Crouching dragons: the suicide divers Japan never sent to war

During the closing months of World War II, Japan trained a corps of suicide frogmen known as the fukuryu. These operatives were designed to undertake suicide missions against Allied ships, similar to the more widely recognized kamikaze pilots who flew aircraft into enemy vessels.

While Japan's wartime kamikaze pilots remain among the most prominent and recognizable symbols of the Pacific war as young men sent on missions with no expectation of return, the fukuryu frogmen are far less remembered in historical memory.