Because they thought the enemy were like them. They thought that if for instance Tokyo fell, then it would be the rape of Tokyo (just like they did the rape of Nanjing).
It’s well known that when the Philippines fell the Japanese were very surprised of the amount of U.S prisoners and they were simply not prepared to house so many prisoners but i ask…
How many U.S soldiers would surrender if they knew that slavery, torture, starvation, humiliation and maybe death was going to await them at the Japanese prisioner camps?
Not many. Many would have fought to the death. Just like the Japanese fought rather than falling to the horrors they thought would await them at the hands of the westerners.
I’m actually now thinking in the female fighters of the middle east.
We have heard the cases of Syrian, Israeli, Kurdish, and other female fighters against ISIS that choose suicide over capture. Quite simply because they know that what awaits them. It’s rape, slavery or at least execution.
There were some Japanese women who committed suicide over capture for the same reason.
I don’t think they knew about the rape of Nanjing. But I think they were warned by soldiers and officials of what may happen to them.
Can Zhang gave an amazing answer (sorry I don’t know the link ) but I think it needs some more comments with this..
Disclaimer: Western Allies, Japan, Soviets, Chinese, and Axis all committed atrocities, but all on different levels. We just cannot compare the worst of the Allies with the worst of the Axis. They are on different levels.
Individuation (Richard Rohr)
Just what are those inner imperatives that rise to support us and challenge us in the journey of the second half of life? Perhaps Jung’s most compelling contribution is the idea of individuation, that is, the lifelong project of becoming more nearly the whole person we were meant to be—what [God] intended, not the parents, or the tribe, or, especially, the easily intimidated or inflated ego.
While revering the mystery of others, our individuation summons each of us to stand in the presence of our own mystery, and become more fully responsible for who we are in this journey we call our life. So often the idea of individuation has been confused with self-indulgence or mere individualism, but what individuation more often asks of us is the surrender of the ego’s agenda of security and emotional reinforcement, in favor of humbling service to the soul’s intent. . . .
The agenda of the first half of life is predominantly . . . framed as “How can I enter this world, separate from my parents, create relationships, career, social identity?” Or put another way: “What does the world ask of me, and what resources can I muster to meet its demands?” But in the second half of life . . . the agenda shifts to reframing our personal experience in the larger order of things, and the questions change. “What does the soul ask of me?” “What does it mean that I am here?” “Who am I apart from my roles, apart from my history?” . . . If the agenda of the first half of life is social, meeting the demands and expectations our milieu asks of us, then the questions of the second half of life are spiritual, addressing the larger issue of meaning.
The psychology of the first half of life is driven by the fantasy of acquisition: gaining ego strength to deal with separation, separating from the overt domination of parents, acquiring a standing in the world. . . . But then the second half of life asks of us, and ultimately demands, relinquishment—relinquishment of identification with property, roles, status, provisional identities—and the embrace of other, inwardly confirmed values.
In Need of Guidance (Richard Rohr)
After he retired, my father cried in my arms and said, “I don’t know who I am now. I don’t know who I am. . . . Pray with me, pray with me.” Here I was a grown-up man, a priest, supposed to be strong for my father. I didn’t know how to do it. I guess I said the appropriate priestly words. But I didn’t know how to guide him into the second half of life, and he was begging for a guide.
The church wasn’t much of a guide in such things. The common sermon was on the evil of abortion. My mom in her 70s would come home and say, “Why does the priest keep telling us the same thing? I can’t have babies anymore!” That’s what happens when the Church doesn’t grow up or support its growing members. We focus on something that’s quantifiable and seemingly clear and has no subtlety to it. It’s mostly black and white thinking, usually about individual body-based sins. We know who the sinners are, and we know who the saints are, and we don’t have to struggle with the mixed blessing that every human being is. We’re all mixed blessings and partly sinners, and we always will be. But this wisdom only comes later, when we’ve learned to listen to the different voices that guide us in the second half of life.
These deeper voices will sound like risk, trust, surrender, uncommon sense, destiny, love. They will be the voices of an intimate stranger, a voice that’s from somewhere else, and yet it’s my deepest self at the same time. It’s the still, small voice that the prophet Elijah slowly but surely learned to hear (see 1 Kings 19:11-13).