TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Ordered to sacrifice themselves for the nation by crashing their planes into U.S. warships as Japan vainly battled to stave off invasion in the final months of World War Two, some young pilots instead returned alive. Young pilots from the Japanese Royal Navy drink cups of sake before their kamikaze suicidal attack mission. As a documentary released in Japan on Saturday shows, not all the young men trained for the suicide missions that struck terror into U.S. servicemen faced their almost certain death gladly. "I wanted to live," Kazuo Nakajima, one of the now elderly 'failed cherry blossoms' tells the filmmakers with an embarrassed laugh. "I didn't want to die."
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Documentary shows not all kamikaze pilots faced their death gladly
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Film found veterans were not just fanatics but had mixed emotions about the past
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Director found veteran who criticized the emperor for not surrendering sooner
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4,000 kamikaze pilots died and 34 U.S. ships sunk in last months of the war
One veteran even criticized the emperor, treated as a living god until @placeholder's defeat, for failing to surrender sooner.