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The Last Zero Fighter

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About this listen

Firsthand accounts from interviews conducted in Japan with five WWII Japanese Naval aviators. All are veterans of the pivotal battles of the Pacific War including; USS Panay, Nanking, Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Rabaul, Port Darwin, Indian Ocean Raid, Ceylon, Midway, Guadalcanal, Marshall Islands, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the kamikaze in the Philippines, the home defense and the dropping of the atomic bomb.

Includes an introduction to the Japanese pilot training system for both officers and enlisted men.

Each pilot is followed from the time he joined the navy until war's end. They explain in their own words; why they joined the navy, what they thought about the war, about the aircraft they flew, how they felt about their friends and their former adversaries.

The interviews were conducted firsthand in their own language by King who is a linguist and Pacific War historian who spent 10 years living in Japan.

©2012, 2018 Dan King (P)2020 Dan King Asia Japan Military War Imperial Japan Aviation Air Force
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I quite like books about the second world war but most of what I've read from the Pacific theatre has been from an American or British perspective, so it was really interesting hearing the stories of Japanese pilots.
There is a broad set of pilots in this book including those present at key battles such as Shanghai, Nanking, Pearl harbour, midway, and Iwo Jima. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in those battles to get a unique perspective on them.
They also seem to avoid glorifying their actions to much with several of them mentioning the over reporting of kills.
Interesting listen all round and I'd happily recommend it to anyone interested in the life of fight pilots.

A very interesting book from a unique perspective.

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I found this a hard listen. In fact I gave up with 3 hours to go. I found the narrators voice being the same as the Japanese fighter pilots testimony confusing and I had to keep remembering the pilots was Japanese. Probably old fashioned of me but if the Narrator read Murder on the Orient Express I wouldn't be able to enjoy if Poirot was spoken with an American accent.

Could have been much better

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