮司 ) controls the overall system, and the Gon-gūji ( 権宮司 ) assists the Gūji. In 1933, Minister of War Sadao Araki founded

17169-520: The Yasukuni Shrine have made statements criticizing the United States for " convincing " the Empire of Japan to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor in order to justify the Pacific War , as well as claiming that Japan went to war with the intention of creating a " Co-Prosperity Sphere " for all Asians. See details on related controversy in Controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine . There are over 2,466,000 enshrined kami (deities) listed in

17346-545: The Yasukuni's Symbolic Registry of Divinities . This list includes soldiers, as well as women and students who were involved in relief operations in the battlefield or worked in factories for the war effort. There are neither ashes nor spirit tablets in the shrine. Enshrinement is not exclusive to people of Japanese descent. Yasukuni has enshrined 27,863 Taiwanese and 21,181 Koreans. Many more kami – those who fought in opposition to imperial Japan, as well as all war dead regardless of nationality – are enshrined at Chinreisha . As

17523-666: The anti-Japanese conspiracy. On 28 June 1944 the Japanese executed the Sultans of West Kalimantan including Pontianak after a naval court martial. The accusations against the Sultans were printed in Borneo Shimbun on 1 July 1944. The Japanese slaughter of the Malay sultans of west Kalimantan led to Dayaks ascending to the political scene after the violent destruction of the Malay nobility at the hands of Japan. Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. The purpose of experimentation

17700-469: The army's 31st Fighter Squadron on Negros Island decided to launch a suicide attack the following morning. First Lieutenant Takeshi Kosai and a sergeant were selected. Two 100 kg (220 lb) bombs were attached to two fighters, and the pilots took off before dawn, planning to crash into carriers. They never returned, but there is no record of a Kamikaze hitting an Allied ship that day. According to some sources, on 14 October 1944, USS  Reno

17877-747: The attack on Pearl Harbor, was fully aware that if Japan lost the war, he would be tried as a war criminal for that attack; as it turned out, he was killed by the USAAF in Operation Vengeance in 1943. At the Tokyo Trials, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo , Shigenori Tōgō , then Foreign Minister , Shigetarō Shimada , the Minister of the Navy , and Osami Nagano , Chief of Naval General Staff , were charged with crimes against peace (charges 1 to 36) and murder (charges 37 to 52) in connection with

18054-477: The attack on Pearl Harbor. Along with war crimes and crimes against humanity (charges 53 to 55), Tojo was among the seven Japanese leaders sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1948, Shigenori Tōgō received a 20-year sentence, Shimada received a life sentence , and Nagano died of natural causes during the Trial in 1947. Over the years, many Japanese nationalists argued that the attack on Pearl Harbor

18231-417: The attacking aircraft, while the third crashed into a tank. During 12–13 August, 14 Japanese planes, including kamikazes , targeted tanks of the 5th Guards Tank Corps. Soviet fighter aviation, which managed to destroy three enemy aircraft and an anti-aircraft artillery which lost two planes participated in repulsing the air raids. Nine kamikazes crashed without hitting their targets. Damage from these attacks

18408-512: The behavior of the Japanese military in World War I was at least as humane as that of other militaries which fought during the war, with some German prisoners of the Japanese finding life in Japan so agreeable that they stayed and settled in Japan after the war. As Japan continued its modernization in the early 20th century, her armed forces became convinced that success in battle would be assured if Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen had

18585-651: The bomb magazine exploding, sinking the carrier. By 26 October day's end, 55 kamikazes from the Special Attack Force had also damaged three large escort carriers: USS  Sangamon , Santee , and Suwannee (which had taken a kamikaze strike forward of its aft elevator the day before); and three smaller escorts: USS White Plains , Kalinin Bay , and Kitkun Bay . In total, seven carriers were hit, as well as 40 other ships (five sunk, 23 heavily damaged and 12 moderately damaged). Early successes—such as

18762-440: The bombers made for much faster, more maneuverable, and smaller targets. The B-29 also had formidable defensive weaponry, so suicide attacks against B-29s demanded considerable piloting skill to be successful, which worked against the very purpose of using expendable pilots. Even encouraging capable pilots to bail out before impact was ineffective because vital personnel were often lost when they mistimed their exits and were killed as

18939-431: The case of the attack on Pearl Harbor . Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been convicted of committing many such acts during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Japanese military soldiers conducted a series of human rights abuses against civilians and prisoners of war throughout East Asia and the western Pacific region. These events reached their height during

