Jim Downey

speaker

621 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 13 Jul

Jim Downey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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History That Doesn't Suck · 208: The Pacific War, 1942–43: Guadalcanal, the Aleutians, and Operation Vengeance · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

He's only holding the handle. matched

The blade has already broken off inside the Japanese soldier. matched

The already dead soldier. matched

Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. matched

I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. matched

Just how many of the once 2,300 Japanese soldiers on Attu were alive before this attack on May 29th, 1943 is hard to say. matched

Sources conflict. matched

But what we do know is that those too sick or wounded to fight killed themselves while the rest launched an unmitigated fight-to-the-death assault on the Americans, a tactic known as a bonsai charge. matched

At the battle's end, the victorious Americans, again in control of the island, took the surviving Japanese soldiers prisoner. matched

They numbered less than 30. matched

Perhaps you're wondering, what compels an entire army to carry out such a suicidal bonsai attack? matched

This takes us to the Bushido Code, or the Way of the Warrior, a set of cultural guidelines built around honor, duty, loyalty, and sacrifice. matched

But it's not as ancient as it sounds. matched

The term was largely popularized by Nitoba Inazo's 1899 book, Bushido, The Soul of Japan, which he wrote, oddly enough, to explain Japan's warrior culture to Western readers. matched

What matters for our story is what the Imperial Japanese Army did with it. matched

To paraphrase historian C. Kenneth Quinones, Japanese military leadership used the Bushido to convince their soldiers, their commoner, not of samurai descent soldiers, that they were heirs and guardians of the samurai tradition. matched

In that tradition, death in battle was equated with seppuku, ritual suicide, as an act of ultimate selflessness. matched

Survival was selfish, cowardly even, a shame to one's family. matched

Keep the Bushido code in mind. matched

Kamikaze attacks are coming in future episodes, and this isn't the last Banzai Charge we'll encounter, even in this one. matched

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