21. Japan’s Leaders and National Suicide
Japan’s wartime leaders spoke a great game about indomitable courage and a refusal to surrender as matters of honor. In reality, however, Japan’s leaders were a morally bankrupt and cowardly lot, who refused to confront the fact that they had taken their country into an unwinnable war and lost. Ethical leaders would have shouldered the responsibility for getting their country into such a fix. Japan’s leaders sought to escape their burden via histrionics and determined to immolate themselves and take their country with them.
So they sought to save face by training women to fight off heavily armed invaders with bamboo spears, and training little boys and girls to fight soldiers with pointy sticks. Rather than sacrifice themselves in order to spare their country, Japan’s leaders sought to sacrifice their country in order to spare their egos from the humiliation of surrender.