19116-407: The chief prosecutor in the Tokyo Trials, says that the attack on Pearl Harbor not only happened without a declaration of war but was also a " treacherous and deceitful act". In fact, Japan and the U.S. were still negotiating for a possible peace agreement which kept U.S. officials distracted up to the point that Japanese planes launched their attack on Pearl Harbor. Keenan explained the definition of

19293-502: The coalition saw that Japan, which was in a tight corner, was using Yasukuni for propaganda purposes. The main point is that the Yasukuni is used as a means of pressure to induce soldiers to choose suicide bombing to escape desperate situations, or to socially bury those who are captured or want to surrender. After World War II, the US-led Occupation Authorities (known as GHQ for General Headquarters ) issued

19470-507: The combined number of fatalities suffered on all six Royal Navy armored carriers from all forms of attack during the entire war. Bunker Hill and Franklin were both hit (in Franklin's case, by a dive bomber, not a kamikaze ) while conducting operations with fully fueled and armed aircraft spotted on deck for takeoff, an extremely vulnerable state for any carrier. Eight kamikaze hits on five British carriers resulted in only 20 deaths while

19647-510: The crimes committed by Japanese personnel during World War II broke Japanese military law , and were subject to court martial , as required by that law. The Empire also violated international agreements signed by Japan, including provisions of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) such as protections for prisoners of war and a ban on the use of chemical weapons , the 1930 Forced Labour Convention which prohibited forced labor ,

19824-603: The death of 100,000 civilians in the Japanese-occupied Philippines . It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hands of the Japanese during the occupation. In Singapore during February and March 1942, the Sook Ching massacre was a systematic extermination of "anti-Japanese" elements among the Chinese population ; however, Japanese soldiers did not try to identify who

20001-554: The early 1980s, after conducting extensive interviews with Chinese survivors and reviewing existing Japanese records, Japanese journalist Honda Katsuichi concluded that the violence perpetrated by Japanese troops in the Nanjing Massacre was not an isolated event. Instead, it was part of a broader pattern of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in the Lower Yangtze region since the Battle of Shanghai . Hosaka Akira

20178-577: The enshrinement of Taiwanese due to the organized resistance that followed the Treaty of Shimonoseki , but Taiwanese were later admitted due to the need to conscript them during World War II . In 1932, two Sophia University (Jōchi Daigaku) Catholic students refused visit to Yasukuni Shrine on the grounds that it was contrary to their religious convictions. In 1936, the Society for the Propagation of

20355-581: The first officer to officially propose kamikaze attack tactics. With his superiors, he arranged the first investigations into the plausibility and mechanisms of intentional suicide attacks on 15 June 1944. In August 1944, it was announced by the Domei news agency that a flight instructor named Takeo Tagata was training pilots in Taiwan for suicide missions. One source claims that the first kamikaze mission occurred on 13 September 1944. A group of pilots from

20532-528: The first time, that a "human bomb" or Taiatari , had destroyed a US aircraft carrier. It was explained that the term, which meant "thrust of body," was the practice of Japanese airmen to dive with the full load of bombs on to their target. Another possible example occurred at the Battle of Midway when a damaged American bomber flew at the Akagi 's bridge but missed. During the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

20709-495: The fleet to provide earlier radar interception and improved coordination between fighter direction officers on carriers. This plan also called for around-the-clock fighter patrols over Allied fleets. A final element included intensive fighter sweeps over Japanese airfields, and bombing Japanese runways, using delayed-action bombs making repairs more difficult. Late in 1944, the British Pacific Fleet (BPF) used

20886-560: The focus of military loyalty, nationalism and racism. During the so-called "Age of Imperialism" in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers by establishing a colonial empire, an objective which it aggressively pursued. Unlike many other major powers, Japan never ratified the Geneva Convention of 1929 —also known as the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva 27 July 1929—which

21063-545: The heaviest casualties on US carriers in 1945 (particularly as Bunker Hill was unlucky to get hit with fueled and armed aircraft on deck), the IJN had sacrificed 2,525 kamikaze pilots and the IJAAF 1,387 – without successfully sinking any fleet carriers, cruisers, or battleships. This was far more than the IJN had lost in 1942 when it sank or crippled three US fleet carriers (albeit without inflicting significant casualties). In 1942, when US Navy vessels were scarce,

