re: #407 albusteve

it was widespread practice…just ask my dad…go through the killing ground and do the coup de gras…that’s what I’m getting at…there is plenty of oral history and even some film footage

I won’t argue it didn’t happen. I can’t argue much at all this late, but my knowledge through family and the History channel was that my grandfather in Guam took some Japanese as POWs. We have photos. (The Jap officer in charge had the only clean white shirt and a little Hitler mustache which must have been the style at the time.) I also recall some island with lots of caves near the end of WW2, we dropped bits of paper on the population with the instructions that “if you wish to surrender, bring this ticket with you and wave it around so we don’t shoot.”

If there were just times when our boys were to enraged to follow the rules, or the Japanese had snook one too many hand grenades in with the POWs lately, so we just got tired of taking prisoners, or it otherwise wasn’t practical, how systematic was our breach of proper conduct relative to other allies?