The banzai charge came from a code that made surrender unthinkable. Imperial Japan drilled into its soldiers the conviction that to be captured was a disgrace worse than death, and that a man's highest duty was to die for the Emperor — "Tennōheika Banzai!," ten thousand years to his Majesty, was the cry. When a position was hopeless, Japanese troops would often fix bayonets and hurl themselves in a mass assault straight at the enemy. Against American machine guns and artillery the result was usually slaughter: at Saipan in 1944 some four thousand men died in a single such charge. Late in the war these attacks were named gyokusai, "the shattered jewel" — a chosen death over surrender. They were less a tactic than the terrible logic of a culture that had made dying the only honorable option.

The three-figure set is caught at the climax of the charge: an officer at the front with a pistol in one hand and his katana raised in the other, driving forward two riflemen with bayonets fixed, all three open-mouthed in the shout. Group them with the Charging Flagbearer carrying the colors into the same assault and the Sergeant with Sword, with the Machine Gunner covering the rush. It makes the dramatic heart of a Pacific diorama — though the history it depicts is a grim one, and worth telling honestly.

Model: JN062 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 3 piece set