Talk:Allied war crimes during World War II/Archive 5

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Policy of killing surrendering soldiers and POWs

See also Archive4: Policy of killing surrendering soldiers and POWs

Returning to Stor stark7's text: That some most American marines came to see the Japanese as the enemy and less than human is part of the indoctrination that all soldiers conscripted to fight a war are put through. That some of them had a tendency not to want to take prisoners is not surprising given the tenaciousness of the Japanese soldier and their tendency (as the American soldiers rightly or wrongly thought) of some of them not to abide by the laws of war when offering to surrender. But what is important is what was the reaction of the American command system? Did they encourage it or try to stop breaches of the Geneva Conventions. (Usually authorities encourage the taking of prisoners because of the information they can provide and because as Niall Ferguson pointed out in the Pity of War, taking prisoners is the fastest way to inflicting casualties on the enemy). I see no harm in mentioning that such incidents took place particularly if the paragraph is phrased explicitly to mention that this is from a research paper by Niall Ferguson. But not every insident needs to be listed and for a NPOV paragraph it should also be highlighted that no quarter was not the policy of the US Army. I mention this because the section where this is discussed on this talk page is called "#Policy of killing surrendering soldiers and POWs" which implies it was US policy which is was not. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

In response to Philip Baird Shearers text above I would say that the U.S. killing of prisoners was indeed, but not only, “part of a systemic failure by the authorities to stop such crimes, (such as the Soviets lack of censure on the mass rapes that took place Germany)”. Philip Baird Shearer also makes a brief attempt to explain the reasons for the activities. Maybe the reasons for the no-prisoners should be included, but I believe that in that case it should be in an in-depth manner.

A better name for the concept would be the one used by Ferguson i.e. that killing of prisoners became “standard practice” in the pacific.

Then there is the issue of who is responsible. Of course the soldier who shoots down a surrendering Japanese in cold blood is guilty of a war-crime. Even more so the one who kills a prisoner, no difference whether the killer is working for the Nazis or the Democrats. But as Ferguson shows, U.S. officers quite high in the chain of command condoned and even sanctioned the killings. And only quite late did the Allies high command try to stamp out this practice, once it was realized to be counterproductive.

As to why the American Generals, lieutenants, and GI’s behaved in this way…. Well, if you have been repeatedly told by your commanders that the enemy is not human, then there’s no problem. You’re just shooting at animals, at untermenchen.

words from a lieutenant of the 11th Airborne Division to his mother illustrate vividly this point: "Nothing can describe the hate we feel for the Nips--the destruction, the torture, burning & death of countless civilians, the savage fight without purpose--to us they are dogs and rats--we love to kill them--to me and all of us killing Nips is the greatest sport known--it causes no sensation of killing a human being but we really get a kick out of hearing the bastards scream" (p. 207) HNET review of The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II

This racist “untermenchen” view by the Americans would also explain the extensive U.S. practice of taking home pieces of the dead Japanese bodies as trophies. Reading about it absolutely gives me the shivers, especially the scale of it.

Prof Aldrich (Richard Aldrich, The Faraway War) also discovered new diaries showing that American generals worried about the abuse of human remains by their troops. They were particularly concerned that the skulls of dead Japanese soldiers were often displayed as gruesome mascots by some units, while US marines made a specialty of collecting ears. The Telegraph

And this, unfortunately somewhat dodgy, site claims that according to (Source: Kenneth V. Iserson, M.D., Death to Dust: What happens to Dead Bodies?, Galen Press, Ltd. Tucson, AZ. 1994. p.382. when the remains of Japanese soldiers were repatriated from the Mariana Islands in 1984, sixty percent were missing their skulls."

“This article discusses the use of enemy body parts as war trophies, focusing on the collection of Japanese skulls as trophies by Allied servicemen in the Second World War, and on the treatment of these objects after the war. I argue that such human trophy-taking tends to occur in societies, including modern states, in which two conditions hold: the hunting of animals is an important component of male identity; and the human status of enemies is denied.” Skull trophies of the Pacific War: transgressive objects of remembrance

Essentially, many American G.I.s in the end were made to see the Japanese in the same light that dedicated Nazis saw the Jews or the Russians. This would tend to explain the behavior of many of them.

"Not surprisingly, this led to a dehumanization of the Japanese troops by the American soldiers. Such dehumanization is a natural phenomenon in war, yet it reached overwhelming proportions as compared to its parallel articulation in the European front in the case of the Italians or Germans.[7] The humanization of the Japanese soldiers came as a shock to some, as a "horrified" marine realized when he discovered naive and brightly-colored paintings in a blown-out cave on Iwo Jima: "The Japanese soldiers had children ... who loved them and sent their art work to them" (p. 165). (From the HNET review)

As to why many people would recoil in disbelief, maybe part of the answer lies here

"The phenomenon was largely downplayed by the mainstream media during the war, but it garnered some mention in 1943, when Life magazine published a photo of a U.S. sailor's girlfriend contemplating a Japanese skull with a note written on it. Her fiancé sent her the skull as a gift. Edward L. Jones, a U.S. war correspondent in the Pacific, wrote about the practice in the February 1946 edition of The Atlantic Monthly: "We boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter-openers." In 1943, Leatherneck, the monthly magazine of the Marine Corps, reportedly published an article about the taking of trophy skulls at Guadalcanal. But the Allied propaganda machine turned on the cogs of the mainstream American press, where such unflattering representations of the American warrior were off-limits. Author John Steinbeck confessed as much in 1958 about his days as a war correspondent. "We were all part of the war effort," he said, according to a 1989 article in The Atlantic Monthly. "We went along with it, and not only that, we abetted it. I don't mean that the correspondents were liars. It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies." "The Pueblo Chieftain Online

Some quotes from Ferguson.

It is clear from many accounts that American and Australian forces often shot Japanese surrenderer's during the Pacific War.137 It happened at Guadalcanal, especially after 20 Marines fell victim to a fake Japanese surrender that turned out to be an ambush.138 The Marines’ battle cry on Tarawa was ‘Kill the Jap bastards! Take no prisoners!’139 In his diary of his experiences in New Guinea in 1944, the celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh noted: “It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Japanese prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Japs with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone.

