Talk:American mutilation of Japanese war dead/Archive 1

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Could the person(s) that wrote this biased article make it any more clear that they hate Americans? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bamafader (talk • contribs) 11:03, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Single source tag

The article is based mainly on 2 scholarly articles that pretty much sum up the state of knowledge available in other books. The tag is therefore in error. But I will add some of the references they use to the further reading section. --Stor stark7 ^Talk 02:53, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The Steinbeck Quote

John Steinbeck in 1958 wrote this about his period as a war correspondent. “We were all part of the war effort. We went along with it, and not only that, we abetted it... I don't mean that the correspondents were liars.. It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies. "The foolish reporter who broke the rules would not be printed at home, and in addition would be put out of the theater by the command..."[1], [2]

The following motivation was given for the deletion of the quote: "removed misleading Steinbeck quote - it seems to be on another topic, and he didn't report from the Pacific)"

I have a few problems with this. The quote is used in the main source provided for it [3], not a high quality source by all means (they got the year wrong for the Life magazine picture), but it puts it in context to help explain why so little is known about the skulls by the average american "john doe" on the street.

I did not know that Steinbeck as a war corespondent only reported for his newspaper from Europe, are you really sure he never was in the Pacific too?

Even if so, does it matter? The same circumstances as regards reporting presumably applied in Europe as in the Pacific. In fact, I'd personally expect the informal censorship would be even stricter in the Pacific arena.--Stor stark7 ^Talk 22:34, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

That would probably be fine for an essay, but Wikipedia aims to be an Encylopedia, and using the quote in anything but a literal context (eg, Steinbeck's personal experiances as a correspondent in Europe) violates the policy Wikipedia:No original research. This policy states that "Interpretations and syntheses must be attributable to reliable sources that make these interpretations and syntheses". If you want to write about war correspondents not reporting attrocities in the Pacific then you need to cite a reference on this specific topic. --Nick Dowling (talk) 07:08, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand. Are you confirming that you have verified that Steinbeck only reported from Europe and never from the Pacific?

MACABRE MYSTERY from The Pueblo Chieftain Online 2003 uses the Steinbeck quote to try to explain the trophy skull they discovered there, or rather how media reporting was downplayed at the time. But okay, using your definition we can use another war correspondent quote from the same article directly related to the war.

"Edward L. Jones, a U.S. war correspondent in the Pacific, wrote about the practice in the February 1946 edition of The Atlantic Monthly: "We boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter-openers."" Although I prefer the full quote.

WE Americans have the dangerous tendency in our international thinking to take a holier-than-thou attitude toward other nations. We consider ourselves to be more noble and decent than other peoples, and consequently in a better position to decide what is right and wrong in the world. What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought, anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers. We topped off our saturation bombing and burning of enemy civilians by dropping atomic bombs on two nearly defenseless cities, thereby setting an all-time record for instantaneous mass slaughter. One War Is Enough by Edgar L. Jones

--Stor stark7 ^Talk 22:03, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The quote is from Steinbeck's introduction to his book of war correspondance 'Once There was a War' (page 13 in the 1975 Pan Books edition I own) and refers to the general inability to report on topics which were judged to be detrimental to the war effort (due to self-censorship and the military censors) and is in no way a reference to Allied war crimes - the examples he gives of stories he couldn't report are things like the vanity of senior officers and soldiers showing fear. All of the reports in the book were filed from Britain, North Africa and Italy. As such, the Steinbeck quote has no specific reference to Allied warcrimes in the Pacific and doesn't belong in the article. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Lindbergh's Wartime Journals

Another good source on the subject:

• Alden Whitman (August 30, 1970). "Lindbergh Says U.S. 'Lost ' World War II". New York Times. (mirror)
• Charles A. Lindbergh (1970). The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. (The linked page has some excerpts from the book).

--Saintjust (talk) 08:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty skeptical of whether that website should be considered a reliable source - it's run by Nobukatsu Fujioka, who seems pretty controversial, and most of Lindbergh's claims (if they're accurate quotes - I suspect that the book itself should be quoted) seem to be second-hand stories. As the NY Times article makes clear, Lindbergh himself was very sympathetic towards the Axis so what he wrote should be taken with a lot of salt. There are reliable and scholarly sources on this topic, so there's no reason to use bad sources. --Nick Dowling (talk) 09:48, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Lindbergh is a notable figure and that he was one of the very early critics of this issue is notable also. I don't see any reason to suspect Fujioka for misquoting the journals. If you can't use a source just because it is provided by someone who supports one side of an issue, then you can't use the majority of evidences and witnesses on Japanese war crimes such as Nanking massacre and comfort women that are provided from by the Chinese and the Koreans. --Saintjust (talk) 10:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Given that neither Lindbergh or Fujioka are unbiased and that reliable and unbiased sources exist on this topic, why make any use of them? The same obviously applies to all other unreliable historical sources, including those on Japanese war crimes - there's no shortage of good material to draw on when writing about World War II. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:24, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "unbiased"? It's only natural that most of people who take interest in an issue like this are involved with the issue themselves in some way or the other. The majority of scholars who study American war crimes in the Pasific War are either American or Japanese and not of some totally unrelated nationality/ethnicity like Uganda for an obvious reason. The majority of victims and witnesses of such war crimes are naturally involved with one of the concerned parties also. Mark Twain, the vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, has an entire section dedicated to himself in the article "Philippine-American War." --Saintjust (talk) 10:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Australians

A single Australian example is mentioned - is this to illustrate the practice was not limited to US personnel or that examples by (for instance Commonwealth) other troops were unusual? GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

No, there was no particular intention behind it. Originally the sentence was in a section called "Types of Trophies", but the article has morphed since I started it. I had intended that particular section to list the various types of trophies that were taken, and how they could be further "processed". I thought turning a skull into a tobacco-jar was worthy of inclusion, and included Australian just because the source said it was an Australian that was known to have created one.

The sources are focused on Americans, hence the title. I cant remember any comparison with other Allied nationalities in the area, although I haven't re-read the entire papers. I went back to the source for that information and found in a footnote the comment that some Australians just as Americans also collected skulls, and points the reader to the following sources.

• Clarke,P. & M.McKinney 2004. The equal heart and mind: letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. p. 68-9
• Johnston,M. 2000. Fighting the enemy: Australian soldiers and their adversaries in World War II. Cambridge: University Press. p. 82
• Stanley, P. 1997. Tarakan: an Australian tragedy. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. p. 140

The tobaco jar is from Johnston. Maybe it should be briefly mentioned in the context section that some Australians also collected skulls? --Stor stark7 ^Talk 21:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I have the Stanley book, and that page confirms that Australian troops rarely took prisoners during the Battle of Tarakan (1945) (though it was very rare for Japanese soldiers to try to surrender during this or most other battles as they were indoctrinated and forced to fight to the death) and that some Australian veterans of this battle recall their comrades mutilating Japanese corpses to extract gold teath and some occasional collection of skulls. Stanley is the former chief historian at the Australian War Memorial (and was in that job at the time the book was published, I think) so this is a very reliable source on Australian soldiers in this battle. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

This newspaper-story contains mainly anecdotal evidence from single witnesses, not scholarly enough for this slightly controversial article so we cant really use it in the article, but since it is in relation to the question that started this section it might be noted here in the talk page that it mentions that "There are also stories of Japanese ears and heads being collected by British-led troops - particularly by Gurkhas and Nigerians."--Stor stark7 ^Talk 00:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, it took me a while to figure out which Channel 4 TV series was being referred to in the above Guardian/Observer article. This Japanese article on the book that followed helped [4]. The TV series was first aired in the summer of 2001, and was called "HELL IN THE PACIFIC: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Beyond". Some quotes from the article on the colour film footage available:

The film, shot in colour, was taken by an unknown combat cameraman in 1944 during fighting on the Pacific Island of Peleliu. It includes scenes of American soldiers shooting Japanese wounded as they lie prone on the ground.

