American mutilations of Japanese War Dead

[packman]

My late uncle was a pilot of those landing crafts during WWII during the Pacific campaign. He had his knee cap blown off when a Japanese soldier ran out of the jungle, onto the beach, thru the waves and threw a grenade into the landing craft. One evening he told the family about some of the things the marines and sailors did to the captive Japanese soldiers on the islands they stormed. I thought he was doing it to scare me and my cousins, but now I wonder.

Can never put oneself in another's shoes and experiences, especially the horror of combat. But---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead

[Ernesto]

1. Chimp & Cheney had no idea of what goes on in war...........

That is why I was sooo upset about the Iraq fiasco as it was being sold to the sheeple.

[Rebubula]

2. War and the following retribution are quite ugly

Atrocities committed by victorious (or even sume invading forces) is astounding and sickening.

Read up on Nanjing and the Bataan Death marches - the Japanese brought this on themselves. Not excusing - but trying to bring some balance here.

Abuse of fallen armies has been documented since the beginning of time (even mentioned in Bible - Old Testament of course) - this is nothing new.

That said - I pray to my personal Elvis that I never have to experience what these men (and millions of other sent to an early death\life of torment and pain by idiots throughout history) had to endure; both thoughts and acts. One sometimes has to become a monster to deal with them.

[Lurks Often]

3. Atrocities committed by Allied soldiers during WWII were a lot more common then

Last edited Fri May 22, 2015, 03:10 PM - Edit history (1)

most would like to believe. WWII was a nasty war and after years in a combat zone, some turned off that part of them that was a decent human being and did horrible things.

Australian soldiers after seeing what the Japanese did to the Australian soldiers and nurses they captured generally stopped taking prisoners during the New Guinea campaign

African troops part of the British Army in Burma chopped off heads with machetes and put the heads into carefully dug shelves in trenches and foxholes. After freeing some captured Gurkha's that had been tortured by the Japanese, the African soldiers crucified the Japanese soldiers, removed their eyes and ate parts of the Japanese after they were dead.

American troops in both Asia and Europe would stop taking prisoners in response to German atrocities committed against American soldiers and soldiers liberating concentration camps would sometimes just put all the Germans up against the wall and shoot them or turn them over to the camp's prisoners and walk away leaving the Germans to be torn apart by the bare hands of the prisoners.

Atrocities on the Eastern Front between the Germans and Russians were common.

[DustyJoe]

4. No Prisoners

After seeing a few of your own mutilated.
A 'no prisoners' inclination, even though not an
order was practiced by many combatants.

[jwirr]

5. Those things really did happen. I was setting up a memorial room in our local museum and taking

donations from community members.

A woman brought a whole box of items that contained a hand carved knife that was made of the bone of a Japanese soldier. She told me that her husband had made it while he was recovering from wounds in the hospital.

I did not know what to do with it but finally labeled it including the details and put it in with the items that could not be used.

[LongTomH]

6. I remember talking with my uncle, a WWII veteran.

I made some comment about the terrible things that Germans did during the war. He, very quietly. replied: "Americans did some terrible things too!"

I didn't press him on this. Please understand, Uncle John was a very gentle man; but, I just knew that he was haunted by what he'd seen.

And, this was a soldier whose company commander had marched his whole company around the perimeter of one of the camps so they could see the horrors.