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3 reviews for:
Danger's Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her
Maxwell Taylor Kennedy
4.2 AVERAGE
3 reviews for:
Danger's Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her
Maxwell Taylor Kennedy
4.2 AVERAGE
I bought this book because my grandfather served on the USS Bunker Hill. He was a part of and witnessed a great deal of the events described in this book. The writing isn't fantastic but he tells the story and I have a great deal of respect for those in the Armed Forces and anyone willing to tell their story should be commended for their work.
What an amazing and horrific story. I've always thought aircraft carriers were virtually indestructible, but clearly this vintage had some serious vulnerabilities. My great uncle was on the Bunker Hill during this attack, but sadly he passed away recently and I never heard the story of his experiences on that ship.
What to make of this book. Not being a professional historian working in this area but with some interest in things nautical, I have no in-depth knowledge of the factual nature of this book. Nevertheless, there were some little things that struck me: the Langley (CV-1)described as having begin its life as a light cruiser (it was a collier - note that a later USS Langley CV-17 was indeed originally ordered as a light cruiser), “heads” being called bathrooms, the “rising sun” insignia described as being on the tail of a plane (all pictures I’ve seen had the red ball on the fuselage and the wings,) and bombs are not usually attached to the landing gear.
So I poked around in some reviews and leaving aside the inevitable antagonism toward the Kennedys -- why can’t we see people as individuals instead of part of the inevitably hated tribe -- there were several naval types who railed at the naval errors which they reported filled the book. (One wag reported that reading the first half of the book was like “walking around with a pebble in your shoe” - what a great line.)
On the other hand, the goal of the author was to celebrate the ordinary seaman and aviator (ironically both Admirals Mitscher and Burke were aboard the Bunker Hill); to examine why they performed such heroic actions under impossible conditions; why Japanese often flew their planes willingly into American ships; and to examine whatever cultural differences might exist between the two countries that might explain the differences.
A basic tenet of western culture is that suicide is immoral, yet despite our celebration of the individual as opposed to the Japanese adoration for those who subsume themselves for the group, we, too, honor those who “give their lives for their country.” That implies a willful act, one that could be considered suicide and it’s certainly done for the “greater good.” Charging the machine gun to certain death gets the country’s highest honor. If these values were not inculcated into us from birth, I suppose the military could not exist.
The Bunker Hill carried a new kind of bomb. Developed by Dr. Louis Fieser (who later invented antimalarial drugs and proved that cigarettes caused lung cancer,) this cluster bomb contained several pipes each packed with a mixture of sodium and gasoline which formed a kind of jelly that once burning was impossible to extinguish. Called the M-69 it was targeted against people. Since most Japanese homes were built of wood, the incendiaries created a firestorm. In a change of tactics, General Curtis LeMay ordered his B-29s to begin nighttime bombing of cities rather than daylight targeted bombing of industrial targets. The first test, a single raid, was horrifically successful destroying 25,000 homes in Tokyo. A larger raid, totally unopposed by Japanese fighters which by March of 1945 had been virtually destroyed, created a firestorm rivaling anything in Europe and killed more than 100,000 and destroyed sixteen square miles. Many died by trying to protect themselves in the city's canals but the water began to boil from the heat and they were boiled alive. More people than died at Hiroshima. Could this devastation provided part of the motivation for the Kamikazes, as a desperate act of revenge or to prevent further strikes?
By 1944, the shortage of experienced pilots and airplanes forced the Japanese military into adopting a last resort tactic as the only way to successfully attack U.S. fast attack carriers which were devastating their navy shore-based aircraft. The only solution left to them -- perhaps the only tactic for any desperate group whose righteous survival is threatened with destruction (Jim Jones, anyone?) was the suicide attack. That lesson seems to have been lost on the U.S. after 9/11: it represented a sign of Al Qaeda's weakness rather than strength.
So the question I continue to ask myself, and sought from this book, is just why we are so willing to give our lives for something as ephemeral and inconsequential as a political entity we call a country and/or a political system which many of us could not define except in mythological terms. My nephew and I once had a most interesting debate over lunch in Wurzburg where he teaches ethics and philosophy about a statement made by a German(!) professor I had in college who said that “no political system was worth one life.” If one accepts that one might be, just where does one draw the line: a thousand, ten thousand, a million? So my expectations for the book had less to do with whether the author was a Kennedy or whether the original Langley started as a collier, or where the Japanese planes painted their insignia. It was why people do what they do in times of extreme stress and how we define heroes. I still cannot answer that question to my satisfaction.
