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> how much of Japan's conduct in WW2 (notably, the fighting until death) can be attributed/blamed to this misinterpretation of samurai history? Japanese soldie

> how much of Japan's conduct in WW2 (notably, the fighting until death) can be attributed/blamed to this misinterpretation of samurai history? Japanese soldiers' "fighting to the death" nonsense was myth invented many years after WW2 by allied "historians" to justify the mass murder of japanese soldiers by the allies. It's not that the japanese weren't willing to surrender. It was that the allies ( unfortunately out of extreme racism ) wouldn't allow japanese soldiers to surrender. If you dig a little past the history/propaganda and look at the raw data/facts/etc of the pacific war, you will learn how brutal the pacific war was. And how racist the allies were towards the japanese soldiers. Nearly every japanese soldier who was wounded was butchers and killed as were nearly all japanese POWs. It was called the "no prisoner policy" of the allied soldiers. And if you want to read about some more base aspects of the pacific war, go read about the mutilation of the japanese soldiers by the allied soldiers. Some real sick shit. The more you learn about the real nature of ww2, you realize that there was no good side in that war. Just two evils fighting each other.

mathattack 10y ago
Really no good side in most wars. Winning wars requires evil in one form or another.
- mercurial 10y ago
  No, but while all sides in war end up committing war crimes of one form or another, you definitely have systems in which this is a feature, not a bug. Large-scale massacres of civilians have been a regular staple of the Japanese armed forces during WWII (particularly the Army). And the pattern of abusing civilians of the so-called "co-prosperity sphere" and terrible treatment of POWs was not a case of isolated incidents.
Apocryphon 10y ago
Who was responsible for the mass suicides in the Battle of Okinawa?
- akeruu 10y ago
  This has been subjected to revisionism multiple times. After public protest and court ruling, it is now admitted it was the Japanese army which ordered people to kill themselves and even killed them: "Orders from Japanese soldiers led to Okinawans committing group suicide," and, "The [Japanese] army caused many tragedies in Okinawa, killing local civilians and forcing them to commit mass suicide." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#MEXT_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#MEXT_controv...
  - iwontreddit 10y ago
    > After public protest and court ruling, it is now admitted it was the Japanese army which ordered people to kill themselves and even killed them: That's a bit of revisionism as well. The reason why many okinawans killed themselves was because the allied soldiers were raping and killing okinawan civilians. From your own wikipedia link... "There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians – and we didn't care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children. Americans always had great compassion, especially for children. Now we fired indiscriminately." The nonsense about "distinguish between the enemy an women and children" is just egotistic nonsense. We have a long history of butchering women and children ( especially non-white women and children ). All we have to do is review US treatment of natives, blacks, etc throughout US history to see how compassionate we were. The reason why the okinawans killed themselves was because of the brutality and savagery of both sides ( americans and japanese ).
ekianjo 10y ago
> The more you learn about the real nature of ww2, you realize that there was no good side in that war. Just two evils fighting each other. You don't win wars without killing people, and therefore all sides are evil by definition. The little process of judging "war criminals" after the war is over is just for one's good conscience. If the Allies had lost they would have been judged as war criminals by the victors too.
- wbl 10y ago
  Where is the American Treblinka, the British Buchenwald? WWII was against genocidal maniacs who starved entire countries and destroyed Yiddish speaking culture.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World...
    - jonyt 10y ago
      So you're saying Allied war crimes were in no way comparable to Axis?
      - cyberferret 10y ago
        Not sure if you are addressing this comment to me and my Wikipedia post, or at wbl (who I was responding to). I am not sure what measure anyone would use to compare war crimes etc., but if you are talking about pure body count, then the number of civilians killed during (a) the Rape of Nanking and (b) the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombs run about the same...
jbooth 10y ago
Respectfully, that's a bullshit point of view. For the japanese military in WWII, rape was normal. Butchering civilian populations wholesale was normal. The Americans and British did not play by those rules, even though we did a lot of killing. This was not two equivalent evils. http://foxtalk.tistory.com/98 http://foxtalk.tistory.com/98
