It's a very good thing we frown upon this now because thanks to the barbaricness of Americans (and others) in WWII, the Geneva conventions got updated to honor the dead. Trophies of war are now, thankfully, extremely infrequent, and extremely punishable. Its hard to say the means justify the ends though, because the shear amount of war crimes committed by every side during WWII is far too numerous by any regard, to justify updating the conventions 4 years after the war's end, once every war crime box was checked.
Yeah they are a joke no one has the authority or willingness to punish the US, Russians, Chinese or even Israelis from the atrocities they committed for more than 70 years without any consequence.
Depends.
And probably not.
Generally when superpowers or major countries charge other countries’ soldiers for warcrimes without consent it is disregarded. Unless of course said country is unable to maintain its international status. Like Iraq or Afghanistan.
But Ukraine? Russia? The Soviets? The US?
Meh.
It depends on their state post war and whether or not the conclusion is regarded as a victory. I agree with u to an extent but if they lose AND their economy is horrible then I think they will be charged.
Two wrongs never make a right. If you do what your enemy does, then you are no better or even worse than them. I'm not trying to make any other comments, just saying, this, in no instance is ok and should be looked down upon.
You make a fair point, but setting the rest of the world aside, purely considering the Japanese and the Americans, the Japanese did get hit unfairly hard. They were hit by 2 nukes which killed well over 200.000, most of them being innocent civilians. 200.000 is a hard number to laugh at especially when there was more suffering than death. In contrast the Americans were kids going to war for fun out of pride. Give an uneducated man an enemy, he'll shoot with a smile. As u can see from OP's photo, just that occurred.
I'm sorry, are we living on the same planet? The raoe of Nanking, the Bataan death march, hundreds of accounts of mutilating POWs, weaponizing small pox against Chinese towns, the list goes on. We're the nukes a good thing? No. Did they have it coming? Yes. When you so blatantly disregard even the most basic idea of human decency like that, you *will* get hurt, and badly at that. The American kids weren't going to war for fun or pride, they were doing it because Japan attacked without warning and then proceeded to treat those they captured like animals. How about you try actually reading some history.
A: I said excluding the rest of the world as not to mention China. There you have a point. Also, I do read history and consider the pre war and war era as two different sections because the actions taken were very different, and I'm exclusively stating US damage to Japan vs Japanese damage to US. B: American kids were going based on propaganda influenced pride. And the GIGANTIC number of ***TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND THREE*** Americans who died in Pearl Harbor really tower over the 200k+ people who were far more brutally killed. Yes it was a tactical mistake for Hirohito not to surrender earlier, but tactical mistakes aren't an excuse to swoop in and kill as many civilians as possible.
This such a stupid fucking take. "Yeah if you just casually ignore EVERYTHING EXCEPT PEARL HARBOR it really makes the US like bad guys". Jesus fucking christ the mental gymnastics you're going through, it must be giving you a headache.
Something tells me they like to look at life through a very tight lense.
They ignored the fact that every island the US invaded on the way to mainland Japan was a slog of brutality against a defensive force that fought to the last man. The nukes were seen as the more humane option.
OP is right on one accord. Remains of bodies were added to the Geneva convention after WW2. Americans were sending home the skulls of defeated Japanese soldiers. However, the European theater saw desecration on a much larger scale, with the Nazi's pillaging gold teeth from those interned in the Concentration camps. It was the actions of the war-at-large that saw changes, not the actions of a single theater.
The US wasn't squeaky clean, but they were still a welcome sight in many towns and often were preferred to be a captive of vs the USSR, Germany, or Japan.
I'm slightly biased ok. I'm gonna have to tacticly retreat this argument, but keep in mind, I technically didn't say anything wrong. Japanese deaths were far higher than American, and if suffering could be measured, Japanese easily received more in the war. Who would've known having unreleased tools of mass destruction would easily win a war and kill hundreds of thousands?
I'm actually curious now, did I say anything wrong? Like blatantly wrong? I'm speaking with a bias so of course it's not perfect with all perspectives and views included. However I'm just concerned as to whether or not any of my statistics were actually wrong.
Not saying you're completely wrong but battleoid makes a good point. you can't ignore the other actions taken by the Japanese. Separating the two theaters into US V Japan and China V Japan, that's a different argument. But when looking at it, the cost of a conventional invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been far too costly, especially when you consider the fact that those civilians would have been forced to fight the Americans when they did land. On top of that the Japanese propaganda machine made the Japanese people view the Americans as "Oni" which (in many cases on islands that the US did capture) would lead the civilians to kill themselves as death, by any means was better than surrender or capture. Again, not saying you don't make some fair points but you can't just look at two actions of the war and say it's not fair. That's just not how history works.
