Read a good thought provoking article in the latest Military History magazine on this topic. The Japanese murdered many prisoners, often using them for bayonet practice as they slowly killed their victims. They recorded themselves proudly beheading people from POW's to Chinese citizens.
They raped and then murdered captured nurses in Hong Kong and Singapore, then entire cities like Nanking. It was medieval like in their fury and blood lust.
What made them so cruel?
Why did they hate their captors so? What drove them to suicidal fanaticism?
The article tackles one aspect, because there are many, in racism as being a major motivational factor. The Japanese were late into the 19th and early 20th century race for colonial spoils. They felt shut out by Western nations. Adding to their natural Xenophobia, their worship of Emperor as God and their fanatical Samurai cults where surrendering meant you could be treated like cattle, they also felt inferior whicj led to hatred of the white man. In particular the Americans became the focus of their racial hatred. They also despised the Chinese and other Asian nations as being inferior people meant to serve the Japanese masters.
Driven on by their authoritarian officers the ordinary soldiers were brutal and cruel to any who fell in their path. POW's stood a 4% chance of dying in a German POW camp but a 27% chance in a Japenese. Starved, beaten and executed the allied prisoners suffered enormous privations compared to their comrades in arms in Europe.
The US army and marines soon reralised they were in a terrible fight to the finish. The war became a racial war which has not been duscussed much after the fact. Very few prisoners were taken on either side during the conflict. It is also important to understand this fury and haterd these opponents had for one another when understanding the use of the atom bomb to defeat the Japanese. The Japenese people were so motivated to fight and kill Americans that it was felt that millions of casualties would ensue if an invasion of Japan had taken place. I don't believe HArry Trueman and his generals had any other choice than to drop those terrible bombs. I believe they would have kept dropping them if the Japanese had continued to resist.
It is incredible now to see the harmonious relations between Japan and the USA and to think of how they once despised one another so that they would die in fighting rather than surrender.
What led Japan down that path? Could it happen again or have all the conditions been removed for that possibility? Was there a collective madness taking place on our planet in the 1930's and 40's? Why did we cover up the aspect of a racial war or do you disagree with that synopsis?
(Copied from my post on another web site)
http://www.irishabroad.com/Discussio...&CategoryID=11