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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dr. Id who wrote (135978)	6/8/2004 4:07:05 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Or maybe you're just plain WRONG! If it was so clear to the Japanese that they had lost the war and the situation was hopeless, why did they not surrender? Why instead did the military prepare the civilian populace for a fight to the death? In the spring of 1945, civilians were given instructions on how to kill American soldiers if they invaded. Stab them in the stomach with bamboo spears, people were told. Use kitchen knives, or whatever weapons are at hand. Women tied up their kimono sleeves with thin sashes and practiced skewering straw dummies with bamboo spears. "Savage Americans!" they were told to shout as they did so. On every block, households were told to step up activities through their "tonarigumi," or neighborhood associations, practicing civil defense and keeping watch for any disloyal activities. Everyone had to wear military-style name tags sewn to the chest of their blouse or kimono. In June, the government ordered the mobilization of all Japanese men under age 60 as "volunteers." Their weapons: spears, bows and arrows, iron pipes. Cabinet ministers who reviewed the "troops" were reportedly shocked by their primitive equipment. Japan's leaders might have hoped a display of fierce fanaticism on the part of civilians would prevent the American military from embarking on a land invasion. Historians are still arguing over the degree to which the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was influenced by US fears of huge casualties in hand-to-hand fighting to take the Japanese mainland. killeenroos.com