Towards the end of World War II, as US troops advanced across the Pacific, Japan resorted to a desperate strategy: kamikaze attacks. Thousands of Japanese pilots, with an average age of just 21, were ordered to crash their explosive-laden planes into enemy ships. More than 3,800 pilots gave up their lives, killing over 7,000 allied naval personnel. Our reporter Mélodie Sforza met one of the last surviving former kamikaze pilots.
Kamikaze literally means "divine wind". But since 1945, the word has come to represent the Japanese pilots who laid down their lives to defend Japan at the end of World War II. The conflict was coming to an end, and with the advance of US troops and the exhaustion of Japanese forces, it was a radical, desperate strategy.
