About half of the kamikaze pilots of 1945 had been drawn from the ranks of university students. Many were cosmopolitan intellectuals who had been exposed to foreign ideas and influences, including Western philosophy and literature. These traits had not endeared them to their officers and NCOs in military training camps. Many young scholars had been singled out for special abuse, including vicious beatings—leaving them with feelings of contempt and loathing for military authority, and for the tyrannical regime that held the nation’s fate in its grip. In diaries and letters, many of these future
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