Japan's WWII "kamikaze" film sparks talk of peace

"They took these pure, inexperienced young men and sent them off to die. I think they should take responsibility for that."

Both he and Ishihara have emphasized the differences between the wartime kamikaze and contemporary suicide attackers, but others say the two phenomena have common threads.

"The similarities in the selection of young men to carry out these one-way missions and the methods used to convince them cannot be ignored," said Linda Hoaglund, one of the makers of "Wings of Defeat," a documentary film about the kamikaze set to be screened in Japan later this year.

DESPERATION

Vice-Admiral Takejiro Onishi initiated the desperate strategy of having pilots fly their planes into U.S. ships when Japan was on the verge of losing control of the Philippines.

The success of the first "kamikaze" attack off the island of Leyte in 1944 led to the recruitment of more young men for such missions.

"The suicide attacks were an inevitable result of Japan's pre-war militarism," said businessman Hiro. "It was a kind of religion."

More than 2,000 planes were used and 34 U.S. ships were sunk in Japanese suicide attacks in the last few months of the war, according to a Japanese encyclopedia.

One 80-year-old who lived through wartime bombing said it was hard for those who did not remember the conflict to understand it.

"I don't really feel proud of them," Kunimitsu Suzuki said of the pilots after watching the film. "I think with the education they had, they were forced into it. They felt there was nothing else they could do."