The next afternoon the Japanese destroyer HIJMS Ikazuchi, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Shunsaku Kudo, spotted the survivors and closed in on them. Despite the very real risk of being torpedoed by one of the many Allied submarines lurking in the area, Kudo ordered his ship to come to a halt and for his crew to begin pulling the dazed Allied sailors from the water. By the time they were finished, Ikazuchi was laden with 442 Allied survivors, more than double the ship's 219-man crew. Although they had to endure the horrors of the Japanese POW camps for almost three-and-a-half years, the men of the Encounter and Pope considered themselves fortunate because there were a number of Allied ships sunk during the Battle of the Java Sea whose survivors were abandoned or machine gunned by the Japanese.
Today in Japan, Commander Kudo is considered by many to be the last samurai.
http://1-22infantry.org/history4/lengfeld.htm
The plaque on the monument erected for
LT Friedrich Lengfeld.
The inscription (in both English and German) reads:
No man hath greater love than he who
layeth down his life for his enemy.
IN MEMORY
OF
LIEUTENANT FRIEDRICH LENGFELD
Here in Huertgen Forest on November 12, 1944,
Lt. Lengfeld, a German officer, gave his life
while trying to save the life of an American
soldier lying severly wounded in the “Wilde
Sau” minefield and appealing for medical aid.
PLACED AT THIS SITE ON OCTOBER 7, 1994
THE
TWENTY SECOND UNITED STATES
INFANTRY
SOCIETY - WORLD WAR II
“Deeds Not Words”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_H%C3%BCrtgen_Forest
Erstwhile enemy remembered
There is a stone monument with a bronze plaque at the Hürtgen military cemetery dedicated by veterans of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division to the memory of Friedrich Lengfeld (29 September 1921–12 November 1944), a German lieutenant. Lengfeld died on 12 November 1944, of severe wounds sustained while helping a wounded American soldier out of the “Wild Sow” (”Wilde Sau”) minefield. It is the only such memorial for a German soldier placed by his erstwhile opponents in a German military cemetery.[14]
It might have been humane on the part of the Japanese commander to do what he did. It might however been a matter of practicality too. Leave your enemy to be rescued by his own comrades and your enemy lives to fight another day. To see the real face of Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners look up the “Hell Ships’’ and the nightmare that was for so many unfortunate Allied prisoners. John Toland’s excellent book “The Rising Sun’ is a good place to start.’. From the Bataan Death March, the “Hell Ships’’’ to the Thai-Burma Railway the Japs were brutal captors.