Urban fighting is one of the most dangerous fight in a war. Buildings can hid snipers, boobytraps, etc. but as soldiers go house to house, the attacking soldiers need to watch out for innocent civilians hiding for safety in these buildlings.
Ah, but what do you do when the departing soldiers deliberately kill these civilians? That is what happened in Manila.
After the Japanese left, they headed north to the mountains to hide, and later battles in rural jungles was terrible but not given a lot of publicity.
The Japanese soldiers, often starving, would attack villages for food, killing everyone. If the soldiers tried peacefully to ask for food, villagers, knowing about the murders in other villages, often would given them poisoned food.
Sigh.
My husband's brother and cousin were guerillas who hid in the mountains and helped the American armies.
My husband was still a young teen, but at the end of the war, his brother recruited him and other teens to patrol the towns to keep people safe.
I post this to remind people two things: One: that a similar house to house battle would have happened if the Allies had to invade Japan, hence the willingness of President Truman, who after all was a battle veteran of World War I to drop the atomic bomb. And two: this was genocide. And the genocides of the Japanese against civilians is often left out of the history books.
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