My Uncle recounted similar incidents where he, and other Americans mowed down surrendering Japanese in the Philippines, although they were supposed to be taken as POW’s.
The Japanese usually faked surrender. They’d have a grenade behind their back to take one more Marine with them. They’d hide behind women and open fire, knowing that Marines were reluctant to shoot women. The Marines and the Army learned that the hard way.
The Japanese were the absolute worst. Their brutality put today’s Isis and the Taliban and such to shame.
No doubt stories like what the Taliban did will get out and the conflicts will be bloodier because then other solders won’t give up so easily. The taliban that did this were idiots.
That’s why so many Jap soldiers refused to give up...they feared they would just be butchered anyway just like people like your uncle proved what would happen. At least a military tribunal with executions warranted for some would have given some cover. Your uncle should have been prosecuted.
A friend of the family was in the Italian campaign in WW II. By the spring of 1945 the Germans were whipped, and the Allies were advancing fast. He told us that his unit rarely took prisoners. It was just a logistics thing, he said.
Billy Sherman was right. War is hell.
We did it to Germans too after Normandy and especially liberating camps
The NVA routinely killed prisoners
As did the hessians
And Henry V
He put he cream of French noble youth as prisoners to the sword as a precaution over his baggage train
“My Uncle recounted similar incidents where he, and other Americans mowed down surrendering Japanese in the Philippines, although they were supposed to be taken as POW’s.”
Was he a First Cav vet or a ?