This behavior was not merely sanctioned but actively encouraged by Allied officers in the Pacific theater. An infantry colonel told Lindbergh proudly: ‘Our boys just don’t take prisoners.’140 The testimony of Sergeant Henry Ewen confirms that Australian troops killed prisoners at Bougainville ‘in cold blood’.141 When Indian soldiers serving with the British in Burma killed a group of wounded Japanese prisoners, George MacDonald Fraser, then serving in the 14th Army, turned a blind eye.142 As in the First World War, the practice of killing prisoners was sometimes justified as retaliatory. At Okinawa in May 1945, the orderly of a popular company commander who had died of his wounds ‘snatched up a submachine gun and unforgivably massacred a line of unarmed Japanese soldiers who had just surrendered’.143 However, there is evidence that ‘taking no prisoners’ simply became standard practice. In the course of the battle for the island, 75 000 Japanese soldiers were killed; less than a tenth of that figure ended up as prisoners.144 ‘The [American] rule of thumb’, an American POW told his Japanese captors, ‘was “if it moves, shoot it”.’145 Another GI maxim was ‘Kill or be killed.’ The war correspondent Edgar L. Jones later recalled: ‘We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats . . . .finished off the enemy wounded.’146 War psychologists regarded the killing of prisoners as so commonplace that they devised formulas for assuaging soldiers’ subsequent feelings of guilt.147 Roughly two-. Fifths of American army chaplains surveyed after the war said that they had regarded orders to kill prisoners as legitimate.148 This kind of thing went on despite the obvious deterrent effect on other Japanese soldiers who might be contemplating surrender.149 Indeed, it is far from easy to distinguish the self-induced aversion to surrender discussed above from the rational fear that the Americans would kill any prisoners. In June 1945 the US Of. office of War Information reported that 84% of interrogated Japanese prisoners had expected to be killed by their captors. 150 This fear was clearly far from unwarranted. Two years before, a secret intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days’ leave would suffice to induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese.151 To the historian who has specialized in German history, this is one of the most troubling aspects of the Second World War: the fact that Allied troops often regarded the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians – as Untermenschen. The Australian General Blamey, for example, told his troops that their foes were ‘a cross between the human being and the ape’, ‘vermin’, ‘something primitive’ that had to be ‘exterminated’ to preserve ‘civilisation’.152 In May 1944 Life magazine published a picture of a winsome blonde gazing at a human skull. A memento mori perhaps, in the tradition of the Metaphysical poets? On the contrary: When he said goodby [sic] two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big, handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends, and inscribed: ‘This is a good Jap – a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.’ Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo.153 ‘Boil[ing] the  flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts’ was a not uncommon practice.154 ´ Sergeant William C. Bradley recalled how one of his comrades killed a group of German prisoners captured in France.158On 7 June 1944 an American officer at a SHAEF press conference declared that US airborne forces did not take prisoners but killed them ‘as they hold up their hands coming out. They are apt in going along a road with prisoners and seeing one of their own men killed, to turn around and shoot a prisoner to make up for it. They are tough people.’159 Stephen Ambrose’s history of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, suggests this was not wholly without foundation.160 As one Foreign Office official noted: American troops are not showing any great disposition to take prisoners unless the enemy come over in batches of twenty or more. When smaller groups than this appear with their hands up, the American soldiers . . . are apt to interpret this as a menacing gesture . . . and to take liquidating action accordingly. . . . there is quite a proportion of ‘tough guys’, who have experienced the normal peace-time life of Chicago, and other great American cities, and who are applying the lessons they learned there.161 As in the Pacific theater, American troops often rationalized their conduct as retaliation. The tenacity of German troops – their reluctance to surrender, and their ability to inflict casualties until their supplies of ammunition were exhausted – was intensely frustrating to Americans, certain of victory, who saw their resistance as futile. However, prisoner killing continued to be overtly encouraged by some American officers. Patton’s address to the 45th Infantry Division before the invasion of Sicily could not have been more explicit: When we land against the enemy . . . we will show him no mercy. . . . If you company of. officers in leading your men against the enemy . find him shooting at you and, when you get within two hundred yards of him, and he wishes to surrender, oh no! That bastard will die! You must kill him. Stick him between the third and fourth ribs. You will tell your men that. They must have the killer instinct. Tell them to stick it in. He can do no good then. Stick them in the liver.162 Major-General Raymond Hufft ordered his troops to ‘take no prisoners’ when he led them across the Rhine.163 And, as in the Pacific, American troops were encouraged to regard their foes as subhuman.

Perhaps the best evidence of the effectiveness of such psychological warfare was the evident preference of German troops to surrender to American units. ‘God preserve us!’ one German soldier wrote in his diary on 29 April 1944, ‘If we have to go to prison, then let’s hope it’s with the Americans.’188 That was a widespread sentiment. Until the third quarter of 1944, more than half of all German prisoners were held in the East. But thereafter, the share captured by the Americans rose rapidly, as Figure 7 shows. It is clear that many German units sought to surrender to the Americans in preference to other Allied forces, and particularly the Red Army. With the benefit of hindsight, they would have done better to look for British captors, since the British treated German prisoners better than the Americans did, and were also less willing to hand them over to the Soviets.189 But successful psychological warfare led the Germans to expect the kindest treatment from US forces. Similar efforts were made to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. ‘Surrender passes’ and translations of the Geneva Convention were dropped on Japanese positions, and concerted efforts were made to stamp out the practice of taking no prisoners. On 14 May 1944 General MacArthur sent a telegram to the commander of the Alamo Force demanding an ‘investigation . . . of numerous reports reaching this headquarters that Japanese carrying surrender passes and attempting to surrender in Hollandia area have been killed by our troops’.190 The Psychological Warfare Branch representative at X Corps, Captain William R. Beard, complained that his efforts were being negated ‘by the front-line troops shooting [Japanese] when they made an attempt to surrender’.191 But gradually the message got through, especially to more experienced troops. ‘Don’t shoot the bastard!’ shouted one veteran when a Japanese emerged from a foxhole waving a surrender leaflet.192 By the time the Americans took Luzon in the Philippines, ‘70 percent of all prisoners surrendering made use of surrender passes or followed exactly the instructions contained in them’. The Philippines had been deluged with over 55 million such leaflets, and it seems plausible to attribute to this propaganda effort the fall in the ratio of prisoners to Japanese dead from 1:100 in late 1944 to 1:7 by July 1945 (Figure 8). Still, the Japanese soldier who emerged with six surrender leaflets – one in each hand, one in each ear, one in his mouth, and one tucked in a grass band tied around his waist – was wise to take no chances.193

Only quite late in the war was it remembered – and only on the Allied side – that prisoner killing was in fact counterproductive, and that the best way of bringing the war to a swift end was to make surrender seem a more attractive option for enemy soldiers than . fighting on. It was a lesson of the First World War that Adolf Hitler was not alone in failing to learn. It is a lesson that bears repeating.

