History Lesson

blow up the show. No more political talk or anything else. And we are going to tell a history story of some kind. This one I left up to you. This one I left up to you. Everybody emailed in. This is the one you wanted. It was a couple of months ago, and so I've been digging into it, reading and watching and reading and watching it. I spent like eight hours, yeah, yesterday, kind of putting the finishing touches on some things, making sure I was where I needed

to be to kind of lay out the story. And now we're about to lay out the story. I'm not promising you I'm going to finish this hour. If I don't, we will do it again tomorrow in this hour. Okay, we've had them go three days before. I don't know that. I don't think this one will, but I don't know. I don't know till I start. Okay. So we are about to tell the story of the kama Kazis, the Japanese Kamakzis from World War Two. Now, before we get going, and I'm gonna go do all kinds of background on

it and history stuff and things like that. Before we get going, let me ask you something really, asking what is suicide? Okay? Jewish producer Chris already jumped in and said, what do you mean? Uh So, if you take a plane, a fighter plane, and you intentionally fly it into a ship, I think you would agree that is suicide. Right, Okay, that's very fair. Let me ask you. You're in a

fighting hole, You're a marine on Ewo Jima. You're in a fighting hole with your buddy, and one of the Japanese troops throws a grenade inside of the fighting hole. You look at the grenade and you throw yourself on top of it? Is that suicide? Not quite as simple, now, is it, Chris? Is that suicide? Okay? All right? Let's do it. Let's do one more, just one more. Let's say your wife or husband. If you're a woman, your wife, your mom, your dad, your family, every person in your

family who you love, they're all in a house. It's right behind you. You're on the sidewalk, they're all in the house. Right behind you, standing in front of you is a seven foot muscle bound man with an axe in each hand, and he is walking towards that house to kill, maime, rape and torture everyone in the house. You are standing there unarmed. Are you going to attack him? Chris says yes. I would say yes as well. I

think everyone would say yes, that's your family. Okay, you're gonna die the seven foot guy with an axe, a couple of them. Is that suicide? All right? Now, just keep those questions in the back of your mind and we'll do some background here and then we'll discuss the actual comcasis, what they did, why they did it. We're going to do this very honestly, as as usual some history. When we do it may offend if it does, just like the regular show. I don't care if you're offended.

You can email me all you want, but it's not going to bother me at all. Your offense is your your choice. I don't care about that. We don't do We do wantest history here from every side. We do honest history. So let's background this quite a bit first. In this part is going to be very very important for our purposes. We need to understand two things, two huge, huge things about Japan that will matter a lot, and I mean a lot. The first one of those things

is a I'm going to use the word celebration. That's probably not the right word, but everything I read on it sure looks like that a celebration of death, a celebration of death, a different view of death than Westerners have than I have, probably than you have. One of their emperors, one of their emperors actually has a quote, maybe you've heard this quote before, that duty is as heavy as a mountain, but death is as light as

a feather. Now that may just sound like one statement that was preached to the Japanese people, and most definitely the Japanese military. You know, some of the first training you got in the Japanese military back then. I've read several different sources. Some said it was one of the first, many said it was the first was not how to kill, not how to march, not how to run, not how to do pushups, how to die? How do you die?

What's the best way to die? Dying in service to your country, in service to your emperor was not frowned upon. In fact, whatever the opposite is a frowned upon. That's what it was. It was lionized to the point of worship. The Kama Kazi pilots were going to discuss, and Kama Kazi submarine guys in Kamakazi boats and Kama Kazi torpedoes. There were all kinds of different kinds, and we'll get into that a little bit. But the Kama Kaze guys

we're going to discuss here. Their names weren't carried around back home of Hey, did you hear what? Gosh, you hear what Bob did? It was playing into a boat, so sad, Why would he do that? No, Bob's name. There was a special shrine area set up, and not only would Bob's name be part of this special shrine area, people would show up and say, look at that guy. He gave his life for the emperor, he gave his

life for Japan. Wow, I want to be like Bob understand there is a different relationship with death the way they view it there. And I said there were two things, here's the second thing, and they kind of tie it together.

