Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

For the Japanese, likewise, the discovery that most Americans were instinctively decent and courteous came as a great relief. Fear had gripped the communities scheduled to receive the first advance units of occupation troops. Civilians still under the influence of wartime propaganda—or perhaps with some inkling of how Japanese forces had behaved overseas—had assumed they would suffer brutality, pillage, massacres, and rape.63 Many women and girls fled to remote mountain villages. Others stayed off the streets, hiding themselves, or disguised themselves as boys, or smeared coal on their faces in the hope of making themselves ugly. Some even carried a sharp blade, intending to take their own lives by severing a vital artery. As American soldiers first arrived in Miyagi, north of Tokyo, a group of evacuated schoolchildren hid in their dormitory and peeked through a hole they had poked in a paper screen. They did not expect to see human beings. “It occurred to us, ‘They must have horns!’ ” one recalled. “We had images of glaring demons with horns sprouting from their heads. We were disappointed, of course. No horns at all.”64 Some of the boys went out and returned in triumph with chocolate bars.