War movies lead you to believe that you understand violence. You don't. The actual history of World War II, and what the Japanese military did, is worse than anything you'll see in films.
This wasn't a handful of bad soldiers doing something in secret. Cruelty was institutionalized. The Bushido code was turned into a belief that Japanese soldiers were better than anyone else and everyone else was less than human. This was a mindset that produced a machine that existed for violence and called it honor.
Six weeks of brutality occurred in Nanking in 1937. Two hundred to three hundred thousand prisoners and civilians were killed. Thousands of women were mass-raped. Soldiers competed to kill as many as possible.
The abuse went on. Over two hundred thousand comfort women were coerced into sexual servitude. Unit 731 was also a camp where prisoners were tortured through live experiments that are unbelievable unless you learn that they actually occurred.
And then the Bataan Death March. POW's died in the heat, were beaten, stabbed, or beheaded if they could no longer walk.
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