Kokutai well, that Japan needed to seize and hold by force sufficient territories to maintain a powerful martial state and autarchic economy KOKUTAI “National Essence.” The term had multiple meanings in Japanese: linguistic, cultural, and uniquely political It underlay the Meiji imperial system after 1868, serving as a unifying national ideology that responded to the Western challenge in a spiritual–political manner that celebrated the immutable native virtue of the Japanese, centered on the unbroken succession of emperors descended from the Sun Goddess Kokutai as an underpinning of the imperial system was revived by prewar militarists to inform a broad “return to Japan” movement in politics and culture It had irrational components derived from its religious (or metaphysical) origins, myths taught by the government and military as the factual history of Japan as confirmed by a special committee of scholars in 1937 That permitted a view of the Meiji constitution as less than fundamental law while upholding sovereignty as enshrined in the imperial family as the central condition of the “national essence.” During World War II the term usually referred to the imperial Japanese principle, or ideology, of a “family state,” which had the emperor at its summit as both a “divine” and human father figure to the nation Its retention in 1945 was the single condition asked for by the Japanese in surrender talks: how could Japan surrender if its “national essence,” as housed in the imperial system, was not guaranteed? After the war, “Kokutai” was redefined in a more modern and democratic form that helped secure legitimacy for those Japanese cooperating with occupation authorities, although its meaning was undercut for purists by the Sho¯wa Emperor, Hirohito, being forced to renounce any claim to divinity See also Hiroshima; Japan; Nagasaki; unconditional surrender KOKUTAI “Air corps.” The principal organizational unit of the Japanese Army Air Force, usually formed from one aircraft type and attached to a specific fleet or tactical land-based command KOLOMBANGARA, BATTLE OF ( JULY 13, 1943) A small action between a U.S Navy task force composed of light cruisers and a destroyer squadron and Japanese escorts of a Tokyo Express “destroyer transport” convoy speeding reinforcements to New Georgia The IJN again demonstrated its superiority in night actions, exchanging one light cruiser for an enemy destroyer and severe damage to three USN cruisers The troop reinforcements got through KOMANDORSKI ISLANDS, BATTLE OF (MARCH 26, 1943) A rare North Pacific naval battle in which a U.S Navy task force of two cruisers and four destroyers sought to block Japanese reinforcement of garrisons in the Aleutian Islands A larger and more powerful IJN task force escorting two fast transports chased the Americans away and badly damaged a heavy cruiser Before retiring, the American ships did enough damage to the Japanese escorts that the IJN task force turned back 638