Intelligence and the Japanese Civilian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Intelligence and the Japanese Civilian was a 1945 film produced by the US Marine Corp, to instruct Marines on how they should handle the civilian population of Japan during the post-war occupation.
The film begins by describing the difficulties the civilian population posed during the Battle of Saipan including the famous mass suicide of Japanese who believed the US would torture them. As the Mariana campaign progressed, though,the Marines learn to use the Intelligence Division to handle the Japanese civilians, and by their time the Marines reach Okinawa, the ID had become a routine part of the operation. (It should be noted that the Marianas and Okinawa, pre-war Japanese possessions, had large Japanese civilian populations at the time of their occupation, whereas other islands, like Tarawa, Guam or Iwo Jima were either uninhabited by civilians, or only by indigenous civilians).
The ID uses a variety of techniques to handle the Japanese civilians: they first make loudspeaker announcements in Japanese to coax them into surrendering; once a group has surrendered they find a community leader or someone in a position of authority to make more loudspeaker broadcasts to encourage further surrenders. Camps are set up, and made self-sufficient as much as possible. Later, other roles of the civilians are explored, especially the use of captured documents and the need to find out who had been a collaborator with the militarist regime.