You remember we went to Israel as a show. We did that big promotion thing and I don't remember how many of us, to two hundred of us, something like that, to three hundred of us The Jesse Kelly Show family made Jewish producer Chris Corey wasn't with us then, but me, Chris, my parents, my wife, my sister, kids, and you and your kids. We all went over to Israel. Now, I'd never been to Israel, but it was it is a holy land tour. And I'm not one who gets sentimental

about places that much. A little bit, a little bit, but not much. But I will tell you for me, in my belief system, being on a boat on the Sea of Galilee was powerful. It was powerful. It meant something to me to this day. If you told me, hey, Israeli governments they're making some moves and they're draining the Sea of Galilee. Did that hurt walking walking and saying hey, this is the place where we're reasonably sure Jesus carried

the cross when he was bleeding and tortured. It hit me that that place hit me, Oh my gosh, I had to take a knee, say a prayer with my dad. Hit me. Now, there is something about having a religious connection to a certain spot of land. And the reason I brought up Israel was I've lived all over and I've liked a lot of places and like this house or like that condo, but never there's not another spot on earth where I would where I would feel like

I have a religious connection to the ground. We're talking about Japan, back in this time and still to this day, but back in this time they very much do Japan. For the Japanese people at this time and for most of their history, it's not just a string of islands where they ended up. It's so much more than that. It is their home. There is a spiritual connection to them. And this was obvious from all the writings, all the

things I've read on it. A spiritual connection there. That is the best comparison I can make is to one I just did. Wow, that's where Jesus was carrying the cross like that is the best connection I can make. This is the sea a galilee. The disciples are, That's the best connection I can make, an actual religious connection to the land that is beyond physical It gets to a spiritual realm. All right, Now that we got those two things out of the way, let's talk about the

origins of Kamakazi. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wonderful Monday. If you just joined us, you just joined us at the beginning, after the beginning of a history story on the Japanese Kamakazi. And this will probably undoubtedly last us the rest of this show, possibly into hour three as well tomorrow. So I just gave you a little bit of a background of the Japanese people,

their religious connection to their homeland. And there I'm not gonna say in affinity for dying, because that is not true at all, and we'll find that as we get deeper into this. But dying for your country, your emperor, your your whatever is honor extremely so over there, and we will go into some of the propaganda that they went into. But for now, that was kind of the

Japanese people in their connection. We have to go over the long, long, long background hundreds of years ago, not because I think it is important to the Kamakazi story, and actually not because this is where they got the term Kamakazi from. But because the Japanese people and most definitely the young men, the Japanese military men, they thought this event was hugely important. So here's the event you

know about. Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Just always think that the twelve hundreds, that was when the Mongols were they were wiping out everybody, everybody. In my opinion, this is an opinion part I think the Mongol army is unquestionably the greatest army of all time. I don't think there's a close second. And I say that because they just blew through the other great armies like they weren't anything. I realized there was some heavy fighting, but they just

stormed through everybody. Oh European knights, ha Oh, the Muslim Empire of the Middle East. That's hilarious. They just destroyed everybody. Now, Genghis Khan is dead by this time, but his grandson, I believe grandson, Kublai Khan, is not dead. He is still the Khan. He's the Mongol king. Essentially, he is the Mongol king. And by now this is it's the twelve seventies. Don't worry about the dates. Remember, history is not about dates. By now, the whole world knows about

the Mongols. It's not a mystery. The Mongols show up outside of your city, you in some trouble. Kublai Khan, he's in China at this time. So if you'd like to look at a map, which I love to do, you're welcome to. If not, don't worry about it. China and Japan are very close. According to the map. It's across the water, but they're very close. Japan was doing some trading with the last surviving Chinese dynasty that Kublai

hadn't conquered yet, and plus Kublai was a Mongol. Kublai looked across the water at Japan and thought to himself, I want it. I think I should have that now Japan. At this time, Japan was a feudal society run by different lords in this place, and their elites really were warriors, the samurai, as you already know, they were all about warfare. They believed wholeheartedly in warfare and making your body strong and training and things like that. These were not some chumps.

