I have to disagree with you about Flyboys: it’s full of liberal claptrap about how “ committed atrocities all the time” so the Japanese atrocities were just no worse than ours.
I threw my copy out.
It's war. I have no idea what I would do to an enemy that butchered and maimed my brothers in arms. But I'm sure that I wouldn't want to explain it 1000's of miles away and years after the event.
Men do things in war that are horrible and unspeakable in any other place that is not in the theater of war. Do you really want to know what men do in war? My father fought in Latin America, Lebanon, Indonesian and Vietnam. He never spoke about combat except one time when someone mentioned that a "young boy" had been killed I think in El Salvador or Vietnam.. and he just said, "young boys can kill you just as easily as young men. They can shine your shoes and blow you up." If you don't kill them, your men can die.
He said that there was a difference between killing in war and murder. Each man has to answer to his maker for what is in his heart at the time he kills the enemy.
I am fairly certain that men being men, we had men that mutilated enemies, killed civilians and all the horrible things that we can imagine. But I can't put myself in the mindset of being in combat for years and watching my best friends turned to dog meat and mutilated. I am glad that I haven't had to make those choices and I pray for the men that have been put in these situations.
I don't think that American men have a monopoly on altruistic behavior in combat. I think Americans scare the crap out of most other men in combat because of our aggressive nature , discipline and tactics. We also tend to allow men to surrender. That's a huge thing in combat.