Wings of Defeat

Wings of Defeat is a feature-length documentary exploring the human experience of surviving kamikaze pilots. When director, Risa Morimoto, learned that her beloved uncle had trained as a kamikaze pilot in his youth but carried that secret to his grave, she decided to retrace his footsteps and ask surviving pilots about their provocative experiences. Sixty years later, survivors in their eighties tell us about their training, their mindsets, their experiences in a kamikaze cockpit and what it meant to survive when thousands of their fellow pilots crashed to their deaths. Their stories insist we set aside our preconceptions to relive their all too human experiences with them. Ultimately, they help us question what responsibilities a government at war has to its soldiers and to its people.

Aliases

• Beyond the Sun: Legacy of the Kamikaze

Dans l’imaginaire collectif, les pilotes kamikazes incarnent le fanatisme. Au Japon, on admire le sacrifice de ceux qui lors de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, se sont portés volontaires. Ce sont en effet des milliers de pilotes que l’armée japonaise, refusant de capituler, a envoyé vers des cibles impossibles à atteindre. Ce que l’histoire ignore, c’est que des centaines d’entre eux ont survécu à la guerre.

Aliases

• Les ailes de la défaite

Selbstmordpiloten verkörpern eine extreme Form von Fanatismus. In Japan werden die Kamikazepiloten, die im Zweiten Weltkrieg ihr Leben ließen, für ihre Selbstlosigkeit und Opferbereitschaft jedoch weiterhin hoch geachtet. Nur wenigen Menschen außerhalb Japans ist bekannt, dass neben den 4.000 im Einsatz ums Leben gekommenen Piloten Hunderte Kamikazeflieger den Krieg überlebten.

제2차 세계대전 중 자살폭격을 벌인 가미카제는 국제적으로는 광적인 애국주의를 상징하지만, 일본에서는 여전히 숭고한 희생정신을 발휘한 영웅으로 숭배된다. 60년이 지난 지금 생존자들은 수천 명의 동료가 자살한 가운데 살아남은 것이 어떤 것인지, 그리고 가미카제의 훈련의 진상은 무엇인지 증언한다.