| RolStoppable said: Last week I watched a few documentations about World War II and the warzone in the pacific was also one of the topics. The Japanese would rather die than surrender, so they developed kamikaze tactics where they sacrificed the pilots of their airforce. That in and of itself is already insane, but on the islands that the USA took back from Japan, even the civilians would commit mass suicide when a defeat was looming. The point is that Japan was an enemy that wasn't like any other and that's why I think that the nuclear bombs were necessary to end the war. The nazis surrendered when they were outmatched, but the Japanese tended to choose death. Who knows how many people would have died if the USA didn't demonstrate how unwinnable this war was for Japan and how quickly Japan could have been wiped out altogether. |
A combination of what you've described, but you also had severe mental health (revenge) concerns among US troops. By the time they were preparing for the final push to the Japanese mainland, word had spread regarding the treatment of US PoW's in Palawan, Cabanatuan, Corregidor, and the Bataan Death March (among other things). There was a genuine concern that US soldiers, driven to the near breaking point after going through the Pacific Isles, would simply kill everything they came across in Japan.
And to add to the suicide attacks, even injured soliders, or not wounded at all, would pretend to be dead, and then suicide grenade troops as they approached/passed by.
I recommend watching the Pacific series (HBO), reading the accompanying book by Ambrose (The Pacific), and Helmet for my Pillow and With the Old Breed. Mental health was a huge problem in the Pacific, and they go into it throughout those books and the episodes.
