Replies

How a war is fought is often dictated by the aggressor. Germany pretty much followed the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the Western Front. Not so on the Eastern Front where atrocities were the rule and civilized treatment was not.

In the Pacific, Japan fought without quarter for opponents, both combatants and civilians. Japan killed prisoners of war, used civilians and POWs as biologic warfare guinea pigs, and massacred civilian populations. American troops were forced to take no prisoners because Japan's Bushido Code ordered its soldiers to fight to the death and made no provision for surrender. The last two 1945 battles of the Pacific War, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, produced more killed and wounded on the American side than all Pacific invasions before February 1945. Okinawa traumatized the USN for years after it was fought — more sailors were killed than wounded with 28 ships sunk and 368 damaged. Of 183,000 American troops committed, over 12,000 were killed, 38,000 wounded. Japanese forces casualties were 110,000 killed, 7,000 captured. Between 40,000 to 150,000 Okinawan civilians were killed from 1 April to 22 June 1945.