Nations with Western, Judeo-Christian values see soldiering very differently. What first tipped me that Japanese soldiers might be acting from a radically different culture rather than simply being sadistic monsters was the account I read of the beheading of an American prisoner, recounted in a captured war diary.
"An American prisoner today was accorded the death of a samurai."
That sure is not the way I would look at it.
I must add to the above that there certainly were a large number who simply were sadistic monsters.