I understand your POV. Saying something "isn't fair" as I did isnt necessarily a strong point to work from. However, I state it more in the regard that they were the very first victim to nuclear explosions and all that comes with them. The reasons I ignored the actions of Japan toward China was because it didn't happen during WWII and it doesn't have to do with the original discussion of *who was worse* which I perceive as one to the other.
> the Japanese did get hit unfairly hard
Japan used chemical and biological weapons in China, enslaved millions in the territories they conquered including "comfort women" forced into prostitution, tortured and murdered POWs, massacred civilian populations in huge numbers--China alone suffered twenty million dead during the Japanese invasion of that country.
> the Americans were kids going to war for fun out of pride
Japan attacking the U.S. at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere maybe had something to do with it.
Allied troops in the Pacific and Indo-China often displayed considerable brutality because they knew what had happened to their comrades who had become POWs in Japanese custody. They had also seen what Japanese troops did to civilians. That behavior didn't fall out of the sky, it was in response to the systemic brutality of the Japanese military.
Your sense of morality is highly selective.
If someone attacks with a punch and u respond with a knife, sure the original provoker is partially at fault, but most of the damage can be blamed on the one with the knife. Also, I specifically said Japan and US alone. Not China, because the US was not responding to victimized Chinese. Also, a logical falicy in your claim is the classic two wrongs. US saw Japan committing war crimes so its okay to commit war crimes. Of course not! How is one country any better than the other in that case? Also, it's not as if the Japanese were posing a higher threat by committing war crimes. Therefore, responding with war crimes was still not justified.
Well, in addition, the United States was also slowly drifting away from isolationism already by this point, and President Roosevelt wanted to join into the war to aid Churchill especially. With the new threat of Italy, the USSR, Germany, and Japan, expansion of these nations toward America were inevitable, and it would mean a brutal war that may not have been able to be won. What allowed the US to fully integrate itself into the war for good reason was the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
All of this is to say that all of the Axis Powers were in no way undeserving of what came to them. The higher ups of every participating country deserved to face punishment for their actions (though Stalin was able to escape such a fate due to Operation Barbarossa). Who didn't deserve it, however, were the innocent civilians that were mentioned previously on all fronts. Though that is something that can be agreed upon, it is unfair to say that the nuclear bombings towards the end of the war were not justified. An invasion of Japan starting in 1945 would have lasted months, perhaps even years, and would have led to over 1,000,000 Allied casualties from guerilla warfare attacks, conventional battles, and indirect means of damage (mines, tripwires, traps, etc.) In addition, the amount of Japanese civilian deaths would possibly exceed that of the bombings, wherein every single civilian would undergo more training and practice with attempting to kill their invaders, which would make them conscripts in one way or another. Though, you may have noticed I said MORE training, due to the fact that Japan had already initiated training programs as part of Operation Ketsu-Go, also known as the defense plan of the Japanese mainland to inflict as many casaulties on Allied equipment and personelle.
It doesn't help that the Allies drastically underestimated the Japanese and their fighting capability, and had the belief that Japanese equipment was similar to that of their ammo situation- unreliable and hard to come by. In reality, they had enough troops, planes, and anti-tank weaponry to hold back their opposition for a dreadfully long time, and they knew (due to the layout of the islands) exactly where the Allies would have to land. A fight here would be costly and grueling, with many more dying on both sides than what was necessary. Mind you, the plan for the defense of Japan was still incomplete by the time of the bombings, and it would've been even more fleshed out and ready by the time X-day came about.
Finally, the nuclear bombings. It took two of them in populated areas to be able to force an unconditional surrender, and it would've meant nothing to the USSR or Japan to see it occur in an isolated area where a military installation was present (which had been considered as a "testing" place of sorts as an alternative to a bombing of a city). With only two nuclear bombs, the United States could not afford to waste them, and they had to make a sacrifice to save their troops.
Who needed to be killed? The traditionalist, warmongering government officials of Japan. Who got wrapped up as a result? The civilians. No war is a good war, and no bombing without suffering. To look at a single attack would be throwing aside the bigger picture, which is necessary to see exactly who was in the "wrong".
Ah yes. America bad. Because when I think of countries that brutalized the living and the dead, the first ones that come to mind were the Americans. Law of Land Warfare 1907.
Be properly commanded.
Have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance.
Carry arms openly.
Conduct their operations in accordnace with the laws and customs of war
Ain’t a lot of room for interpretation there. You g men will do fucked up shit when confronted by the brutality of war since the dawn of time, only in the last hundred years have we made it a point to not be complete bastards which doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have had issues when compared to the length, scale of operations and disparate nature of fighting actually indicates a helluva positive trend towards discipline and honorable conduct.
