The last kamikaze : the story of Admiral Matome Ugaki /

Vice Admiral Ugaki served as chief of staff to the legendary Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet, until Yamamoto was killed in an aerial ambush in 1943. Ugaki, who was himself wounded in the attack, later was appointed commander of the First Battleship Division, remaining in that position until the battle of Leyte Gulf. He was then charged with directing the aerial defense of Japan, oriented around the untried Kamikaze Corps. Hoyt ( Japan's War ) bases part of his narrative on Ugaki's terse but revealing war diary, which the admiral called ``Seaweed of War.'' Often poetic and abstract, the diary nonetheless conveys Ugaki's stoic struggle to prepare himself for defeat and death even as he sent waves of suicide missions into the air against the Americans. Resolved to follow his young pilots to certain death, Ugaki flew a kamikaze mission within hours of Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, and was never heard from again. A strange, stirring tale, sympathetically related from the Japanese point of view. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Admiral Ugaki held several important posts in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II and died leading a kamikaze attack on the day of the Japanese surrender. Ugaki's wartime diary has recently been published under the title Fading Victory ( LJ 6/91), edited by Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon. Hoyt, a prolific military historian, has used the original diary and other sources to write a survey of the Pacific War from Ugaki's perspective. Weaknesses in Hoyt's book include a redundant style and factual error concerning the Guadalcanal campaign, which has been called the turning point of the Pacific War. In addition, Hoyt's figures for the number of American cruisers participating and lost in this battle are wrong. Hence, this book is not recommended. For another view on Hoyt's work, see the review of Warlord , p. 84.--Ed. --Robert Andrews, Duluth P.L., Minn. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

During WW II, Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki was the only known member of the Japanese Navy's high command to keep a diary. The ever-prolific Hoyt (Hirohito, 1992, etc.) now draws on this unusually candid journal (begun in October 1941) to offer an absorbing appreciation of how the fate of a single honorable officer, swept up in a terrible conflict over which he had little control, mirrored that of his service and country. As chief of staff to Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Ugaki helped plan the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, an enterprise neither man supported wholeheartedly. Loyal to a fault, he rejoiced, albeit apprehensively, in Japan's early victories throughout East Asia. Then came setbacks at Midway, Guadalcanal, and elsewhere, which Ugaki knew could not easily be made up for. When US interceptors ambushed and killed Yamamoto, Ugaki was traveling in a second plane that also was shot down--but the warrior survived, recuperated, and eventually returned to sea. His flagship was shot out from under him, however, during the battle of Leyte Gulf. Back in Japan by the fall of 1944, Ugaki was chosen to direct naval efforts to provide the home islands with air defense. ``Special attack'' units--a euphemism for squadrons sent on suicide missions--were integral to this program. But while the kamikazes took a significant toll on American vessels, there was no stopping the Allies. When the end came after the two atom bombings, Ugaki defied his beloved emperor (who had instructed the Japanese military to lay down its arms) to keep faith with the hundreds of young men he had sent to their deaths. Shortly after the surrender broadcast, Ugaki flew from Kyushu toward Okinawa, where US night fighters on routine patrol shot him out of the sky before he could damage Allied ships. An insider's intriguing perspectives on an ill-starred belligerency, plus savvy commentary and continuity from a veteran military historian.