The Ient Family: Family History

The Japanese Emperor & Bushido

Now here’s a situation where the Japanese emperor, who is a god, and he wants to capitulate. Now what happens to the spirit of bushido? The spirit of the warrior and all the rest of it? These people had been brought up for years to believe that the emperor is a god, absolutely infallible, what he says is right. You die for the emperor, you die for your country, then go to your Valhalla. How does the emperor come out and explain ‘capitulation’ after all these hundreds of years of having the spirit of bushido forced down the throats of the Japanese.

Here is how we heard the news of capitulation: we go down and we sat on the dockyard and listened to the emperor on the radio. I can give you what he said word for word, though one of the lads was writing it down, but basically what he said was that the spirit of bushido was still alive in Japan as they hadn’t been beaten by force of arms, they’d been beaten by silence. In other words, Japan had not been beaten on the field of battle, so bushido was still intact, the spirit was still there, but they can’t compete with a big bomb. Americans were cowardly for dropping the bomb because it wasn’t really a battle. Notwithstanding they [the Japanese] had been bombings for years, over and above that, the excuse by the Emperor was a copout[i] you see.

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