In another scene on the Japanese island of Okinawa a year later, a US soldier is filmed dragging a wounded enemy from a hiding place. Although the man has his ankles tied together, two bullets are fired into his knees and then, while he is still moving, shots are fired into his chest and head.

Other footage from Hell in the Pacific shows American soldiers using bayonets to hack at Japanese corpses while looting them. Former servicemen interviewed by researchers spoke of the widespread practice of looting gold teeth from the dead - and sometimes from the living.

Others spoke of units throwing away their bayonets to avoid being ordered by 'over-enthusiastic' officers to charge, and of machine-gunning villages full of civilians and clubbing wounded Japanese soldiers to death as they tried to surrender.

I suppose the raw footage must be public domain. I wonder if Wikipedia will evolve to the point where we easily can include videos of such footage and not only images.--Stor stark7 ^Talk 15:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Picture Needed

The article needs a picture or more. I posted the text below (copied from Wikipedia:Media copyright questions/Archive/2008/January) to the, duh, media copyright page. Any suggestions are welcome:--Stor stark7 ^Talk 23:23, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I need a picture for the article American mutilation of Japanese war dead. I would have preferred to use this "picture of the week" from May 1944 but somehow I think Life Magazine would not agree to it.

This image would also be ok, but I suppose the copyright can be owned by an individual.

Therefore my hope lies with the image in this article:

• The Pueblo Chieftain Online, MACABRE MYSTERY

The photos are "COURTESY PHOTOS/ OFFICE OF PUEBLO COUNTY CORONER". the relevant quote is "The signatures on the skull are quite legible in photographs released to The Chieftain by Pueblo County Coroner James Kramer after the newspaper submitted a formal Freedom of Information Act request." Does this mean they are free for anyone to use? Or do you need to ask permission from the Pueblo Chieftain, and/or the Pueblo County Coroner? --Stor stark7 ^Talk 22:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

My suspicion - and hopefully User:Megapixie will stop by to spread a little of his/her mega pixie dust of knowing the answer to everything - is that those images are still the intellectual property of the Pueblo County Coroner, and that the newspaper was making fair use of them. My further suspicion is that a fair use rationale for use of the photo the Wikipedia article you mentioned wouldn't pass muster, but I don't pretend to be certain about any of this. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 00:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

All three images are not free enough to be free (for one reason or another), however because you discuss the image and its impact, you actually have an excellent case for using the Time Life image as fair-use. Find a low resolution unwatermarked version if possible (no larger than 300 pixels in any one dimension). Make sure you credit the source fully - i.e. Time Life, photographer, etc. Tag with {{Non-free historic image}} and add a WP:FURG. Same principle as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, in that the image itself is famous, and we are commenting on the impact of the image. The other images would fail fair use, as they are not directly discussed. Megapixie (talk) 06:16, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I found another Life picture, this time a display of what appears to be Japanese killed during the invasion of the Aleutian islands [5]

Picture of a Japanese skull being displayed during the battle of Peleliu with sign "Danger! Move Fast" http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/the-battle-of-the-bulge-timeline.htm/printable

LIFE picture; Japanese skull being displayed on a US tank during the battle at Guadalcanal. http://www.rastko.org.yu/kosovo/istorija/ccsavich-propaganda/009.jpg

Picture from Brunei Museum; Australian soldiers searching dead Japanese; one in the background is holding the head of a decapitated Japanese soldier. http://bruneiresources.blogspot.com/2007/04/brunei-in-world-war-ii.html

Racism

I've changed a line that previously read "The mixture of inate American racism, dehumanizing propaganda, and real and imagined Japanese atrocities lead to intense loathing of the Japanese." to "The mixture of racism, dehumanizing....". Whatever the racism of the US media and/or military during the war, there is no way it could be considered 'innate'. Somearemoreequal (talk) 10:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Ridiculous

Is it really necessary to have an entire Wikipedia article about the relatively trivial subject of Allied collecting of Japanese skulls during WWII? I mean, seriously.

Since most of the "worthwhile" bits of this drivel (I especially love the quote: "The U.S. armed forces had a long history of brutality in the pacific, beginning with the Philippine-American_War, where military operations lasted until 1913." - oh yes, those nasty brutish Americans! Ooooh!!!) are just replicated from the already ridiculous Allied war crimes during World War II article, I think the best course of action is to just merge this completely superfluous stinker into that one. -- Grandpafootsoldier (talk) 03:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I found this article a very interesting read, and not "trivial" in the least. I suppose you could call it "relatively trivial", but about 99% of all articles on wikipedia are "relatively trivial". Odiumjunkie (talk) 06:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

i too find it (and the commentary here) thought-provoking: one has to wonder how otherwise decent young americans could think nothing of this kind of savagery, of doing something that, if done to a white man, would provoke nationwide outrage. it's a chilling reminder of the human capacity for evil: that headhunting wasn't confined to the distant past or to neolithic tribesmen from the remotest corners of the world, but was practiced by contemporaries of my grandparents. one also has to wonder why some people would rather suppress information about the practice than confront it honestly. those who cannot remember the past. . . 69.138.115.189 (talk) 14:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC) Yes, I agree the article should be deleted, It is just as collection of sensationalist reporting a few occasional accidents to make a synthesis.--Molobo (talk) 17:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I see that you have resumed following me around Molobo (talk · contribs).--Stor stark7 ^Talk 17:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Major reason not given in article

In Ken Burns' documentary on the war, I seem to remember on veteran recalling that they would stab Japanese soldiers on the ground as they passed because earlier, Japanese soldiers had pretended to be dead and then shot American soldiers in the back after they passed. I don't have the definite site so I won't include it, but someone must. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.191.14 (talk) 05:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that is relevant, but if you have a reliable source that links Japanese soldiers feigning death to Americans keeping body parts of their enemies as trophies, add it, on the other hand I think considering the plentiful supply of ammunition amongst Americans in the pacific, why wouldn't they just fire off a few more rounds rather than spend time mutilating and removing body parts of their enemies just to see if they were dead? Thisglad (talk) 01:18, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Certainly relevant to the sections about the low numbers of Japanese POWs taken. My grandfather ran crash boats in the Adak campaign, and told me how they stopped picking up Japanese sailors after getting shot at from life rafts too often. I think it's important to provide some context. This is an difficult article to read; prior to Adak, my grandfather was on the Nevada at Pearl Harbor. I would hope anyone stumbling on this article can place it in the context of Bataan, Nanking, Manchukua, and so forth. Anyway, I'm ranting. I'll see if I can find some useful sources.75.169.33.206 (talk) 05:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Modern Perceptions

Groupthink is a powerful weapon of war, and we need to consider if the Wiki "Neutral Point of View" might be tempting contributors to skew the original actors' intentions by the imposition of the relatively recent ethical ideas imposed on us by Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The work of Noam Chomsky might be relevant here, but I do not feel qualified to insert such a section or perform the clean-up which I feel is needed on this article. Any offers? Timpo (talk) 16:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no need for the opinion of a pacifist. War is hell and WWII was the worst. I've added a paragraph at the beginning that tries to put these anecdotes in context. Readers of this article should keep in mind that war stories -- some true, some made-up, some embellished -- are an art-form, possibly even therapeutic for participants. SilasCreek (talk) 06:41, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

We need to guard against adding our opinions or values to this article lest it turn into an article more about our values than about this facet of American history. Rklawton (talk) 12:26, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Japanese surrender?

