Kamikaze - The Final Countdown

This program follows the extraordinary story of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots of World War II.At 7:25 am on 25 October 1944, just five days after the Kamikaze Corps was formed, Lieutenant Yukio Seki took off from this very location on the first official Kamikaze attack mission. Three hours and twenty minutes later, at 10:45 am, his unit reached enemy targets in the Gulf of Leyte. Seki was the first to strike. He deliberately dive-bombed his plane into the American aircraft carrier USS St. Lo, triggering a massive explosion that blew the ship apart. The USS St. Lo sank just 20 minutes later. War historians regard Lieutenant Yukio Seki as the world’s first official human bomb.The story of these young Japanese pilots, who willingly flew suicide missions by crashing their aircraft into enemy ships, gives us cause to stop, reflect, and take a close look at our own lives. It challenges us to ask: What do we love more than life itself? What is truly worth dying for?And why is it important, even vital, to ask these questions? Because the things worth dying for reveal most powerfully the things worth living for. The things we are willing to die for are, properly understood, the very things we should live for, the things that give life meaning.