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Technically speaking every military is made up of civilians … every soldier was once a civilian.

That said, there is a difference between you voluntarily signing up to join the military and you being dragged into it.

To state the obvious, civilians can get dragged into something and manage not to commit atrocities. The conscripts of the IJA weren't trained specifically to commit atrocities. They weren't drugged, lobotomized, or transformed into robots either. What they did came from within themselves.

> The conscripts of the IJA weren't trained specifically to commit atrocities.

Maybe not directly.

100s of thousands of people don't commit atrocities just out of the blue.

Their doctrine was pretty hardcore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoichi_Yokoi

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