I was a kamikaze

mberley's new series of Eyewitness Accounts bring history, warfare, disaster, travel and exploration to life, written by the people who could say, 'I was there!' Ryuji Nagatsuka did not know, when he made an application to become a pilot in October 1943, that by the following autumn Japan s situation in the war would be so critical that the role for which he was destined would be part of the most incomprehensible phenomenon of the hostilities that of a suicide pilot, known to the world as a kamikaze.

He and his fellow kamikaze pilots had to be highly trained to crash exactly on target and to evade dense anti-aircraft fire.