Books like Tales By Japanese Soldiers

I've been interested in the history of the second world war for a long time now but never before have I had the oppurtunity to read a book from the Japanese point of view. Needless to say I was looking forward to it. Japanese soldiers and officers who fought during that conflict were labelled at the time by political propaganda as merciless, savage killers with a complete disregard for human life. The Japanese troops were made out to be monsters and that point of view is still held by many people today, largely because of the terrible way the Japanese treated Prisoners of War. No book has ever really tried to paint the Japanese during the war as ordinary soldiers and human beings with the same fear and vulnerabilities as everyone else. The book is very informative of Japanese tactics, movements and use of aircraft and mountain guns as support during combat and of the high regard the Japanese had of bayonet charges (a morbidly facinating fighting technique). The book also covers the fear and shame some soldiers felt at being wounded or pinned down by enemy fire and therefore unable to continue fighting. Also there genuinely seemed to be very little fear of dying, whether this was bravado or genuine courage is sometimes hard to tell but I think on the whole the soliders seemed to feel that if it was necessary for them to die for the betterment of Japan then they were ok with it. I was surprised to read that alot of Burmese people were pro-Japanese and supported the Japanese forces in Burma. It amused me in some strange way to read that the Japanese soldiers seemed more frightened of cholera than British soldiers! I was however disappointed with a seeming lack of human feeling or expression from the Japanese. Occasionally a Japanese soldier would write that he felt sad about something but that was it, the whole thing seems so clinical, so devoid of emotion. Perhaps alot was lost in translation but most of the writing is surprisingly functional and non-emotional. The book is full of sentances like "Today we crossed a bridge, it was very hot, we saw some British tanks. They fired at us, we hid behind some trees. Later on we had soup" thats not an actual extract but its similar to the style of alot of it. I just wish they put a bit more emotion into what they were writing, many diary entries seemed very detached, almost as if the soldier writing it was in some way sedated. Thats my opinion. Perhaps the Japanese soldiers just didn't like to put alot of emotion into what they wrote or perhaps any emotion was censored out. I'm not sure but what I will say is that although I got a very good, clear idea of what the fighting conditions during that conflict were like as well as how battles and skirmishes were fought. What I didn't get was any real idea as to how the Japanese soldiers actually FELT about the war and being shot at and having to kill a man with a bayonet or blow up a tank with four men still inside or how it felt to be shot at themselves. How it felt for them to be involved in this terrible war. Why did they treat prisoners so badly? These questions are still unanswered and I feel that many people are still looking for these answers. I suspect, judging by the very fact that the Japanese government still refuses to apologise to all the victims of their brutal treatment in prison camps that even the Japanese themselves don't know why their ancestors did it.