The Mongols had run into tough guys and they'd run into chumps. These were not going to be chumps. Kublai Khan he arranges a forty thousand person military force, eight hundred ships, and he crosses that ocean to take over Japan. The Mongols are not chumps either, obviously. The fighting is inhumanly fierce. This is an an amphibious force. The Mongols actually gain a foothold, but people are dying in droves on every side. Japan is outnumbered here right, the Mongols

brought forty thousand troops. Japan's outnumbered the Mongols. They get a foothold, like I said, and then they returned to their ships at night. Mostly there were some Mongos still on the land, but most of the force returned to their ships at night. Now, I spent six months in

Japan when I was in the Marine Corps. We had several typhoons when I was there, and I remember, like it was yesterday, looking down at a big conex box in the parking lot, and I watch this typhoon pick up that conex box and throw it across the base like it was a soda can. A typhoon is a hurricane. Remember it's a hurricane. Imagine you're on an old. We're talking the year. This is the twelve hundreds, right, this is two hundred years before Christopher Columbus sailed the Ocean blue.

That's the kind of ships we're dealing with. The Mongol army was sitting on ships in the ocean and a typhoon came and wipe them out. Now let's just say you're in Japan. You're a Japanese person, This frightening Mongolian horde crosses the ocean, tries to take you out. They get wiped out by the weather. You already remember you have a religious connection to your land. They just got wiped out by the weather. Wait, we had a storm. Wait last night. Really, the Mongols are gone. Do you

think you would think God's looking out for me? Japan itself is looking out for me. And this is where the name, what the name Kamakazi actually means is divine wind, and that's what they chose to name the Saving of Japan. In Japan's mind, the Mongols were coming to rape and murder, and of course, because it's the Mongols, they were most definitely coming to rape and murder. This gigantic, unstoppable army showed up and the divine wind stepped in to save Japan.

But wait, there's more, and we have to understand this part before we get to the World War II part. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Monday. Remember you can email this show love, hey, death threats, whatever you would like. Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Currently telling the history of the Japanese Kama Kazi WW two. Don't worry if you just got here, we haven't even

gotten to that yet. We talked about the Japanese affection for their homeland, a religious connection to their homeland, a willingness to die, dying in service of that is honored. And we just talked about the Mongolian invasion. They showed up on the shore, they fight this huge battle, they get a foothold. Oh, we're about to be conquered and murdered and raped and everything's going to end. And then

a typhoon comes in and wipes out the army. Wow, if you are already primed to believe that there is a religious sacredness to your homeland, that your homeland provides protection to you and your family, and then a typhoon wipes out the invading Mongols. What do you think that does for that belief system? It pretty much confirms it to you. Now, wait, there's more a lot of people I've heard of the failed Mongolian invasion because a typhoon came in and wiped out the army. But what most

people don't know it happened twice. You see, after the Mongols got wiped out by a typhoon. Again, I want you to put yourself in the mind of the Japanese. The Mongols got wiped out by a typhoon. Kublai Khan then decides, Okay, the army got wiped out by a typhoon. That's some bad luck. Clearly, maybe I've bit off more than I can chew here. Anyway, let's just make a deal instead. So Kublai Khan the Mongol he sends emissaries over to Japan instead of sending an army. He sends

over some diplomats. Essentially, he sends over US Scott Descent and Howard Lutnik. He just sends over some diplomats. Diplomats show up hat in hand. Hey, all that fighting stuff. Let's let bygones be bygones. Shall we Let's make a deal, only the Japanese cut their heads off. The Japanese were not the most forgiving people, especially when you just tried to conquer their homeland. Enemies tend to be enemies for life. Plus they were a very very very closed off society

by now. They really wanted to keep them themselves. You can say that's good or bad. They just wanted to do their own thing. You just tried to conquer them. The Japanese took the emissaries and they cut off their heads. Uh that you did not do to a Mongolian emissary. You remember the stories of Genghis Khan melting down silver and pouring it down the throat of a governor. He did that because the governor killed his emissaries. You remember the story of Genghis Khan and his Mongols. Some Russian

princes killed his emissaries. He took over the town and built a wooden platform on top of those princes and they had a victory dinner, suffocating suffocating the princes underneath the platform sitting there, eating, drinking and being merry while everyone was dying. You really, really really didn't want to touch a hair on a mongol emissaries head. So when Japan cuts offset head, you know, Kublai Khan is not going to receive the news all that well. He gets

the news, does not receive the news that well. And he promptly remember I said it was forty thousand Mongolians before, promptly raises an army of one hundred thousand Mongolians, over twice the size, over twice the size of the fleet, and he goes a sailing again. This is about six seven years later, After about six seven years after the

