An easy way to handle a few armed men amongst a throng of weaponless wretches is to ignore the wretches and only include armed units. While it's not literally true that the only ones present were the armed troops, if the weaponless ones just died by dozen without any material impact, design for effect.
JR
I would not ignore the unarmed ones, if you are not careful with a bamboo pole you can take an eye out, didn't your parents teach you anything ?I suppose one could always SSR an attack factor to be used in CC only as well (say a mix of 447s & 347s with the 347s having only the capability to engage in CC attacks). Interesting, never really thought much about it before now.
The effectively weaponless still absorb bullets and distract from the armed, starving or not they still have momentum ... and teeth and fingers! It's not going to be a case of "over there, that one's got a rifle, ignore the toothpicks." So I have to agree with Eagle4ty's approach or some variation thereof.
My version is to reduce Japanese FP to 1 (some weapons/ammo left) or half for (I)IFT combat, using their printed FP in CC but give them no -2 HtH bonus. Even normal HtH CC will involve some shooting and grenades whilst closing in for knife/bayonet work and they are physically weakened. If their target is US then no cowering for US fire (like the British).
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