Granted that reading this type of info can be no more fun for an American than it is for a German to read about WWII, we should not allow it to be swept under the rug. Next thing you know other things start disappearing from history... And to end this rather long discourse, I do not understand Philip Baird Shearers comment "I see no harm in". Harm to whom or what?--Stor stark7 ^Talk 01:17, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Harm to the reputation of Wikipedia, which occurs when it publishes points of view which are not common in English language publications, particularly when they advance a "novel narrative or historical interpretation."(WP:NOR). So such paragraphs need to include the name of the person making the allegation (as is done for the entry on the UK bombng of Germany) and a citation from a verifiable source.

The number of Japanese prisoners taken can also be explained by the refusal of the Japanese to surrender, rather than an interpretation that the Americans preferred to kill them. A way to asses this would be to see if the ratio of the number of prisoners to the number of enemy killed was the same in all four theatres (China (ROC),(South-East Asia (British),Pacific Ocean (US Marines), and South West Pacific (US Army)), if the ratios were similar, in similar time frames, then the ratio is not down to perceived American racism. BTW A difference between the ration between the US Army and US Marines, might indicate a difference in training and military culture having an effect on this issue. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:59, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Then I agree with you that it causes no harm to insert the paragraph. We just note that it was "standard practice" and not "official policy". We can also note that beginning in May 1944 McArthur took steps to halt the "standard practice" and instead encourage the Japanese to surrender. We have at least two sources on the standard practice, Ferguson, and as mentioned in the Telegrah article also the book "The Faraway War" by Prof Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University, where he "...found several examples confirming what became an American policy in some parts of the Pacific theatre not to take prisoners of war". As to the taking of Japanese bodyparts as "war trophys" we have several independent sources on that as well. As to rapes, we have the HNET review of Peter Schrijvers. "The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II". New York University Press, 2002. where reference is made to the fact that rape "..was a general practice against Japanese women". and that "The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the [Okinawa] campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone".

The high prevalence of massacres of surrendering Japanese would seem to be beyond dispute given the sources, but parts of the high death rate of Japanese soldiers can of course be explained by other reasons than massacres, as Ferguson notes "it is far from easy to distinguish the self-induced aversion to surrender discussed above from the rational fear that the Americans would kill any prisoners." But he also notes. "...efforts were made to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender....concerted efforts were made to stamp out the practice of taking no prisoners...gradually the message got through, especially to more experienced troops. ‘Don’t shoot the bastard!’ shouted one veteran when a Japanese emerged from a foxhole waving a surrender leaflet...it seems plausible to attribute to this propaganda effort the fall in the ratio of prisoners to Japanese dead from 1:100 in late 1944 to 1:7 by July 1945...Still, the Japanese soldier who emerged with six surrender leaflets – one in each hand, one in each ear, one in his mouth, and one tucked in a grass band tied around his waist – was wise to take no chances."

The assessment you speak of, comparing battlefield death rates, seems very much like Original Research to me. Besides, ignoring that poignant fact, how are we happy amateurs supposed to be able to interpret the figures in any meaningful way? Your assumption that "if the ratios were similar, in similar time frames, then the ratio is not down to perceived American racism" can be false in so many ways, which is why Wikipedia leaves such analysis to the authors of secondary sources. You are for instance assuming that there were no other battlefield dependent factors influencing death rates, for example tropical diseases such as malaria, or maybe that the other Allied combatants were just as racist? As Professor Aldrich states "Australian troops are also shown not to like taking prisoners." But please feel free to search for secondary sources that may have done such a comparative analysis. And maybe it will turn up a difference within the U.S. Armed Forces, although the only difference we can reliably source right now is what Prof Aldrich discovered, i.e. that "...the skulls of dead Japanese soldiers were often displayed as gruesome mascots by some units, while US marines made a speciality of collecting ears."--Stor stark7 ^Talk 19:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Is the taking of Japanese bodyparts as "war trophys" a war crime? I am not suggesting doing any research, and I am certainly not suggesting that any such research done without publication should be in included in the article. The point I was making is that without such an analysis it is not possible to conclude definitely that any preference that the Americans had to to give no quarter effected the ratio of Japanese killed to those taken prisoner and that as it is controversial to claim that it did the author of such a claim should be mentioned in the text. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:50, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It's intrestng that you don't question wether rape is a warcrime, but question the desecration of japanese remains. But you do bring up an intresting point when doing so. According to which legal definition are the items listed in this article included here? According to the legal definition of War crime at the time the events took place? Or according to the modern definition of warcrime? Or just if it was an attrocity in general? From your actions Philip I interpret it that you try to keep the amount of information contained in the article down to a minimum, excluding everything that does not meet the legal definition of a "war crime" at the time it took place, as far as you know it. I admit I'm not fully clear on the relationship between a normal crime (and then, crime under which jurisdiction, the offenders or the victims?), a "war crime", a "crime against humanity", "genocide" etc. I hope you have a better grasp of the subject. At a minimum the article should then in the introduction list what it considers as warcrimes, and what main types of activities that are not allowed to be included in the listing, so as not to confuse the reader to think that the allies did no more than this. In fact, I believe we need a number of "attrocities during WWII" articles, one for the U.S., one of the U.K. one for Australia etc. Then there would be no problem including issues such as rape.

As for rape, apparently neither the Japanese policy of keeping comfort women, nor any alledged Japanese rapes were considered a war crime. In mothern times these types of acts have been reclassified however.(see Mass Rape Ruled a War Crime So aparently, now that systematic rape is considered a crime against humanity instead of just a violation of the customs of war, those engaging in such pastimes can find themselves prosecuted, (presumably on the condition that they are actually caught, and happen to belong to the loosing side of the conflict). At the moment the use of comfort women is included in the Japanese war crimes article. If we apply the same standards to these two articles then that should probably be deleted from the Japan article. On the other hand, war crimes courts have punished rape even though it is not strictly a "war crime". Essentially, reading this article and this article, I would say that applying the term "war crime" to events that took place during WWII is too fussy and difficult to apply, and so the whole article should be renamed Allied attrocities during World War II.

As for the taking home of human remains, technically abusing a corpse and possession of human body parts has usually been a crime in most "civilized" countries although not a serious one. But a war crime? Well, according to the U.S. marine corps Major interviewed here it certainly was punishable.

I suggest we keep the three topics apart, for now concentrating on the U.S. standard practise of killing surrendering Japanese.

