I understand. You are correct.
Likewise, my Dad served at the Battles of Normandy and Okinawa as a gunner’s mate on an LST. He told us kids more than once, “If you weren’t scared, you weren’t there.”
And he quickly took a liking to my wife who I met in the Navy while stationed in southern Japan. And after spending 4 years in Japan and many more watching Japanese samurai shows on NHK and meeting many Japanese people on a one-to-one basis, I know something about the Japanese character and they are very honorable and good.
I agree about the attrocities committed by the Japanese. The terror inflicted by the leaders and officers is as bad as it was in Nazi. Germany. You’re right, we cannot forgive that.
From the standpoint of your average foot soldier, I think the Japanese were very similar to Americans. They didn’t want to be there and they fought valiantly for their cause.
Japan was like Germany in World War II. If you complained or didn’t strictly obey orders, you were shot. The kamikaze pilots were mostly young kids (the veteran pilots were all dead by that point) and were they forced to get in those airplanes and crash them to their deaths.
The Clint Eastwood directed movies on Iwo Jima, produced and acted by American and Japanese people, shows maybe the truest account of this terrible war.