Word: gumbatsu
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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...preserve the Emperor, says Roth, means inevitably to preserve the ruling clique which protects him. The most dangerous of the shifting ruling groups in Japan, says he, is that "which will try most eagerly to please us." More potent than the now discredited Gumbatsu (military class) - the self-proclaimed "angels of peace" - are the Zaibatsu, the plutocracy, which controls some 62% of Japan's financial, industrial and commercial wealth...
Leaflet bombing of Japan has been stepped up sharply since V-E day. Both B-29 Superforts and carrier-based planes are dropping paper salvos, at the rate of 500,000 to 1,000,000 leaflets daily. Principal target of these broadsides is the gumbatsu, the military clique which rules the empire: ". . . our bombers will return . . . many times, as long as your militarists continue this war." A small leaflet like a 10-yen note bears on the reverse: "The gumbatsu is wasting your tax money. For this war the gumbatsu has spent the equivalent of 5,000 yen for every...
...could speed by so much as a day or an hour the time of Japan's final, unconditional surrender, then the men fighting the steel-&-fire war would cheer it on. But they might properly raise a question: how unconditional is unconditional? And, in its concentration on the gumbatsu, is this campaign aiming for a surrender that would preserve the emperor system, in a Japan untouched by war except for air attacks? Few men who have fought in the Pacific would welcome any peace that let Japan off the hook this time, still possessed of its insane national-religious...
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