There is a lot of discussion on this page of the notion that the Japanese were afraid to surrender becuase they surely would be executed by Americans. My challange to this argument can be sumed up as Pascal's Wager. I.E. if I am Japanese and I know I will die if I continue fighting and I have a 99.999999% chance of being executed if I surrender surely I would still try to surrender even for that 0.000001% chance I may live. Unless there was such a culture of honor and social stigma associated with surrender. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.108.31.34 (talk) 21:28, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

This argument is flawed because there might have been a 0.00001% chance of defending the Japanese homeland by relentless fight. Apart from that, even suiciding might be the better option if a person is convinced a priori that Seppuku would increase the quality of the afterlife (you mentioned that). --77.21.78.54 (talk) 17:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Japanese Reaction

Regarding the mass civilian suicides on Saipan and Okinawa after the allied landings....This was more the result of the Japanese military encouraging/forcing suicide on the civilian population more than it was their own fear of the Americans. If you wish to check, this is easily verifiable in two ways. First, several first hand accounts of civilian Japanese survivors. And second(and most significant), the fact that the civilian suicide rate was FAR lower, or even non-existent on islands where the Japanese military did not have a large presence. In short, the Japanese military bears the direct responsibility for the mass civilian suicides. Abalu (talk) 06:33, 24 March 2009 (UTC)Abalu

Well that's a bit of a fallacy there, Abalu. That second to last sentence is a classic mistake between causality and correlation. In this case, it doesn't prove that army is forcing/encouraging, it just means it's correlated. A more likely explanation is that Japanese military are present due to american military presence (ie they're fighting and the island is in a very hostile situation) and therefore, the islanders, feeling threatened, resort to suicide, whether it may be due to direct order by military or by terror of US GIs.

"In the U.S. there was a widely held view that the Japanese were sub-human"

What an absolutely ridiculous quote.. not suitable for inclusion in wikipedia. It uses the weasel word "widely held" (what does widely held mean - 10 people? 1000? 1 million?) and is based on an academically sloppy and biased work. This really has no place in wikipedia unless the statement is suitably quantified and evidenced. I concur with others - the neutrality of this article is horrible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.9.166.7 (talk) 15:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

We can expand that section with the examples the authors provide, but I'm sure you'd like that even less. Intresting judgement on the academic work, what are your personal academic merits, and how did you reach that conclusion?

Tell me, look at this image. Is it a female guard at at Nazi Death camp with a souvenir? No it is not, as far as I know nothing like that was ever published in Nazi Germany. This was picture of the week in LIFE one of the largest U.S. feel-good periodicals.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 16:14, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the comment - this statement is too broad and is dubious. I note that Stor didn't include that the photo got an "overwhelmingly condemnatory" response from the magazine's readers, despite this being stated in one of his main sources for the article. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:40, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Nick, I get the distinct feeling that you are trying to bias this article. For example using the quote you inserted in reference to the image. What you neglected to insert was that it was not necessarily moral or humanitarian concerns that prompted that response. Lets do some quoting of what you left out: "Still others feared the likely impact of the photograph should it reach Japan. "I have never seen a picture that could be used more patently by the enemy for anti-Allied propaganda," wrote one. Most thoughtful was a reader who observed: Let us reverse the situation and imagine that one of the most prominent magazines in Tokyo published the picture of a young Japanese girl in such a pose, gazing at the skull of one of our sons who died for his country-the storm of protest at such savagery would sweep America and it would most certainly be held up to us as an example of the hopeless depravity of Japanese youth.19

Further, as to the "dubious statement" by Weingartner. Thank you for pointing it out, but rather than deleting it we should include more information that substantiates it. For example some information from Paul Fussel: " Among Americans it was widely held that the Japanese were really subhuman, little yellow beasts, and popular imagery depicted them as lice, rats, bats, vipers, dogs, and monkeys. What was required, said the Marine Corps journal The Leatherneck in May 1945, was "a gigantic task of extermination." The Japanese constituted a "pestilence," and the only appropriate treatment was "annihilation." Some of the marines landing on Iwo Jima had "Rodent Exterminator" written on their helmet covers, and on one American flagship the naval commander had erected a large sign enjoining all to "KILL JAPS! KILL JAPS! KILL MORE JAPS!" Herman Wouk remembers the Pacific war scene correctly while analyzing Ensign Keith in The Caine Mutiny: "Like most of the naval executioners of Kwajalein, he seemed to regard the enemy as a species of animal pest." And the feeling was entirely reciprocal: "From the grim and desperate taciturnity with which the Japanese died, they seemed on their side to believe that they were contending with an invasion of large armed ants." Hiroshima seems to follow in natural sequence: (Page 27) "This obliviousness of both sides to the fact that the opponents were human beings may perhaps be cited as the key to the many massacres of the Pacific war." Since the Jap vermin resist so madly and have killed so many of us, let's pour gasoline into their bunkers and light it and then shoot those afire who try to get out. Why not? Why not blow them all up, with satchel charges or with something stronger? Why not, indeed, drop a new kind of bomb on them, and on the un-uniformed ones too, since the Japanese government has announced that women from ages of seventeen to forty are being called up to repel the invasion? The intelligence officer of the U.S. Fifth Air Force declared on July 21, 1945, that "the entire population of Japan is a proper military target," and he added emphatically, "There are no civilians in Japan.""

Or why not mention that the British embassy in the U.S. concluded that the Americans regarded the Japanese as a "nameless mass of vermin".[6] Challenged to do it I'm sure there is many more such sources to dig up, but since you aparently have read Weingartner I do not see why there should be a need to do so.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 18:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I found this article through here - http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_for_Non-Japanese_Speakers#American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead . I created an article in the Japanese wiki, added a link to here, and asked opinions/inputs regarding this subject. As a Japanese citizen residing in the U.S., I would like to express my concerns. First, I concur with the no's on "In the U.S. there was a widely held view that the Japanese were sub-human". It IS vague, unsubstantiated(like the earlier writers, how many is considered "majority"?), and certainly quite un-wikipedia statement. Also it has been suggested by the Japanese wiki to add "Violence" tag as I myself feel absolutely horrified and disgusted by the grotesque picture on the top. Children can watch the article. thanks, LH —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lynn.tyler.college (talk • contribs) 08:52, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality tag

I added the tag due the the comments raised by other editors raised on this talk page - the tone of the article seems slanted and non-neutral. My main concern is that the article doesn't indicate how common this kind of behavior was before discussing it in detail - there's really only a single sentance on the extent to which this happened, and it's vauge. While it obviously isn't going to be possible to find any hard data on the incidence of this, the article needs to be much more explicit on just how big a problem it was - any cases of clear cut war crimes like this are going to greatly concern military officials and the media so it's not enough to simply say that it occured on "a scale large enough to concern the Allied military authorities throughout the conflict and was widely reported and commented on in the American and Japanese wartime press". My more specific concerns on the article include:

