Unlawful Orders

Do you remember what year that was?

 

A. Was this a lawful order - Probably not under the Geneva Conventions.

B. Would you have obeyed this order - Probably but would have missed people swimming in the water.

C. If the Cpt threatened you with Brig time... Oh well...

Open for discussion




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I don't read as much about the Pacific War, but I think that it was common practice not to take prisoners because they would smile at you while having a concealed weapon, sometimes a grenade and often a revolver or a knife. And the Japanese did not respect prisoners because they thought that one should fight to the death. Also, by that time, which is the reason that I asked you the year, I think that the news was out that the Japanese were cutting off the heads of our pilots if they captured them. Also, there were widespread reports of the Japanese atrocities in China. I learned about them in junior high when I started reading Pearl Buck novels. She always used to say such things are not forgotten. I saw Pearl Buck once and heard her speak in the late 1960s. At that time she was concerned about the children of American soldiers by Asian women.

But to the point of your question. No, that was not a lawful order. A soldier might have obeyed it if he had seen Japanese atrocities and if he had been in combat with the Japanese so I might have obeyed it under those circumstances. A retired marine sergeant working at Fort Benjamin Harrison before it closed told me that he would kill a monkey if it were shooting at him and he would not hesitate to kill a child shooting a gun at him in war. If I were not hardened by Japanese atrocities and combat with the Japanese, then I might prefer the brig but I never heard of such an incident before but then WW II has thousands of events all over the globe and there were atrocities by all nations I suppose.

There never was much in the way of war crime trials for Japan as it was felt that a lot of scores were settled when the atomic bombs were dropped to save American lives. The Japanese are still widely hated in the orient and in this country by those whose loved ones died at the hands of the Japanese. Such things are not forgotten. I just wish that communist China would remember what we did for them.

One last thing, about six years ago I started reading Pearl Buck's novel about Korea. I got to the part where the Japanese murdered the last Queen of Korea and I could not read anymore.

 

I have been thinking about this recently since Herman Wouk fictionalized an incident exactly like this in his historical novel of WWII, "War and Remembrance." I've read the novel several times over the last 30 years, but I'm now listening to it on audiobook, and it makes it fresh again.

Not by submarine warfare conventions of the day, but the Japanese were using the Western conventions of war against us. They had a very different viewpoint that was not informed by centuries of Christendom. My father, who served in the Pacific theatre with a hospital unit, told me that the Japanese pilots would use the giant red crosses on the roofs of hospital tents and buildings as targets for bombs. The Japanese massacres in China and in the early days of the war in the Philippines, set the standards by which the Pacific war was fought. It was an extraordinarily bloody and cruel business.

I honestly don't know. I would have to be in that situation. At the same time, the Japanese were not very good about rescuing their own soldiers adrift in the ocean during the war. Often, they were on their own, expected to rely on their own ingenuity and resources to return to their units or continue the fight on their own. Leaving them far out at sea in the tropics would likely be a death sentence. If heat and thirst didn't get them, the sharks would likely pick them off. And subs are extremely tight as it is. They don't really have much room for prisoners. I'm not even sure if those subs had a brig.

That wouldn't make any difference.

 

Yes, I thought of those things but did not mention them. I was trying to say that the surrenders on land were almost always false surrenders and the order was just not to take any prisoners and so that might have spilled over into the Navy. I also actually did think of the limited space on a sub. I am thinking that the Japanese lost a lot of men when we sunk their ships and destroyed their navy, which we did.

 

We're they surrendering or trying to escape? I am 100% sure they were attempting to escape.

 

Salty, you know your firearms better than that. Military ammo is fine submerged in salt water for weeks. The firearm will not rust beyond use for a very long time.

 

The Japanese left us in the water when they sank the USS Indianapolis.

 

This actually happened. Some Japanese troop ships were sunk in March of 1943 and there were hundreds of survivors floating on the sea.

Accordingly the story is that: "Through the 4th and into the 5th of March Allied aircraft were dispatched to strafe Japanese life rafts and rescue vessels to prevent the large number of Japanese who had escaped their sinking transports from being rescued and arriving in Lae to be rearmed and sent to the front. There was a deadly race for the survivors between Japanese submarines and Allied aircraft. It was a horrible task and one that haunted several of the aircrews for years to come. Some 2890 Japanese soldiers and sailors were killed in the battle or drowned trapped in their sinking ships or drifting in the wreckage spread. Only 850 reached Lae".

Evidently, many Allied airman followed their orders and killed the defenseless Japanese soldiers. The war in Asia was a war to the death and had these soldiers made it to land they would have been able to fight our men there, so I think this was a justifiable action. Had I been an aircrew member at this particular time and place, yes, I think I would have obeyed the order to kill these soldiers.

We must remember that in their conquest of Asia Japanese soldiers had no qualms about beheading captured Allied airmen, burying people alive, bayoneting prisoners to death (including the wounded), starving and beating them, and raping and torturing the local populations. It seems to me that in this case the Japanese did indeed reap what they had sown.

 

Probably was standard practice but I don't know. I have not paid as much attention to the war in the Pacific. Our own fleet had lost track of the USS Indianapolis so many died from sharks.

 

Our submarines did not stop and rescue Japanese sailors either after their ships were torpedoed.

 

Thanks!

I imagine that Russian troops were the most brutal of World War II although Japan was savage and never stood trial for war crimes except in a couple of cases. During the treaty signing with Japan, MacArthur said something about a new era of peace and the possible end of war but that was dispelled by the Korean War when China forgot all that we had done for them during World War II and China became the new aggressor in the orient and brazenly captured and smashed Tibet and shelled Quemoy and Matsu. Also, Americans have forgotten how many Muslims sided with Germany and still carry on the German ideology, which is very much like Muslim ideology.

 

One of the first orders of the War Department was to conduct unrestricted submarine warfare.

The Geneva convention has to do with the treatment of prisoners and civilians. The soldiers in the water were fair game since they weren’t prisoners yet and the commander had not accepted a surrender.

 

The Japanese were the most brutal. They just weren’t as efficient as Hitler.

 

Do you think that the Japanese were more brutal than the Russians?