banzai

“On this May Day, we unite with our fellow workers around the world standing up for their rights,” she said, shouting “banzai!” or long life, to all workers.

The Japanese fired mortars and large artillery ahead of banzai charges by fearless soldiers willing to run into the Americans’ Browning machine guns.

“We decided it must be a banzai attack,” Gibbs recalled.

The daily “banzai runs” in Yuma, Ariz., that used to send hundreds of young men dashing across the scarcely marked border to overwhelm a few dozen U.S. agents were already a thing of the past.

The island’s name became synonymous with the suicidal “banzai” charges that Japanese troops repeatedly threw against the Marines and Army soldiers fighting for the island.