The storm that saved Japan.
This was war on an unprecedented scale. Kublai Khan had already completed the conquest of China begun by his grandfather, Genghis Khan. Now he had assembled 140,000 warriors to invade the Japanese islands. A fleet of nine thousand ships carried them to Japan. It seemed that nothing could stop them from defeating Japan and absorbing it into the Mongol Empire.
But everything changed when the winds suddenly rose with a fury and a powerful typhoon slammed into the Japanese coast, wreaking havoc on the invasion force. Ships were dashed upon the rocks. Thousands drowned. Chinese warriors who managed to stagger ashore were easy prey for the Japanese, who slaughtered them at will. It is thought that as many as 100,000 of the invaders perished.
Japan was saved. The Japanese people gave credit to the gods, calling the typhoon that wrecked the invasion force “The Divine Wind.”
It was a name that would become familiar in another war centuries later, when it would be adopted by Japanese warriors willing to sacrifice their own lives in a last-ditch bid to turn defeat into victory. They too referred to themselves as “The Divine Wind.” Or in Japanese:
Kamikaze.
This was actually the second time Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan. The first time, seven years before, a smaller invasion force was also stymied by a typhoon that scattered or sunk much of the invasion fleet.
A kamikaze plane attacking the USS Missouri in April of 1945. It hit the Missouri a glancing blow moments after Seaman Len Schmidt snapped this picture, but no one on the ship was hurt. During the last year of World War II, suicide planes sunk 34 U.S. ships and damaged 288. More than four thousand Japanese pilots sacrificed their lives in kamikaze missions.