Was It U.S. Military Policy to Shoot Wounded & Surrendering Japanese Soldiers In WW II?

A friend of mine, now 83 years old, recently told me a story about being in the Marines during WW II. As he was about to be deployed to the South Pacific from a base in Southern California, the officer orienting them for the situations they would be facing stated that they would be required to shoot and kill surrendering or wounded Japanese soldiers they might encounter.

My friend indicated to the officer that he would not be able to comply with that order. He was subsequently written up for insubordination and wound up spending the next two years on an East Coast Marine base doing paper-shuffling word. All personal leaves were cancelled. He described the experience as similar to being under house arrest. Later, he did receive an honorable discharge.

This raised an interesting question in my mind.

Were U.S. Military orders issued during WW II requiring U.S. Marines and/or other soldiers to kill surrendering or wounded Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific?

I am well aware that many surrendering Japanese soldiers did so with the intent of "taking out" a few American GIs before they would be killed. Wounded Japanese frequently would blow themselves up along with Americans who attempted to come to their aid.

In personal accounts such as "My Private War" by Private Chester W. Nycum, I can read graphic accounts as to how U.S. soldiers began to routinely kill wounded and surrendering Japanese simply out of a sense of self-preservation. In this case, the untrustworthy and deceiptive behavior by the Japanese brought this action upon themselves.

But nowhere, whether in Nycum's short reminiscence or in any other place, have I read where soldiers were explicitly ordered to do this as military policy.

Stanley Frankel's on-line book, "Frankel-y Speaking About World War II In the Pacific," suggests that in his unit, at least, the exact opposite was the order of the day:

Lieutenant Jones explained there was one infallible method of convincing a reluctant Japanese prisoner to tell all he knows: to tell him, via interpreters, that they will send his name and picture back to Japan. At that, the Japanese falls to his knees, begs forgiveness, and proceeds to spill enough beans to send a few squads of his brothers- in- arms to honorable ancestors. We might note that few Japanese ever attempt to hold anything back. Being taken prisoner is not in their handbooks. No Japanese is ever taken alive. Thus, they are not drilled in the "Name- Rank- Serial No- nothing more" routine. They usually reveal everything easily without any persuasion

For this reason, our men have been repeatedly warned that though all dead Japanese are good Japanese, a live Japanese prisoner is worth ten times his weight in American lives. The bravado with which some American soldiers cold- bloodedly shoot quivering, defenseless, even wounded Japanese, in this context, can be equated to treason. The moral aspect of the situation is secondary; the significant point is that taking Japanese prisoners can save American lives.

Can anyone help clear this up? Does it really matter?

An old posting on Free Republic, entitled "Film Exposes Allies' Pacific War Atrocities" presents an "expose" of WW II movie footage showing the sort of killings described by Private Nycum.

The article ends with these words:

One US marine, Steve Judd, based on the island of Saipan during some of the fiercest combat of the war, blamed repeated exposure to horrors for some of the Allied excesses.

Judd described how he was ordered to clear some caves. Aware of the Japanese tactic of pretending to surrender before blowing themselves and their captors up with a hidden grenade, he and his team decided to be indiscriminate. 'We just blew it all up. We don't know if there were women and children or whatever, we just blew them up,' he said.

'Some people today will tell you it was cruel and inhumane, but you weren't there - we were.'

This article generated some fascinating comments, including this one from someone named, Hobey Baker:

My Dad was in the infantry in New Guinea in World War II. He said neither side took prisoners, and the U.S. troops were TOLD not to take Japanese prisoners because they were just too dangerous. The level of brutality on both sides was unimaginable.(My Dad said the Australians were the toughest troops on our side, because they'd been in the jungle the longest, hated the Japanese the most and were half-crazy from drinking quinine to keep the malaria symptomsdown.)

My Dad made it clear that no one in combat in the Pacific was in anything like a normal frame of mind. Everybody was terrified, brutalized and just prayed that they'd live long enough to go home and try to forget all the s**t they'd done and seen.

This comment seems, at last, to corroborate my friend's story and even offers a partexplanationtion for why the order (if it was, indeed, an official order) was given. Even so, asanecdotalodal comment it does not actually "prove" that such orders were given.

I suspect that this particular question has more than a little relevance to our current national "discussion" over the treatment of "prisoners of war," "terrorist detainees" and "enemy combatants." The issue is always context, context, context.

This is chillingly captured by another comment on the Free Republic post, this one by someone named Ron C.:

"Pacific war atrocities" began with the Japanese.. as in the Philippines with the Bataan Death march, gang rapes of women and children and indiscriminate and frequent murder and robbery of tens of thousands of captives. The Japs did not hold with any of the "conventions" of war, and made that quite apparent to the allied troops who swore a "tit for tat" policy on the ground. Such "crimes" did not happen in the US war between the states, because the participants weren't savages - but in most wars savage things happen, and revenge became all to common in the Pacific, far worse than the European theater.

I've known about, and seen footage of WWII war that few have ever or will ever see - some of it the most brutal imaginable, committed by all sides in the war. But, the last line of the post tells it like is really is, "Some people today will tell you it was cruel and inhumane, but you weren't there - we were." My uncles were there, and what they brought home were tales of horror so far beyond common knowledge today that I doubt the public has any ability to comprehend what they had to face - they had to kill quickly in any way possible - or be killed. Did they kill unnecessarily and brutally? You bet they did, but their fiendish enemies did far more of it - many of their victims being non-combatant civilians.

At this point I have sort of run out of things to say. Perhaps it doesn't matter whether official orders to kill wounded and surrendering Japanese soldiers were given or not. In point of fact, it would appear that context even generated conflicting and mutually exclusive policies in this regard.

I suppose that, given the reality of the history of war, the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere should count themselves lucky that they are still alive to defecate, sweat, tremble when cold and, yes, even to be interrogated under the watchful eyes of the FBI, the U.S. military, the CIA, the ICRC, Amnesty International and Senator Dick Durbin.