Before the war there was a famous woman commonly referred to as Mrs. Inoue, though after the war people stopped talking about her.
Mrs. Inoue's husband, an army lieutenant, was being sent to Manchuria, and, on the eve of his departure, Mrs. Inoue stabbed herself in the throat and died. In her suicide note she expressed joy at her husband's assignment and said she was killing herself so that he could enter into battle without hesitation, the idea being that if he worried about never returning to see her again he couldn't fight to the bitter end.
Local newspapers called Mrs. Inoue a hero. More than 1,500 people attended her funeral, and her alma mater closed for a day in her honor. Later, other soldiers' wives formed home-island defense teams in her name. She became the subject of not one but two feature films.
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