kamikaze

beatrice garland

Published: 2013

Birth - Death: 1963 - ?

Country: Japan

Leader: Hideki Tojo

Nationality: English

Beatrice Garland has said: "I spend a lot of the day listening to other people's worlds". Kamikaze came out in a collection of poems called The Invention of Fireworks. Which focuses of life and death in the natural world. Garland questioned what attracted young men and women to risk their lives for a higher cause. The peak period of kamikaze attack frequency came during April–June 1945 at the Battle of Okinawa. Garland says the conflict in this poem is national and personal. The conflict of which decision to make either give into the social pressures to commit suicide as a kamikaze pilot or the ideas of coming back home safely back to the comfort of his family.

who is beatrice garland

Beatrice Garland is a poet, NHS clinician and teacher.

Born 1938 in Oxford.

Beatrice Garland describes writing as ‘a marvellous part of one’s interior private life’ and cites John Donne, John Clare and Seamus Heaney as inspirations.

She has a day job as a National Health Service clinician and teacher.

Began writing poetry in 1989.

She has always read poetry from the sixteenth century right up to the 2011s, as a result of a first degree in English Literature.

She enrolled as a complete beginner in Michael Donaghy’s class at the City Literature

Then for several years she went to Colin Falck’s Thurlow Road Poetry Workshop.

She now goes to a small weekly group run by John Stammers in the Poetry Society’s upstairs studio. There are around 10 poets in it, all experienced and each with a particular and personal style.

Beatrice Garland won the 2001 National Poetry Competition with her poem ‘undressing’.

Her first poetry collection, The Invention of Fireworks, was published in 2013 by Templar and was shortlisted among the Forward Prizes for the Felix Dennis Prize awarded to the best first collection.

society & politics

World War 2 started in 1939 and ended in 1945.

Garland says: “His choice was not futile. I think it was honourable and I think he knew that in spite of how painful it was. Japanese society did not agree,”

Shinto and Buddhism are Japan's two major religions.

Japan's samurai heritage and the samurai code of ethics known as 'Bushido'. The great classic of Bushido - 'Hagakure' written in the early 18th century - begins with the words, Bushido is a way of dying'.

Bushido code: loyalty and honour until death.

The tradition of death instead of defeat was deeply ingrained in Japanese military culture.

As a Kamikaze it was, 'kill or be killed'.

Nearly 5,000 kamikaze pilots died.

Heroic terms of young men achieving the glory of the short-lived cherry blossom, falling while the flower was still perfect, the strategy behind the kamikaze was born purely out of desperation.

“In fact, one might even say that Japan would have lost the war on the home-front sooner without women’s generous contributions to their neighbourhood associations, savings bond campaigns and local labour brigades as well as their psychological support for local families whose fathers and sons were away at war,”.

Kamikaze aircraft were essentially pilot-guided explosive missiles, purpose-built or converted from conventional aircraft. Pilots would attempt to crash their aircraft into enemy ships in what was called a "body attack".

The ultimate offering was to give up one’s life. It was an honour to die for Japan and the Emperor. Young Japanese people were indoctrinated from an early age with these ideals.

If a person came back from a kamikaze attack, they would be shamed and isolated, you would be a coward to your people for caring about yourself more than the country. If you came back, you’re better off dead.

Their motivations in "volunteering" were complex and not simply about patriotism or bringing honour to their families.

Kamikaze pilots who were unable to complete their missions (because of mechanical failure, interception, etc.) were stigmatised in the years following the war. This stigma began to diminish some 50 years after the war as scholars and publishers began to distribute the survivors' stories.

An individual who survived a kamikaze experience, wished they were dead as they brought dishonour on themselves and their family.

Kamikaze means divine wind or spirit wind.

Kamikaze pilots were said to have yelled as they flew their planes through enemy warships: “Tenno Heika Banzai!” — “Long live the Emperor!”

Many of the young soldiers mobilised into the Japanese army by the early 1930s came from the rural areas, where the effects of the depression were devastating, and poverty was widespread.

The wartime regime used existing government controls on public opinion, including schools and textbooks, the media, and the police, but Japan continued to have more of an authoritarian government than a totalitarian one.

No single governmental institution was able to establish full control, until the 1931 Manchurian Incident, when Japan took control of Manchuria.

The emperor has been criticised for not taking a more forceful action to restrain his government, especially considering his own known preference for peace, but Japanese emperors after the Meiji Restoration (1868) had "reigned but not ruled."

The people were not allowed to look at the emperor, or even to speak his name. Japan inhabitants were taught to give their lives, if necessary, for their emperor.