• The 'Context' section is hopelessly biased as it basically states that the US military frequently committed war crimes against Asian opponents during the 20th Century (again, how common were these crimes?) and the Japanese war crimes against the Allies, which were a key driver of Allied soldiers attitudes towards Japanese troops, are relegated to single sentances in different parts of the article - this section basically states that these war crimes fit an established and underlying pattern of behaviour in the US military. -(Which is true, because I'm pretty damn sure the Native Americans aren't going to disagree.)--Anon
• "Some Japanese were also guilty of mutilating U.S. corpses, but this was neither as widespread as the American practice nor for the purpose of taking trophies" given that from August 1942 onwards the Japanese very rarely captured the locations where battles were fought against US troops (and hence the bodies of the men killed in the battle) this is a dubious comparison, especially as Japanese troops were subjected to similar types of propaganda and, occassionally, resorted to canablism of Allied corpses on some occasions (which also sparked very deep horror among Allied troops).
• the claim that this "contributed to a preference to death over surrender and occupation, shown, for example, in the mass civilian suicides on Saipan and Okinawa after the Allied landings" is dubious: Japanese troops were routinely fighting to the death rather than surrendering when faced by greatly superior forces from the early months of the war (eg, the Battle of Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo and Battle of Buna-Gona) and there's considerable evidence that many of the civilian suicides at Saipain and Okinawa were the result of the Japanese military pressuring civilians to avoid the 'dishonour' of capture. This behaviour seems to have been more the result of Japanese beliefs and the culture of the time rather than a reaction to US war crimes, and it's also worth noting that the Japanese government invented Allied war crimes to terrorise the civilian population.
• The 'Dehumanisation' section is also troublesome as a) it doesn't provide any link between propaganda and these particular crimes and b) there seems to be no reason to include the discussion of the small number of Japanese who tried to surrender and the even smaller number whose surrender was accepted (and Oct 44 isn't a great month to use given that it was shortly after the Cowra breakout in which 231 Japanese POWs were killed while trying to escape - the number of POWs at this single camp also makes me doubt the number claimed in the article given that there were also Japanese POWs at other camps in Australia, New Zealand, India and the US).
• The article states that the US high command at every level issued directions against mutilating Japanese bodies, but does not state what impact this had - surely at least some US troops were punished if the directions were "partially" obeyed? - what impact did this have? --Nick Dowling (talk) 11:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I will deal with your concerns one by one, it may take some days. I think a good start would be to point to other aspects of American criminal behavior, such as the fact that rape was general practice by U.S. soldiers against Japanese women. I will also expand on the Japanese reactions to the U.S. crimes, and on the U.S. motives for the crimes. But let me first just make a note on the:

"I added the tag due the the comments raised by other editors raised on this talk page".

As far as I can tell the comments you refer to are,

1. "The editors must hate Americans." Hardly a constructive comment and it should have been deleted a long time ago.

2. Ridiculous to have an article on the topic. At least 2 other editors have stated their disagreement to that opinion. Please don't tell me you agree with it?

3 I seem to remember on veteran recalling that they would stab Japanese soldiers as they passed because earlier, Japanese soldiers had pretended to be dead and then shot American soldiers in the back. This certainly is not the type of mutilations this article is about. It is more about this type of mutilations: the following is a description of color footage available of mutilations, taken by U.S. troops/reporters:

In another scene on the Japanese island of Okinawa a year later, a US soldier is filmed dragging a wounded enemy from a hiding place. Although the man has his ankles tied together, two bullets are fired into his knees and then, while he is still moving, shots are fired into his chest and head.

Other footage from Hell in the Pacific shows American soldiers using bayonets to hack at Japanese corpses while looting them. Former servicemen interviewed by researchers spoke of the widespread practice of looting gold teeth from the dead - and sometimes from the living.

4 Yes, I agree the article should be deleted, It is just as collection of sensationalist reporting a few occasional accidents to make a synthesis. I think my response to that particular comment should have been enough. If not, perhaps you will understand after checking these two comments. [7], [8].

Cheers --Stor stark7 ^Speak 13:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

What is your source for the claim that "rape was general practice by U.S. soldiers against Japanese women"? Everything I've read suggests the opposite: on the only occasions during the Pacific War when US troops encountered Japanese civilians (mainly on Saipan and Okinawa) the civilians were treated fairly well. The US occupation troops in Japan after the war also generally behaved well, and seem to have actually behaved better than the troops on occupation duties in Western Europe. Nick Dowling (talk) 03:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I reply in detail on the rape question in the rape section below. Some quick and dirty answers to some of your other points follow here.

• "other editors" -Dealt with.

• "Tone seems slanted". I'm sorry you feel that way, I've done my best to be completely neutral. In fact I fear I may have gone overboard to the other side, since I haven't mentioned mutilations of living prisoners, the common practice of trading in body-parts etc.

• "Extent" I think the section is quite large and good, for example mentioning the 60% figure.

• Japanese war-crimes being the "key driver" for U.S. motives. I'm sorry, but that sounds like wishful thinking to me. The sources used mention it, but do not consider it to be a "key driver". They consider U.S. dehumanization of the Japanese to be the "key driver " for the mutilations. Funnily it seems to be partially the other way around, the U.S. authorities were afraid that knowledge of the mutilations would lead to Japanese atrocities against Allied prisoners, which perhaps it did. But sure, you find a source that identifies Japanese atrocities as a "key" instead of "secondary/tertiary" cause for U.S. mutilations, then by all means include it. The section would then have to include the names of the authors; A and B state that atrocities was the main reason, while C and D state that dehumanization was the main cause. Given that Americans were being issued theese (from here)...... (see also Jap hunts)

• Japanese taking trophies. You have a point in that after the initial capture of the Philippines etc, i.e. after 1942 the Japanese would themselves had little opportunity to take G.I. heads home as decoration. Nevertheless, considering that for example the Australians and other Commonwealth troops were also taking heads, surely the Japanese would not have been so racist as to discriminate between the Allies if they themselves had such inclinations. Surely we would know of some headless Allied corpses from the Burma Campaign??? And note that the Americans were collecting heads as soon as they even got the chance.

• "Japanese troops were routinely fighting to the death rather than surrendering." How convenient to state that. Hmmm... In 1943 it was noted in a secret intelligence report that "only the promise of ice cream and three days' leave would suffice to induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese." I wonder why the Japanese seldom chose to try to surrender, hmmmm?

• Japanese military pressuring civilians to avoid the 'dishonour' of capture. Let me point out two things here. 1. The article only says that the topic of the article contributed to the suicides, not that it was the sole cause of them (I will expand the article on that point nevertheless), and 2. Where do you get "dishonor" from? The closest thing I can find relating to what you may be talking about is this "Japanese soldiers used civilians as shields against the Americans, and persuaded locals that victorious American soldiers would go on a rampage of killing and raping."[9] Apparently nothing about "dishonor", more about the soldiers urging the civilians to choose death in order to be spared the fate of ending up in American hands, figuratively as in mass rapes (see section below), or literally as in letter openers (see the article we are discussing)....Granted, suicide doesn't necessarily keep the second thing from happening, but then perhaps dying from your own method is preferably to being killed by whatever methods Americans willing to turn parts of you into souvenirs might be inclined to use.

• "This behaviour seems to have been more the result of Japanese beliefs and the culture of the time rather than a reaction to US war crimes, and it's also worth noting that the Japanese government invented Allied war crimes to terrorise the civilian population." Do you have any sources for those statements, particularly the "invented" part?

