Every soldier went to battle carrying the pocket-size Senjinkun or Field Service Code, whose opening sentence was this: “The battlefield is where the Imperial Army, acting under the Imperial command, displays its true character, conquering whenever it attacks, winning whenever it engages in combat, in order to spread the Imperial Way far and wide so that the enemy may look up in awe to the august virtues of His Majesty.” In Shinmin no Michi (The Way of the Subject), a major tract issued four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government’s ideologues dwelled on the direct descent of
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