Proposal for prisoner killing paragraph, we can discuss the other topics afterwards, once we have hashed out this one:

In the pacific war American and Australian soldiers massacred Japanese prisoners of war, according to "The Faraway War", a detailed study of diaries made by Professor Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University. According to Aldrich it became an American policy in parts of the Pacific theatre not to take prisoners of War.

According to Niall Fergusson, in "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat", taking no prisoners became standard practise amongst U.S. troops. According to Ferguson this practise played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. In 1944 efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practise and instead encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this accounts for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945.

--Stor stark7 ^Talk 23:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

It has been dicussed many times, but articles entitiled atrocities are non NPOV magnets. For example was the Allied bombing campaign of Germany an atrocity? Sometimes when an article already exists under a POV name like Soviet genocide there is a clear NPOV advantage to moving to a title like [Soviet persecutions]] but the current name of Human rights in the Soviet Union is clearly superior. As to the issue of rape it was clearly a war crime both under the 1929 Geneva convention Art 3. and in military occupied territories under Hague IV Art. 46. (However this does not include nationals of the party to a conflict or the nationals of their allies). --Philip Baird Shearer 11:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Some sources will claim that the bombing of Germany was an atrocity, some will say that it was not. Wikipedia will present both sides, stating which seems to be the majority view at the moment. As to the issue of rape your argument brings up the danger of Wikipedians doing Original Research when trying to interpret legal texts when they themselves are not experts on the subject. Nevertheless, for clarity's sake, lets state the legal texts you refer to. "Geneva" Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.[1] Art. 3. Prisoners of war are entitled to respect for their persons and honour. Women shall be treated with all consideration due to their sex. Prisoners retain their full civil capacity. I.e. it only says that thou shall be nice to prisoners of war, even if they are women. "Hague" CONVENTION RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND Art. 46. Family honour and rights, the lives of persons, and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice, must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated. Is quite open to interpretation, and says nothing explicit about rape. When interpreting these texts you come to the conclusion that rape was a war-crime, and act in wikipedia on that assumption? But the truth does not seem so clearcut. Human rights law/war crimes law ignores the whole area of rape as a war crime. Rape was not recognized as a war crime after World War II at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal although evidence of rape by soldiers was first introduced at these trials; international law does not recognize gender specific crimes and rape is not recognized as a "grave breach" under the Geneva Conventions 563 - However, it was specifically identified as a war crime for the first time in the Tokyo War Crimes Trials after the same war, where commanders were held responsible for rapes committed by soldiers under their command.[2]. In modern times steps have been taken to make the issue more clear: In February 2001, the tribunal in The Hague delivered a ruling that made mass systematic rape and sexual enslavement in a time of war a crime against humanity. Mass rape, or rape used as a tool of war, was then elevated from being a violation of the customs of war to one of the most heinous war crimes of all - second only to genocide.[3]--Stor stark7 ^Talk 20:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the word "policy" in the above "practise" seems much better. I think it is best to remove the sentence with policy in it. Also take out the second "According to Ferguson" and replace "He worte" or something similar. Replace "this accounts" "this may account". --Philip Baird Shearer 11:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I understand your aversion to the word policy, since it is close to "official policy". Nevertheless I want to keep the word as it is the word used in this article. I think we should be as true as possible to available sources in this case. And since we don't have the word "official" there really should be no problem. I don't want to remove the sentence relating to policy since it reinforces the Ferguson text regarding "standard practice", showing that there are at least two scholarly sources saying that this type of activity was quite common for U.S. soldiers.

In the pacific war American and Australian soldiers massacred Japanese prisoners of war, according to "The Faraway War", a detailed study of diaries made by Professor Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University. According to Aldrich it became an American policy in parts of the Pacific theater not to take prisoners of War.

According to Niall Fergusson, in "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat", taking no prisoners became standard practice amongst U.S. troops. Ferguson writes that this practice played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. In 1944 efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practice and instead encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this may account for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945.

--Stor stark7 ^Talk 20:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I've inserted the proposed paragraph.--Stor stark7 ^Talk 11:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

First of all, the comment "This racist “untermenchen” view by the Americans would also explain the extensive U.S. practice of taking home pieces of the dead Japanese bodies as trophies." is POV, false, and disgusting in the use of a Nazi term when Americans fought the Nazis. To have a foe that chooses to never surrender, and who treats surrendering Americans as food or target practice, and then complain that their surrender numbers are low and blame that on the Americans is both hypocritical and obviously negative rather than encyclopedic.

Second, to ignore the fact that Japanese soldiers were taught to never surrender, to the point where kamikaze attacks to die for their emperor were perferable to being taken alive, to the point where the first POW in the Pacific war, Kazuo Sakamaki, begged to be allowed to kill himself rather than be captured, and to the point where some still fought years after the war was over, and then expect Americans to be considered criminals for defending themselves from such zealots is both unfair and one-sided. As one such holdout stated (and note that his skull was not taken for a trophy) "I am sorry I did not serve his majesty to my satisfaction...We Japanese soldiers were told to prefer death to the disgrace of getting captured alive," - Shoichi Yokoi, 1972. I would suggest that you read this book to see how well Japanese prisoners were treated the few times that they allowed themselves to be taken. CodeCarpenter 20:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

First, I suggest you do some reading of the talk page text before making such postings, could save some time I believe.

Second, The Nazi term was used by a reputable historian when discussing U.S actions. Therefore perfectly legitimate. Sorry to see that you cant handle it.

What the xxx has the fact that the U.S. fought the Nazis to do with it? Cant two nations with partly similar ideological outlooks be in conflict? Let me remind you that it was the Communist Russians that Won the second world war for you. Chummy allies you had, go gulag go, mass rape and ethnic cleansing, go. And just because I feel like it "The scale of the Nazi program prompted American Eugenics advocates to seek an expansion of their program, with one complaining that "the Germans are beating us at our own game"". Or why not read U.S. Eugenics Paralleled Nazi Germany

Third, I'm not quite sure how to deal with your statement that the Japanese ate Americans. Were they tasty? Just read some of the quotes I've posted here for gods sake before writing stuff like that. Or some of the links. Here look, I'll collect some for you to make it easier. [4],[5], [6], [7]

Four, I believe we've already established that there was strong honor pressure against surrendering. But even stronger than that was the realization that they were likely to be killed by the Allies if they surrendered, so they might just as well try to take one more of the bastards with them when they died, since they were going to die whatever they did.

Five, as far as I know no Japanese source has been used here that complains anything, except indirectly about rape. All the Sources are properly eugenically white, I think. I guess you must be a bit confused?

