Chateau Lloyd

I'm reading up on the Saipan campaign in June of 1944, and it underlines the theme of one of my earlier posts about the 'rules of war.'

Spoiler alert: there are no rules.

The Japanese defenders of the island breached just about every custom of war they could find. 

They used civilians as literal human shield (herding them in front of their attacking columns). 

They targeted medical corps personnel and would purposefully leave wounded G.I.s in the open so that they could pick off troops trying to treat them.

They even went so far as to boobytrap their own casualties and also taught their wounded to have a grenade, so they could kill American medics trying to treat them.

Because Americans weren't stupid, they came up with countermeasures, which basically boiled down to: kill everything in sight.

What this meant was that wounded Japanese who might have wanted to surrender never got the chance.  Innocent civilians who just wanted to be left alone were pulverized along with everything around them because the Japanese could not be trusted to respect any of the rules of war which were designed to prevent such savagery.

The paucity of Japanese prisoners has led to the myth that the Japanese were everywhere and always fanatical in their courage and devotion, which simply isn't true.  We cannot for certain say how many Japanese troops wanted or even tried to surrender, only to be shot down by disbelieving Americans who may have actually witnessed earlier fake attempts.

The thing is, Japan had previously followed the rules of war, and achieved victories over China and Russia.  By throwing them away, they gained a fleeting tactical advantage but its price was hundreds of thousands of dead and total defeat.