• Prisoner numbers. If you really want I can provide you with more detailed numbers. Otherwise perhaps you will settle with knowing that once the value of prisoners was realized the U.S. command took efforts to stamp out the U.S. "take no prisoners" attitude. From Niall Fergussons paper on prisoner killing:

Similar efforts were made to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. ‘Surrender passes’ and translations of the Geneva Convention were dropped on Japanese positions, and concerted efforts were made to stamp out the practice of taking no prisoners. On 14 May 1944 General MacArthur sent a telegram to the commander of the Alamo Force demanding an ‘investigation . . . of numerous reports reaching this headquarters that Japanese carrying surrender passes and attempting to surrender in Hollandia area have been killed by our troops’.190 The Psychological Warfare Branch representative at X Corps, Captain William R. Beard, complained that his efforts were being negated ‘by the front-line troops shooting [Japanese] when they made an attempt to surrender’.191 But gradually the message got through, especially to more experienced troops. ‘Don’t shoot the bastard!’ shouted one veteran when a Japanese emerged from a foxhole waving a surrender leaflet.192 By the time the Americans took Luzon in the Philippines, ‘70 percent of all prisoners surrendering made use of surrender passes or followed exactly the instructions contained in them’. The Philippines had been deluged with over 55 million such leaflets, and it seems plausible to attribute to this propaganda effort the fall in the ratio of prisoners to Japanese dead from 1:100 in late 1944 to 1:7 by July 1945 (Figure 8). Still, the Japanese soldier who emerged with six surrender leaflets – one in each hand, one in each ear, one in his mouth, and one tucked in a grass band tied around his waist – was wise to take no chances.193

• Impact - "surely at least some US troops were punished". Ha, god knows. A slap on the wrist perhaps. The soldier responsible for the notorious "Life Magazine picture of the week" that did so much P.R. damage was in the end, very reluctantly by the army/navy, tracked down. I'll expand on it in the article. Nimitz reluctantly recommended that he be given a "letter of censure" whatever that means. Doesn't sound very serious. And, there is no information on whether he received even that punishment. I'd say that taking skulls home from dead enemies during WW II seems to be a fairly non-risk business, probably the worst that'll happen is that the skull in question gets confiscated. Not really something that would keep people from getting a fresh one.

--Stor stark7 ^Speak 20:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Those comments don't adress my concerns, or the concerns of other editors who you choose to dismiss - I agree that some of the above comments don't warrant any kind of response, but those made by Grandpafootsoldier and Molobo seem valid. Your statement that the 'Extent of practice' section is satisfactory is where I think that I disagree with you the most. This critical section is vauge and appears to be the main reason this article is criticised on grounds related to WP:UNDUE. In short, the article does not establish that this was a widespread problem before it then goes on to imply that it was and attribute this to US troops being brainwashed into violent racism and aparantly routine war crimes. Even the one bit of quantitative data you quote is unacceptably vauge: "In 1984 Japanese soldiers remains were repatriated from the Mariana Islands. Roughly 60 percent were missing their skulls" How many Japanese soldiers were repatriated? (thousands? a few?) and what evidence is there that the reason they lacked their heads was due to head hunting? If your sources state that Japanese attrocities had little impact on Allied troops opinions I think that you may need to widden your reading - for instance, attrocities were a key factor which lead to Australian troops developing a deep hatred for their Japanese opponents. I'm not going to bother debating the inncidence of Japanese troops attempting to surrender with you, though I do agree that Allied troops rarely accepted individual Japanese surrenders (this wasn't restricted to the Pacific War though - historically invididual soldiers attempting to surrender during battles have a high chance of being killed in the process, and such killings weren't uncommon in the European theatre of the war). Nick Dowling (talk) 11:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

References

Rapes

This section is in reply to Nick Dowlings' question.

An estimated 10,000 Japanese women were eventually raped by American troops during the Okinawa campaign. H-Net review of The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II. According to Peter Schrijvers, rape was "a general practice against Japanese women".H-Net review of The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II According to a New York Times article from June 1, 2000 regarding the 1998 discovery of the corpses of 3 U.S. rapists killed by Okinawan villagers after repeated rape-visits by the group: "rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 either know or have heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war." "3 Dead Marines and a Secret of Wartime Okinawa" New York Times, June 1, 2000

Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes based on several years of research:

Soon after the US marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the marines "mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the situation, they started "hunting for women" in broad daylight and those who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.

Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II By Yuki Tanaka, Toshiyuki Tanaka, page 111

---

You should read the sources provided for the above paragraphs, they have much more additional information to give on the U.S. rapes of Japanese women.

You can also further read the books by Yuki Tanaka and John Dower. You can also check Joanna Bourke, An Intimate history of Killing, London, Granta Books, 1999, p. 354.

The following two books, with some pages available from Google Books, tell of continuing rapes during the years of Allied occupation.

• Voices from the Japanese Women's Movement
• The Making of Black Revolutionaries

The first book speaks of Japanese women being raped in the fields and in the U.S. military bases.

The later book tells the experience of a black soldier of the forces of occupation, a few years into the occupation.

The saddest thing was that some of the brothers also called the Okinawans gooks. They adopted the superior attitude of the american white man and they, too, though thought they were better than the Okinawans. They, too, did some of the things the whites did, especially to the women of Okinawa. Not so much, but enough to open my eyes.

There came a night when several men in my barracks whent out and brough back an elderly woman from a nearby village. They pulled a train on her, passing her from one bunk to another.

How could you put that gun to that womans head and then rape her like the white soldiers were doing all over the island of okinawa? When you heard about what the white soldiers were doing, how could you not think of slavery and what the man did to our women? How could you adopt the white man's way? How could you go out and kill brown men by day and rape brown women at night? How could you?--Stor stark7 ^Speak 08:33, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not convinved that those sources are sufficent to justify the statement that "rape was general practice by U.S. soldiers against Japanese women" (as this implies that most US troops were rapists), but am willing to conceed that I may have been wrong about the US troops on Okinawa. It's worth noting that over 7,000 Japanese prisoners were taken during this campaign, which suggests that the US Army and Marines weren't mindless murderers. --Nick Dowling (talk) 11:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Gracious of you to concede that you "may have been wrong about U.S. troops on Okinawa". How about the U.S. troops in the rest of occupied Japan?: as stated in the H-NET review: "A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone".

As to the "It's worth noting"; We should also note that only 12,500 American soldiers were killed, while 66,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in Okinawa. We should also note that by this time the campaign to teach U.S. soldiers that prisoners were valuable for intelligence gathering reasons and therefore should be taken and kept alive had been ongoing for quite some time. As Ferguson writes: "it seems plausible to attribute to this propaganda effort the fall in the ratio of prisoners to Japanese dead from 1:100 in late 1944 to 1:7 by July 1945".

As to "...though I do agree that Allied troops rarely accepted individual Japanese surrenders"; I don't like the implied statement that you agree with something I've allegedly stated. I have not restricted myself to individual surrenders, nor claimed that it was a question of "not accepting surrender". It is a question of killing everyone, whether during individual or mass surrender attempts, and also of killing prisoners in the few cases such were taken. As Ulrich Straus writes; When prisoners nevertheless were taken, many times these were shot during transport because "it was too much bother to take [them] in".

And to further challenge preconceptions, lets quote the Research of another professor. Richard Aldrich:[10]

"the soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army were far from the cruel, mindless troops of popular legend" "Prof Aldrich has found Japanese diaries that belie the common perceptions that soldiers or even low-ranking officers were automata devoted fanatically to their emperor and the codes of bushido, hara-kiri and kamikaze." ""One young officer praises America and its ideas of democracy and modernity, while on another occasion a Japanese soldier voices out loud his envy of some Germans who had set up a sort of peacenik camp on New Guinea to get away from the war,""

"We have this stereotypical idea that the Japanese were all cruel and robotic while the Allied forces were tough but fair in their treatment of the enemy. But I was very surprised by much of what I found and had to rethink all those stereotypes." "Prof Aldrich found several examples confirming what became an American policy in some parts of the Pacific theatre not to take prisoners of war."