I'm glad that Japanese that surrendered so late was allowed to keep his skull, I guess the Americans must have had so many by now, especially with the Vietnam war providing fresh supply that the prise had gone down to the point where it wasn't worth the effort (dripping sarcasm).

In the book you point me to, it tells the story of a sub crew who is captured at Pearl Harbor in 1941, by two Japanese American MPs. Two points can be made about this. First; what we have been discussing here is killings in the immediate or close to the battle zone, not killings in proper POW camps, Second;they were captured by Japanese, at the start of the war, in the civilisation, it really makes sense that they were not killed outright. Ergo I fail to see what point you are trying to make. Besides, one example of good treatment proves nothing, it's like saying that my granddad smoked cigarettes till he was 90, ergo those who say smoking shortens your life are wrong, just look at granddad, he's the proof!--Stor stark7 ^Talk 00:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Historical context/"US and Australian"

I find the article in the UK Telegraph newspaper, referenced for this material, one-sided for two reasons. First and foremost there is no recognition that — in the Pacific War — the practice of not taking and/or killing prisoners was (first and foremost) a Japanese practice. (See, for example, Bataan Death March, Battle of Rabaul (1942), Parit Sulong Massacre, Banka Island Massacre and Battle of Ambon. I doubt if Americans or Australians even had the opportunity to take many Japanese POWs by the time those events took place, in late 1941 and early 1942.) Yes, this Wikipedia article is about Allied war crimes, but to ignore the context in which war crimes occur (to borrow a line from Apocalypse Now) is like "handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500." Second, it's interesting that a UK newspaper choses to ignore the issue of the rate at which prisoners were taken by Allied forces in the Burma campaign, especially since it was such a significant campaign and it was one which involved a large number of British personnel. Moreover, I have seen at least one source which suggests that the rate of prisoner killing by Allied forces was recorded in South East Asia (inc Burma), than in the South West Pacific or Pacific Ocean Areas. Perhaps the noble Telegraph would blame the Indians, Gurkhas and Africans who had to do much of the dirty work in Burma, but the accusation is there. Grant | Talk 14:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

This is from a post on a long-vanished web forum by T. F. Mills, of the University of Denver/regiments.org:

9 million Japanese served in the armed forces. 41,500 were captured.

This compares to:

6 million British in the armed forces, and 172,600 POW.

2.6 million Indians in the armed forces, and 79,500 POW.

1.3 million Australians in the armed forces, and 26,400 POW.

These figures demonstrate the relative shame the Japanese attached to being captured. And as Judy mentioned, it went both ways: enemy POWs were not worthy of humane treatment.

Of the Japanese POWs, 37,280 were captured in the Pacific, and only 3,100 in South East Asia, and 1,080 in China. (That makes for 100 short of the grand total estimated Japanese POWs.)

From various other sources: More than half of the Japanese POWs (23,571) seem to have been taken in the exceptionally fierce Bougainville campaign. But it is hard to ascertain how many of these prisoners were taken at the final Japanese surrender when they heard that the war was over. I am pretty sure the 41,500 total does not include any from the final surrender in August 1945. At that surrender the Japanese still held many of their 1941 conquests, and the Allies were hard pressed to send forces everywhere to accept surrenders. Particularly in Indonesia the British arrived to take the Japanese surrender on behalf of the Dutch, but were spread much too thin to manage a Military Administration and they actually used the Japanese to administer and police the region. This was just part and parcel of the incredibly massive human displacement and chaos at the end of the war. As the Australian Army demobilised and combat battalions disbanded, two whole new battalions of men whose terms of service were not completed were formed in August 1945 simply to manage surrendering Japanese.

The comparatively low number of Japanese prisoners taken in SE Asia is further illustrated by some microscopic views. In one day of the Meiktila campaign, the British counted 800 Japanese dead and 36 prisoners. In one week of the Pyawbwe campaign, the British counted 2,900 Japanese dead and 29 prisoners. Normally in warfare such numbers are reversed...

I think his assumption, that those taken in the final surrender are not included, is correct, since about 150,000 Japanese surrendered to Australian forces on the neighbouring island of New Britain, which held a major Japanese base in the South Pacific, Rabaul.

Unfortunately, I don't have Mills' source, if he gave it in the post.

Grant | Talk 16:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I have confirmed that 21,000 Japanese personnel were in the final surrender on Bougainville,[8] which makes a total of about 16,000 POWs taken in the Pacific. Grant | Talk 02:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

If one strips out Allied mass surrenders (where senior officers order their men to surrender as happened at Singapore), how would that effect the Allied numbers and ratios? If one is fighting in an army where the senior officers do not usually order their men to surrender when they are in a hopless situation, then the ratio of KIA to POW is likely to be higher than in an army were surrenders are ordered. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The indications from cases like that which John Masters writes about (see section The Dark Side of Command in this paper) is that in Burma there was a reluctance by the Allied forces to surrender to the Japanese no matter how badly wounded (At the evacuation of the Chindits base codenamed Blackpool, 19 Allied soldiers, who were so badly injured as to be beyond hope of recovery and could not be moved, were shot by the medical orderlies (Masters, The Road Past Mandalay pp. 277-278)). --Philip Baird Shearer 13:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Phil. As regards your first point, we are talking here about Japanese POWs and their treatment. While it's quite right to talk about the statistical impact that the numbers of Allied personnel taken in 1942 at Singapore and in the Philippines, it's irrelevant in the context of the present discussion. For example, as I mentioned before, a staggering 150,000 Japanese personnel surrendered at the end of the New Britain campaign in 1945. It was a logistical nightmare for the Australian division which had responsibility for them. The standard discussion of Japanese POWs doesn't include them either. So the exclusion of large/general surrenders (by either side) is reasonable in discussing what happened to POWs individually, or in small groups, since there was no systematic abuse of Japanese POWs, comparable to the Burma Railway, for example.

Clearly, mass surrenders were virtually unknown to the Japanese before 1945, because they preferred to fight to the death, and this tended to create the same fatalistic attitude among the Allies. For example, see the comments of an Australian soldier, regarding the Japanese SNLF (Marines) at the Battle of Milne Bay in 1942:

Lying across the [air]strip were dozens of dead Japs... As our officer crossed in the vanguard a Jap, apparently wounded, cried out for help. The officer walked over to aid him, and as he did the Jap sprang to life and hurled a grenade which wounded him in the face. From then on the only good Jap was a dead one, and although they tried the same trick again and again throughout the campaign, they were dispatched before they had time to use their grenade.

