[Reily]

It’s interesting that during the Russo-Japanese War & the few encounters with the Central Powers (Germans mostly!) in China & South Pacific during WWI Japan was very chivalrous in its behavior toward POWS. This was so much the case, that the international community positively commented on it.

What happened to change that?

I’ve read several psycho-historical articles on it. None of them seem persuasive. Thoughts?

[dfwgator]

Japan felt slighted after WWI, felt they didn’t get enough of the spoils from being on the winning team. They began to focus on getting the European Colonialists out of Asia.

[Navy Patriot]

Thoughts?

The Japanese and Grerman Ruling Elite developed World Class Arrogance, and the Arrogant Japanese found out that you CAN piss off normal people to the point that they WILL Nuke you to oblivion to save one of their own Patriots.

Of course that attitude no longer exists in Prog Socialist Marxist America.

[hanamizu]

Japan was very chivalrous in its behavior toward POWS....What happened to change that?

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I’ll give a try. During the war in 1905 Japan was striving to shake off its recent feudal past and become a modern ‘Western’ nation. So, the Japanese treated Russian P.O.W.s following the civilized West’s rules of proper behavior toward a defeated foe.

But starting in the 20s, having modernized in many ways, it became popular and maybe compulsory to look back fondly at past Japanese history and customs. The old samurai code of Bushido was revived. Honorable warriors fought and died rather than surrender. Any who did surrender were beneath contempt. This was the attitude that the Japanese army and navy had when invading China, and later, the rest of the Pacific area.

The irony was that during the feudal period, samurais were a small minority of the Japanese population, yet the majority of the Japanese population in the 1930s bought into the idea that they were the descendants of the samurais and acted accordingly.