This work will explore the cultural implications of military operation and technology from 1940 to 1955. Previous studies of wartime cultures have shown that the conduct of war was at least in part predicated on the idea that the enemy should be de-humanized. The binary thinking of wartime--“the Other” versus the self-righteous “Us”--dominates cultural studies of interstate war in peacetime. To test the validity and vitality of this dichotomous thinking, I will employ historical, comparative, and international perspectives, focusing on Japan, the United States, and other nations that developed unconventional and controversial military missions for homeland defense, commonly (and often wrongly) referred to as kamikaze. In the midst of war, each country developed/deployed airplanes specifically designed to crash into incoming enemy targets, an action that left the operators little or no chance of survival. Many still believe that only wartime Japan has executed this special attack operation in actual battle, thus perpetuating misconceptions attached to the word kamikaze since the end of World War II in 1945. Detached from stereotypes, my study will ask: How did different counties, including Japan, try to render their own airmen for homeland defense? How did engineers, scientists, and military strategists in each country define “necessary evil” and solve inherently complex issues at times of war? How and why did the knowledge of suicide/suicidal missions move across national borders, and to what end? My paper will highlight the similarities and differences in how different nations constructed their cultures of war for suicide/suicidal military operations during World War II and the Cold War.