Out policy was to watch any apparent dead, shoot at the slightest sign of life and stab with bayonet even the ones who appeared to be rotten. It was all out from then on, neither side showing any quarter and no prisoners were taken. (Sgt Arthur Traill, 2/12 Bn, cited by Gabrielle Chan, 2003, in War On Our Doorstep [Hardie Grant Books: South Yarra, Victoria, Australia], p. 188.)

(In fact, the Australians did take Japanese POWs at Milne Bay, but they were generally severely wounded and/or airmen, rather than the diehard Marines.) By the time the Americans reached the southernmost Japanese home islands, in 1945, they were not taking any chances, and would use grenades, bazookas, flamethrowers and any other weapons at their disposal, against civilian houses which might be harbouring Japanese military personnel.

The (somewhat irrational and disproportionate) policy of killing ones' own wounded you refer to was probably a Japanese invention, and in fact the reference cited above, regarding the Bougainville campaign, refers to Japanese soldiers implementing it, after the general Japanese surrender. Grant | Talk 14:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I personally don't care about how cruel the Japanese allegedly were, or attempts to milden the appearance of American actions by relativising them by pointing to Japanese actions. What does upset me is that no-one seems to have reacted to the blatant OR going on by Grant65. Maybe the American policy was the result of some Japanese faking surrender and killing would be captors, and maybe it was influenced by the U.S. soldiers being told about Japanese mistreatment of U.S. prisoners. But then maybe mistreatment of U.S. prisoners was caused by the knowledge that the U.S. usually killed theirs. Bottomline, if you are going to write about something as complix as the motives behind acts, then you damn well better provide backing secondary sources, sources not only saying that "this bad thing was done by the Japanese", but also saying that this was the reason for U.S. actions. Personally I'm tempted to dig into this, and from what I've read most of the reason can be traced back to Allied propaganda dehumanization of the Japanese. But if we are going to have a Reasons paragraph, it had damn well be sourced to the teeth. I've restored the text to the compromise reached with Philip Baird Shearer. --Stor stark7 ^Talk 22:48, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Stor, your use of "American" and "US" here, as well as the fact that you haven't responded to anything specific that I've said above, suggests that you haven't read/understood my above posts.

Briefly:

• The historical context, including Japan's non-signature of the Geneva Convention is not well-known, but is a fact (i.e. not OR), and is relevant here, as is the Japanese practice of killing prisoners, which was established in the Second Sino-Japanese War, long before 1941.

• It can only be proven that a war crime is related to racism, whether it was the racism of Allied troops or that of Japanese personnel, if you have a positive statement of such, i.e. "I killed them because I hated x people." To say otherwise is OR/non-NPOV.

• It is offensive, unencyclopedic and non-NPOV to use a clearly-biased source, which characterises US and Australian troops as the only killers of POWs, when well-known, official figures (cited above), available on the internet, show that the rate of prisoner-taking by British, Indian and other Commonwealth troops, in the Burma campaign was even lower.

Grant | Talk 01:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Grant it is not clear to me if you mean that Japan's non-signature of the Geneva Convention is not well-known by the average reader of this encyclopedia (and so needs explanation here) because I would suggest that most of the English speaking world already knows this -- If we were talking Soviet non signatory of GC then I would agree it would need mentioning -- But even if Japan was not a signature, killing men hors de combat was a war crime under customary law. Hague IV Article 23.c says "To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;" -- I'm not sure what "has surrendered at discretion" means. There is no mention of racism in the paragraph in the article. Your last point is a valid one, and one I raised. But the problem with your argument although a valid one uses different sources to draw a conclusion (Two articles claim the US soldiers killed prisoners, other sources claims the ratio of Japanese prisoners was the same in Burma as the other areas in theatre, QED the British and Indians also killed prisoners -- This falls foul of Synthesis of published material serving to advance a position. What is needed is another source that alleges that British and Indian troops behaved in the same way as Australian and U.S. troops in the Asian/Pacific theatre. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:03, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

BTW I do not disagree with your assumption that the Burma campaign was similar to other campaigns. For example here is anecdotal evidence from Slim (defeat into victory page 336): At the Battle of Bishenpur "some Gurkhas were engaged in collecting the Japanese corpses ... when one Japanese, picked up by a couple of Gurkhas, proved not to be dead as expected. A Gurkha had drawn his kukri to finish off the struggling prisoner when a passing officer intervened saying 'You mustn't do that Johnny. Don't kill him!' The Gurkha, with his kukri poised, looked at the officer in pained surprise, 'But sahib,' he protested, 'we can't bury him alive!'". --Philip Baird Shearer 12:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, since the text was directed at me I guess I'd better respond as well. First, I agree with what Philip Baird Shearer replied, and would like to embellish a bit. Second, I'll do what seems to be my favorite pastime here and add some quotes by the Ferguson article, but I'll placing them in a separate section below this on in order not to muddle up the discussion.

Japanese treatment of POW's , and very tenuously their non signing of the Geneva, only becomes relevant if we write a specific chapter dealing with the motives behind the American and Australian War-crimes in the Pacific theatre. Considering the trouble i've had inserting a short paragraph on what actually was done, I don't think trying to insert a paragraph dealing with the motives will be worth the effort. As to the Geneva signing or not signing it is really irrelevant. Other factors determined Japanese treatment of prisoners. In the 1904-05 war with Russia they treated their prisoners very well. After that something changed.

We don't mention racism in the paragraph, but if we do write a "motives" paragraph, then we most certainly would end up also inserting racism or something closely equivalent. Your argument about racism, not that I agree with it, could by the way also be used concerning using the context about Japanese actions, e.g. only using that context if it could be proven that someone said "I killed the Japanese prisoners because they mistreated Australian prisoners." I would like to repeat what I wrote earlier though. If we are going to mention Japanese activities as a "context" in an article about Allied war-crimes, then it had better be sourced to a secondary source that explicitly links the two together, i.e. the sourced scholar says that the motivation behind the Allied war-crimes is directly traceable to xxx japanese activities. In my opinion you are far likelier to find a scholar that says that the war-crimes were more linked to allied propaganda efforts making the enemy seem less than human, as an animal that it is "OK" to take his boiled skull or other part of his anatomy home as a little trophy souvenir. Not even the most fanatical and indoctrinated Nazi soldiers seem to have indulged that particular type of past-time for xxx sake, yet for the Americans at least it seems to have been relatively common in the Pacific.

