Macalester College James R. Coplin
moog@qwest.net
   One of the lasting questions remaining from the World War II experience in Asia revolves around the reality of brutality meted out by Japanese soldiers on civilian populations and prisoners of war. How could good men, who were sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers, become such monstrous machines of human destruction outside their homeland? How could their officers, imbued with studies of the Confucian classics and Bushido, oversee and allow such heinous acts of aggression in the first place?
     While it is probable that no completely satisfactory answer will ever be forth coming, it is essential to continue to grapple with these fundamental questions in order to prevent such tragedies from recurring. This paper does not attempt to provide a definitive answer to these questions, but to explore some of the fundamental ideological roots of Japanese culture and history which contributed to the attitudes and activities of the Japanese soldier abroad. It is found, among other things, the Japanese interpretation and use of Confucianism and the unique Japanese national polity might be identified as ideological roots of Japanese militarism.