first one, the Mongolian army returns. The Japanese wake up, the fighting begins again, and I kid you not, another typhoon comes in and wipes the Mongolian army off the sea. Remember that Japanese person, the Japanese religious belief, the Japanese connection to their land. How strong do you think that connection is? Now? When the divine wind the kamikaze just swept the Mongols off the sea twice in less than

a decade. If you are a Japanese person, you think, ah, we have like a force field around us here, a divine wind. Now. I brought up that story because the Japanese brought up that story, and still due to this day, I should note, but since that time, that was the twelve hundreds, children were taught this. It had a religious reference there. It was a powerful story. The divine wind came and saved us. The Japanese people saved our homeland, saved our island. When our island is under threat, the

divine wind will show up and save us. Now pause on that. It's important to understand that history. Let's talk about World War II a kind of from a Japanese perspective, because that's going to be important for our purposes here. Pearl Harbor, you know about obviously, Japan. Prior to Pearl Harbor, before Hitler started invading Poland and things like that, Japan was expanding. They had already invaded Manchuria, they'd invaded China. Japan was fighting World War two before anyone else was

fighting World War two. And Japan had a plan that rhyme Chris, Japan had a plan. The plan was, we're stuck on this island. We have now modernized. We have a modern military, a modern navy, we have a modern economy, we have modernized our society. We are no longer in danger of being conquered. We don't want to be colonized. But the problem is, it takes stuff to run a modern economy or a modern military. It just does. I have said many times before, I'll say it to you

again now. One of the unbelievable blessings about America is not just the size of our land mass, not just that we have an ocean to our left and an ocean to our right, east and west. We have so much stuff here, so many resources here. Yes, we do want to do trade, there's no question about that. You want to trade with other countries. But we really don't have to. We could just seal off the border, keep all our goods in here and be more than fine.

We have so much stuff. Japan doesn't have any stuff nothing, not only an island country. They just don't have resources. They don't have steel, they don't have oil, they don't have stuff. Into the Japanese government, they decided, well, we better go get someone else's stuff. If we have a modern military now, if we have a modern economy now, and we're gonna run out of stuff, we better go grab what we want. We better go conquer. And they began,

they began to conquer China. Now America, this is good. This goes beyond America. It's all the Allies, but I'm just gonna make it about America. America. They didn't want Japan in China. We had best, we had interests in China, we had things, and we started leaning on the Japanese. Hey back off, Hey, back off, Hey, get out of China, Get out of China, Get out of China. Well, Japan has a completely different national interest at this time. They don't want to get out of China. In fact, they

want more than just China. Their intention is to take their modern mi military. They're very capable fighting for US, very capable navy, and they want to conquer so much over there in East Age. If you look at Japan, just make a gigantic ring, a big circle around it, including the Philippines. We'll come back to that. They want to make a big ring around it and conquer all of it. So they, just like us here in America, have all the stuff they need. America throws such a

fit about this. We cut off their oil, we're cutting off their steel. Japan makes the worst strategic decision in military history. I don't know that that can even honestly be argued. They're going to attack Pearl Harbor. We'll touch on that quickly when we get back. Before we do that, let's make sure we have our dogs for as long as possible. It is a Jesse Kelly's Show. Final segment of The Jesse Kelly Show on a while Wednesday, A Blast of a Wednesday. I know, I know you're I

know what you're already saying. You probably already said it. There's no way he's gonna finish this tonight as far as the history program goes. You're right, I'm not. I'm gonna do it again tomorrow. Okay, start of hour three tomorrow. Wherever we leave off tonight, I am going to continue on with the history of the Japanese Kamakazis. The background is really, really, really important. Okay, So we have to go through all this stuff. Pearl Harbor happens. Japan is expanding.

