1944: Japan was fighting for her life against the unstoppable Allied juggernaut. In a desperate attempt to stave off defeat, the Japanese high command unleashed the kamikaze - idealistic young men who believed there was no greater glory than sacrificing their lives to defend their homeland. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle - and lived?
Soon after the 9/11 attacks that shattered the peace of his own country, ethnographer M. G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cadre of Japan's kamikaze corps survivors - pilots who, through chance or fate, were prevented from completing their final missions. Theirs are stories of courage and camaraderie, of fanatical devotion to a lost cause, of the mass indoctrination of an entire people into a cult of death - and of a brotherhood, forged in the fire of war. In a world where the suicide bomber has once again become the preferred means of resistance for a militant cause sworn to bring the West to its knees, this testimony has never been more vitally important and relevant.
