The war against Japan was a different war from the one fought in Europe — waged island by island across the vast Pacific, in jungle, coral and volcanic sand rather than hedgerows and snow. The Japanese infantryman who held those islands carried a bolt-action Arisaka rifle with a long bayonet, fought under a code that treated surrender as disgrace, and often defended his ground to the last man. From Guadalcanal to Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, that determination made the Pacific some of the most brutal fighting of the war, and it shaped the terrible calculus that led to the atomic bombings and Japan's surrender in 1945.

The assortment brings six action poses in super-detailed plastic — riflemen firing and kneeling, a light-machine-gunner, a bayonet charge, and an officer with his sword raised for the attack — molded and painted, forty-eight figures to a counter-pack box. Unlike the boxed 1/30 metal figures elsewhere in this range, these are an affordable play-and-display plastic tier, and their natural counterpart is the other side of the Pacific war, the World War II U.S. Infantry 48-Piece Assortment. The two boxes together field both armies for a Pacific battle across a tabletop.

W. Britain model 17829. Super-detailed painted plastic. A 48-piece assortment of World War II Japanese infantry in six poses, supplied in a counter-pack box; the pose distribution is weighted and varies from box to box. Choking hazard — small parts, not for children under 3.