The Kaiten Weapon

THE KAITEN WEAPON is the full story of a fantastic suicide weapon—the manned torpedo —and of the volunteers who deliberately offered their lives in defense of Japan.So secret that few people even in Japan knew of its existence, the Kaiten force was a desperate and fanatic attempt to smash the U.S. fleet in the closing months of the war.Yutaka Yokota, a Kaiten force volunteer himself, tells how men were trained, gives complete details about the weapon’s performance and how it was operated, and provides a comprehensive account of every Kaiten mission.Joseph D. Harrington, an American expert on U.S. Naval operations in World War II, worked closely with Yokota in preparing this first English language edition of his book. In addition, he has provided an accurate appraisal from U.S. sources of the results of Kaiten attacks, making this the definitive work on one of the most bizarre and fanatical fighting groups of the war.