In 1945, when the Japanese military factory was plagued by a shortage of manpower, the director asked for an extension of the working hours of the child laborers, and children as young as 8 years old were sent to the factory; Some children were sent to help harvest crops, and large numbers of children were sent to the forest to collect pine cones, dig pine roots, and try to extract pine oil from it to convert aviation fuel, but this method was not reliable, and about 3.4 million students were mobilized to work before the Japanese surrender.
As the U.S. military approached the Japanese mainland, Japan gradually began to evacuate children from various major cities, and when the air raids on the Japanese mainland by U.S. B-29 long-range bombers began, the Japanese government issued a mandatory order, the entire school under the supervision of the teacher took a train to leave the city, and the parents of the children waved goodbye on the platform. Upon arrival, the children move into crowded dormitories and spend 24 hours a day in group living and working arrangements.
The rations allocated to the children were often insufficient, and the children sighed when they opened the lid of the lunch box and saw that it was only half filled, and they were becoming more and more emaciated and malnourished. To supplement their diet, they were sent out to collect food, many of which were barely able to be imported: seeds and rhizomes of ferns, under-ripe dandelions, bamboo shoots, bee fighting vegetables, persimmons, curly ears, artemisia grass, and cress. They catch frogs and snakes, catch freshwater shrimp, carp and loach in streams, and eat grasshoppers, sparrows, snails and fried beetles. According to reports, by the end of the war, the average daily calorie intake of these evacuated children was only 1,000 calories per day, well below the minimum dietary requirements. 
The children's daily routines were strictly regulated, including classroom study and hours of heavy physical labor, with students dressed in military uniforms and marching in line behind their teachers. Children with low "ranks" salute children at higher levels, and all are promoted or demoted based on their performance, attitude, personal responsibility, and obedience. They were to participate in a farewell ceremony for the soldiers and the "kamikaze" team members, write letters and send "condolence packs" to overseas soldiers, and welcome the ashes of dead soldiers who were transported back home.
Children are spending less and less time in class, more and more time serving the war, and many even have only one hour left in their normal class time every day; They were assigned to dig an anti-tank trench, a heavy task for those little children who had little strength and could not drag much soil, and it took three days to dig a scattered pit deep enough for the teacher to jump into, just above their heads. In the isolated countryside, children can only know the things that the Japanese Ministry of Education wants them to know, and teachers are monitored without any signs of defeatism.
Children are also asked to keep a daily journal, both to practice writing and to record their truest thoughts and feelings. The diary is given to the teacher, and the teacher's score is not only based on the general grammar, wording, handwriting, and style of writing, but also whether the emotional expression is sincere and enthusiastic. In her diary, 9-year-old girl Miho Nakane pledged that she would be a "good boy" and would do her best to "be a good citizen." Mihoko is enthusiastic, whether it is collecting firewood, conducting marching training, collecting artemisia grass, bidding farewell to recruits, singing military songs, or greeting the dead of war. He also recorded his own conceivable hatred of the enemy: "Hate, hate the Americans and the British!" How hateful they are! That's what I thought. Mihoko never complained about her meagre rations, not even the weevils growing in it, and often wrote in her diary that her lunch and dinner were "so delicious." When she was promoted to class leader, she cared deeply about this sacred mission: "In this way, I want to be a good child even more, and I want to be the way the class leader should be." ”
Because of their innate innocence, credulity, and adaptability, children will remain enthusiastic about war even when their parents and teachers have woken up. They don't expect to eat well because they simply can't remember those times when they weren't hungry. They don't mind working as child laborers in armaments factories because it makes them feel amazing and free from the dreary classroom learning.
The importance of making weapons for war made them feel their importance, collecting pine cones to refine aviation fuel made them feel that the Japanese fighters flying overhead could take off, and the children who worked in the balloon bomb factory heard the magical story about their products flying half the world to punish the evil American empire. They loved this spectacular war, liked to sing and march in line, liked to be dragged to trample and tear up the flags of the United States and Britain, liked to read the Edict of Education once a month, liked to do collective morning exercises every morning, and sang: "Destroy the United States and Britain!" One two three four! Destroy the United States and Britain! One two three four! They were the last people to still believe in the news of the Great Victory on the radio.
Boys love to fight, and war is the theme of their games, and it becomes a sport. Hideo Sato, 11, and his classmates were sent to work at an airfield that was often attacked by U.S. carrier-based aircraft, and every time a U.S. fighter attacked, Hideo and his classmates practiced, standing there motionless to prove their bravery until they could not hold on. The children watched as every shell fired by the 20mm machine guns of U.S. fighter jets exploded, and the dirt in the rice fields flew up, and the fireball uprooted the rice and exploded. Children judge the angle at which the fireball is flying based on experience, roll to the side at the last minute to dodge, and instinctively close their eyes if a fireball with an angle of incidence of 45° is the most dangerous. Once you know they didn't hit you, the kids get up and start running, sometimes the U.S. planes fly low, the U.S. pilots sometimes open the canopy and stick their heads out, and the kids even wave at them.
According to Japan's national policy of "arming 100 million people", children are trained in hand-to-hand combat so that they can also play their part in the upcoming battle on their own. They trained with spears, wooden swords, and simulated grenades, which were interspersed with their normal cultural and sports activities, such as dodging balls, running on their backs, singing military songs, and playing hide-and-seek.