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Perhaps not complete bullsh!t. Both my parents were in their early teens in Malaysia during the Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation. The both lived near (different) POW camps, and yes, they both agreed that the treatment of the British & Aussie POWs in those camps by the Japanese guards was brutal. But they both say that when the roles were reversed and the Allies took back Malaysia, the treatment by Allied soldiers of the Japanese prisoners was equally as horrific. Call it 'revenge mentality' or anything else, but the truth is that it happened and they saw it happen with their own eyes. It is just not documented in the history books we read today. My father had his bicycle commandeered by a Japanese soldier when the Imperial forces walked into Kuala Lumpur unopposed. The soldier politely asked to 'borrow' it and my dad's family knew better than to refuse. At the end of the war however, the same soldier knew defeat was coming so he actually sought out my father's family and returned the bike. It was a lot worse for wear, but he got it back. Another Japanese officer gave my grandfather one of his ceremonial swords as a gift because he was going to go down to the river to commit seppuku rather than be captured by allied forces. Bushido or not, that sort of cultural belief was the norm back then. My mother still speaks fondly of British POWs who she said were just young boys that she felt sorry for. She and her mother used to go down to the camp to collect the clothing of the POWs and the guards so they could mend them. Some of the English soldiers taught her to make toy bunny rabbits out of socks and she still remembers how to make them to this day. She speaks of the sorrow of going down to the camp one day to return some uniforms only to find the place deserted. A remaining guard told her that the Allied POWs had been shipped off to Burma to build a railway. She cries even now when telling the story. My mother actually still has some of the 'banana money' that was used by the Japanese in Malaysia during the occupation. Both my parents said that any actual fighting done by the Japanese forces was precise and directed against military installations in order to minimise civilian casualties. My father's best friend lived among the labour camps on the ground of the KL railway station. When the initial Japanese air attack on the railway yards came, they bombed a few cars/buildings and shot out the clock tower (after dropping leaflets explaining that they would demonstrate their superiority by shooting out all the clock towers in KL). There were hardly any civilian casualties. Conversely when the allied forces later counter attacked KL, they carpet bombed the railway yards, killing almost all the civilian labourers living there (including my dad's friend). Perhaps it is because I heard all these first hand witness accounts while growing up that I always listen to any official war reports with a grain of salt. War is hell, and makes monsters of ALL the participants.
RockyMcNuts 10y ago
My impression is a lot of soldiers and contemporaneous sources said Japanese fought to the death, engaged in suicidal 'banzai charges', killed themselves rather than surrender, and that those few who did surrender thought it was shameful, and had been taught to expect mistreatment from Americans similar to what Japan dished out on e.g. the Bataan Death March. Now it's quite possible that some of that was exaggerated and history as written by the victors. (authors like Leckie, Sledge, Jones ... have their books but didn't get too far) But if your opponent is willing to surrender, it's generally a better tactic to let them surrender, than to have a no-prisoners policy that means their only hope for survival is to defeat you. Not saying there was no racism, no brutality, no war crimes from the American side, but would need to see more evidence that the relative lack of prisoners was 100% due to American war criminality vs. how Japanese fought. https://www.quora.com/Are-educated-Americans-no-longer-taught-that-Japanese-soldiers-in-World-War-II-were-trained-to-fight-to-the-death https://www.quora.com/Are-educated-Americans-no-longer-taugh...
- mcguire 10y ago
  Further, you get more intelligence from prisoners than from bodies.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    At the point that you're winning the war by a landslide, you don't care much about intelligence.
    - mcguire 10y ago
      "...winning the war by a landslide..." When, exactly, would that be?
  - iwontreddit 10y ago
    Sure, but you are talking about racist hatred trumping rationality and civility. There weren't a more racist and savage group in ww2 than the allied soldier in the pacific. Hundreds of thousands of japanese soldiers were tortured, mutilated/decapitated and turned into war trophies. It's a good thing we won ww2, otherwise, so many people would have been executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
rmidthun 10y ago
If you want a good look at the other side, read the Showa series of manga by Shigeru Mizuki. It mixes historical background (based on photos) with his own personal story (a more cartoony style). And his own story is Hellish by any standard. In the third volume particularly, his group gets caught by enemy fire and are presumed dead. When he makes it back to camp, they has already reported them as dead. This turns out to be an embarrassment and they are effectively told to go back into the jungle and die. Some do.
simonh 10y ago
How do you explain the Ohka, a piloted flying bomb custom built for suicide attacks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_MXY7_Ohka https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_MXY7_Ohka