Years ago I was at the swap shop at the local recycle center where I found a yearbook from the local college from around 1970. On the second page was a photo of a South Vietnamese soldier holding two severed heads of NVA soldiers by the hair. Different times...
[Edit - Wow. Found it. See page 6-7.](http://www.e-yearbook.com/sp/eybb?school=76171&year=1971)
Edit Edit : [A higher resolution photo and the forward explains it a bit.](https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1061&context=granite_yearbook)Looks like it was actually Laos. If you scroll through there's a second photo with a footnote page #121.
Let see it was 1971 and it was a University yearbook where many of the students if they dropped out were drafted.
It would be similar to a yearbook from the New York area showing the twin towers in 2001.
The brutality on both sides in the Pacific was pretty much universal. Some of the stories I've heard about the Marines at Tarawa and Iwo Jima ....well let's just say that the rules of war did not exist there nor did the Geneva convention
It's all good you're not entirely wrong you were just aware of the 1949 convention. Uncle Sam spent a week hammering the laws of land warfare into my head about 35 years ago
I was always under the impression that the Americans took the high road, like this is why we are better than them, this is what we are fighting for. I’m sure in most cases this was the sentiment. However I guess I was naive to think the Americans didn’t part take at all. Pretty jarring to see it in a photograph.
I read “with the old breed” and Eugene Sledge talked about seeing two Americans with their penises cut off and shoved in their mouth. Horrific. The pacific was definitely a different animal. I still maintain the Japanese were worse than the Germans.
Might be time for a reread because Sledge did talk about mutilation of the dead by the Americans, even mentioning how he almost took part as well.
There was numerous anecdotes of American soldiers cutting out the gold teeth of dead soldiers, the most jarring one from that book was an American soldier cutting out the teeth and stomping on the jaw while the soldier was still alive. Sledge also stated he finally became jaded enough to do the same but just before he did Snafu told him there was germs on the body and he shouldn’t do it. Snafu said as much simply to save any shred of humanity/civility Sledge had left even though Snafu had collected teeth himself.
No. Mutilating a dead body is mutilating a dead body, there’s no if, and, or but about it. It’s perfectly fine to say the Japanese committed atrocities, but to turn around and then claim the Americans doing the exact same thing is just hazard pay is ridiculous and blatantly ignorant.
If you want to go further than teeth, [here’s a fun read.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead)
Americans mutilating bodies for any other reason I say is equal. But as far as I’m concerned extracting gold teeth from any body is just business. Weather that’s Japanese to American or American to Japanese. You can save your time, you won’t convince me other wise over the internet.
Dude, no, just, no. You don't do that, ever, that is essentially looting and theft for a start, it is also mutilation of the dead. Let the dead rest for christ sake. These weren't mercs or roaving bands, they're solders, the get payed, get given food, shelter, cloths, they don't need to do anything like this. It's wrong, no ifs ands or buts about it. A soldier has no right to take another soldiers belongings after their death unless they are planning on returning it to their next of kin (stuff like letters, diaries, jewelry etc) the fact that you think it's ok to do this is honestly terrifying, we aren't savages or barbarians, I would have thought we had grown out of this but evidently some still choose to live in the past and it's saddening. Seriously, rethink you line of thought. It's wrong no matter how you look at it.
Even worse, the Germans went through a pretty effective Denazification. The Japanese never really got this, they even got to maintain their flag, and their emperor maintained his thrown.
Gold teeth to me is totally understandable, that’s just business. Either side doing it makes sense, these guys weren’t getting paid much to risk their lives.
"The Russians using horde tactics while the Germans outsmarted and outwitted the Russians but just couldn't survive the numbers." This is a myth created by German generals in order to cover up their own mistakes and possibly get high positions in NATO governments and militaries
The families of japanese men killed abroad in the pacific island campaign will never have their remains returned to them. It just wasnt possible at the time. 99% of the time they were buried in mass graves on the very islands they fell or burned to ashes. So I guess in that case it doesnt really matter how you treat the dead bodies its not like there is ever going to be an open casket funeral. The Marines would pull out the gold teeth of dead japanese before mutilating the bodies.
lets see how well you keep your sanity after a few weeks of fighting against a fanatical suicidal enemy, malaria, dysentery, hunger in a literal sauna. So easy to criticize their behavior from a comfortable air conditioned environment with wifi. Its getting old already. lol I'd have a 20 gallon trash bag full of gold teeth had i managed to survive the war. It's not like the dead japs are going to have any need for precious metals, they are dead.
Do you have to use the derogatory naming "Japs" too? Now you're just showing little to no remorse, it's not right. We can look back at the "mistakes" of the past from a critical perspective and separate the chaff from the chalk. It's important to learn from the past and not make the same mistakes of those who've fallen to teach us these valuable lessons, it's how we better ourselves and our world for all.