21240-538: The high-altitude performance of its Supermarine Seafires (the naval version of the Spitfire) on combat air patrol duties. Seafires were involved in countering the kamikaze attacks during the Iwo Jima landings and beyond. The Seafires' best day was 15 August 1945, shooting down eight attacking aircraft with a single loss. Allied pilots were more experienced, better trained and in command of superior aircraft, making

21417-406: The level of criminality because of its disastrous effects upon the common good of international society. The injustice of a war of aggression is criminal of its extreme grosses, considered both from the point of view of the will of the aggressor to inflict injury and from the evil effects which ensue ... Unjust war are plainly crimes and not simply torts or breaches of contracts. The act comprises

21594-456: The list but one died during trial and one before trial so they were never convicted. This has led to many controversies surrounding the shrine . Another memorial at the Honden (main hall) building commemorates anyone who died on behalf of Japan and so includes Koreans and Taiwanese who served Japan at the time. The Chinreisha ("Spirit Pacifying Shrine") building is a shrine built to inter

21771-431: The mainland, also allowed for the proliferation of war crimes because if commanders tried to restrict atrocities they would either face mutiny or reassignment. Historians have also attributed war crimes to the lack of supervision and disorganization within the military which without stronger control over units and effective court martial procedures allowed for war crimes to go unpunished and therefore continue. Compared to

21948-447: The majority of Japanese troops stationed in Asia either taking part in or supporting the killings. The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service participated in chemical and biological attacks on civilians during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II , violating international agreements that Japan had previously signed, including the Hague Conventions , which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare. Since

22125-495: The operation [to hold the Philippines] than to put a 250 kg bomb on a Zero and let it crash into a US carrier, in order to disable her for a week." Commander Asaichi Tamai asked a group of 23 talented student pilots, all of whom he had trained, to volunteer for the special attack force. All of the pilots raised both of their hands, volunteering to join the operation. Later, Tamai asked Lieutenant Yukio Seki to command

22302-544: The order was received to scale down the operation. There were other massacres of civilians, such as the Kalagon massacre . In wartime Southeast Asia, the Overseas Chinese and European diaspora were particular targets of Japanese abuse; in the former case, this was motivated by a Sinophobic resentment of the historic expanse and influence of Chinese culture , and in the latter, by a racist Pan-Asianism and

22479-455: The planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of the war) to Yasukuni Shrine. These individuals were gradually enshrined between 1959 and 1967, often without permission from surviving family members. In 1966, information on fourteen men who had been charged with Class A war crimes was forwarded to the shrine. Eleven were convicted on these charges, one was convicted of Class B war crimes, and two died before completing trial. This group included

22656-411: The poorly trained kamikaze pilots easy targets. The US Fast Carrier Task Force alone could bring over 1,000 fighter aircraft into play. Allied pilots became adept at destroying enemy aircraft before they struck ships. Allied gunners had begun to develop techniques to negate kamikaze attacks. Light rapid-fire anti-aircraft weapons such as the 20 mm Oerlikon autocannons were still useful though

22833-409: The port catwalk and cartwheeled into the sea. Two others dived at USS  Fanshaw Bay but were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire. The last two, Seki among them, ran at USS  White Plains . Seki however, under heavy fire and trailing smoke, aborted the attack on White Plains and instead banked toward USS  St. Lo , diving into the flight deck, where his bomb caused fires that resulted in

23010-463: The position that Japan accepted the Tokyo tribunal and its judgements as a condition for ending the war, but that its verdicts have no relation to domestic law. According to Abe, those convicted of war crimes are not criminals under Japanese law. Outside Japan, different societies use widely different timeframes when they define Japanese war crimes. For example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910

23187-498: The prime ministers and top generals from the war era. In 1970, the shrine passed a resolution to enshrine these individuals. The timing for their enshrinement was left to the discretion of head priest Fujimaro Tsukuba, who delayed the enshrinement through his death in March 1978. In 1978, his successor Nagayoshi Matsudaira, who rejected the Tokyo war crimes tribunal's verdicts, enshrined these fourteen convicted or alleged war criminals in

23364-598: The ships lost were destroyers or smaller vessels, especially those on picket duty. The destroyer USS  Laffey earned the nickname "The Ship That Would Not Die" after surviving six kamikaze attacks and four bomb hits during this battle. American carriers, with their wooden flight decks, appeared to suffer more damage from kamikaze hits than the armored-decked carriers of the British Pacific Fleet . American carriers also suffered considerably heavier casualties from kamikaze strikes; for instance, 389 men were killed in one attack on USS  Bunker Hill , greater than

