It's plausible enough to be believable, especially as propaganda. American soldiers... despised isn't a strong enough word, but they despised the Japanese. The Japanese practice of fighting to the last man, engaging in suicide charges, hiding out and ambushing US troops while the Americans were clearing the area after the battle, make false surrenders then attack, and a general refusal to surrender at all made battles extremely bloody. It was compounded because a lot of the battles in the Pacific happened in heavily fortified or extremely hostile terrain, which meant a great deal of extremely lethal close in fighting and bunker clearing. In most wars in most cultures at most times fighting to the last man was something that happened in stories and propaganda, not in real life. When casualties got bad enough armies either broke and routed or surrendered. A lot of times the Japanese didn't, and it made the fighting more bloody and deadly than it would otherwise have been. And they'd do it regardless of whether the battle was strategically important, or a completely pointless defense of a strategically worthless rock sticking out of the ocean.
The result was that very shortly in to the Pacific war Americans stopped trying to take prisoners or accept surrender and committed to killing every Japanese soldier on sight. And I don't want to make this "Americans bad, Japanese good". The Japanese were exactly as monstrous, routinely executing captured soldiers and occupied civilians, putting them on death marches or deliberately working them to death. Generally speaking surrendering to the Japanese was not a better alternative than dying fighting.
Either way, if you told Americans shortly after the nukes dropped that Japanese civilians were going to fight to the death with bamboos spears no one in the US would question it. It was consistent with the behavior of the Japanese military.
It's plausible enough to be believable, especially as propaganda. American soldiers... despised isn't a strong enough word, but they despised the Japanese. The Japanese practice of fighting to the last man, engaging in suicide charges, hiding out and ambushing US troops while the Americans were clearing the area after the battle, make false surrenders then attack, and a general refusal to surrender at all made battles extremely bloody. It was compounded because a lot of the battles in the Pacific happened in heavily fortified or extremely hostile terrain, which meant a great deal of extremely lethal close in fighting and bunker clearing. In most wars in most cultures at most times fighting to the last man was something that happened in stories and propaganda, not in real life. When casualties got bad enough armies either broke and routed or surrendered. A lot of times the Japanese didn't, and it made the fighting more bloody and deadly than it would otherwise have been. And they'd do it regardless of whether the battle was strategically important, or a completely pointless defense of a strategically worthless rock sticking out of the ocean.
The result was that very shortly in to the Pacific war Americans stopped trying to take prisoners or accept surrender and committed to killing every Japanese soldier on sight. And I don't want to make this "Americans bad, Japanese good". The Japanese were exactly as monstrous, routinely executing captured soldiers and occupied civilians, putting them on death marches or deliberately working them to death. Generally speaking surrendering to the Japanese was not a better alternative than dying fighting.
Either way, if you told Americans shortly after the nukes dropped that Japanese civilians were going to fight to the death with bamboos spears no one in the US would question it. It was consistent with the behavior of the Japanese military.