On one occasion he commented to a group of senior officers that very few Japanese seemed to be taken prisoner.: "Oh, we could take more if we wanted to," one of the officers replied. "But our boys don't like to take prisoners.

"It doesn't encourage the rest to surrender when they hear of their buddies being marched out on the flying field and machine-guns turned loose on them."

his allegations are supported by other American diarists, who report that the US marines, in particular, did not take many prisoners. Prof Aldrich also discovered new diaries showing that American generals worried about the abuse of human remains by their troops.

They were particularly concerned that the skulls of dead Japanese soldiers were often displayed as gruesome mascots by some units, while US marines made a speciality of collecting ears.

Australian troops are also shown not to like taking prisoners. Prof Aldrich quotes the 1943 diary of Eddie Stanton, an Australian posted to Goodenough Island off Papua New Guinea. "Japanese are still being shot all over the place," he wrote. "The necessity for capturing them has ceased to worry anyone. Nippo soldiers are just so much machine-gun practice. Too many of our soldiers are tied up guarding them."--Stor stark7 ^Speak 16:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Am I correct in reading your above post to mean that you believe that very substancial numbers of Japanese attempted to surrender but were killed while trying to do so, and that this is a more important reason which explains the small number of Japanese POWs taken by the Allies than the Japanese military's hostile attitudes towards surrender? Nick Dowling (talk) 06:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You are only partially correct. Yes, substantial numbers of Japanese were killed when trying to surrender. But, also, substantial numbers of Japanese were killed after surrendering, when they were POW's. And, yes, I believe this indirectly explains the small number of Japanese POW's. But this is not something I needed to figure out on my own. This comes from reading works focusing on the topic such as Niall Fergusson:

"it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonor that deterred German and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on." (He is referring to Germans on the Eastern front, by the way). This is from "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat", War in History, 2004, 11 (2): p.176.

Judging by your surprise about the massive rapes, and comments such as "it's also worth noting that the Japanese government invented Allied war crimes to terrorise the civilian population." and " "on the only occasions during the Pacific War when US troops encountered Japanese civilians (mainly on Saipan and Okinawa) the civilians were treated fairly well. The US occupation troops in Japan after the war also generally behaved well, and seem to have actually behaved better than the troops on occupation duties in Western Europe." I'm not at all confident about the NPOV or scholarly quality of the sources you've read to give you your impression of the Pacific conflict.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 10:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

clearly you dont read scholarly articles the truth is that you only have one source saying what you claim while their a thousand sources that disprove them youre only source is from a scholar who is well known for taking sensationalistl views and their yellow journalism its clear that you are motivated by bias and the steryotype of the stupid racist american its true that many japanese were shot trying to surrender they were shot by their officers for cowardice i reccomend if you want any credibility you should stop citing weingartner 98.250.4.115 (talk) 18:34, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

As noted above, I don't intend to engage in a debate with you on the topic of prisoner killing, especially as you seem to hold an unusual view on the subject (eg, that lots of Japanese wanted to surrender but were prevented from being able to successfully do so) and I agree with your basic point that Allied troops generally didn't take prisoners in the Pacific - though the reason for this is more complex than just racism (blue eyed and blond haired members of the Waffen SS were also lucky to be taken prisoner in Europe). I still maintain that this article does not establish that "American mutilation of Japanese war dead" was a serious problem or is attributable mainly to violent racism, and you have not added further sources to prove this point. Nick Dowling (talk) 03:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Borneo

I've been informed that the book "All Elevations Unknown: An Adventure in the Heart of Borneo" might be of interest.[http://www.amazon.com/All-Elevations-Adventure-Heart-Borneo/dp/0767907566] Or rather, the older memoir book it often refers too and that forms the heart of the book. "World Within", by Tom Harison, the Memoirs of a British officer parashoted into Borneo. Apparently the Allies recruited local headhunter tribes to form irregular outfits, run by Allied officers, to fight the Japanese. Needless to say, having dedicated headhunters as Allied troops was bound to lead to atrocities. If more scholarly information on the topic is available somewhere it might form part of the context section, or form the basis of its own article.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 16:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Those guerillas were coordinated and supported by the Australian Z Special Unit, and were indeed encouraged to use their 'traditional' forms of warfare against the Japanese (some of the headhunter tribes of Borneo are still doing this when faced with Indonesian police and soldiers). The Australian-lead New Guinean irregulars also sometimes engaged in head hunting, which is their traditional form of warfare (which is also practiced to this day in the Papuan Highlands). That said, I think that you're grasping at straws if you're thinking of including that kind of material in this article as an example of racist attrocities. Nick Dowling (talk) 22:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Dear Nick Dowling, thanks for the background information, but: "you're grasping at straws"??? Let me explain; this article is about the mutilation of dead Japanese soldiers, and the taking of their body parts as trophies or souvenirs. I further have no need to "grasp straws", I have two excellent scholarly articles on the topic. I'm not the one in need of trying to cherry pick quotes from commercially oriented literature targeted at a western audience which may only mention the topic in passing, and then probably in a not very researched nor accurate manner.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 10:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

There seems to me to be a very large difference between the behaviours of warriors from what were, at the time, pre-modern societies in which mutilation of enemy corpses was considered an entirely routine, acceptable and honourable part of warfare and soldiers from the world's most advanced country in which such behaviour was, at least in theory, a serious war crime. Morover, the topic of the article is "American mutilation of Japanese war dead", so the behaviour of Australian-led tribemen seems a bit out of scope (though I'd welcome expanding the scope of the article, which seems too narrow - War crimes of the Pacific War would help put things in perspective). I'm interested to see that you're dismissing Bergerud, whose book is regarded as a minor classic on the combat behaviour and experiances of American soldiers, as he offers another explation than those advanced in the narrow sources you're using (which includes the very commercially oriented Niall Ferguson, who is in no way a specialist on WW2 or military history). Bergerud is a specialist military historian who interviewed dozens of US and Australian soldiers for his book, which is a frank account of how the war was fought and is in no way a 'Greatest Generation' style history. Nick Dowling (talk) 03:45, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I've added some information on Australians to the 'context' section to make the point that this behaviour wasn't limited to US troops and, for Australians at least, revulsion at Japanese attrocities was the main factor which lead to war crimes - though racism and a lack of understanding played a key role (I'd argue that Australia was much more racist and anti-Japanese than the US prior to the war and Australian soldiers were subjected to similar propaganda). Nick Dowling (talk) 08:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