23541-520: The shrine, as well as several structures along the 4 hectare causeway. Though other shrines in Japan also occupy large areas, Yasukuni is different because of its recent historical connections. The Yūshūkan museum is just the feature that differentiate Yasukuni from other Shinto shrines. The following lists describe many of these facilities and structures. On the shrine grounds, there are several important religious structures. The shrine's haiden , Yasukuni's main prayer hall where worshipers come to pray,

23718-499: The shrine. The site for the Yasukuni Shrine, originally named Tōkyō Shōkonsha ( 東京招魂社 , "shrine to summon the souls" ) , was chosen by order of the Meiji Emperor . The shrine was established in 1869, in the wake of the Boshin War , in order to honor the souls of those who died fighting for the Emperor. It initially served as the "apex" of a network of similar shrines throughout Japan that had originally been established for

23895-486: The signature of the Treaty of San Francisco . In 1954, government directed some local memorial shrines to accept the enshrinement of war criminals from their area. No convicted war criminals were enshrined at Yasukuni until after the parole of the last remaining incarcerated war criminals in 1958. In 1959, the Health and Welfare Ministry began forwarding information on Class B and Class C war criminals (those not involved in

24072-429: The sinking of USS  St. Lo —were followed by an immediate expansion of the program, and over the next few months over 2,000 aircraft made such attacks. When Japan began to suffer intense strategic bombing by Boeing B-29 Superfortresses , the Japanese military attempted to use suicide attacks against this threat. During the northern hemisphere winter of 1944–45, the IJAAF formed the 47th Air Regiment, also known as

24249-438: The slaughter of thousands of human beings. It did not eventuate only in the destruction of property. It was an outright act of undermining and destroying the hope of a world for peace. When a nation employs a deceit and treachery, using periods of negotiations and the negotiations themselves as a cloak to screen a perfidious attack, then there is a prime example of the crime of all crimes. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto , who planned

24426-535: The souls of all the people who died during World War II , regardless of their nationality. It is located directly south of the Yasukuni Honden. Japanese soldiers fought World War II in the name of Emperor Shōwa , who visited the shrine 8 times between the end of the war and 1975. However, he stopped visiting the shrine due to his displeasure over the enshrinement of top convicted Japanese war criminals. His successors Akihito and Naruhito have never visited

24603-454: The souls of various feudal lords' retainers, and which continued to enshrine local individuals who died in the Emperor's service. Following the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion , the Emperor had 6,959 souls of war dead enshrined at Tōkyō Shōkonsha. In 1879, the shrine was renamed Yasukuni Jinja. The name Yasukuni , quoted from the phrase「 吾以靖國也 in the classical-era Chinese text Zuo Zhuan (Scroll 6, 23rd Year of Duke Xi), literally means "Pacifying

24780-460: The special attack force. Seki is said to have closed his eyes, lowered his head, and thought for ten seconds before saying: "Please do appoint me to the post." Seki became the 24th kamikaze pilot to be chosen. He later said: "Japan's future is bleak if it is forced to kill one of its best pilots" and "I am not going on this mission for the Emperor or for the Empire ;... I am going because I

24957-492: The stated wishes of the family members. Some families from foreign countries such as South Korea have requested that their relatives be delisted on the grounds that enshrining someone against their beliefs in life constitutes an infringement of the Constitution. Japan has participated in 16 other conflicts since the Boshin War in 1869. The following table chronologically lists the number of people enshrined as kami at

25134-484: The temporary absence of key warships from the combat zone would tie up operational initiatives. By 1945, however, the US Navy was large enough that damaged ships could be detached back home for repair without much hampering the fleet's operational capability. The only US surface losses were escort carriers, destroyers, and smaller ships, all of which lacked the armor protection or capability to sustain heavy damage. Overall,

25311-608: The terms set by the Potsdam Declaration (1945) after the end of the war, including the provision in Article 10 of punishment for "all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners". Japanese law does not define those convicted in the post-1945 trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan's governments have accepted the judgments made in the trials, and in the Treaty of San Francisco (1952). Former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe had advocated

