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At the beginning of the Pacific War, Japanese Military Regime started to make a memo, “Senjin-Kun.” “Senjin” means “battlefield,” and “Kun” means “instruction.” In this memo, there were two goals. One goal was that the Military Regime had intention to let the world know, “how brave Japanese soldiers are.” The other goal was that they let the world know how well-organized, merciful Japanese soldiers are. However, this memo had lines indicating Japanese Empire soldiers should not behave shameful conducts. Actually, Senjin-Kun was drafted by the Military Regime. However, Senjin-Kun was proclaimed under the name of Hideki Tojo’s Cabinet.

In the memo, all soldiers were ordered to kill themselves to avoid being captured by the enemy, because they were told, “It is a shame to live in captivity.” The soldiers were all made to believe that the suicide order was an absolute order from the Emperor. The fact is that the Emperor has never ordered soldiers to kill themselves in the battles. What do you think of the fact that Tojo was captured alive at the end of the war when he was arrested by GHQ? He killed not only so many enemies but also his own people with no sense of responsibility.

Ruth Benedict, who was a leading cultural anthropologist, was asked to conduct the research on Japanese national character by CIA. Ruth Benedict and her team of researchers studied the prisoners of the war captured by the U.S. military. The research study found an astounding fact that all Japanese soldiers were ordered to kill themselves by Hideki Tojo under the name of the “Emperor” before they were captured.

All soldiers were ordered to recite “Senjin-Kun.” “Kun” means the instruction and “Senjin” means battle fields.

All the Japanese prisoners, who were captured, lost consciousness in the battlefield. They were only told to kill themselves. I would like to repeat the fact that this suicide order was made by the Japanese Military Government during the Pacific War. No Emperor ever gave such a command to soldiers. There was no such an order during either the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) or World War I (1914-1918).

The Japanese Military Government during the Pacific War did not educate the soldiers how to behave when they were captured. They were just told to kill themselves before they were captured. Therefore, quite the contrary to expectation of the researchers, those who looked cruel in the battlefield were very calm while being asked questions by the researchers. As a result, under questioning, they told everything including confidential military information. This led the U.S. Army to get all essential information of the movement of the Japanese Empire Military. At the same time, this conduct of soldiers in captivity revealed evil and foolishness of Hideki Tojo.

Ruth Benedict and her research team concluded an interesting analysis of the national character of Japanese people. They found that Japanese people are not aggressive but very obedient to orders. Later, she worked up the results of her research and wrote “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Patterns of Japanese Culture.”