Mordecai George Sheftall is an American author and scholar living in Japan since 1987.
He has also been a featured commentator and technical advisor on the History Channel series "Dogfights."
His most important work to date has been the critically acclaimed Penguin Group title Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (2005), based on interviews with survivors of Japan's wartime kamikaze program.
Sheftall graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City, attended the United States Military Academy at West Point for two years as a member of the Class of 1984, and received a B.A.
Sheftall's Waseda dissertation employs a methodological framework based on Terror Management Theory to analyze the evolution of kamikaze ideology during Japan's Imperial Era (1895-1945) and the interpretive discourse of this historical legacy in postwar Japan.