We already have the article Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II#The_Pacific. As to Bergeruds explanation, what does he base it on? As far as I could gather it is mainly a retelling of some soldiers memoirs. Is it a soldiers claim that he his just restating, or has he done a proper analysis of the topic by reviewing multiple sources, as is done in the two main sources for this article: Trophies of War: U.S. troops and the mutilation of Japanese War Dead, 1941 - 1945, Skull trophies of the Pacific War? I'm working on expanding the article as per your request, mainly based on the Japanese reaction. I will add it in a few days. It will f**k up the structure of the article, but that's the way it will have to be for now.As to Fergusson, and the other two sources, at least they have focused their research on the topic of prisoner killing/trophy hunting. They are far more valuable as sources than some author who deigns to mention it in passing without doing any proper analysis first since it is not the focus of his work.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 15:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Bergerud states that his book is based on "dozens of original interviews with American and Australian veterans of the conflict". The men he interviewed discussed killing wounded and surrendered Japanese in very frank terms (including what seems to have been an incident where sick Japanese in a hospital area were methdologically killed as some of them were holding live grenades - see pages 420-21), and the book's coverage of the factors which drove Allied attitudes towards Japanese and the kinds of incidents which occured runs for 22 pages. Mark Johnson's excellent book on Australian soldiers combat behaviour (which is regarded as the best book on the topic) is based on interviews with veterans and Army files - especially field censorship reports which tracked what soldiers were saying in private letters and conversations - and comes to pretty much the same conclusions about Australian troops as Bergerud came to about US troops. The sources you prefer might argue that US soldiers were racist murderers, but other sources state that there was more to it than just this and a desire for revenge and responses to most Japanese soldiers unwillingness to surrender where the most important factors which generated hatred for Japanese troops. If authors who publish detailed books on Allied soldiers combat behaviour in the Pacific mention mutilations "in passing" I'd argue that this indicates that the mutilations weren't all that common and this article is placing undue weight on the topic (Niall Ferguson devotes less than half a page to the topic in 'The War of the World' and discusses prisoner killing in much greater detail - this appears to be a common ratio). At present, almost all of the article is sourced to two journal articles by Harrison and Weingartner which focus on this narrow topic - while these are reliable sources under WP:V (I don't have access to JSTOR or blackwell-synergy.com so I'm afraid that I can't read them) books published by major and serious publishing houses (and you don't get much bigger than Penguin Books) are also considered reliable. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:36, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

My thinking is that this article should be merged into the greater Allied atrocities/war crimes article (Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II). Note the following section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II#Mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead. My thinking is that this article has gotten a little out of hand and become a bit more "editorial" than is healthy.Rodan32 (talk) 05:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

The Entry in the WW II crimes section is simply because this was a recognized War crime. It is a short section, with an unusually long section on the legal aspects. The latter is due to the fact that wikipedia beginners have a tendency to try to delete such information otherwise from that article unless it is written on their noses. This topic deserves its own article where the topic is explained in detail, and to which it can be pointed to from relevant associated areas using a short summary, such as the War Crimes article, the War trophy article, or the Head Hunting article.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 16:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Vietnam

i was always under the impression that what went on of this behaviour in nam was confined to ears. when i returned i, and everyone i was with, had to go through u.s. customs (like we'd been tourists,lol) and all contraband (grenades, ammunition and others too numerous to mention) was confiscated. no way anybody got through with a @#$%$#@ing skull.Toyokuni3 (talk) 02:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, obviously there are fewer Vietnam War skulls in the U.S. than WWII skulls, partly because of this stricter vetting at customs during Vietnam. Probably much was caught and disposed of there, they didnt bother taking them home, or they tried to get it home through other means. See for example Eerie Souvenirs From the Vietnam War. See also this picture of a Vietnamese skull, nicelly graphitied by the GI's.

Military forensic pathologists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology see one or two cases each year of trophy remains from the pacific theatre of world war II and Vietnam. Skulls from World War II were actually easier to bring home, since the bags of returning U.S. military personel were not searched like they were after Vietnam.[11]

I also have to agree with you on the other part, it seems more emphasis was put on softer body parts during the Vietnam war.

American and Australian soldiers in vietnam also collected body parts, and some GIs strung ears or fingers around their necks, calling them "love beads" to parody the peace movement back home. One marine recounted:

We used to cut their ears off....If a guy would have a necklace of ears, he was a good killer, a good trooper. It was encouraged to cut ears off. A female, you cut her breasts off. It was encouraged to do these things. the officers expected you to do it or there was something wrong with you.[12]

Cheers--Stor stark7 ^Speak 16:36, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

What's your source for the claim that Australian soldiers did this? I'm an Australian and have read fairly extensively about the Australian war in Vietnam, and have never seen any such claim. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:12, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

All I wrote in the text above is referenced next to the text --Stor stark7 ^Speak 01:52, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Two additional sources on Australians.[13], [14] Per your arguments in the section below the fact that such unsavory things are apparently not mentioned in the literature prepared for your consumption means it did not happen or should not be mentioned in Wikipedia?--Stor stark7 ^Speak 02:34, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. I note that the caption states that skull on display at 5 RAR's base was quickly removed and the other story is from a bar night. As for your second point: yes, I do think that topics which are judged unimportant by specialist authors should also be judged unimportant by Wikipedia. This article rests largely on two specialist papers in journals, which isn't a great basis for a lengthy article, and probably explains why this article both repeats and contradicts itself at present. Nick Dowling (talk) 05:56, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I was under the impression that it was you that had inserted the contradictions, but that is OK with me, it's only natural that "researchers" have differing opinions. As to the sources, what do you expect me to dig up on 5 minutes notice? I'd be rather alarmed that it was possible to find something that easily, despite your profession of ignorance. It's interesting that you fail to mention that the skull atop the kill board was removed together with the scoreboard because the score suddenly no longer was quite in the Australians favor... Actually I judge on-topic scholarly papers such as those that make their way into JSTOR, scientific work which have been peer reviewed, are preferable to snippets from books for popular consumption and on other topics, where the only reviewing is done by the publishing editor.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 13:42, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

undue weight

be careful of giving undue weight to this phenomenon. From reading this article, I still don't know if it's common or not. One sentence says it's not widespread, another says it's serious enough to cause concern in the allied high command. The article also disregards the common practice of Japanese soldiers to fight to the end and not surrender. As it is the article is very biased and spotty, and when a few selected authors make such claims, their names need to be present in the article, so that their claims would not be taken as commonly entrenched beliefs when they are not. Blueshirts (talk) 20:38, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree - see the discussion above. Reliable histories of the experiances of US soldiers in the Pacific Theatre generally devote 2-3 pages on this topic. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

And the number of pages devoted to it in lightweight popular consumption literature means exactly what? How many pages do they devote to rape? Does that mean it did not occur or was insignificant? How about rape during the European campaign?--Stor stark7 ^Speak 01:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that I'd call Dower, Schrijvers or Bergerud's books 'lightweight popular consumption literature'. Nick Dowling (talk) 06:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I just found a PDF version of the article by Simon Harrison which is the article's major source. The article is anoyingly vauge about the incidence of this behavior, but clearly states that only a minority of US troops took body parts and few of these took skulls or bones - this qualifier was missing from the article. Nick Dowling (talk) 01:02, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

trophy taking

The article states and I quote "perceived inhuman cruelty of Imperial Japanese forces" there is no perception of inhuman cruelty on the part of the Japanese forces. There is only documented fact that the Imperial Japanese Army were brutal and treated captives in an inhumane manner be it on or off the battlefield. Let's not sugarcoat their actions with language that suggests it was a feeling the Japanese Army might be conducting themselves in a manner inconsistent with rules of warfare governing the treatment of corpses, POWs (death march, murder, starvation, canabalism, etc.) and civilians (rape chairs, live bayonet practice, bio warfare, etc.). The Japanese Army did commit abhorrent acts of violence against prisoners and the Japanese Army did violate human remains in a most profane manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 8.21.180.41 (talk) 20:06, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Trophy taking of those considered to be the most vile criminals was common place until the 1950s, in most western countries. Executed felons often had their scrotums cutoff by the prison governor to be made into some type of pouch. Tobacco and snuff pouches were all the rage. Trophy taking of skulls has be a favorite through out the ages. The offended and the deniers of this article are judging common old-practices by modern standards. Deranged torturing of the living and killing by cutting of large chunks of flesh was a speciality of the Jap Imperial Army. Go read the evidence in the Pacific War trials from 1945 to 1947.203.87.98.101 (talk) 11:34, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Skull collecting

