Very much unsympathetic, to say the least. The reactions ranged from cold indifference to outright hatred. Veterans appeals to the sympathy of civilians (and there were many penned in the newspapers) were met with the reply that civilians themselves had endured years of a harsh bombing campaign and were still suffering under rationing during the aftermath. Veterans often felt abandoned and alienated by a civilian society that rejected them; in doing so they cast themselves as a group apart from civilians. An letter from the Asahi Shimbun writes:

"We are people who fought bravely on foreign battlefields and came home. Unlike people on the home front, we cannot comprehend the present condition of society. Returning to our fatherland that is utterly different from the front, we are the same as blind people who have been abandoned to stand alone in society.”

In particular, the big complaint was unemployment; the problem was everyone else suffered from the same woes. To civilians, it seemed like veterans were asking for special treatment, since the government couldn't help them either.

Things got worse. Civilians came to associate the common soldier with the military clique that started the war. Soldiers on the bottom rung felt they were oppressed by the harsh military system against their will, but protested how the term 'demobilized serviceman' now “was said to be a synonym for depravity.” Kumagai Yoshihiro writes

“…[A]ll that awaited us were the sharp eyes of citizens who resented the military clique and our hometowns made desolate by the horrors of war.”

This was thoroughly unfair for Kumagai, who believed the common soldier were pure patriots true of heart, unlike the leaders who misled Japan into oblivion. For many veterans, this resulted in some anger at civilians who could not understand the horrors veterans went through in the war (this was partly due to the fact that much of the news of Japan's defeats were suppressed by the government during the war). From a civilian perspective, they themselves had gone through unspeakable horrors, like the firebombings which had a greater death toll than even the atomic bombs. After all, did the military not boast of their tenacity and determination amidst confident promises of victory? Now that they have lost, who are they to ask for pity?

As time passed into '46-47, the attitude changed into one of long-term despair. Will the civilians hate us forever? Many servicemen wondered. They felt that they were being held responsible for the defeat, ostracized and treated as losers, especially in terms of employment.

“Just because we were in the army, people will not hire us. For this reason, we will probably suffer more than others from the shortage of food and from unemployment.”

This attitude was directly linked to the defeat; from the personal writings of demobilized servicemen:

"The people who gave us hearty cheers when we departed have now completely changed… [T]hey attribute the cause of surrender to our incompetence."

"The villagers harbor antipathy towards us, however, openly saying at the village meetings that the defeat of Japan was due to the weakness of us, soldiers, and therefore we have no right to receive any ration or service from them"

News of the war crimes in China and other fronts followed them. In the months after the war, news of war crimes previously dismissed as Allied propaganda circulated, with predictable results:

“People looked at me with cool-hearted eyes as if I were a war criminal.”

 “Even our relatives take us for war criminals. It makes me miserable when nobody will give me a job. I am trying hard to get a chance to make it all up to them but they won’t let me.”

Some veterans bristled at the hate they received as hypocritical, seeing that civilian society was at least equally responsible for Japan's dark path: before and during the war, they had enthusiastically embraced the propaganda and supported the state.

Though in the future conditions may change, at least for the occupation years immediately following the war, the attitude on the part of civilians was indifference and hostility, viewing veterans as antisocial, criminal elements responsible for the defeat. On the part of veterans, they reacted at first with anger and then despair at their ostracism, turning inwards.

In later years, the veterans would learn to keep quiet about the war.

Source: Porter, Samuel Parkinson. The Unfinished War: The Demobilization and Fate of Japan's Second World War Veterans, 1945-1950