They seize control of all these places. Remember draw that big ring around Japan. They seize control of Manchuria, they have the Philippines, they have Wake Island, they Guam. They just grab control of this big bunch of islands and mainland stuff all around Japan. And the idea behind Pearl Harbor stupid and suicidal as it was, was not to defeat America. That's that's false history. Whoever told you that

they were just trying to slow us down. The idea was slow down their navy, essentially, take out their Pacific fleet, grab control of these areas. Then dig in as fast as you can dig in because you know the Americans are coming. They weren't stupid, They knew we were going to come. Dig in. When the Americans show up, you make them bleed for every island, every inch of ground. And this is where they really screwed up. Americans, in their mind, were so soft. Remember it was very much

a war of racial superiority for the Japanese. These soft Americans are too soft to withstand the amount of death. We can take the death, they can't take the death. Eventually, America will sue for peace. Even if we quote lose, we'll end up with more territory than we had before. Now this is important because this is this is something that we have to understand about the Kamikazi as we work our way to the Kamakazi. We already talked about that the honoring of death, dying for your country, death

not being a bad thing, giving your life. You know, death is as light as a feather. That way of thinking. Japanese society at that time had nurtured, really, really nurtured. They had poured this mentality into their citizens, and as a result they had a country full of citizens who were willing to die for Japan, were willing to die for the emperor, and that that in itself is a weapon, and the Japanese there is certainly their leadership saw it as a weapon. Hey, we have all these people who

will die for us, we can use that. That gives us a leg up. And wouldn't you agree militarily it does. If you have an army full of people who are more than happy to die for you, and they have an army full of people who are dying to get back home by Christmas time to be with the wife and Muffy, well I think you would agree that the army that's willing to die has some advantage in some way over the army that wants to go home. The Japanese government knew it had a benefit, it had something.

It had a leg up that every other country on earth did not have. Its entire army, for the most part, was willing to die. Now during Pearl Harbor because a lot of people think the Kamikazis began later on, and officially the program did, but the Japanese were throwing themselves into death on purpose from the very beginning. Pearl Harper, one pilot plane disabled, not sure, has a chance to

set it down somewhere. Instead of setting it down somewhere, makes the conscious decision to aim for an airfield hangar and try to fly his plane into it on purpose, to blow up and kill as many Americans as he could. Now he got shot down before he could do it,

but he was trying it. That is one of ten thousand incidents I could list of the Japanese throughout World War II throwing themselves committing suicide, doing essentially a kami Cazi attack with whatever they had a plane, a train, an automobile, but seriously, a rifle, a grenade, a stick, throwing themselves into death on purpose. So it wasn't just that the Japanese government thought they had a people who would do this. They did. They had an army full

of people who were more than willing to die. Pearl Harbor goes well for Japan, but America starts to claw its way back nineteen forty one. Obviously the end of it was a bad year. Nineteen forty two, certainly, the first half of it a bad year. Really, most of nineteen forty two was a bad year, to be honest with you. By the way, quick pause on this. You like World War two history stuff? You enjoy this? You know that I brought up Hillsdale College a lot. They

have more than forty free online courses. You know they have a seven lecture series on World War Two? Do you think you might learn something from Hillsdale College? If you get anything from me, You're definitely gonna get it from Hillsdale College at no cost. Why don't if you're nerding out on this, maybe, why you wait until tomorrow? Why don't you go learn from Hillsdale at no cost?

When I wrap this show up tonight, go to Hillsdale dot Edu Jesse and go learn about World War Two from the greatest university in the country, Hillsdale dot Edu slash Jesse more than forty free online courses, no cost. All right, all right, now back to the war Japan, Pearl Harbor. You got it. The war at first is going poorly. We got yes, sucker punched, but they were also prepped and mentally ready, and they had their economy ready for war. We didn't. We were just sauntering along,

minding our own business be in America. We didn't want to get involved in the European War. Remember we didn't like Hitler as a country, but it wasn't our problem. America didn't have that kind of foreign policy back then. All we wanted was to be left alone. Okay, Well, now Pearl Harbor happens and you realize you're not going to be left alone. It took us time to get the equipment we needed, the training we needed to get up to speed, and at first we were struggling. But

then Midway comes. You know about the Battle of Midway. You've heard about the Battle of Midway, but this is actually important for our story, for the Kamikazi story. The Japanese only add so many aircraft carriers. We of course, could print aircraft carriers like it was nothing. They only had so many, they only had so many planes, They

only had so many experienced pilots. We slam into them at Midway, and we not only sink a bunch of their carriers, we kill a bunch of their excellent pilots midway. It did not break the Japanese sword, but it broke off the edge. They no longer were better than us, and virtually every way from that point forward they started to lose. The monster that was the American Navy was swimming closer and closer to the home island again. And that's where we will pick up our story again tomorrow.

All right, that's all