The Sacrificial Lambs
by Bill Sholin
Mountain View Books, 1994, 250 pages
Bill Sholin formed the National Kamikaze Survivors
Association in 1997 and served as its President until he passed away in 2005. In May 2002, about 400
kamikaze attack survivors and their relatives shared their wartime experiences
at the association's first reunion held in Everett, Washington. This book
written by Sholin tells about his experiences aboard the destroyer Wren
and gives the history of Japan's kamikaze attacks on Allied ships.
The 23 chapters in The Sacrificial Lambs jump back and forth between
personal reminiscences about the destroyer Wren and battle
descriptions of kamikaze attacks. The book lacks a single focus, with only
about ten percent of the material on the destroyer Wren relating to
kamikaze attacks. More than three quarters of the way through the book, Wren
gunners shoot down their first kamikaze planes off Okinawa. Before this point in
the book, Wren spends most of her time in the Aleutian Islands,
with several crossings to bomb the Japanese-occupied Kurile Islands, far north
of kamikaze attacks that took place in the Philippines and Okinawa.
The title comes from the author's belief that Navy
destroyers served as sacrificial lambs to save the remainder of the Allied
fleet from kamikaze attacks. Part of the book's subtitle is "US destroyers
vs. Japanese Kamikazes," but in several places in the book Sholin
acknowledges the valuable role played by other types of ships and by
carrier-based fighters such as the Corsair. In the Battle of Okinawa,
148 destroyers of all types participated, and 119 of these suffered kamikaze
crashes and 43 were sunk or scrapped (p. 223). Radar picket destroyers had the
task of early detection of incoming kamikaze planes, and these picket lines
mostly located 40 to 70 miles to the north and northwest of Okinawa in a half circle
took the brunt of the kamikaze attacks. Although the Japanese military leaders
wanted most to destroy aircraft carriers, many kamikaze planes dove at these
destroyers on the picket lines.
The book's history of kamikaze attacks generally gives a
tedious chronological recitation of ship name, attack date, where hit,
casualties, and what happened to the ship afterward. Sholin writes that he
gathered his own information by researching the history of each ship rather
than relying on other available summaries. His primary research source was the
eight volumes of the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
published by the U.S. Naval Institute. The book also has many photos of
kamikaze attacks and of the destroyer Wren and her crew.
Although Sholin gives battle details about scores of
kamikaze attacks, he provides no background information on Japan's military
strategy and the Japanese kamikaze pilots themselves. Instead, battle
descriptions begin with the appearance of kamikaze planes, with no details on
the origin of the planes and the background of the pilots. The book's most
interesting parts provide eyewitness accounts of kamikaze attacks. Two kamikaze
planes hit the destroyer Drexler in quick succession, and the book gives
accounts by seven survivors when the ship sank in 49 seconds after being hit by
the second kamikaze aircraft. Another gripping account relates to several shin'yo
suicide boats (explosive motorboats) that tried to attack Wren, but the
destroyer's
gunners destroyed nine of them before they could get close.
Any Wren crewman, and most likely any World War
II destroyer crewman, will probably love this book. However, most readers will
prefer a book that focuses on the history of Japan's kamikaze operations and
that covers the Japanese perspective on the attacks. Bill Sholin wrote two other
books related to kamikaze attacks: Truman's
Decision: Kamikazes the Unknown Factor
(1997) and
The Kamikaze Nightmare: Terror of the Lambs
(2000).
Wren's radar searches
the skies off Okinawa
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