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The idea was that the Japanese soldiers would see the atrocious that they were doing, realize that the Americans would want revenge, so the Japanese better figh
by roshin 2y ago
The idea was that the Japanese soldiers would see the atrocious that they were doing, realize that the Americans would want revenge, so the Japanese better fight to the death, since that's better than what the Americans would do to them in captivity.
It ends up that the Americans weren't too in to revenge, so the captured Japanese were surprised.
- KennyBlanken 2y agoThe idea was that the Japanese considered themselves superior and everyone else was inferior, sub-human, and needed to be punished for defying them.
- trissi1996 2y agoThey dropped 2 nuclear bombs on, mostly on innocent civilians, seems like pretty good revenge to me.
- pfdietz 2y agoAnd even before that, burned > 500 square miles of Japanese urban areas to ash. Granted, by the last weeks of the war, the USAAF was dropping leaflets warning they'd be back with incendiaries in a few days, a masterstroke in psychological warfare.
- Workaccount2 2y agoHot take, but Japanese civilians (all civilians, not just men) were to fight American soldiers if they invaded Japan. We'll never know what would have happened if America invaded, but Japan certainly was not making civilian evacuation plans. So maybe innocent-ish civilians? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg
- Neonlicht 2y agoJapanese soldiers fought to the death because they knew that their families would be punished if they didn't. In Japanese culture at the time the sins of the father are inherited by the sons and daughters. If you surrendered you would be dooming your entire family to a life of poverty and shame. To most decent people that would be worse than death.