“Us?” Yoshida said. “We thought Japan would win for sure. We had to endure until we won. That’s how it was. Everyone wanted to fight in the war. We longed to. We were educated this way starting in elementary school. We were brainwashed, so we didn’t think it was possible for us to lose.” The emperor, he explained, “was considered a descendant of God. At school, there was a portrait of him. We would bow and pay our respects when we entered a room. That was the Japanese way.”
