The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 F O C U S O N C O U N T E R T E R R O R I S M K AMIKAZES : P RECURSORS OF 9/11? t was an ironic reversal of fortune. In October 1944, Tokyo named Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi the new commander of Japan’s First Air Fleet, based in the Philippines. Onishi was the man responsible for planning the knockout blow against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor by Japan’s carrier-borne aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941. But three years later, after his arrival at Clark Field, he found that his forces were on the ropes in the Philippines. Americans, after raids on several bases, had destroyed nearly two-thirds of the entire Japanese fighter-plane force in the country and were gathering a massive armada off the east coast of Leyte. I T ODAY , 60 YEARS LATER , THE STORY OF THE KAMIKAZES ECHOES EERILY IN THE PHENOMENON OF SUICIDE BOMBING IN THE M IDDLE E AST AND 9/11 ATTACKS . B Y J OSE A RMILLA Phil Foster