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Okinawans were ordered to commit suicide (or murdered, if refused)
[Japan is marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa – one of the bloodiest episodes in the Pacific during World War Two. Editor]
The order issued by the “supreme command of the Army and the Navy,” Emperor Hirohito, who was legally supreme commander of the Imperial General Headquarters, where the military decisions were made, also stipulated that those who did not commit suicide should be executed.
About 110,000 Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) soldiers, rapists and mass murderers were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies lost just over 14,000 troops.
However, the real tragedy was the fate of an estimated 150,000 local civilians who were either killed, committed suicide, murdered for refusing to kill themselves, or starved to death.
“A significant aspect of the Battle of Okinawa was the great loss of civilian life. At more than 100,000 civilian losses far outnumbered the military death toll. Some were blown apart by shells, some finding themselves in a hopeless situation were driven to suicide, some died of starvation, some succumbed to malaria, while other fell victim to the retreating Japanese troops.” http://www.peace-museum.pref.okinawa.jp/english/index.html
[Editor’s Note: Japan lost the Battle of Okinawa, and subsequently the war, in the most dishonorable and humiliating way possible.]
The Japanese soldiers used civilians as human shields against the Americans, or simply murdered them.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060114010134/http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/20/news/oki.php
“There were two types of orders for ‘honorable deaths’—one for residents to kill each other and the other for the military to kill all residents.” —From the documentary Nuchigafu by the Korean-Japanese director, Pak Su-nam.
The Japanese Army used civilians as human shields against the Americans. They forced civilians out of their shelters, confiscated food from them and executed those who hid it, leading to a mass starvation among Okinawans.
Japanese soldiers also murdered more than 1,000 Okinawans for speaking their mother tongue to suppress spying.
“You have the Battle of Britain, in which your airmen protected the British people. We had the Battle of Okinawa, in which the exact opposite happened. The Japanese army not only starved the Okinawans but used them as human shields. That dark history is still present today…,” an official of the prefectural government in Okinawa told David Hearst of The Guardian.
In March 2013, Japanese textbook publisher Shimizu Shoin was permitted by MEXT to publish the statements that, “Orders from Japanese soldiers led to Okinawans committing group suicide,” and, “The [Japanese] army caused many tragedies in Okinawa, killing local civilians and forcing them to commit mass suicide.” [Link deleted by Japan’s Mainichi newspaper.]
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