If war broke out tomorrow....

[A Black Falcon]

Yes because of course the Japanese civilians knew everything that was going on and condoned all of the military's actions...

Now, I definitely agree that their value system was twisted. However, I can't blame the civilians for it. In that situation anyone would have ended up that way. I mean, since the 1860s the government had been emphasizing how important it was for Japan to be strong! They taught it and many of its side effects -- Japan needed industry. Equal trade relationships. A strong military. An empire. Equal fleets. Anything less and Japan was lesser than the West and they were obsessed with being as good as or better than the West... and the people were as I said trained to be militaristic. Now in class we just reached the 30s, but in the 20s there was a more democratic period... abut as I explained before while there were trappings of democracy the military was full of hardliners who wanted to expand their Chinese territories, and they got the chance when Hirohito took the throne... and its spiralled from there...

Did the Japanese people support the action in Manchuria? Yeah, probably. It was in defence of national honor, "protecting the Manchurians" (the government was very good at propaganda among its people), etc... and as I said they'd conveniently forget to mention all the massacres of civilians, the war atrocities, and all of that -- just the good stuff. The Japanese didn't learn what their troops had done to people until 1945.

Yes, breaking that system would be hard. And the A-Bomb probably was the easy and safe way out, making the peace faction a lot stronger in a hurry. But still... hundreds of thousands died... and most WERE innocent. At least guilty of nothing more than believing what their superiors told them and remember Japan was and still is a top-down society.