Kamikaze
What it's about
by Beatrice Garland is about a Japanese pilot in the Second World War, sent on a suicide mission to crash his plane into an enemy ship. He turns back, and lives, but his family and neighbours treat him as if he were dead.
Kamikaze pilots were expected to die for their country and emperor; turning back was a deep disgrace. The poem was published in 2013.
Key terms
The daughter's narration
The story is told by the pilot's daughter, reported by another speaker. This makes it feel like a family story passed down, and distant from the pilot himself.
It begins: ‘Her father embarked at sunrise’, with ‘a shaven head / full of powerful incantations’, the chants that prepared him for death.
Looking down, he sees the beauty of the sea: ‘dark shoals of fishes / flashing silver’. The memories of nature, fishing and his childhood seem to turn him back towards life.
Key terms
The shame of returning
When he comes home, he is rejected. His wife ignores him: ‘my mother never spoke again / in his presence’. Neighbours and even his children treat him ‘as though he no longer existed’.
The poem has . In the last two, the daughter's own words appear, in italics, as she remembers how she and her brother learned to shun him too.
The poem ends with a question: ‘which had been the better way to die’, a death in battle, or a slow, living death of shame.
Key terms
Themes and comparisons
the effects of conflict on families; honour and shame; the power of nature and memory; identity.
- Poppies: war seen through a family.
- : memory, and someone cut off from home.
- Remains: a soldier who survives, but is haunted afterwards.
Remember
The pilot chooses life, and is punished for it. That irony is the heart of the poem.