Takijiro Onishi

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Image:Admiral Takijiro Onishi.gif Image:Takijiro Onishi.jpg Takijirō Ōnishi (June 2, 1891–August 16, 1945) (Kanji: 大西瀧治郎, Hiragana: おおにしたきじろう) was a Japanese admiral, known as the father of kamikaze.

Early in the Pacific Campaign of World War II he was the head of the Naval Aviation Development Division in the Munitions Ministry and was responsible for some of the technical details of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, under command of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Onishi himself opposed the attack on the grounds that it would lead to a full-scale war with an implacable foe who had the resources to overpower Japan into an unconditional surrender.

After October 1944, Onishi became the commander of the First Air Fleet in the northern Philippines. While he is commonly credited with devising the tactic of suicide air attacks (Kamikaze) on Allied carriers, the project in fact predated his tenure and was one that he originally opposed as 'heresy'. Following the loss of the Mariana Islands, Onishi changed his position and ordered the attacks. The plan was to load a 250 kg (approximately 550 lb) bomb on a Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter and crash it into an enemy ship.

In a meeting at Magracut Airfield near Manila on October 19, Onishi, visiting the 201st Navy Flying Corps headquarters, suggested: "I don't think there would be any other certain way to carry out the operation to hold the Philippines, than to put a 250 kg bomb on a Zero and let it crash into a U.S. carrier, in order to disable her for a week."

Takijiro Onishi committed ritual suicide (Seppuku) in his quarters on August 16, 1945, following the unconditional surrender of Japan. His suicide note apologized to the approximately 4000 pilots whom he had sent to their deaths, and urged all young civilians who had survived the war to work towards the rebuilding of Japan and peace among nations. He also stated that he would offer his death as a penance to the kamikaze pilots and their families. Accordingly, he did not use a kaishakunin (second), and died of self-inflicted injuries over a period of 15 hours.