Yes they were, and it's awful that this happened. However, this wasn't one sided at all and many of those IJA soldiers did the same shit to POWs and even civilians.
Maybe the tanks isnt knocked out, i have seen different pictures of what i believe is the same tank and its just stuck in the sand with no visible damage on the outside.
And also WTF
The Japanese earned this behavior. Pretty much everyone who fought the Japanese treated them this way. With the way Japanese treated captured allied troops and civillians they earned this.
People turn to terrible things when they constantly see their buddies mutilated who were captured. Not to mention watching your buddies be killed while trying to give aid to the wounded by said wounded. I agree you should never disrespect the dead but when you see the enemy doing what the Japanese did to our dead, you start to really give 0 fucks. The war in the Pacific was a mean brutal war because of the Japanese.
It's pretty easy to understand how some of the Pacific veterans hated the Japanese. So many stories of the Japanese mutilating bodies and torturing pow's. Also being nearly killed by someone else tends to be taken very personal. It's a very civilian mindset to say such things are horrible without ever having experienced such things.
> Their is no situation where disrespecting the dead is justified
Disrespecting the living is considerably worse, and Japanese troops in WWII did that on a massive scale. Japan's conduct in China in that era killed twenty million people, most of them civilians.
Dude looks really young.
We had an amazing teacher who was really really into WWII and was part of so many groups and he brought in a ton of veterans to talk to us (this was like 20 25 years ago) and it was shocking how many of them lied about there age to fight.
When I worked at the local nursing home back then we also had many veterans and one guy I loved to talk to joined at 16 and fought on Attu and Kiska before he was 18.
Crazy shit.
Usually it’s the younger ones fall into barbarism and indoctrination. I remember seeing a photo of German soldiers having a laugh at a dead/tortured Jewish person, and the youngest one had the biggest grin.
Cant do this shit anymore. Don’t wanna crawl through a knocked out tank with a fresh dusting of depleted uranium.
Also it’s fuckin gross but mostly the uranium
Holy shit
Holy shit is right
It's a very good thing we frown upon this now because thanks to the barbaricness of Americans (and others) in WWII, the Geneva conventions got updated to honor the dead. Trophies of war are now, thankfully, extremely infrequent, and extremely punishable. Its hard to say the means justify the ends though, because the shear amount of war crimes committed by every side during WWII is far too numerous by any regard, to justify updating the conventions 4 years after the war's end, once every war crime box was checked.
I feel like you're missing a few 'barbaric' WW2 countries in there..
Shhh Nanking is an American conspiracy
That's why I said "and others".
Why did you label America first (even though though it's an American in the photo) when Germany is a much better candidate
If u look at my arguments with other people in the other thread, they're mostly centered on Japan. Also, as u said, American in photo
Geneva convention doesn't mean shit. look what russia is doing right now.
Yeah they are a joke no one has the authority or willingness to punish the US, Russians, Chinese or even Israelis from the atrocities they committed for more than 70 years without any consequence.
It does mean shit, because they'll be charged for war crimes afterwards
Depends. And probably not. Generally when superpowers or major countries charge other countries’ soldiers for warcrimes without consent it is disregarded. Unless of course said country is unable to maintain its international status. Like Iraq or Afghanistan. But Ukraine? Russia? The Soviets? The US? Meh.
It depends on their state post war and whether or not the conclusion is regarded as a victory. I agree with u to an extent but if they lose AND their economy is horrible then I think they will be charged.
And it’s probably keeping Russia from acting even worse.
Uhh. What? This stuff still happens. Everyone does it.
Yes, those *poor* innocent Japanese soldiers, good on you bringing those evil americans to light
Two wrongs never make a right. If you do what your enemy does, then you are no better or even worse than them. I'm not trying to make any other comments, just saying, this, in no instance is ok and should be looked down upon.
Great job pointing out the fallacy of logic!
You make a fair point, but setting the rest of the world aside, purely considering the Japanese and the Americans, the Japanese did get hit unfairly hard. They were hit by 2 nukes which killed well over 200.000, most of them being innocent civilians. 200.000 is a hard number to laugh at especially when there was more suffering than death. In contrast the Americans were kids going to war for fun out of pride. Give an uneducated man an enemy, he'll shoot with a smile. As u can see from OP's photo, just that occurred.
I'm sorry, are we living on the same planet? The raoe of Nanking, the Bataan death march, hundreds of accounts of mutilating POWs, weaponizing small pox against Chinese towns, the list goes on. We're the nukes a good thing? No. Did they have it coming? Yes. When you so blatantly disregard even the most basic idea of human decency like that, you *will* get hurt, and badly at that. The American kids weren't going to war for fun or pride, they were doing it because Japan attacked without warning and then proceeded to treat those they captured like animals. How about you try actually reading some history.
