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And we often forget just how brutal those Japanese soldiers were.

IMO, they never got the "credit" they deserved for their brutality. It would have been much, much better to be a POW of the Germans than the Japanese. The fanaticism of the Japanese populations reminds me of Muslim extremism.

[IMO, they never got the “credit” they deserved for their brutality. It would have been much, much better to be a POW of the Germans than the Japanese.]

For Allied troops from the West, sure. But 57% of Soviet troops captured died in German captivity, vs 40% of GI’s captured by the Japanese. And a good chunk of GI casualties in Japanese captivity came from problems with logistics, because Japanese soldiers were starving and short of supplies much of the time, thanks to the effectiveness of the Silent Service.

[The fanaticism of the Japanese populations reminds me of Muslim extremism. ]

They were convinced by the Japanese government that they would be killed to the last man, woman and child if they lost. Hence, better to die fighting than surrender and be exterminated like sheep.

In some ways, their credulity with respect to Japanese government propaganda was understandable. Military ethics there was medieval. Resist a siege and the price was extermination by the victor when he breached the castle walls. Not unique to the Japanese, but the kind of thing they dealt out during their wars of unification and expected to receive in return if they lost.

The Greeks and Romans did similar things:

https://www.livius.org/sources/content/diodorus/alexander-sacks-persepolis/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)#Destruction_of_Jerusalem

They weren’t bloodthirsty barbarians, but conquerors who needed to nip small problems in the bud before they became big problems. Hearts and minds counterinsurgency isn’t just expensive, it often fails miserably. What always works is the elimination of enemy soldiers and their civilian supporters. And that’s why conquerors throughout history have repeatedly resorted to it, including winners of bloody civil wars up till the present.

Anyway, the expectation of genocidal root and branch slaughter by the West upon final defeat drove Japanese actions at the grassroots level. That is why they were almost embarrassingly grateful when they were spared after the surrender.

The IJA-Imperial Japanese Army were the ones noted from their brutality. At Midway we fought the IJN-Imperial Japanese Navy. I don’t know if the Navy were as barbaric as the Army. The Army were the aggressive hard-liners, the Navy apparently not as much.