Meiji’s warning thus became prophecy. In throwing away their lives like so many feathers, Iwabuchi’s forces in Manila unshouldered the burden of a mountain. Forsaking the “true valor” prescribed in the rescript, possessing no sound discrimination between right and wrong, the soldiers and sailors abandoned themselves to feral violence against defenseless innocents. And in the end, as Hirohito’s grandfather had foretold, the world came to detest them and to look upon them as wild beasts. As one surviving witness to the Manila atrocities commented afterward, “They were like mad, wild dogs. They
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