TOKYO, July 24 (UPI) -- "Wings of Defeat," a documentary about Japanese kamikaze pilots, comes at a time when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to revise the country's wartime history.
The film, directed by Risa Morimoto, a Japanese-American living in New York, takes a kinder view of kamikazes -- a Japanese word commonly translated as "divine wind" -- typically depicted as fanatics filled with hatred for the United States and ready to die for their god and emperor.
In "Wings of Defeat," the dwindling number of surviving pilots expressed sadness, regret and anger at their leaders, who told them they were fighting madmen who would kill them all.
"They thought they were fighting to end all wars, and they were lied to," Morimoto recently told The Japan Times.
Masaaki Kobayashi, a former pilot who appears in the film, said the fliers "thought we were fighting and giving our lives for our families and our comrades," The Independent reported Tuesday.
"Wings of Defeat" follows another film about kamikazes but with a different point of view. In "I Go to Die for You," written by Tokyo's right-wing governor, Shintaro Ishihara, pilots are eulogized as self-sacrificing heroes and glorified as "falling cherry blossom petals."
