Soldiers were merely "expendables" in the Imperial Japanese Army, says a 98-year-old survivor from World War II.
Junichi Tanigawa was called into the army twice — in 1938 and 1943 — and fought in China and Burma.
While Tanigawa was a standard soldier, his younger brother, Shugo, was a lieutenant from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. They belonged to the same infantry regiment while in Burma, where Shugo Tanigawa was killed in 1944.