| Owen,I feel draws on the truth regarding the behaviour of the Japanese.Theirs was a different military culture framed in the philosophy of the Knights of the Bushido.Surrender to the enemy was not an option for the Japanese Imperial Forces and its leadership preferred to commit Hari Kari (spelling perhaps) to living with the feeling of personal failure.
Above all was the loyalty to the Emperor, a figure that the Japanese had never heard speak until he addressed surrender to them in August 1945 and yet this loyalty had been established from the dawn of the foundation of the Japanese Empire over 2600 years (Japanese calender). This loyalty was thought to have it origins in the principles of "Hakko Ichiu" (making the world one big family) and "Kodo" meaning that "Hakko Ichiu" could only be attained by loyalty to the Emperor.These two concepts were at the heart of the Japanese military powers who used them to further their own agenda of Japanese territorial expansion throughout south east Asia.
This moral code was enacted on the battlefield and determined how captured enemy personnel and civilians would be treated.Moreover it determined how the Japanese would conduct themselves in defeat. Wounded Japanese in the majority of cases saw their predicament as an opportunity to kill their enemy rather than receive aid to preserve their life.
There is no doubt that Allied forces initially treated Japanese combatants with due regard to the Geneva Convention but Japanese battlefield behaviour which prevented them from surrendering and then concealing weapons when captured in order to kill Allied soldiers in a suicide act led to Allied units reviewing how the Japanese were were to be handled in defeat. The Japanese who were saved were those who surrendered without concealed arms and weapons and as a precaution were made strip down to their briefs.At this stage they were thought to represent minimum danger to their captors.Further there was a motivation from Allied soldiers to kill the Japanese from their hatred of the enemy as atrocity reports carried out by the Japanese filtered back to the Allied side. |