General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
The Imperial Japanese and the rules of war
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: March 12, 2001 06:15PM
<HTML>Japanese soldiers and sailors were generally shot while in the water because:
1) The Japanese did this to US soldiers first from when the war first started, so the US soldiers replied in kind. Japanese soldiers felt like they were above any rule of war and acted with barbarity everywhere they went. So it is hardly wrong that the same attitude should be applied back to them. It was poetic justice. It was also exactly what they expected in war.
2) Japanese did not surrender but instead kept fighting no mater what the situation, even after being stranded in the water. This means that often the troops in the water would be shooting back at you! If they still consider themselves combatants, suffer the consequences! Granted, an airplane has little to fear from troops paddling in the water, but submariners often had potshots (and more!) taken at them by soldiers in the water. Anyone who puts heavy machine guns or even artillery pieces on a lifeboat (which they did) should expect lifeboats to be treated like gunboats, not lifeboats!
3) Usually the Japanese in question were close to friendly (Japanese held) territory. If the soldiers survived and swam to shore, it would cost many lives to kill them later.
for example, when several IJN destroyers serving as transports were sunk while delivering troops to Gudacanal, the USAAF and USN aircraft shot up the soldiers in the water without mercy. If the soldiers had lived, they would have reinforced the Japanese troops on Guadacanal, which was at that time in a see saw who knows who is going to win battle. it would have cost many US lives, and possible victory, to let them ashore so they could be killed later \'in a cricket fashion\'. This is not morality, it is stupidity! And a naive attachment to irrelvant romatic dreams of war as chivalry. Because the Japanese troops, even in the water, posed a future threat to US troops, they were legitimate targets.
Many good gun camera films were made of this - this might be the films you saw. (In a war of 100,000,000+ combatants, it is amazing how few clips of film get recylced again and again!)
4) The Japanes routinely violated the rules of war and the flag of truce. Faking out americans soldiers with white flags, false offers of surrender etc was standard procedure. A surrendering Japanese soldier was more likely than not to be hiding a grenade or a pistol and using the raised hands or white flag to get Americans out into the open or to get close to them. After a few incidents like this, and hearing of the vast atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against all who fell under their rule, especially US POWs, most US soldiers learned the hard way that the safest thing was to kill \'em all, regardless. To be treated as POW or a noncombatant, one must not act like a combatant while or after \'surrendering\'. It is interesting that, unlike most wars where atrocities are ballyhooed by the opposing side, the American authorities tried to hide and cover up the atrocities committed on US POWs by the Japanese, because American soldiers were already so angry at Japanese soldiers for violating the rules of war that American intel had a problem getting live prisoners for interrogation.
Remember that however we may feel about these incidents now, at that time, the Japanese above all did not feel them to be wrong at all, either to commit, or to have done to them; it was just the fortunes of war. They gave no mercy, and expected to receive none in return. They did not expect to, and in fact did not want to, survive capture.
We should also not be naive about the nature of war. While large units may make organized surrenders of entire units, the surrender of an individual combatant, in the midst of battle, is extremely perilous; one\'s opponent is as likely to shoot you outright as to bother with the trouble and risk of taking you into captivity. This is true in almost any war by almost any combatant nation. War is not a clean, humane, or rule abiding activity...
P.S. Did the RAF attack German hospital ships? I haven\'t heard of this, though I don\'t deny it. Where, when, by who, why...? I do know that no Japanese hospital ship was sunk by US submariners (even though we knew that their suspiciously large hospital fleet was routinely used for ammo running, but that is another story)...</HTML>
1) The Japanese did this to US soldiers first from when the war first started, so the US soldiers replied in kind. Japanese soldiers felt like they were above any rule of war and acted with barbarity everywhere they went. So it is hardly wrong that the same attitude should be applied back to them. It was poetic justice. It was also exactly what they expected in war.
2) Japanese did not surrender but instead kept fighting no mater what the situation, even after being stranded in the water. This means that often the troops in the water would be shooting back at you! If they still consider themselves combatants, suffer the consequences! Granted, an airplane has little to fear from troops paddling in the water, but submariners often had potshots (and more!) taken at them by soldiers in the water. Anyone who puts heavy machine guns or even artillery pieces on a lifeboat (which they did) should expect lifeboats to be treated like gunboats, not lifeboats!
3) Usually the Japanese in question were close to friendly (Japanese held) territory. If the soldiers survived and swam to shore, it would cost many lives to kill them later.
for example, when several IJN destroyers serving as transports were sunk while delivering troops to Gudacanal, the USAAF and USN aircraft shot up the soldiers in the water without mercy. If the soldiers had lived, they would have reinforced the Japanese troops on Guadacanal, which was at that time in a see saw who knows who is going to win battle. it would have cost many US lives, and possible victory, to let them ashore so they could be killed later \'in a cricket fashion\'. This is not morality, it is stupidity! And a naive attachment to irrelvant romatic dreams of war as chivalry. Because the Japanese troops, even in the water, posed a future threat to US troops, they were legitimate targets.
Many good gun camera films were made of this - this might be the films you saw. (In a war of 100,000,000+ combatants, it is amazing how few clips of film get recylced again and again!)
4) The Japanes routinely violated the rules of war and the flag of truce. Faking out americans soldiers with white flags, false offers of surrender etc was standard procedure. A surrendering Japanese soldier was more likely than not to be hiding a grenade or a pistol and using the raised hands or white flag to get Americans out into the open or to get close to them. After a few incidents like this, and hearing of the vast atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against all who fell under their rule, especially US POWs, most US soldiers learned the hard way that the safest thing was to kill \'em all, regardless. To be treated as POW or a noncombatant, one must not act like a combatant while or after \'surrendering\'. It is interesting that, unlike most wars where atrocities are ballyhooed by the opposing side, the American authorities tried to hide and cover up the atrocities committed on US POWs by the Japanese, because American soldiers were already so angry at Japanese soldiers for violating the rules of war that American intel had a problem getting live prisoners for interrogation.
Remember that however we may feel about these incidents now, at that time, the Japanese above all did not feel them to be wrong at all, either to commit, or to have done to them; it was just the fortunes of war. They gave no mercy, and expected to receive none in return. They did not expect to, and in fact did not want to, survive capture.
We should also not be naive about the nature of war. While large units may make organized surrenders of entire units, the surrender of an individual combatant, in the midst of battle, is extremely perilous; one\'s opponent is as likely to shoot you outright as to bother with the trouble and risk of taking you into captivity. This is true in almost any war by almost any combatant nation. War is not a clean, humane, or rule abiding activity...
P.S. Did the RAF attack German hospital ships? I haven\'t heard of this, though I don\'t deny it. Where, when, by who, why...? I do know that no Japanese hospital ship was sunk by US submariners (even though we knew that their suspiciously large hospital fleet was routinely used for ammo running, but that is another story)...</HTML>
