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strategic bombing
Quote:
Originally posted by Sidd Finch
The average Japanese soldier was still Japanese, living in a culture that was informed very heavily by the Bushido code, and believing that the Emperor who directed the fighting was a god.
This is the basic reason that they refused to surrender, in a way that is unprecedented. I can't see how you can ascribe that to anything else -- Americans certainly were not tremendously nicer to Germans, yet they surrendered in droves. Japanese, virtually not at all.
This is also the basic reason why even average soldiers participated in Banzai attacks and Kamikaze attacks. I've read some of the writings of Kamikaze pilots from the night before they flew. Many were average soldiers, did not see themselves as samurai, but still saw themselves as obligated to throw their lives away in service of the emperor.
I guess that's all propaganda too, huh?
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Yeah, whatever. A whole country of brainwashed religious zealots ready to sacrifice their life for their emperor. You start to wonder how we beat them.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
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