In class, we learned that Americans had anti-Japanese propaganda, but did the Japanese have anti-American propaganda?
When watching a video in class, we learned that the Japanese were told that Americans had to kill their parents to become a marine. The Japanese press greatly overexaggerated number of suicides at Saipan. For me personally, that would not make me want to go to war to know that there was a lot of suicide. The question then might be, why might it have a different effect on Japanese? The interpretation may be that: rather than surrender, they would rather die for their nation. The Japanese government wants people to think that only 17 were taken as prisoner, and the rest fought to the death, meaning that they are trying to get their people to fight to the last breathe.
IF you are an American soldier what is your perception of this? You may think that this is crazy or even frightening. Can you imagine being 19 or 20 and watch people commit suicide. This may make the Americans not want to fight or the effect where they say: okay we won't take more prisoners. Psychologically watching people commit suicide would cause a person to have PTSD.
For whatever reason, the propaganda used isn't exactly the same but the same thing. Often the propaganda you use against one group to show them as bad, it is exactly the opposite of how we view ourselves.
If watching the enemy suicide causes a soldier to have PTSD, what about having to physically kill someone? No part of war is pretty, nor fair. I think the part that really got them was the fact it was not only soldiers, but women and children.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dylan, I don't necessarily think that it was just the suicides that got to the soldiers, but rather who was committing the suicides. To many soldiers watching innocent women and children die could have had a much larger effect on there mental stability then killing someone who was trying to kill them. But this was all a part of the Japanese plan in the end was the break each solider making them back off on the war to save more lives. Like possibly on the innocent. So I think it made many soldiers questioned what they were doing so that they would come across as weak or bound to give up. Which is exactly what Japan wanted
ReplyDelete