Japanese Discipline and Training During World War IIThe Japanese soldier was perhaps the most discip

Japanese Discipline and Training During World War IIThe Japanese soldier was perhaps the most disciplined soldier of World War II. When comparing the Japanese soldier to their Axis contemporaries, it can even be claimed that Japanese soldiers were even more disciplined than their German Allies.  After all Japanese soldiers were more than willing to turn themselves into human bombs or commit mass suicide for their emperor.  German soldiers were not so willing to do so for Hitler. While German discipline was more in the realm of tactics, organization, and esprit de corps, Japanese training centered more on extreme physical toughness, extreme mental toughness, a willingness to endure disease, hunger, deprivation, torture, and a willingness to die for the cause en masse.  To boil the comparison down even further into oversimplified statements, German soldiers were trained to be killers, Japanese soldiers were trained to die without second thought.  German soldiers were trained to be effective and well organized soldiers, while Japanese soldiers were trained to be cheap cannon fodder.To instill this physical and mental discipline, the Japanese Imperial Army had the toughest and most brutal training program in all of the 20th century.  Rigid discipline was always maintained, and punishments were extreme.  Even the smallest or slightest infraction could result in beatings, starvation, and even execution.  Irokawa Daikichi is an eminent historian who was drafted while in college at Tokyo University during World War II.  According to him, after first learning how to fire a rifle, he was taught how to commit suicide with it, using his big toe to pull the trigger while cradling the rifle with his body and placing the muzzle under his chin.  He also gives this account of the brutal treatment he endured during his training,“After I passed the gate to the Tsuchiura Naval Air Base, “training” took place day after day. I was struck on the face so hard and frequently that my face was no longer recognizable. On January 2, 1945, Kaneko (Ensign) hit my face twenty times and the inside of my mouth was cut in many places by my teeth. I had been looking forward to eating zōni [a special dish with rice cakes for the New Year]. Instead, I was swallowing blood from the inside of my mouth. On February 14, all of us were punished because they suspected that we ate at farmers’ homes near the base to ease our hunger. In the midst of the cold winter, we were forced to sit for seven hours on a cold concrete floor and they hit us on the buttocks with a club. Then each of us was called into the officer’s room. When my turn came, as soon as I entered the room, I was hit so hard that I could no longer see and fell on the floor. The minute I got up, I was hit again by a club so that I would confess. A friend of mine was thrown with his head first to the floor, lost consciousness, and was sent to a hospital. He never returned. All this savagery was orchestrated by the corps commander named Tsutsui. I am still looking for this fellow.  Memorizing and reciting the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers (Gunjin Chokuyu) of 1882, written in archaic language, were a daily exercise. If we failed in the accurate recitation of the Rescript, we were hit to the ground, as I experienced personally. -- source link

More pics about