mathattack 10y ago

Really no good side in most wars. Winning wars requires evil in one form or another.

mercurial 10y ago
No, but while all sides in war end up committing war crimes of one form or another, you definitely have systems in which this is a feature, not a bug. Large-scale massacres of civilians have been a regular staple of the Japanese armed forces during WWII (particularly the Army). And the pattern of abusing civilians of the so-called "co-prosperity sphere" and terrible treatment of POWs was not a case of isolated incidents.

Apocryphon 10y ago

Who was responsible for the mass suicides in the Battle of Okinawa?

akeruu 10y ago
This has been subjected to revisionism multiple times. After public protest and court ruling, it is now admitted it was the Japanese army which ordered people to kill themselves and even killed them: "Orders from Japanese soldiers led to Okinawans committing group suicide," and, "The [Japanese] army caused many tragedies in Okinawa, killing local civilians and forcing them to commit mass suicide." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#MEXT_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#MEXT_controv...
- iwontreddit 10y ago
  > After public protest and court ruling, it is now admitted it was the Japanese army which ordered people to kill themselves and even killed them: That's a bit of revisionism as well. The reason why many okinawans killed themselves was because the allied soldiers were raping and killing okinawan civilians. From your own wikipedia link... "There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians – and we didn't care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children. Americans always had great compassion, especially for children. Now we fired indiscriminately." The nonsense about "distinguish between the enemy an women and children" is just egotistic nonsense. We have a long history of butchering women and children ( especially non-white women and children ). All we have to do is review US treatment of natives, blacks, etc throughout US history to see how compassionate we were. The reason why the okinawans killed themselves was because of the brutality and savagery of both sides ( americans and japanese ).

ekianjo 10y ago

> The more you learn about the real nature of ww2, you realize that there was no good side in that war. Just two evils fighting each other. You don't win wars without killing people, and therefore all sides are evil by definition. The little process of judging "war criminals" after the war is over is just for one's good conscience. If the Allies had lost they would have been judged as war criminals by the victors too.

wbl 10y ago
Where is the American Treblinka, the British Buchenwald? WWII was against genocidal maniacs who starved entire countries and destroyed Yiddish speaking culture.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
- cyberferret 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World...
  - jonyt 10y ago
    So you're saying Allied war crimes were in no way comparable to Axis?
    - cyberferret 10y ago
      Not sure if you are addressing this comment to me and my Wikipedia post, or at wbl (who I was responding to). I am not sure what measure anyone would use to compare war crimes etc., but if you are talking about pure body count, then the number of civilians killed during (a) the Rape of Nanking and (b) the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombs run about the same...

jbooth 10y ago

Respectfully, that's a bullshit point of view. For the japanese military in WWII, rape was normal. Butchering civilian populations wholesale was normal. The Americans and British did not play by those rules, even though we did a lot of killing. This was not two equivalent evils. http://foxtalk.tistory.com/98 http://foxtalk.tistory.com/98

