WAR WITHOUT MERCY

Japan's suicidal tactics and the almost cultlike devotion to death shown by Japanese kamikazes inevitably invite comparison to the use of suicide bombers by fanatical Islamists. It is a comparison that Japanese veterans bitterly reject. They were soldiers fighting other soldiers, the Japanese are quick to point out. Interestingly, American veterans who were their targets agree. "We knew who we were fighting," says Pete Beninato, 82, a gunner with the Third Tank Battalion, Third Marine Division, in some of the heaviest fighting in the Pacific War. "What they got over there in Iraq is a crime. Our soldiers today don't know who the hell they're fighting. Those Iraqi suicide bombers, they're a bunch of cowards. The Japanese," says Beninato, "they were brave. I don't think I'd have the guts to kill myself. I like life too much. But they were good fighters, not afraid to fight, not afraid to die."

By the summer of 1944, 2-1/2 years after Pearl Harbor, Japan's tactics on the battlefield could only be described as desperate. Beninato was on the island of Guam, lying underneath his tank, when he heard the enemy preparing itself for a suicidal charge. "They were drinking sake and screaming 'Banzai!' and 'Marine, you die!' " recalls Beninato. "Then they charged with bamboo spears with bayonets tied on the end. They were trying to spear tanks. We slaughtered them. It was sad, really."

Japan was just gearing up for greater sacrifice. By October 1944, kamikaze planes (named after the "divine wind" that spared Japan from a Mongol invasion in the 13th century) were attacking American warships in waves. Japanese factories were building ohka bombs, rocket-propelled explosives steered by suicide pilots (called baka, or "idiot," bombs by the Americans) and kaiten torpedoes, 420 all told, with 1,375 young men trained to guide them.

Toshiharu Konada wanted to be a doctor, but when war came, he became a kaiten pilot instead. He recalled seeing his first kaiten being lifted out of the water by a crane at a Navy base in September 1944. "It was black and shiny and dripping seawater. Dark clouds were covering the sky. I was kind of struck with awe: 'So this is it! This is what I am going to ride on!' "

The kamikazes made their greatest push after the Americans invaded Okinawa, a large island south of Japan and the empire's last line of defense, in April 1945. On April 6, as part of Operation Kikusui ("Floating Chrysanthemum"), Japan launched 223 suicide planes at the American fleet. Aboard the minesweeper Defense, Jim Bowell saw a kamikaze shot down as it came in low at the ship's bow. As the plane exploded, it flung its pilot high onto the mast of the American ship. The body, or what was left of it, hung grotesquely from a yardarm. "Cut that man down," Commander Abbott ordered Bowell, who was standing at his side on the bridge to send signals. Bowell, who was 19 years old, climbed up the mast and retrieved a "pile of pulp," he recalls. Bowell saved the pilot's bones as a souvenir and, after the war, brought some of them home to Minneapolis in a cigar box. When he told his mother what was inside the box, she yelled, "Get that thing out of this house!"

The gruesomeness was worse on the island of Okinawa. Private Dencker, the mortar handler with the 96th Infantry Division, came across some civilians hiding in a cave on his first day on the island. He knew just enough Japanese to say, "Come out." They did, but an old man repeatedly pointed to Dencker's pistol and his own head. He was begging to be shot. It was a disgrace for the Japanese to be taken prisoner. A few days later, Dencker came across more native Okinawans lying in the road, writhing. They had been given poison to take by departing Japanese troops. Army medics were trying to give them purgatives, but the civilians were resisting. They wanted to die. Finally Dencker encountered some actual Japanese soldiers. Surrounded by the Americans, they were trapped behind an outcropping of rocks. When the Americans called on them to surrender, the Japanese held grenades to their chests and blew themselves up.