Word: imperiale
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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G.I.s stared with cold curiosity at the impressive wreckage of the Japanese Imperial Army. The tough brown soldiers, ragged, weary, grim, clung to packed trains and swarmed the roads, following the long way home from war. City dwellers cheered them, but unbombed rustics, who could not understand the surrender, jeered...
At Manila, Japanese emissaries confirmed an Office of Naval Intelligence prediction: the Jap Navy had literally been blown out of the seas by war's end. Of twelve battleships, only the heavily damaged Nagato was left. Of 21 carriers, four derelicts remained. Four cruisers (of 43) were still afloat...
Further, it looked as if Russia would get Japan's half of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands enclosing Russia's Okhotsk Sea. Russia's position in east Asia would return to about where it was in 1904 before the Russo-Japanese war. Stalin's imperialism...
When the representative of Japan's Imperial Headquarters placed his chop on the parchment, hostilities would be over. After that, it would be up to MacArthur and the armies of occupation to win the peace-on the soil that the Japanese still consider sacred.
For many Japanese the shame of surrender was even harder to take. "Large numbers" of people, reported Radio Tokyo, were committing hara-kiri before the Imperial Palace.