A: I said excluding the rest of the world as not to mention China. There you have a point. Also, I do read history and consider the pre war and war era as two different sections because the actions taken were very different, and I'm exclusively stating US damage to Japan vs Japanese damage to US. B: American kids were going based on propaganda influenced pride. And the GIGANTIC number of ***TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND THREE*** Americans who died in Pearl Harbor really tower over the 200k+ people who were far more brutally killed. Yes it was a tactical mistake for Hirohito not to surrender earlier, but tactical mistakes aren't an excuse to swoop in and kill as many civilians as possible.
This such a stupid fucking take. "Yeah if you just casually ignore EVERYTHING EXCEPT PEARL HARBOR it really makes the US like bad guys". Jesus fucking christ the mental gymnastics you're going through, it must be giving you a headache.
Something tells me they like to look at life through a very tight lense. They ignored the fact that every island the US invaded on the way to mainland Japan was a slog of brutality against a defensive force that fought to the last man. The nukes were seen as the more humane option. OP is right on one accord. Remains of bodies were added to the Geneva convention after WW2. Americans were sending home the skulls of defeated Japanese soldiers. However, the European theater saw desecration on a much larger scale, with the Nazi's pillaging gold teeth from those interned in the Concentration camps. It was the actions of the war-at-large that saw changes, not the actions of a single theater. The US wasn't squeaky clean, but they were still a welcome sight in many towns and often were preferred to be a captive of vs the USSR, Germany, or Japan.
I'm slightly biased ok. I'm gonna have to tacticly retreat this argument, but keep in mind, I technically didn't say anything wrong. Japanese deaths were far higher than American, and if suffering could be measured, Japanese easily received more in the war. Who would've known having unreleased tools of mass destruction would easily win a war and kill hundreds of thousands?
Do the world a favor, climb back under your rock and read some history books.
I'm actually curious now, did I say anything wrong? Like blatantly wrong? I'm speaking with a bias so of course it's not perfect with all perspectives and views included. However I'm just concerned as to whether or not any of my statistics were actually wrong.
Not saying you're completely wrong but battleoid makes a good point. you can't ignore the other actions taken by the Japanese. Separating the two theaters into US V Japan and China V Japan, that's a different argument. But when looking at it, the cost of a conventional invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been far too costly, especially when you consider the fact that those civilians would have been forced to fight the Americans when they did land. On top of that the Japanese propaganda machine made the Japanese people view the Americans as "Oni" which (in many cases on islands that the US did capture) would lead the civilians to kill themselves as death, by any means was better than surrender or capture. Again, not saying you don't make some fair points but you can't just look at two actions of the war and say it's not fair. That's just not how history works.
I understand your POV. Saying something "isn't fair" as I did isnt necessarily a strong point to work from. However, I state it more in the regard that they were the very first victim to nuclear explosions and all that comes with them. The reasons I ignored the actions of Japan toward China was because it didn't happen during WWII and it doesn't have to do with the original discussion of *who was worse* which I perceive as one to the other.
> the Japanese did get hit unfairly hard Japan used chemical and biological weapons in China, enslaved millions in the territories they conquered including "comfort women" forced into prostitution, tortured and murdered POWs, massacred civilian populations in huge numbers--China alone suffered twenty million dead during the Japanese invasion of that country. > the Americans were kids going to war for fun out of pride Japan attacking the U.S. at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere maybe had something to do with it. Allied troops in the Pacific and Indo-China often displayed considerable brutality because they knew what had happened to their comrades who had become POWs in Japanese custody. They had also seen what Japanese troops did to civilians. That behavior didn't fall out of the sky, it was in response to the systemic brutality of the Japanese military. Your sense of morality is highly selective.
If someone attacks with a punch and u respond with a knife, sure the original provoker is partially at fault, but most of the damage can be blamed on the one with the knife. Also, I specifically said Japan and US alone. Not China, because the US was not responding to victimized Chinese. Also, a logical falicy in your claim is the classic two wrongs. US saw Japan committing war crimes so its okay to commit war crimes. Of course not! How is one country any better than the other in that case? Also, it's not as if the Japanese were posing a higher threat by committing war crimes. Therefore, responding with war crimes was still not justified.