25488-400: The three torii and one gate that lead to the main shrine complex, there are a few others that mark other entrances to the shrine grounds. The Ishi Torii is a large stone torii located on the south end of the main causeway. It was erected in 1932 and marks the entrance to the parking lots. The Kitamon and Minamimon are two areas that mark the north and south entrances, respectively, into

25665-458: The time of the surrender, the Japanese had more than 9,000 aircraft in the home islands available for kamikaze attacks, and more than 5,000 had already been specially fitted for suicide attack to resist the planned either American or Soviet invasion. As the end of the war approached, the Allies did not suffer more serious significant losses, despite having far more ships and facing a greater intensity of kamikaze attacks. Although causing some of

25842-647: The use of kamikaze tactics as Allied forces advanced towards the Japanese home islands . The tradition of death instead of defeat, capture, and shame was deeply entrenched in Japanese military culture; one of the primary values in the samurai life and the Bushido code was loyalty and honor until death. In addition to kamikazes , the Japanese military also used or made plans for non-aerial Japanese Special Attack Units, including those involving Kairyu (submarines), Kaiten (human torpedoes), Shinyo speedboats, and Fukuryu divers. The Japanese word kamikaze

26019-419: The war dead, giving Yasukuni a more central role. Enshrinements at Yasukuni were originally announced in the government's official gazette so that the souls could be treated as national heroes. In April 1944, this practice ended and the identities of the spirits were concealed from the general public. The shrine had a critical role in military and civilian morale during the war era as a symbol of dedication to

26196-732: The war to be sunk, the Fletcher -class destroyer USS  Callaghan , was on a radar picket line off Okinawa when she was struck by an obsolete wood-and-fabric Yokosuka K5Y biplane. During the final stage of World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army aviation employed numbers of kamikaze airstrikes against the Red Army during the Soviet–Japanese War in 1945. Between 9 August and 2 September 1945, several airstrikes involving kamikaze pilots were recorded. On 18 August,

26373-603: The war, this usage gained acceptance worldwide and was re-imported into Japan. Before the formation of kamikaze units, pilots had made deliberate crashes as a last resort when their aircraft had suffered severe damage and they did not want to risk being captured or wanted to do as much damage to the enemy as possible, since they were crashing anyway. Such situations occurred in both the Axis and Allied air forces. Axell and Kase see these suicides as "individual, impromptu decisions by men who were mentally prepared to die". One example of this may have occurred on 7 December 1941 during

26550-419: The way down on to the lowest ranks. In POW camps , this meant that prisoners of war received the worst beatings of all, partly in the belief that such punishments were merely the proper technique to deal with disobedience. The phenomenon of gekokujō (下克上) which involves lower-ranking officers overthrowing or assassinating their superiors, as evidenced by the multiple coups and assassinations carried out on

26727-435: The willful, intentional, and unreasonable destruction of life, limb, and property, subject matter which has been regarded as criminal by the laws of all civilized peoples ... The Pearl Harbor attack breached the Kellogg–Briand Pact and the Hague Convention III. In addition, it violated Article 23 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, of October 1907 ... But the attack of Pearl Harbor did not alone result in murder and

26904-472: The younger brother of Hirohito and a member of the Imperial House of Japan , served as an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army stationed in China. He authored a book published in 1984, in which he revealed his shock at the atrocities carried out by the Japanese military during his one-year deployment in China. In 1994, the Japanese newspaper outlet Yomiuri Shimbun conducted an interview with him. He provided an account of Japanese atrocities committed against

27081-449: Was "anti-Japanese". As a result, the Japanese soldiers engaged in indiscriminate killing. Former Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew , who was almost a victim of the Sook Ching Massacre, has stated that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties. According to Lieutenant Colonel Hishakari Takafumi, a newspaper correspondent at the time, the plan was to ultimately kill about 50,000 Chinese, and 25,000 had already been murdered when

27258-440: Was "likely," but was "confident that the Japanese would not dare to start hostilities against the United States." The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan declared war on the U.S. and the U.S. likewise declared war on Japan . Simultaneously with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (Honolulu time), Japan invaded the British colony of Malaya and bombed Singapore , and began land actions in Hong Kong , without

27435-399: Was an army physician, and his infantry battalion was stationed in China. In his diary, he admitted to following an order to murder civilians in the Chinese city of Changzhou. Hosaka's diary documenting the Japanese atrocities in Changzhou has been supported by various Japanese sources. In 1987, his squad leader, Kitayama, confessed to killing civilians in Changzhou. Makihara Nobuo was part of