cyberferret 10y ago
Perhaps not complete bullsh!t. Both my parents were in their early teens in Malaysia during the Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation. The both lived near (different) POW camps, and yes, they both agreed that the treatment of the British & Aussie POWs in those camps by the Japanese guards was brutal. But they both say that when the roles were reversed and the Allies took back Malaysia, the treatment by Allied soldiers of the Japanese prisoners was equally as horrific. Call it 'revenge mentality' or anything else, but the truth is that it happened and they saw it happen with their own eyes. It is just not documented in the history books we read today. My father had his bicycle commandeered by a Japanese soldier when the Imperial forces walked into Kuala Lumpur unopposed. The soldier politely asked to 'borrow' it and my dad's family knew better than to refuse. At the end of the war however, the same soldier knew defeat was coming so he actually sought out my father's family and returned the bike. It was a lot worse for wear, but he got it back. Another Japanese officer gave my grandfather one of his ceremonial swords as a gift because he was going to go down to the river to commit seppuku rather than be captured by allied forces. Bushido or not, that sort of cultural belief was the norm back then. My mother still speaks fondly of British POWs who she said were just young boys that she felt sorry for. She and her mother used to go down to the camp to collect the clothing of the POWs and the guards so they could mend them. Some of the English soldiers taught her to make toy bunny rabbits out of socks and she still remembers how to make them to this day. She speaks of the sorrow of going down to the camp one day to return some uniforms only to find the place deserted. A remaining guard told her that the Allied POWs had been shipped off to Burma to build a railway. She cries even now when telling the story. My mother actually still has some of the 'banana money' that was used by the Japanese in Malaysia during the occupation. Both my parents said that any actual fighting done by the Japanese forces was precise and directed against military installations in order to minimise civilian casualties. My father's best friend lived among the labour camps on the ground of the KL railway station. When the initial Japanese air attack on the railway yards came, they bombed a few cars/buildings and shot out the clock tower (after dropping leaflets explaining that they would demonstrate their superiority by shooting out all the clock towers in KL). There were hardly any civilian casualties. Conversely when the allied forces later counter attacked KL, they carpet bombed the railway yards, killing almost all the civilian labourers living there (including my dad's friend). Perhaps it is because I heard all these first hand witness accounts while growing up that I always listen to any official war reports with a grain of salt. War is hell, and makes monsters of ALL the participants.

RockyMcNuts 10y ago

My impression is a lot of soldiers and contemporaneous sources said Japanese fought to the death, engaged in suicidal 'banzai charges', killed themselves rather than surrender, and that those few who did surrender thought it was shameful, and had been taught to expect mistreatment from Americans similar to what Japan dished out on e.g. the Bataan Death March. Now it's quite possible that some of that was exaggerated and history as written by the victors. (authors like Leckie, Sledge, Jones ... have their books but didn't get too far) But if your opponent is willing to surrender, it's generally a better tactic to let them surrender, than to have a no-prisoners policy that means their only hope for survival is to defeat you. Not saying there was no racism, no brutality, no war crimes from the American side, but would need to see more evidence that the relative lack of prisoners was 100% due to American war criminality vs. how Japanese fought. https://www.quora.com/Are-educated-Americans-no-longer-taught-that-Japanese-soldiers-in-World-War-II-were-trained-to-fight-to-the-death https://www.quora.com/Are-educated-Americans-no-longer-taugh...

mcguire 10y ago
Further, you get more intelligence from prisoners than from bodies.
- coldtea 10y ago
  At the point that you're winning the war by a landslide, you don't care much about intelligence.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    "...winning the war by a landslide..." When, exactly, would that be?
- iwontreddit 10y ago
  Sure, but you are talking about racist hatred trumping rationality and civility. There weren't a more racist and savage group in ww2 than the allied soldier in the pacific. Hundreds of thousands of japanese soldiers were tortured, mutilated/decapitated and turned into war trophies. It's a good thing we won ww2, otherwise, so many people would have been executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

rmidthun 10y ago

If you want a good look at the other side, read the Showa series of manga by Shigeru Mizuki. It mixes historical background (based on photos) with his own personal story (a more cartoony style). And his own story is Hellish by any standard. In the third volume particularly, his group gets caught by enemy fire and are presumed dead. When he makes it back to camp, they has already reported them as dead. This turns out to be an embarrassment and they are effectively told to go back into the jungle and die. Some do.

simonh 10y ago

How do you explain the Ohka, a piloted flying bomb custom built for suicide attacks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_MXY7_Ohka https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_MXY7_Ohka