Word: harakiri
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Listeners to NBC's key Manhattan station, WEAF, one day last week heard Newscaster Don Goddard say: "... a rumor came bounding into the newsroom. Emperor Hirohito is one of those in Japan who has committed harakiri...
Died. General Korechika Anami, Army bureaucrat and War Minister in the Suzuki Cabinet; and Vice Admiral Takejiro Onishi, originator of Kamikaze ("divine wind," i.e., suicide) tactics; both by harakiri, induced by the Japanese surrender; in Tokyo...
...Japan's soldiers "to defend the Imperial land even after death with your souls." When he heard the news of his son's death in battle, his only visible emotion was to crush a flower bud in his hand. He held out against surrender. Before committing harakiri, he wrote a farewell to his Emperor ("I humbly beg . . . pardon ... for my great sins") and a poem...
There is a right and a wrong way to commit harakiri. In the case of General Anami and Vice Admiral Onishi, it is presumed that they donned the usual ceremonial robes, knelt on a dais, surrounded by friends and officials. When the jeweled hara-kiri dagger had been handed to them, they would have made many bows to the Emperor. Then they would have plunged the razor-like dagger into the left side below the waist, at the same time drawing it toward the right. They would thus have fulfilled the hara-kiri command: to die with honor, when...
...Nazidom's living ex-rulers, now under lock & key in the city jail at Nuremberg, where the first trials will take place in September. Now that Russia had entered the Pacific war, it would probably also be the picture for those Japanese war lords who do not commit harakiri...