re: #209 Targetpractice

The image of housewives and school kids charging machine guns with sharpened sticks. Old men expected to take down tanks with “anti-tank” weapons that consisted of little more than a stand-off mine on the end of a stick. “Sweep and clear” missions in schools and hospitals.

And if you think that’s horrific, imagine what would be going on in the North when the Soviets (eventually) made landfall. Dropping arty on buildings instead of spending time and manpower to clear them. Meeting human waves with tanks and flamethrowers. And we already know from their behavior in Berlin how they treat any persons of the fairer sex they manage to take prisoner.

If you ever listen to interviews with Japanese folks from the time period immediately post-war, it absolutely amazed them that after years of brutality and horrors visited upon their would-be subjects, their countrymen were met with such pity and support from the American occupiers that the country was largely rebuilt within a decade.

And regardless of what you may think about him, you gotta give McArthur credit for his post war Japanese occupation policy.

Someone in our family may still have dinnerware labeled “made in occupied japan.”