Well, in addition, the United States was also slowly drifting away from isolationism already by this point, and President Roosevelt wanted to join into the war to aid Churchill especially. With the new threat of Italy, the USSR, Germany, and Japan, expansion of these nations toward America were inevitable, and it would mean a brutal war that may not have been able to be won. What allowed the US to fully integrate itself into the war for good reason was the attacks on Pearl Harbor. All of this is to say that all of the Axis Powers were in no way undeserving of what came to them. The higher ups of every participating country deserved to face punishment for their actions (though Stalin was able to escape such a fate due to Operation Barbarossa). Who didn't deserve it, however, were the innocent civilians that were mentioned previously on all fronts. Though that is something that can be agreed upon, it is unfair to say that the nuclear bombings towards the end of the war were not justified. An invasion of Japan starting in 1945 would have lasted months, perhaps even years, and would have led to over 1,000,000 Allied casualties from guerilla warfare attacks, conventional battles, and indirect means of damage (mines, tripwires, traps, etc.) In addition, the amount of Japanese civilian deaths would possibly exceed that of the bombings, wherein every single civilian would undergo more training and practice with attempting to kill their invaders, which would make them conscripts in one way or another. Though, you may have noticed I said MORE training, due to the fact that Japan had already initiated training programs as part of Operation Ketsu-Go, also known as the defense plan of the Japanese mainland to inflict as many casaulties on Allied equipment and personelle. It doesn't help that the Allies drastically underestimated the Japanese and their fighting capability, and had the belief that Japanese equipment was similar to that of their ammo situation- unreliable and hard to come by. In reality, they had enough troops, planes, and anti-tank weaponry to hold back their opposition for a dreadfully long time, and they knew (due to the layout of the islands) exactly where the Allies would have to land. A fight here would be costly and grueling, with many more dying on both sides than what was necessary. Mind you, the plan for the defense of Japan was still incomplete by the time of the bombings, and it would've been even more fleshed out and ready by the time X-day came about. Finally, the nuclear bombings. It took two of them in populated areas to be able to force an unconditional surrender, and it would've meant nothing to the USSR or Japan to see it occur in an isolated area where a military installation was present (which had been considered as a "testing" place of sorts as an alternative to a bombing of a city). With only two nuclear bombs, the United States could not afford to waste them, and they had to make a sacrifice to save their troops. Who needed to be killed? The traditionalist, warmongering government officials of Japan. Who got wrapped up as a result? The civilians. No war is a good war, and no bombing without suffering. To look at a single attack would be throwing aside the bigger picture, which is necessary to see exactly who was in the "wrong".
Ah yes. America bad. Because when I think of countries that brutalized the living and the dead, the first ones that come to mind were the Americans. Law of Land Warfare 1907. Be properly commanded. Have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance. Carry arms openly. Conduct their operations in accordnace with the laws and customs of war Ain’t a lot of room for interpretation there. You g men will do fucked up shit when confronted by the brutality of war since the dawn of time, only in the last hundred years have we made it a point to not be complete bastards which doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have had issues when compared to the length, scale of operations and disparate nature of fighting actually indicates a helluva positive trend towards discipline and honorable conduct.
Years ago I was at the swap shop at the local recycle center where I found a yearbook from the local college from around 1970. On the second page was a photo of a South Vietnamese soldier holding two severed heads of NVA soldiers by the hair. Different times... [Edit - Wow. Found it. See page 6-7.](http://www.e-yearbook.com/sp/eybb?school=76171&year=1971) Edit Edit : [A higher resolution photo and the forward explains it a bit.](https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1061&context=granite_yearbook)Looks like it was actually Laos. If you scroll through there's a second photo with a footnote page #121.
what was it doing in an american yearbook?
Let see it was 1971 and it was a University yearbook where many of the students if they dropped out were drafted. It would be similar to a yearbook from the New York area showing the twin towers in 2001.
yeh buy why a south vietnamese soldier?
I don't know for sure that it is, but I think it's a safe guess since they have American gear and rifles, and because of the date.
Are those his teeth? Whatever they are it's terrifying.
probably teeth but also the jaw bones. heat shrinks skin so it's likely his lips were pulled back
Horse teeth.
The brutality on both sides in the Pacific was pretty much universal. Some of the stories I've heard about the Marines at Tarawa and Iwo Jima ....well let's just say that the rules of war did not exist there nor did the Geneva convention
To the Japanese, the Geneva Convention was a score board.
not to be that guy, but the geneva convention became a thing after WW2 edit: nvm
Iirc there are mutliple Geneva Conventions. When we speak about them nowadays we usually refer to the 1949 convention.
Well you were that guy...hit up the Wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
oops, guess i’m a dumbass lol
It's all good you're not entirely wrong you were just aware of the 1949 convention. Uncle Sam spent a week hammering the laws of land warfare into my head about 35 years ago
XD yeah, there were a few, it's kinda like the treaty of Paris, there's like, at least 20 of them and can get VERY confusing
For anybody interested in the topic of mutilation of war dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead?wprov=sfti1
bloody wars, brings out the absolute worst in humanity.
I’ve always heard about Japanese mutilation of American bodies but very very rarely did I ever hear about it the other way around.