I do not disagree with your assertion that the British and their colonial troops were just as criminal as their Allies. I disagree however with your assertion that every source must cover everything of a topic to be considered NPOV. If that were the case we would end up with very few proper scholarly sources at since few scholars work on such a broad front, most take a piece and dig deep, which is why most Wikipedia articles list more than one reference-paper/book..... I get the distinct feeling that all the fuss here is about you being Australian and not wanting to read the name Australia in the context of this Wikipedia article. I hope I'm wrong though. Nevertheless, find a secondary source that deals with common war-crime practices of the British and their colonials in the Pacific, and we would be very happy to see you add a summary of that as an additional sourced paragraph in the section.--Stor stark7 ^Talk 23:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Stor, your insinuation about my nationality borders on a failure to assume good faith. I am not denying that Australians committed war crimes in WW2. Making allegations against one or two nationalies, when — as you have admitted — they are not the only ones concerned is non-NPOV.

On that note we may as well also mention the war crimes of Chinese soldiers, who also failed to take many Japanese prisoners.

I also think a fuller examination of sources will reveal the context of preceding Japanese war crimes to have been crucial to Allied actions.

I am away from home at the moment but I intend to rectify this situation when I have access to sutitable references. Grant | Talk 13:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Grant, we are not making "allegations". We are providing sourced information about War-Crimes committed by nationals from two nations, nations that belonged to the Allies of World War II camp, and therefore that information is collected in this article. We have only included those two for now because they are the only ones we have backing sources for. Your attempt to take a sourced[9] sentence , and change the charge against "American and Australian soldiers" into "Allied soldiers"[10] is what is non-NPOV. You in that way dilute the charge to also include for example Chinese and Indian Soldiers, or even Brazilian soldiers since Brasil was also one of the Allies (I don't know if Brazil sent soldiers to the pacific, but then few people reading this article would either). I find that type of activity fairly non-NPOV and unencyklopedic. Why not change it to read "male soldiers" while you're at it so we can dilute it even further?

I further find your reasoning strange also on another level. Quote "Making allegations against one or two nationalies, when — as you have admitted — they are not the only ones concerned is non-NPOV." Endquote. Are you saying that:

a) In the cases where we only have sources confirming war crimes committed by one or a few of the Allies, we should nevertheless also level an allegation against all the other allied nationalities, despite lacking sources? This to make it NPOV in your eyes?

or

b) We should only include information about war-crimes in this article when we have backing sources confirming that they were committed by all the Allied nations, otherwise we cant include the information?

Either is patently ridiculous. We insert material as we find the backing sources, stop. You may well "know" that something is true, such as Brittish warcrimes, but without being able to provide a backing source such an entry will not survive for long in this highly emotional article. As I said, please find sources with evidence of war-crimes committed by members of the Allies, that is what this article is about, but think carefully before trying to water out the content in the article e.g. by changing Australian to Allied.

"On that note we may as well also mention the war crimes of Chinese soldiers, who also failed to take many Japanese prisoners": Of course! Yes! If Chinese soldiers committed atrocities, then yes it should be included. Again, this is what this article is here for! It should not need to be pointed out!

"I also think a fuller examination of sources will reveal the context of preceding Japanese war crimes to have been crucial to Allied actions." I wish you good luck. I suspect you will find sources with information about the motives for individual events, but I doubt many an author will have touched the motives for the central tenet of the sourced paragraph we have in the article at the moment, e.g. that the war-crimes were committed as a mater of "standard practice".

"Australian troops are also shown not to like taking prisoners. Prof Aldrich quotes the 1943 diary of Eddie Stanton, an Australian posted to Goodenough Island off Papua New Guinea. "Japanese are still being shot all over the place," he wrote. "The necessity for capturing them has ceased to worry anyone. Nippo soldiers are just so much machine-gun practice. Too many of our soldiers are tied up guarding them.""[11]

So, I guess the general motive was manpower shortage, no reason to tie up Australian combat troops by having them guard Japanese prisoners when you can just as easily execute them?

As I've said before, reading Ferguson the image emerges that it was not so much Japanese actions, but rather the way they were viewed as sub-human that was the basis for the massacres. Something confirmed to me when I read for instance read about the practice of taking home trophies.

"I argue that such human trophy-taking tends to occur in societies, including modern states, in which two conditions hold: the hunting of animals is an important component of male identity; and the human status of enemies is denied". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute: Skull trophies of the Pacific War: transgressive objects of remembrance

And also when reading material such as:

"Not surprisingly, this led to a dehumanization of the Japanese troops by the American soldiers. Such dehumanization is a natural phenomenon in war, yet it reached overwhelming proportions as compared to its parallel articulation in the European front in the case of the Italians or Germans.[7] The humanization of the Japanese soldiers came as a shock to some, as a "horrified" marine realized when he discovered naive and brightly-colored paintings in a blown-out cave on Iwo Jima: "The Japanese soldiers had children ... who loved them and sent their art work to them" (p. 165). ...."Nothing can describe the hate we feel for the Nips--the destruction, the torture, burning & death of countless civilians, the savage fight without purpose--to us they are dogs and rats--we love to kill them--to me and all of us killing Nips is the greatest sport known--it causes no sensation of killing a human being but we really get a kick out of hearing the bastards scream" (p. 207). This hatred heightened the dehumanization of the Japanese soldiers whether alive or already dead. Most dead Japanese were desecrated and mutilated. "American soldiers on Okinawa were seen urinating into the gaping mouth of the slain. They were 'rebutchered.' 'As the bodies jerked and quivered,' a marine on Guadalcanal wrote of the repeated shooting of corpses, 'we would laugh gleefully and hysterically'" (p. 209).HNET review of "The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II." --Stor stark7 ^Talk 22:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Some Other Ferguson quotes

As is well known, the Japanese military sought to stigmatize rather than prohibit surrender. Although there was no formal prohibition of capture in either the army or the navy’s pre-war criminal codes and disciplinary regulations, by 1940 surrender had become taboo.

In the final analysis, however, it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonour that deterred German and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on.

It was not only on the Eastern Front that such a cycle of violence manifested itself. In the PaciŽfic theatre too, the ill-treatment and murder of prisoners were commonplace. It is clear from many accounts that American and Australian forces often shot Japanese surrenderers during the PaciŽfic War. It happened at Guadalcanal, especially after 20 Marines fell victim to a fake Japanese surrender that turned out to be an ambush. The Marines’ battle cry on Tarawa was ‘Kill the Jap bastards! Take no prisoners!’139 In his diary of his experiences in New Guinea in 1944, the celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh noted: It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Japanese prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Japs with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone.

