Near Okinawa on the 11th of April, 1945, the USS Missouri was hit by a Japanese kamikaze attack – a suicide mission in the style used by the Japanese military during the Second World War.
The battleship only sustained minor, superficial damage, but the pilot was killed. The ship’s American captain insisted on giving him a funeral with full military honours.
It is estimated nearly four-thousand Japanese pilots died this way in the war’s Pacific Theatre.
The Missouri is now famous for being the site of the surrender of the Empire of Japan later that year, the event that ended the war.
In Times Gone By... 