The first part of the book is rather disjointed and a disorganized aggregation of facts and background (albeit very interesting) in the development of Japanese adoption of suicide as a tactic. Suicidal behavior has always been a part of combat. Indeed, the attacks by U.S. slow torpedo bombers at Midway were suicidal if you look at the nearly 100% casualty rates and most pilots realized it. On the other hand, despite the realization on the part of the Japanese military of the need for some independent thinking, the general culture of Japan celebrated the community and a slavish devotion to the Emperor and society. (The recent Texas GOP platform has a statement with regard to critical thinking that would have made them fit right in with that kind of cultural mindset.*)
The book has an extraordinary bibliography and Kennedy has clearly done his homework. The rather obvious mistakes I noted above should probably be chalked up to bad editing at Simon & Schuster and not seen as a reflection on the entire book which is extremely interesting.
*From the Texas GOP platform: We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
So I poked around in some reviews and leaving aside the inevitable antagonism toward the Kennedys -- why can’t we see people as individuals instead of part of the inevitably hated tribe -- there were several naval types who railed at the naval errors which they reported filled the book. (One wag reported that reading the first half of the book was like “walking around with a pebble in your shoe” - what a great line.)
On the other hand, the goal of the author was to celebrate the ordinary seaman and aviator (ironically both Admirals Mitscher and Burke were aboard the Bunker Hill); to examine why they performed such heroic actions under impossible conditions; why Japanese often flew their planes willingly into American ships; and to examine whatever cultural differences might exist between the two countries that might explain the differences.
A basic tenet of western culture is that suicide is immoral, yet despite our celebration of the individual as opposed to the Japanese adoration for those who subsume themselves for the group, we, too, honor those who “give their lives for their country.” That implies a willful act, one that could be considered suicide and it’s certainly done for the “greater good.” Charging the machine gun to certain death gets the country’s highest honor. If these values were not inculcated into us from birth, I suppose the military could not exist.
The Bunker Hill carried a new kind of bomb. Developed by Dr. Louis Fieser (who later invented antimalarial drugs and proved that cigarettes caused lung cancer,) this cluster bomb contained several pipes each packed with a mixture of sodium and gasoline which formed a kind of jelly that once burning was impossible to extinguish. Called the M-69 it was targeted against people. Since most Japanese homes were built of wood, the incendiaries created a firestorm. In a change of tactics, General Curtis LeMay ordered his B-29s to begin nighttime bombing of cities rather than daylight targeted bombing of industrial targets. The first test, a single raid, was horrifically successful destroying 25,000 homes in Tokyo. A larger raid, totally unopposed by Japanese fighters which by March of 1945 had been virtually destroyed, created a firestorm rivaling anything in Europe and killed more than 100,000 and destroyed sixteen square miles. Many died by trying to protect themselves in the city's canals but the water began to boil from the heat and they were boiled alive. More people than died at Hiroshima. Could this devastation provided part of the motivation for the Kamikazes, as a desperate act of revenge or to prevent further strikes?
By 1944, the shortage of experienced pilots and airplanes forced the Japanese military into adopting a last resort tactic as the only way to successfully attack U.S. fast attack carriers which were devastating their navy shore-based aircraft. The only solution left to them -- perhaps the only tactic for any desperate group whose righteous survival is threatened with destruction (Jim Jones, anyone?) was the suicide attack. That lesson seems to have been lost on the U.S. after 9/11: it represented a sign of Al Qaeda's weakness rather than strength.
So the question I continue to ask myself, and sought from this book, is just why we are so willing to give our lives for something as ephemeral and inconsequential as a political entity we call a country and/or a political system which many of us could not define except in mythological terms. My nephew and I once had a most interesting debate over lunch in Wurzburg where he teaches ethics and philosophy about a statement made by a German(!) professor I had in college who said that “no political system was worth one life.” If one accepts that one might be, just where does one draw the line: a thousand, ten thousand, a million? So my expectations for the book had less to do with whether the author was a Kennedy or whether the original Langley started as a collier, or where the Japanese planes painted their insignia. It was why people do what they do in times of extreme stress and how we define heroes. I still cannot answer that question to my satisfaction.
The first part of the book is rather disjointed and a disorganized aggregation of facts and background (albeit very interesting) in the development of Japanese adoption of suicide as a tactic. Suicidal behavior has always been a part of combat. Indeed, the attacks by U.S. slow torpedo bombers at Midway were suicidal if you look at the nearly 100% casualty rates and most pilots realized it. On the other hand, despite the realization on the part of the Japanese military of the need for some independent thinking, the general culture of Japan celebrated the community and a slavish devotion to the Emperor and society. (The recent Texas GOP platform has a statement with regard to critical thinking that would have made them fit right in with that kind of cultural mindset.*)
The book has an extraordinary bibliography and Kennedy has clearly done his homework. The rather obvious mistakes I noted above should probably be chalked up to bad editing at Simon & Schuster and not seen as a reflection on the entire book which is extremely interesting.
*From the Texas GOP platform: We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.