21 de Outubro de 1944

The first kamikaze attack: HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began. Kamikaze is a Japanese word, usually translated as divine wind — which came into being as the name of a legendary typhoon said to have saved Japan from a Mongol invasion fleet in 1281. In Japanese, the word "kamikaze" is usually used only for this typhoon. In the English language, however, the word "kamikaze" usually refers to suicide attacks carried out by Japanese aircrews against Allied shipping, towards the end of the Pacific campaign of World War II.

Air attacks were the predominant and best-known aspect of a wider use of — or plans for — suicide attacks by Japanese personnel, including soldiers carrying explosives, and boat crews. In Japanese, the term used for units carrying out these attacks is tokubetsu kōgeki tai, which literally means "special attack unit." This is usually abbreviated to tokkōtai. In World War II, suicide squads that came from the Imperial Japanese Navy were called shinpū tokubetsu kōgeki tai, where shinpū is the on-reading of the same characters that form the word kamikaze.

Since the end of World War II, the word kamikaze has been applied to a wider variety of suicide attacks. Examples of these include Selbstopfer in Nazi Germany in World War II. Terrorist attacks that employ suicide attacks, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks, and suicide bombing in Israel by Palestinians are sometimes likened to kamikazes.

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