Randomizer

Would be interesting to get an idea of what these were.

As a general rule Warrior cultures do not generally deal with decisive defeat too well and indulge in all sorts of collective delusions to explain it away. That, or the leadership folds up and collapses when their mythological bubble bursts.

As Sergei points out they were defeated time and again by the American's and had plenty of combat evidence in the form of repeated disasters that their contempt for the U.S. forces was unjustified and yet overall, the IJA leadership revelled in that contempt*. Yet the Red Army beat them once before the battles in August of 1945 and like a school yard bully, the generals were terrified of Ivan.

Perhaps as pointed out above, it was something to do with proximity of the Soviet Union or maybe some cultural component that I'm missing. One thing is for sure, the Japanese armies in Manchuria collapsed almost completely under the Soviet offensive, shedding prisoners by the tens of thousands and vast territories in an entirely conventional rout of epic proportions. The exact military opposite of the American experiance on Okinawa only a few months before.

Wonder if the IJA had actually reached their breaking point at Okinawa and were internally ripe for disintegration in spite of bamboo spears and an Army of 100-Million Bayonets of General Staff propaganda.

Also wonder why the O.P. hasn't bothered to pop in to see what he started.

Edit: explanetory note added.

* Note: This apperant contempt for American arms was not just rhetoric, it actually shaped Imperial strategic operations and so was in all likelyhood sincerely held as true. Likewise fear of the Red Army also shaped strategic thinking and so also must have been founded in the worldview of the Imperial leadership. And yet the German experiance in 1941-42 and their own experiances in '42-43 did nothing to modify their dogma. Odd indeed.