The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

[They] became especially popular during 1944 – 45 when many tokkōtai (Special
Attack Corps members, known as “kamikaze” in the West) carried them on
missions of no return…. During the war these dolls were celebrated in home-front
publications, in soldiers’ letters and in death poetry…. They have become the
objects of intensely nostalgic longing and diverse memorial undertakings. 60
Worn on the body, strapped to belts or parachute harnesses, hanging visibly
from cords around the neck, hidden under uniforms or placed near the
body, under the pilot’s seat, on the dashboard, instrument panel or cockpit
clock, these dolls were for the purpose of easing “apprehension and
suffering of… soon-to-be-martyred male compatriots”: 61
[They] were meant to keep them safe long enough to fulfil their missions and die
honorably and were not expected to bring their bearers safely home…. The dolls
were given not to prevent physical injuries but rather to keep the pilots company
during their terribly lonely final journeys. In some cases… mothers, sisters and
lovers wanted to “be with” the pilot during his final moments, and the dolls
allowed this special closeness…. They might absorb or ease some of the pilot’s
terror and anxiety. 62
It is heartrending to imagine the scene of many pilots who, apparently
seeing “the faces of their mothers, their sisters, their wives, their girlfriends”
in these effigies, often talked to them in flight, looked into their eyes and
held them as they approached their deaths. 63 “For many”, says
Schattschneider, “these treasured objects evoked… longing and solace,
fragmentation and redemption, transience and eternity.” 64
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