NOT SO HEROIC
JAP SUICIDE FIGHTER Warrant Officer Magoshichi Sugino, fabled as a suicide fighter who helped scuttle a Japanese river boat at the entrance of Port Arthur, Manchuria, and bottle up the Russian fleet, is reported ready to come home from shame-faced exile of 44 years.
The discovery of the erstwhile hero, around whom the bushido (immortality through death in war) code was strengthened and for whom songs'are written and statues erected, gives the code a death blow. It was belief in that code which sent thousands of young Japanese to their graves in senseless banzai charges in the second World War. Sugino, old but in excellent health was reported to have been discovered and identified at a Manchurian repatriation port by home-going Japanese, They considered him to be an insult to hero-worshippers who had revered his name for the "sacrifice" he had made.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19470212.2.44
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 93, 12 February 1947, Page 8
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145NOT SO HEROIC Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 93, 12 February 1947, Page 8
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