27612-456: Was asked by Hui people to help bury their relatives. The Hui security maintenance leader Sun Shurong and Hui Imams Zhang Zihui, Ma Zihe, Ge Changfa, Wang Shouren, Ma Changfa were involved in collecting Hui corpses and burying them after the Nanjing massacre. The Ji'e lane Mosque caretaker father Zhang was in his 60s when killed by the Japanese and his decomposing corpse was the first to be washed in accordance to Islamic custom and buried. They buried

27789-414: Was assigned the task of assisting the Japanese ships that would attempt to destroy Allied forces in Leyte Gulf. That unit had only 41 aircraft: 34 Mitsubishi A6M Zero ("Zeke") carrier-based fighters, three Nakajima B6N Tenzan ("Jill") torpedo bombers , one Mitsubishi G4M ("Betty") and two Yokosuka P1Y Ginga ("Frances") land-based bombers, and one additional reconnaissance aircraft. The task facing

27966-400: Was at war from 1895 to 1945. Prior to 1895, Japan had only briefly invaded Korea during the Shogunate , long before the Meiji Restoration , and the invasion failed. Therefore, Rummel 's estimate of 6-million to 10-million dead between 1937 (the Rape of Nanjing ) and 1945, may be roughly corollary to the time-frame of the Nazi Holocaust , but it falls far short of the actual numbers killed by

28143-499: Was called a "body attack" ( tai-atari ) in aircraft loaded with bombs, torpedoes , and/or other explosives. About 19 percent of kamikaze attacks were successful. The Japanese considered the goal of damaging or sinking large numbers of Allied ships to be a just reason for suicide attacks; kamikaze was more accurate than conventional attacks, and often caused more damage. Some kamikazes hit their targets even after their aircraft had been crippled. The attacks began in October 1944, at

28320-665: Was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture." According to Rummel, in China alone, from 1937 to 1945, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and a total of 10.2 million Chinese were killed in the course of the war. According to the British historian M. R. D. Foot , civilian deaths were between 10 million and 20 million. British historian Mark Felton claims that up to 30 million people were killed, most of them civilians.: The Japanese murdered 30 million civilians while "liberating" what it called

28497-728: Was enforced by the Japanese military, and the Society of Yi Dynasty Korea was switched to the political system of the Empire of Japan . Thus, North and South Korea both refer to "Japanese war crimes" as events which occurred during the period of Korea under Japanese rule . By comparison, the Western Allies did not come into a military conflict with Japan until 1941, and North Americans , Australians, South East Asians and Europeans may consider "Japanese war crimes" to be events that occurred from 1942 to 1945. Japanese war crimes were not always carried out by ethnic Japanese personnel. A small minority of people in every Asian and Pacific country invaded or occupied by Japan collaborated with

28674-425: Was hit by a deliberately crashed Japanese aircraft. Rear Admiral Masafumi Arima , the commander of the 26th Air Flotilla (part of the 11th Air Fleet ), is sometimes credited with inventing the kamikaze tactic. Arima personally led an attack by a Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" twin-engined bomber against a large Essex -class aircraft carrier , USS  Franklin , near Leyte Gulf, on or about 15 October 1944. Arima

28851-551: Was justified as an act of self-defense in response to the oil embargo imposed by the United States. Most historians and scholars agree that the oil embargo cannot be used as justification for using military force against a foreign nation imposing the embargo because there is a clear distinction between a perception of something being essential to the welfare of the nation-state and a threat sufficiently serious to warrant an act of force in response, which Japan had failed to consider. Japanese scholar and diplomat Takeo Iguchi states that it

29028-405: Was killed and part of an aircraft hit Franklin . The Japanese high command and propagandas seized on Arima's example. He was promoted posthumously to vice admiral and was given official credit for making the first kamikaze attack. On 17 October 1944, Allied forces assaulted Suluan Island, beginning the Battle of Leyte Gulf . The Imperial Japanese Navy's 1st Air Fleet, based at Manila ,

29205-420: Was killed due to conflicts after Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty that formally ended World War II in 1951 has been qualified for enshrinement. Therefore, the shrine does not include members of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces which was established after the peace treaty. Enshrinement is carried out unilaterally by the shrine without consultation of surviving family members and in some cases against

