Been reading about some world war stuff (currently in an area of the world where wreckages from that war is still lying all over the place)
The Japanese imperial army was one determined bunch of guys... wah.. So they took over Malasyia imprisoning twice as many British and Aussie soldiers than they had. Run a tight ship and really required (arguably) the atomic bomb to make them surrender. Invasion of Japan by soldiers would have tried to kill 3 or 4 before going down - it would have been a bloody battle. After the Bomb - the emperor surrender the ones who could stand the shame of surrender did as orders required and others just hari kiried themselves on the road. it was impressive until I came to hear about some Japanese soldiers who surrender after 30 years. The guy had proper uniform. he kept his things clean and never knew that Japan surrendered. They had to fly in his former commander (the guy who gave him the orders) to go to the Philippines to withdraw the order. The fellow then surrendered to Marcos. Some other guy was found in Guam in 1972.... Kinda made me ask myself - how just how effective was the narrative of 'Japanese superiority and gain after fighting a noble fight for the emperor' to survive solo confinement 30 years down the line? What type of narrative do you come up with to create such tough and tenacious MoFos

I think it is a combination of 2 very powerful forces. Ukabila na dini. Just imagine the enthusiasm of Baba supporters coupled with the belief that Baba is God himself. Japanese Emperors before the current one were for more than 1000 years considered living gods. I also think that Japan being islands reinforces this belief kabisa because people are isolated. On a mainland there are too many people with different beliefs who see and meet each other so that it is a little hard to sustain fundamentalist beliefs. I think if Jehovah Wanyonyi had arisen amongst the people of Mfangano island and they had believed him he would have built a bigger and long lasting following. You can imagine the Japanese on their islands for hundreds of years. Everyone on the island looks the same and speaks the same language and they also believed they were special and they were the chosen ones and the Emperor is God. Then combine that with a general hardworking discipline and team spirit that makes them clean stadiums after world cup matches and you have an unbeatable force.

Sounds more like common sense, which makes sense. The US can attribute its super power status because they all speak the same language, unlike China which is divided and has taken them ions to get where they are with their Mandarin. Japan, small as it is could humble China in battle

When I read about world war 2 stuff I feel very lucky because we must be living in the most peaceful time, more like a temporary peacetime in the eye of the storm.

Consider this all Kenyan soldiers, all of them in all the barracks in Kenya and Somalia and kila mahali are only about 25,000 total. The biggest army in the world right now is the People's Liberation Army of China with about 2.3 million soldiers. The US has about 1.3 million. These numbers look big but they are tiny when you consider how large the forces were during WWII.

The British army had 3 million, Imperial Japanese Army had 6 million soldiers at its peak, Germany had 13 million, Americans had 16 million while the Soviets had about 30 million. Those are a lot of people with guns.

That's it!