A Japan-US Exhibition on Kamikaze Pilots in Hawaii

choi

Debito Arudou, Japan-US Effort to Tell Suicide Pilots’ Stories Dodges Controversy, Wins Praise. Japan Times, May 3, 2015.
www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2 ... roversy-wins-praise

Note:
(a) "Dr MG Sheftall, professor of modern Japanese history at Shizuoka University 静岡大学 [1949- ; national]  and author of 'Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze,' was in Honolulu last month for the dedication of a temporary exhibition about the Tokkō kamikaze suicide pilots aboard the battleship USS Missouri, the site of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. JBC sat down for an interview with Dr. Sheftall about the kamikaze phenomenon and what makes this exhibition unique."
(i) MG Sheftall, Blossoms in the Wind; Human legacies of the Kamikaze. New York: New American Library (a US subsidiary of Penguin), 2005.
(ii) For Tokkō, see Kamikaze
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze
(During World War II, about 3,860 kamikaze pilots were killed, and about 19% of kamikaze attacks managed to hit a ship; began in October 1944; section 1 Definition and etymology)
(iii) For JBC, see NHK
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHK
(1924- ; 日本放送協会; official English name: Japan Broadcasting Corporation; Independent corporation chartered by the government of Japan)

(b) “the exhibit is the first about any kind of Japanese military activity in the modern era ever held outside of Japan with Japanese cooperation — in this case, with the Chiran Peace Museum on the kamikaze in southern Kyushu.”
(i) Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots  知覧特攻平和会館
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiran_Peace_Museum_for_Kamikaze_Pilots
(The airbase at Chiran, MinamiKyūshū, Kagoshima, Japan)

鹿児島県 南九州市 知覧町
(ii) “1941年には町内に陸軍知覧飛行場が完成した。その後、太平洋戦争（大東亜戦争）末期の沖縄戦では、知覧飛行場は本土最南端の特別攻撃隊の出撃地となった。”  ja.wikipedia.org

本土最南端,” Not exactly, but close.

(c) “What makes the USS Missouri an especially relevant venue is that it is to my knowledge only one of two still-existing ships — the other being the USS Intrepid — that were actually hit by kamikaze during the war. The USS Missouri was hit on April 12, 1945, exactly 70 years ago.
(i) USS Intrepid
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Intrepid
(may refer to USS Intrepid (CV-11), an aircraft carrier)
(ii) USS Missouri (BB-63)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63)
(1944-1992; was the last battleship commissioned by the United States; In 1998, she was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii)

choi

(d) "Some of my Tokkō informants even reported feeling insulted about being asked to go through the rigmarole of ceremonies. Their thinking was, 'I’m a pilot in His Majesty’s Army/Navy, how dare they consider the possibility that I might not want a Tokkō mission!'  Some might call this brainwashing, but if that is your criteria, then at this time everyone in the country was brainwashed and therefore the Tokkō were nothing unusual."
(i) rigmarole
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigmarole
(ii) “but if that is your criteria”

Technically “criteria” (Latin’s plural form) should be “criterion” (singular form). But see criterion
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/criteria
("Usage Discussion of CRITERION" underneath the definitions: "The plural criteria has been used as a singular for over half a century")

(e) "Especially after the end of the Battle of Okinawa, all military personnel were Tokkō"

Battle of Okinawa
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
(Japanese: 沖縄戦; Apr 1-June 22, 1945)

(f) Japanese fighters for air defense dwindled "almost to zero once the bombers started having fighter escorts after the fall of Iwo Jima [Battle of Iwo Jima, Feb 19-Mar 26, 1945]. This was not because the Japanese military ran out of planes. Between the Japanese army and navy they had something like 6,000 planes at the time Japan’s surrender happened. They had been holding back those planes for Tokkō" when US would invade the Japan proper 日本 本土.

Japan Air Self-Defense Force 航空自衛隊 was formed in 1954. As for US?

United States Air Force
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force
(Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on Sept 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of 1947
(g) "Another myth is that the kamikaze pilots only had enough fuel for one-way missions. Two reasons that’s wrong. One, especially true for army pilots insufficiently trained in over-water navigation, was they were often sent out to find targets — and couldn’t find them. If you did that only with enough fuel to reach the target area, you don’t incur any damage against the enemy, and you lose a pilot and the plane."

It is wrong for Professor Sheftall to use "incur" which means bringing something to ONESELF. It should be "inflict."

incur (vt): "to become liable or subject to :  bring down upon oneself <incur expenses>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incur

(h) "the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibition fiasco — the one that included the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and which was delayed and reworked amid controversy"
(i) Enola Gay
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Gay
(B-29; named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot; section 4.1 Exhibition controversy)
(ii) "Enola Gay was her maiden name."