29382-449: Was moved directly south of Yasukuni Shrine's honden . Its name, Motomiya ("Original Shrine"), references the fact that it was essentially a prototype for the current Yasukuni Shrine. The second peripheral shrine is the Chinreisha . This small shrine was constructed in 1965, directly south of the Motomiya . It is dedicated to those not enshrined in the honden —those killed by wars or incidents worldwide, regardless of nationality. It has

29559-444: Was negligible. On 17 August, the Kwantung Army command ordered its units to surrender, but some of the pilots disobeyed and the Japanese air attacks continued. On 18 August, convoys of the 20th and 21st Armored Brigade were attacked. The kamikazes traded six of their aircraft for a tank and a couple of cars. The kamikazes also flew solo. On 18 August, several ammunition resupply vehicles carrying ammunition for BM-13 were destroyed by

29736-401: Was not a planned attack by a member of the Special Attack Force and was most likely undertaken on the pilot's own initiative. The sinking of the ocean tug USS  Sonoma on 24 October is listed in some sources as the first ship lost to a kamikaze strike, but the attack occurred before the first mission of the Special Attack Force (on 25 October) and the aircraft used, a Mitsubishi G4M ,

29913-433: Was not flown by the original four Special Attack Squadrons. On 25 October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf , the Kamikaze Special Attack Force carried out its first mission. Five A6M Zeros, led by Lieutenant Seki, were escorted to the target by leading Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa where they attacked several escort carriers . One Zero attempted to hit the bridge of USS  Kitkun Bay but instead exploded on

30090-451: Was not used because it was believed that anesthetics would adversely affect the results of the experiments. Kamikaze Kamikaze ( 神風 , pronounced [kamiꜜkaze] ; ' divine wind ' or ' spirit wind ' ) , officially Shinpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai ( 神風特別攻撃隊 , ' Divine Wind Special Attack Unit ' ) , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for

30267-506: Was ordered to." The names of the four subunits within the Kamikaze Special Attack Force were Unit Shikishima , Unit Yamato , Unit Asahi and Unit Yamazakura . These names were taken from a patriotic death poem , Shikishima no Yamato-gokoro wo hito towaba, asahi ni niou yamazakura bana by the Japanese classical scholar, Motoori Norinaga . The poem reads: If someone asks about the Yamato spirit [Spirit of Old/True Japan] of Shikishima [a poetic name for Japan] – it

30444-435: Was originally built in 1901 in styles of Irimoya-zukuri , Hirairi , and Doubanbuki (copper roofing) in order to allow patrons to pay their respects and make offerings. This building's roof was renovated in 1989. The white screens hanging off the ceiling are changed to purple ones on ceremonial occasions. The honden is the main shrine where Yasukuni's enshrined deities reside. Built in 1872 and refurbished in 1989, it

30621-531: Was preferable since even a heavily damaged kamikaze could reach its target. The speedy Ohkas presented a very difficult problem for anti-aircraft fire, since their velocity made fire control extremely difficult. By 1945, large numbers of anti-aircraft shells with radiofrequency proximity fuzes , on average seven times more effective than regular shells, became available, and the US Navy recommended their use against kamikaze attacks. The peak period of kamikaze attack frequency came during April–June 1945 at

30798-431: Was the Changjiao massacre in China. Back in Southeast Asia, the Laha massacre resulted in the deaths of 705 prisoners of war on Japanese-occupied Indonesia 's Ambon Island, and in Japanese-occupied Singapore 's Alexandra Hospital massacre , hundreds of wounded Allied soldiers, innocent citizens and medical staff were murdered by Japanese soldiers. In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre of February 1945 resulted in

30975-407: Was the Nanjing Massacre of 1937–38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East , the Japanese Army massacred as many as 260,000 civilians and prisoners of war, though some have placed the figure as high as 350,000. The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders has the death figure of 300,000 inscribed on its entrance. In

31152-449: Was the version of the Geneva Convention that covered the treatment of prisoners of war during World War II. Nevertheless, Japan ratified the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which contained provisions regarding prisoners of war and an Imperial Proclamation in 1894 stated that Japanese soldiers should make every effort to win the war without violating international laws. According to Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka , Japanese forces during

31329-474: Was to develop biological weapons that could be used for aggression. Biological agents and gasses developed from these experiments were used against the Chinese Army and civilian population. These included Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii . Victims were subjected to experiments including but not limited to vivisection , amputations without anesthesia, testing of biological weapons , horse blood transfusions, and injection of animal blood into their corpses. Anesthesia

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