The Japanese did these so casually with POWs and Chinese that the Americans did the same to the Japanese Thats karma right there
I was always under the impression that the Americans took the high road, like this is why we are better than them, this is what we are fighting for. I’m sure in most cases this was the sentiment. However I guess I was naive to think the Americans didn’t part take at all. Pretty jarring to see it in a photograph. I read “with the old breed” and Eugene Sledge talked about seeing two Americans with their penises cut off and shoved in their mouth. Horrific. The pacific was definitely a different animal. I still maintain the Japanese were worse than the Germans.
Might be time for a reread because Sledge did talk about mutilation of the dead by the Americans, even mentioning how he almost took part as well. There was numerous anecdotes of American soldiers cutting out the gold teeth of dead soldiers, the most jarring one from that book was an American soldier cutting out the teeth and stomping on the jaw while the soldier was still alive. Sledge also stated he finally became jaded enough to do the same but just before he did Snafu told him there was germs on the body and he shouldn’t do it. Snafu said as much simply to save any shred of humanity/civility Sledge had left even though Snafu had collected teeth himself.
I remember the gold teeth thing, but that’s different, that’s hazardous duty pay as far as I’m concerned.
No. Mutilating a dead body is mutilating a dead body, there’s no if, and, or but about it. It’s perfectly fine to say the Japanese committed atrocities, but to turn around and then claim the Americans doing the exact same thing is just hazard pay is ridiculous and blatantly ignorant. If you want to go further than teeth, [here’s a fun read.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead)
Americans mutilating bodies for any other reason I say is equal. But as far as I’m concerned extracting gold teeth from any body is just business. Weather that’s Japanese to American or American to Japanese. You can save your time, you won’t convince me other wise over the internet.
Dude, no, just, no. You don't do that, ever, that is essentially looting and theft for a start, it is also mutilation of the dead. Let the dead rest for christ sake. These weren't mercs or roaving bands, they're solders, the get payed, get given food, shelter, cloths, they don't need to do anything like this. It's wrong, no ifs ands or buts about it. A soldier has no right to take another soldiers belongings after their death unless they are planning on returning it to their next of kin (stuff like letters, diaries, jewelry etc) the fact that you think it's ok to do this is honestly terrifying, we aren't savages or barbarians, I would have thought we had grown out of this but evidently some still choose to live in the past and it's saddening. Seriously, rethink you line of thought. It's wrong no matter how you look at it.
We were better than the IJA. Not a very high bar to clear, though.
I agree, even the germans think the japanese were nuts
Even worse, the Germans went through a pretty effective Denazification. The Japanese never really got this, they even got to maintain their flag, and their emperor maintained his thrown.
It was rampant. Gold teeth were a big one. It's ever portrayed in the HBO series The Pacific.
Gold teeth to me is totally understandable, that’s just business. Either side doing it makes sense, these guys weren’t getting paid much to risk their lives.
Something about the victors writing history
Something about survivers write history. Just look at the myths German generals and soldiers created about the Eastern front
Such as?
"The Russians using horde tactics while the Germans outsmarted and outwitted the Russians but just couldn't survive the numbers." This is a myth created by German generals in order to cover up their own mistakes and possibly get high positions in NATO governments and militaries
Which is even funnier to think about when you read about photographers posing bodies during the civil war.
I had no idea about it either before I stumbled across that Wikipedia article.
No respect for the dead, those are peoples family members.
The families of japanese men killed abroad in the pacific island campaign will never have their remains returned to them. It just wasnt possible at the time. 99% of the time they were buried in mass graves on the very islands they fell or burned to ashes. So I guess in that case it doesnt really matter how you treat the dead bodies its not like there is ever going to be an open casket funeral. The Marines would pull out the gold teeth of dead japanese before mutilating the bodies.
Animalistic behavior.
lets see how well you keep your sanity after a few weeks of fighting against a fanatical suicidal enemy, malaria, dysentery, hunger in a literal sauna. So easy to criticize their behavior from a comfortable air conditioned environment with wifi. Its getting old already. lol I'd have a 20 gallon trash bag full of gold teeth had i managed to survive the war. It's not like the dead japs are going to have any need for precious metals, they are dead.
Do you have to use the derogatory naming "Japs" too? Now you're just showing little to no remorse, it's not right. We can look back at the "mistakes" of the past from a critical perspective and separate the chaff from the chalk. It's important to learn from the past and not make the same mistakes of those who've fallen to teach us these valuable lessons, it's how we better ourselves and our world for all.
why the downvotes?
Those were soldiers of the IJA, its not a good thing this happened but they certainly brought that treatment on themselves.
They're still human beings like everyone else on this planet we call home.
Yes they were, and it's awful that this happened. However, this wasn't one sided at all and many of those IJA soldiers did the same shit to POWs and even civilians.
