No Surrender Read Online Free PDF

months. By the time we came along, the six-month course was being jammed into three months. The pace was fierce for both instructors and trainees.
    I began to understand the basic differences between open warfare and secret warfare. The attack drills at the officers’ training school had been lessons in open warfare, which is fundamentally unicellular. We were now being taught a multicellular type of warfare in which every available particle of information is used to throw the enemy into confusion. In one sense, what we were learning at Futamata was the exact opposite of what we had been taught before. We had to accustom ourselves to a whole new concept of war.
    And the homework was mountainous! Almost every nightwe had to request permission to leave the lights on after hours, and most of us were up until midnight regularly. Even so, there was not enough time. On our days off we would hole up in the inns in Futamata to work on our assignments. I always stayed at one of two inns, the Kadoya or the Iwataya, and recently I was interested to find that the Kadoya is still operating today. It must have been a terrible nuisance for the innkeepers to have this horde of fledgling officers descend on them every Sunday, particularly when there was a shortage of food.

    I cannot think of Futamata without being reminded of the famous folk song “Sado Okesa.” Lieutenant Sawayama used this song to illustrate the whole idea of secret warfare.
    â€œThere is,” he said, “no correct version of ‘Sado Okesa.’ Within certain broad limits, you can sing it or dance it any way you like. And people do just that. The type of guerrilla warfare that we teach at this school is the same. There are no fixed rules. You do what seems best suited to the time and the circumstances.”
    In one sense, the training we received can be compared with what is usually called “liberal education.” We were to a large degree given our heads, so to speak. We were encouraged to think for ourselves, to make decisions where no rules existed. Here again the training was very different from what we had experienced at the officers’ training school. There we were taught not to think but to lead our troops into battle, resolved to die if necessary. The sole aim was to attack enemy troops and slaughter as many as possible before being slaughtered. At Futamata, however, we learned that the aim was to stay alive and continue to fight as guerrillas as long as possible, even if this entailed conduct normally considered disgraceful. The question of how to stay alive was to be decided at one’s own discretion.
    I liked this. This kind of training and this kind of warfare seemed to suit my personality.
    At that time, if a soldier who had been taken prisoner later managed to return to Japan, he was subject to a court martial and a possible death penalty. Even if the penalty was not carried out, he was so thoroughly ostracized by others that he might as well have been dead. Soldiers were supposed to give their lives for the cause, not grovel in enemy prison camps. General Hideki Tōjō’s Instructions for the Military said explicitly: “He who would not disgrace himself must be strong. He must remember always the honor of his family and his community, and he must strive fervently to live up to their trust in him. Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you!”
    But at Futamata, we were taught that it was permissible to be taken prisoner. By becoming prisoners, we were told, we would place ourselves in a position to give the enemy false information. Indeed, there might be times when we ought deliberately to let ourselves be captured. This could, for instance, be the best course when there was a need to communicate directly with others who had already been taken prisoner. In short, the lesson was that the end justifies the means.
    In such circumstances, we learned, we would not be held