According to Naoto Amaki, the former Japanese ambassador to Lebanon, the WWII Japanese kamikaze bombers — pilots who were sent on suicide missions, particularly during the final year of combat, against the Allied forces — have served as an inadvertent inspiration to Islamist suicide bombers. In a recent LA Times article, Amaki recounted the conversation that he had in 2001 with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. Amaki quotes Nasrallah as stating: “We learned how to do suicide missions from the kamikazes … the Shiites all commend the Japanese samurai spirit.”

The question should be whether it is appropriate to compare Islamist suicide bombers with the Japanese kamikaze pilots, and if we are to adopt a historical perspective, the answer is no. The historical context for the Japanese nationalism that encouraged the kamikaze pilots is certainly not analogous to Hezbollah’s Shiite Islamist context. The Japanese kamikaze pilots — their planes weighted down with bombs or additional gasoline tanks — were told to crash into their targets primarily during the hellish last year of WWII. The collective national fatigue was reaching a state of panic, and the death toll was mounting and would, by the end of the war, reach approximately 1.97 million, although such a statistic is open to debate. As Hideo Den, an 81-year-old who attempted but survived a kamikaze suicide mission, explained, “It was desperation that made us do it.”

The single disturbing and poignant point of intersection between the kamikaze pilots and their Islamist counterparts is, apparently, love. Speaking about the kamikaze operations, Shigeyoshi Hamazono, a kamikaze pilot who survived his three attempted kamikaze missions, recently stated: “I still don’t think it was a mistake. I’m proud that I flew as a kamikaze. And I’m glad I came back. We did what we did out of a love for our parents, for the nation … Just like suicide bombers … We did it out of love for something.”

Mimi Hanaoka