特別攻撃隊

Tokubetsu Kôgekitai, or "Special Attack Forces," is the usual Japanese euphemism for the kamikaze pilots, although the term does not only refer to pilots but also encompasses all manner of suicide troops used by the Japanese military in World War II, including suicide submarine drivers, suicide motor boat drivers, and suicide bomb-wielding frogmen.

Even though the word "kamikaze" originally comes from a Japanese word meaning "divine wind," if you go to Japan and start talking about "kamikaze," most people will actually give you a blank look or ask you what you are talking about.

Only people who are well-versed in English, or extremely well versed in Japanese history, will know what you mean, because the word "kamikaze" is an obscure historical reference to a Mongol invasion of Japan that happened more than 800 years ago, which was used by some of the suicide pilots as a sort of insider codeword. Even then, "kamikaze" was a foreign misreading of a classical Japanese word which was almost always rendered by native Japanese speakers in its Chinese reading of "shinpu."

All news reports, military orders, and government documents from the wartime period, not to mention all modern Japanese history books, almost always refer to the suicide troops as "tokubetsu kogekitai," or the shorter abbrieviation "tokkôtai" and only refer to "kamikaze" if they are referring to American perceptions or images of Japan.