This behaviour was not merely sanctioned but actively encouraged by Allied ofŽficers in the PaciŽfic theatre. An infantry colonel told Lindbergh proudly: ‘Our boys just don’t take prisoners.’ The testimony of Sergeant Henry Ewen conŽfirms that Australian troops killed prisoners at Bougainville ‘in cold blood’. When Indian soldiers serving with the British in Burma killed a group of wounded Japanese prisoners, George MacDonald Fraser, then serving in the 14th Army, turned a blind eye.

‘The [American] rule of thumb’, an American POW told his Japanese captors, ‘was “if it moves, shoot it”.’ Another GI maxim was ‘Kill or be killed.’ The war correspondent Edgar L. Jones later recalled: ‘We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats . . . finished off the enemy wounded.’ War psychologists regarded the killing of prisoners as so commonplace that they devised formulae for assuaging soldiers’ subsequent feelings of guilt. Roughly two-Žfifths of American army chaplains surveyed after the war said that they had regarded orders to kill prisoners as legitimate. This kind of thing went on despite the obvious deterrent effect on other Japanese soldiers who might be contemplating surrender.

Indeed, it is far from easy to distinguish the self-induced aversion to surrender discussed above from the rational fear that the Americans would kill any prisoners. In June 1945 the US OfŽfice of War Information reported that 84% of interrogated Japanese prisoners had expected to be killed by their captors. This fear was clearly far from unwarranted. Two years before, a secret intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days’ leave would sufŽfice to induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese. To the historian who has specialized in German history, this is one of the most troubling aspects of the Second World War: the fact that Allied troops often regarded the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians – as Untermenschen. The Australian General Blamey, for example, told his troops that their foes were ‘a cross between the human being and the ape’, ‘vermin’, ‘something primitive’ that had to be ‘exterminated’ to preserve ‘civilisation’.

German soldiers also came to fear falling into the hands of Australians (‘because of the way the Aussies treated their prisoners’), New Zealanders (‘We were told they would cut the throat of every POW’) and French North African troops, whose ‘reputation for fairness was bad’. Such behaviour might have been expected to encourage retaliation. When Corporal Donovan C. Evers found himself trapped by a German tank in a basement near Hamburg in March 1945, he: started up the steps to surrender. I had a lot of thoughts walking up those steps about all the atrocities that we had committed on the German soldiers. We didn’t know what to expect from the Germans. When I walked out the door of the house with my hands up, a young German soldier about sixteen years old stuck an automatic pistol in my stomach and said, ‘For you the war is over.’ I thought that was it, that he was going to shoot me.

The crucial determinant of an army’s willingness to Ž fight on or surrender was, as we have seen, soldiers’ expectations of how they would be treated if they did lay down their arms. In the case of prisoner killing in the heat of battle, information about enemy conduct in this regard was relatively easy to obtain: eyewitness accounts of prisoner killings tended to circulate rapidly and widely among front-line troops, often becoming exaggerated in the telling. By contrast, news of the way prisoners were treated away from the battleŽfield was slower to spread, depending as it did on testimony from escaped POWs or the letters from POWs to their families relayed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

--Stor stark7 ^Talk 23:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

the fact that Allied troops often regarded the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians

What does Allied troops mean in this context? Does it include Indian, African and Chinese soldiers? What about African American soldiers in the segregated units of the US army? It seems like a very broad and narrow brush stroke. What about the personnel in the other armed services (Air Force and Navy) --Philip Baird Shearer 08:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you're stretching it a bit here. He seems to mean Allied in the context U.S. and Australian, which seems to be the focus nationalities. Why don't you apply the same reasoning to "Germans"? Does he mean "proper" Germans or does he also include Austrians? How about the people from Alsace-Lorraine? Does he include Luftwaffe personnel, or just ground forces? Does he perhaps only mean the SS, or does he include the Wehrmarcht. Ok, I'm in a bad mod but I hope you see my point. You mentioning African American troops gave a bad taste in the mouth though. Are you saying that African Americans, themselves victims of rasism from white americans, can not in turn be rasists themselves against asians? Why? --Stor stark7 ^Talk 19:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

It is a criticism of Ferguson -- it seems to me that his analysis is lacking in academic rigour (and has a myopic POV) when he does not differentiate between what was a very large spectrum of nationalities and races that made up the Allied armies that fought the Japanese when he makes statements like "the fact that Allied troops often regarded the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians – as Untermenschen.". --Philip Baird Shearer 01:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Everything depends on the context its in. Taking the sentence out of its context and dissecting it to pieces is not really fair. Anyone writing the type of prose that would survive such scrutiny would be unlikely to gain a readership. For instance I cant remember Ferguson mentioning the China campaign at all, and Burma only in passing, so to the reader it will have been obvious he was referring to the combat in the pacific islands stretching from Australia to the arctic. I.e Australians, possibly New Zeelanders, Americans and whoever more were involved. Basically soldiers with similar cultural background, including the U.S. and New Zeeland soldiers who happened to have dark skin, all subject to the same type of military organisation, same breed of officers, same type of propaganda etc.

And again, "races"? What have "races" got to do with it? Even if we include the rest of the bunch, they were all Allied soldiers, subject to allied propaganda/indoctrination. You think for example the the Indian troops fighting on behalf of their British colonial master in order to keep India subject to British exploitation instead of Japanese exploitation (yes, slight simplification) were themselves somehow immune? I don't believe you think Indians can't be convinced into being racists. Just look how they historically have treated their own sub-populations/castes/religions. --Stor stark7 ^Talk 23:05, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Focus

The section that Stor stark7 wishes to introduce about Niall Ferguson's alleged American war crimes against the Japanese has I think raised several an important issues.

Like all crimes, war crimes fall into different categories. Some are only war crimes if the person is caught while still behind enemy lines. People like F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas were given their county's highest awards for their gallantry while on a mission which when German agents preformed similar missions against the British, that if caught in Britain resulted in a guilty verdict for spying and an execution unless the agent was useful in the (Double Cross System). Should all Allied agents who parachuted into Europe be listed here?

During World War II the armies of the major parties to the war were conscript armies. So the criminal profile an army was likely to mirror that of the society from which they came. However two further considerations have to be applied.

• Do most soldiers in most armies commit such a crime? For example petty looting. Taking a bottle of wine is theft and should be paid for, but should every recorded incident of such war crimes be listed in Wikipedia?
• Was the crime part of a systemic failure by the authorities to stop such crimes, (such as the Soviets lack of censure on the mass rapes that took place Germany) or worse still encouraged by the authorities like the Commando Order?

If this page is not to be a list of every petty war crime committed by the Allies then we may need a paragraph explaining this. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)