mustpost
18th Feb 2008, 18:53
I'm sure it has not escaped the forum's attention in the UK, but a biggish doc on C4 at 2100 tonight promises a lot of insight into Kamikaze..
Ps I'm not in any way connected with the production.....:)
Mods, will delete after TX...
Graybeard
18th Feb 2008, 19:27
What's the title? I'll have to watch for it on DreckTV over here.
My former co-worker, Jimmy, was born and raised in Sant Monica, Calif, to Japanese parents, successful fresh food merchants in the LA market. Jimmy's mother took him to Tokyo to enroll in secondary school, and was on her way home to LA in a Japanese ship when Pearl Harbor hit. The ship headed back to Tokyo and Jimmy and his mother were put under house arrest.
They dropped him out of school, and took his radio. Jimmy and mother eventually became friends with their two captors. When Jimmy turned 17, they drafted him into the Navy. He would have been made a pilot, but was nearsighted. They made him an avionics tech, and his job was to strip all the excess weight out of the fighters. The radios were just piled at the side of the ramp.
At night the demolition people would load the planes with explosives, and the next morning, the pilots would depart. I had heard elsewhere that they riveted the canopies shut, but Jimmy said that was not true.
As the American fleet drew closer, and they were running out of airplanes, the Navy started a speedboat Kamikaze squadron, and drafted Jimmy to be a driver. The big bombs dropped before his number was up.
It took Jimmy nearly five years to get home to the US, because he had lost his citizenship, having been in a foreign military. He immediately enrolled in junior college in Calif, and three months later was drafted into the US Army and sent to Korea...
Jimmy returned to Japan in about 1975 as a company rep, and was laughed at, as he was speaking the Japanese of 30 years prior.
Jimmy is happily retired near San Francisco, and playing golf, last I heard.
GB
chiglet
18th Feb 2008, 21:55
Watched it....Lots of Havards trailing smoke. Content not too bad, but relying on "Eyewitnesses" who were "Involved" but not at that moment in time.
However, I thought that it was better than the usual crud.
What I found irritating [nothing to do with the Prog]was
"This Programme has been brought to you with the ["garbage"] of the VW Passat"...then the Advert starts with a "Vauxhall Astra" :ugh:
Perhaps VW should be told........:ok:
watp,iktch