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Some surface similarities.

However, from my experience with the Japanese and my limited exposure to the WWII aspect . . . I think there are some significant differences.

The Japanese must have had a kind of elegant, chilvarous, dying for Emporer-god, country and family--a rather sobered, honor-bound, sterile, fate sort of single mindedness. . . . quite possibly some demonic influence but not the overt coarse kind, a more subtle slick kind.

With the Islamists, it's interesting--they more resemble the worst of the animal they deplore--kind of a cross bewteen a rabid b*tch dog and a wild boar. . . mayhem incorporated. . . blind, viscious, gory, drunken hillbilly ruthlessness. . . . a kind of idiot's IQ of 20's glib gah gah fixation on images of umpteen virgins and unlimited sex; dramatic blood, dismemberment, gore and anguish on the part of one's obsessively reviled enemies etc.

The Japanese could have respect for their enemies even at the point of killing them.

The Islamists seem to respect nothing but their own mindless fantasies and the pseudo phallis glory of their sticks of dynamite etc.

I suppose if the biggest thrill you've been able to look forward to is a wet dream in your sleep, going out with a big bang could have some real attraction.

Their book is a messy hodge podge. Their reasoning hardly qualifies for rational. Their tribal infighting has historically been the height of messy. Their values are messy. Not too surprising that they fixate on messy dying. Their father is the father of lies and chaos.

I read a fascinating essay about the Rape of Nanking in Newsweek a few years back. Inflamed by their divine emporer cult, young men of Japan perptrated acts of almost unimaginable barbarity against their Chinese victims: burying people up their heads in sand and leaving them to starve, decapitating young children and keeping the heads as souvenirs, and so on. The story told of an old man, now a physician, who had participated in such crimes in his youth. Now, he has a videotape about the atrocities playing in his waiting room full-time, his way of atoning for the crimes he commited as a youthful soldier of the Empire of the Sun. The story was a fascinating insight into the extraordinary capacity for good and evil in Japanese culture.

Good observations, all. Another major difference between the World War II era Japanese and Islamic fundentalists in the concept of on (gratitude) and giri (duty).

America's help rebuilding after World War II has created our most reliable ally in Asia. The Japanese do a lot of things for America out of on and giri.

Contrast that to the Muslim Fundy concept, with just a couple of examples

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait literally saved Iraq's bacon by pumping in crucial financing during the Iran-Iraq war. Three years after the war ended in a stalemate, Iraq invaded.
In the 1967 war, Israel kicked ass so bad, most of the Pallies in the West Bank and Gaza were packing up to move out. Israel, wanting to be loved, had Moyshe Dayan tell them they could remain if they would refrain from attacks on Israel. This lasted a whole five years.
Another big difference is that Japanese value education and are quite capable of thinking for themselves. There was a substantial underground writer's movement during the war. The fundies, on the other hand, seem to wear ignorance as a badge of pride. Pakistan and India were roughly equal in educational and economic achievement until the fundies took over. Now, India is years ahead and moving forward while Pakitstan continues to regress. The Taliban's Omar is literate only insofar as being able to write his name. Ayatollah Kohlmeni wasn't much better, despite years of exile in France and access to some of the best universities in the world. Then there was Mohammed himself. Every chapter of the Koran begins with the initial of the scribe who wrote for him.