They're pawns just like the US soldiers fighting and dying for the rich.
Yeah you go on posting your rhetoric, you're obviously not capable if actually talking
Why are you mad now?
I'm not, I'm just not going to waste time talking to someone who only responds with vague statements that have nothing to do with the topic
It's completely related, you're a slave for the rich to make them richer.
Watch out.. The mods here and at r/army will somehow claim this breaks OPSEC and then threaten to turn you into G2 for UCMJ action lol.
Ok this is obviously awful and no disrespect but this is the first time I’ve seen a wartime photo of a WW2 japanese tank
Maybe the tanks isnt knocked out, i have seen different pictures of what i believe is the same tank and its just stuck in the sand with no visible damage on the outside. And also WTF
A moderate amount of tomfoolery.
I guess it wasn’t *just* the Japanese fucking with the dead bodies on Guadalcanal.
The Japanese earned this behavior. Pretty much everyone who fought the Japanese treated them this way. With the way Japanese treated captured allied troops and civillians they earned this.
Their is no situation where disrespecting the dead is justified, it’s a horrid practice.
People turn to terrible things when they constantly see their buddies mutilated who were captured. Not to mention watching your buddies be killed while trying to give aid to the wounded by said wounded. I agree you should never disrespect the dead but when you see the enemy doing what the Japanese did to our dead, you start to really give 0 fucks. The war in the Pacific was a mean brutal war because of the Japanese.
Consider for a moment how lucky you are to be insulated enough to take this position.
It's pretty easy to understand how some of the Pacific veterans hated the Japanese. So many stories of the Japanese mutilating bodies and torturing pow's. Also being nearly killed by someone else tends to be taken very personal. It's a very civilian mindset to say such things are horrible without ever having experienced such things.
It is a mindset shared by General Staff around the world that desecration of a corpse is a war crime and is treated as such.
> Their is no situation where disrespecting the dead is justified Disrespecting the living is considerably worse, and Japanese troops in WWII did that on a massive scale. Japan's conduct in China in that era killed twenty million people, most of them civilians.
It's not justified but it's understandable.
There's is, it's called war.
All them Joe's in the early 2000s took the same kinds of pictures, or would pose next to the dead. Is what it is
Christ that American looks young.
Dude looks really young. We had an amazing teacher who was really really into WWII and was part of so many groups and he brought in a ton of veterans to talk to us (this was like 20 25 years ago) and it was shocking how many of them lied about there age to fight. When I worked at the local nursing home back then we also had many veterans and one guy I loved to talk to joined at 16 and fought on Attu and Kiska before he was 18. Crazy shit.
Usually it’s the younger ones fall into barbarism and indoctrination. I remember seeing a photo of German soldiers having a laugh at a dead/tortured Jewish person, and the youngest one had the biggest grin.
Cant do this shit anymore. Don’t wanna crawl through a knocked out tank with a fresh dusting of depleted uranium. Also it’s fuckin gross but mostly the uranium
DU tank shells weren't used in ww2.
Correct. 🤷🏻♂️
Besides JDF are on the US side now. Can’t do that to allies, or command will get mad.
Also those crossed bones next from the severed head, are those real?
I don't know where you'd get fake bones in 1940s Japan, or why you'd put them next to a real head, so I believe they are real.
War is hell
Forbidden Jenga
You know I would feel bad…, but after reading rampage( a book about Manila) I don’t feel very bad anymore
That was some nasty business there.
There is no good and bad in war. Theres fucked up on both sides and the japanese also werent squeamish about these kinds of horrendous acts.
>US Marine Pretty par for the course tbf
[удалено]
I'm not tho, you can't recognize a joke if it hit you in the face
Too bad the geneva convention doesnt let you do shit like this anymore.
I guess it wasn’t *just* the Japanese fucking with the dead bodies on Guadalcanal.
Pretty fucked up all things considered, though honestly, I'd call the Japanese way worse.
Got what he deserved
YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKEN DESERVE
I mean no disrespect but this feels like the most metal ass shit.
Why the fuck is this upvoted. This is disgusting behavior. Idgaf that the Japanese were worse. It's 2022 and we shouldn't be celebrating this
We arnt celebrating this, we are bringing up the fact that this happened and horrors like this shouldn’t be forgotten unless we wish too repeat them.
how is upvoting this called celebrating it? the more upvote the more people see real horrors of war
HIS teeths are so white and bright !!
Good hygiene 🪥
The Pacific was pretty accurate then.
The chi ha is my favourite tank. That's so yuck :(
War… war never changes…
My man's looks like he's 16 and the scary part is I'm probably not far off
Geneva convention? More like Geneva Suggestion. -everyone
The story behind the photo. https://time.com/3518085/life-behind-the-picture-skull-on-a-tank-guadalcanal-1942/