Remember: When the allied soldiers freed the POW camps in the Pacific Campaign, and saw the conditions the prisoners were in, they noted that, all of a sudden, the Japanese just seemed to stop surrendering.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the Pacific Campaign, very few Japanese surrendered, or had their surrenders accepted. Japan, since the Russo-Japanese War, had followed a policy of heavy indoctrination against the idea of surrender and the cultivation of a culture of cruelty within the military to convince the troops that the enemy would do to them all the things they did to others. They were 'successful' in changing their pre-WW2 wounded-dead-captured ratio from something along the lines of 1-1-1 to something closer to 1-1-100.

The other side of the coin is that a mixture of racism, anger, and fear made Allied soldiers reluctant to accept surrenders. Racism and anger for obvious reasons - fear because the Japanese would often feign surrender, and then, contrary to the laws of war, attack the troops who came to collect them - often by committing suicide via grenade.

The capture of Japanese troops actually increased over the course of the war, not decreased. The US, at least, figured out a dual strategy of using native Japanese translators to phrase surrender leaflets in a manner more palatable and reassuring to Japanese troops, and bribing soldiers with ice cream for captured (rather than dead) Japanese soldiers.

[–] MindSkipperBro12 3 points 1 year ago

I see. Thanks for the valuable information.