I didn’t known bombers were used in that role as much as they were. I’d thought that was fighters and fighter bombers. They had specially equipped B25s with 8 (eight!) forward firing .50 BMG for strafing runs of ships and their survivors. Some of the crews felt strafing survivors was distasteful per AARs.
Japanese made it very clear from the first island landings, they didn’t surrender, they didn’t take prisoners, they gave no quarter. I wish I could find some empathy for them in that vid, but I can’t. The Japanese made the Germans look like Boy Scouts.
“During and after the “Battle of the Bismarck Sea” allied aircrews strafed Japanese ship survivors in the sea. The goal was to keep them from reaching the shore, where they could reinforce the Garrison on New Guinea. This was a controversial part of the battle. The video will review the aircrew’s after action reports, orders given to attack the Japanese survivors and the rational for the attacks.”
I remember reading about USS Wahoo, WW2 sub, that fired on survivors of a ship they sank, killing 250. They’d thought they were jap troops, but most turned out to be Indian POWs. The captain, Cdr. Mush Morton, wasn’t tried, but in fact got a commendation for the action. I know war is an ugly business, but Holy Hell, I dunno how that could be construed as anything but a war crime, irregardless of the atrocities of the Japanese.
I like a bit from comic Norm Macdonald where he said he’d been reading a lot of history, and it struck him how the good guys always seem to win… how lucky is that, he said.
I’ve long said that Wahoo needed a Klingon Promotion aboard that night, because Morton surfacing the boat to gratuitously machinegun survivors was an unnecessary endangerment of vessel and crew.
A far cry from IIRC the captain of Growler, who wounded and unable to make it below hollered “TAKE HER DEEP!” down the hatchway before closing it, sacrificing himself to save his boat and men.
Murdering an ALLY’s POWs, the Brits shoulda had some choice things to say about that…
30 years after the War, my Uncle who served as a AA Gunner on the Saratoga refused to enter our Home because my Father had an Engineer working for Hitachi over to complete some work on the weekend.
I think you have really underestimated the amount of hate that generation had for the Japanese
If they promise to fight to the death, it sure would seem they are enemy combatants so long as they are alive. Sometimes you can’t always play by your own rules and have to play by theirs.
That seems reasonable in the case of the Imperial Japanese military for sure.
The notion of trying to kill civilians on their way to the store cause they might grow a vegetable, etc. that might get routed to an opposing military seems unreasonable.
