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The Axis POWs varied a great deal on how they felt about being captured by the Americans. The Japanese with few exceptions were horrified at the very idea. Not so much that the Americans were capturing them, but that they allowed themselves to be captured at all. It was commonly seen as dishoinorable. Many of the men take captive were wounded an unable to continue fighting or even kill themselves. They though surrebder dishonest and shameful. They even thought that they were dishoring their entire family. It is notable that Gen. Tojo had little interest in commiting suiside after the War, making only a face saving gesture with a pistol. Many of his young soldiers, however, were fanatical in their devotion to the Emperor. The ide was inclcated in them by the military. Most facing capture, either commiting suiside or engaged in suisidal Banzai charges. There were some surenders in Okinawa in the final months of the War, but very few before that. Almost all of the Japanese soldiers who syrrendered to the Americans survived the war. Ironically, large numbers of Japanese soldiers at the ebd of the War did surender to the Soviet Red Army in Mancguria. Few of these POWs survived to return to Japan. Given the refusal of so many Japanese soldiers to surrender and the fierceness of their resistance on one Pacific Island after another, it is virtually beyond belieft that the surrender of Japan went to smoothly. The difference of course was that the Emperor ordred them to surrender.
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