Well said there, Harpgirl.

There was a lot of torturing and summary execution of enemy soldiers in the Pacific War...the Japanese were certainly most notorious for that, but it was also done by Allied soldiers to the Japanese. I knew a guy who was a Marine sergeant and fought in most of the island battles. He said that only a few Japanese soldiers ever surrendered, but that it was darned near impossible for him to stop the American soldiers in his unit and other units from torturing and killing those surrendered Japanese brutally the moment they thought no officer was looking. There were some pretty awful stories. The general attitude was that the Japanese were subhumans and deserved no mercy. The odd thing is that that's rather the way the Japanese saw the Americans too. War breeds hatred and insanity, and it's no wonder that these things happen under combat conditions when young man have been brutalized through harsh discipline and propaganda and traumatized through mortal combat.

People will use it as a political football when it suits their agenda, and they will deny it when it doesn't.

- LH