The claims of skull collecting in the Harrison paper don't make sense to me. Both he and Dower note that it was rare for US soldiers to collect Japanese heads, and that this was considered abhorent by the great majority of US personnel, but he then goes on to discuss it as if it was common. I'd be interested to know what the response to the article from readers of the journal was - Stor, can you access the letters pages of subsequent editions? Nick Dowling (talk) 05:52, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid I don't have that access. Could you please quote the contradictions?--Stor stark7 ^Speak 13:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The contradiction is that the majority of Harrison's article is devoted to collecting heads, which he claims was in-line with US attitudes of the time, but yet both he and Dower state that this was actually rare and that the great majority of US troops considered such behaviour to be disgusting. The undue space Harrison devotes to this in his article seems to have been reflected in this article. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:31, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to get two things clear. 1. The focus of Harrisons article is on trying to explain the use of Japanese body parts, (of which skulls constituted a minor segment, the majority were teeth and other such parts). In this work Harrison relies on modern war literature, articles on the recovered remains, and the pre-eminent research on the topic. ^ James J. Weingartner (February, 1992). "Trophies of War: U.S. Troops and the Mutilation of Japanese War Dead, 1941-1945". Pacific Historical Review 61 (1): 556. It only costs $12.00 USD (plus tax, where applicable) to download from the publisher, considering your apparent strong intest on the topic I'm surprised you haven't done so already. Either that or gone to an university library and accessed it there for free.

2 Some Australians and Americans may have considered skull taking "disgusting", but this certainly did not extend to other body part souvenir taking which was far more accepted.

Again, please provide specific citations where authors contradict each others, not just you summary interpretation.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 10:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Unreliable references

I have removed two references from the article:

• the frist H-Net Review: Xavier Guillaume on The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II wrongly claims that Peter Schrivvers' wrote that the bodies of most dead Japanese were desecrated. He does not make this claim on the page of the book where it is attibuted to him (pg 209 of the 2002 edition) and I can't find it elsewhere in the book. Instead he states that "yet the enemy dead were not always simply ignored" and then has a single para on the mistreatment of corpses (his argument is that it was far more common for the Americans to ignore Japanese corpses than it was for them to desecrate them - not sure if that belongs in the article?).
• The second, War, Journalism, and Propaganda, An Analysis of Media Coverage of the Bosnian and Kosovo Conflicts, by Carl K. Savich seems to be a self-published and entirely unreferenced essay from someone who, in other writings, states that US policy in Kosovo was the same as Hitler's (see: [15] ). This doesn't meet the requirements at WP:V. Nick Dowling (talk) 06:34, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I can't speak for the first but the second one is not a big deal since that photo by ralph morse is available from the gettyimages.com library if you want to see it (as with the other life magazine skull photograph), I guess the reader reaction and commentary will have to be separately sourced, but the fact the photograph was published with the original caption is fact Thisglad (talk) 07:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I removed the text in the article which was attributed to the first citation as it is clearly wrong, but left the text attributed to the second citation in the article with a request that a citation be provided. Nick Dowling (talk) 07:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Refering to the first, is it on the same page were he apparently states ""American soldiers on Okinawa were seen urinating into the gaping mouth of the slain. They were 'rebutchered.' 'As the bodies jerked and quivered,' a marine on Guadalcanal wrote of the repeated shooting of corpses, 'we would laugh gleefully and hysterically'""? Is there no other qualification of prevalence?--Stor stark7 ^Speak 14:03, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, those quotes are on that page of the book, but Schrivvers does not state that the majority of Japanese dead were mutilated as was being attributed to him by that reviewer. He only seems to have two paras (not the one I noted earlier) on the subject of this article in his book, which explores the worst aspects of the Pacific War in detail. These paras read "Yet the enemy dead were not always simply ignored. They were desecrated." and which is followed by story about Okinawa, the shooting of corpses on Guadacanal, US Army engineers collecting teeth on New Georgia, sailors ibce preserving the leg of a Kamikaze off Okinawa [which Harrison quotes], US troops collecting the ears of Japanese snipers on Okinawa to prove that they'd completed their missions and a slighly skeptical account of a marine having seen some scalped Japanese corpses. There's nothing about how prevalent such behaviour was and Schrivvers spends almost full page describing how US troops often left Japanese corpses alone and unburried (which is itself poor behaviour and a war crime in some circumstance, but again he simply says that this happened 'often' - I've read other accounts which state that Allied troops were generally swift to bury corpses as they were a massive health hazzard in the tropics, so am skeptical about this) Nick Dowling (talk) 10:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

While I don't think we can do much about direct quotes (an attributed quote is always neutral), I do think they should mostly be moved into a well-labelled "Analysis" section regarding the different opinons of motivation and condemnation instead of spread all throughout the article. Right now, it's difficult at-a-glance to distinguish between fact and opinion.

That said, some quick problems I can pick out:

• "Since the Japanese were regarded as animals it is not surprising that the Japanese remains were treated in the same way as animal remains" - Not attributed as a quote, so reads as a fact
• Links to racism are, at best, indirectly related so shouldn't really be here
• The propoganda image isn't needed, most propoganda posters of that time (from all sides) showed the enemy as inhuman
• "Marines did not consider they were killing men. They were wiping out dirty animals" - needs to be attributed

Oberiko (talk) 13:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm getting fed up, Both Racism, and the imagery most definitely have their place in the article.

And how exactly do you motivate the claims that most propoganda posters of that time (from all sides) showed the enemy as inhuman, even if it were true - of which I'm not so certain and there probably are severe degree differences - how is that relevant? We are talking on the effect of American propaganda. which documentedly was severe.

Straight quotes:

Harrisson:

In the case of the Euro-American armed forces, the answer has much to do with racism. Trophy-taking in these organizations seems to have become progressively racialized during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tending increasingly to be limited to wars which mapped strongly onto social divisions of race. The Pacific War is a paradigm case of such a conflict. Conspicuous in wartime representations of the Japanese was the pervasive use of animal terms: monkeys, rats, cockroaches, lice, vermin, reptiles, and so forth. Japanese soldiers were portrayed as brutish, simian, often rabid, with an affinity for jungles and jungle warfare unfathomable to civilized combatants. In short, for many Americans in particular, the conflict in the Pacific was a war (for some, a war to the death) between peoples or races – almost between species – in a way that the war in Europe was not.

Weingartner:

The explanation for this goes far beyond the fact that the United States had been the victim of a Japanese "surprise attack," whereas Germany and Italy initiated war by means of formal and "gentlemanly" declarations. To a much greater degree than Germans (and certainly Italians), Japanese became dehumanized in the minds of American combatants and civilians, a process facilitated by the greater cultural and physical differences between white Americans and Japanese than between the former and their European foes. It was, moreover, an outgrowth of a long history of white antipathies towards "colored races" -American Indians, blacks, and Asians-which had frequently found expression in acts of murderous violence.2

...widely held view of the Japanese as less than human. This view was reflected in and stimulated by imagery, both pictorial and verbal, propagated by the U.S. mass media. In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the press applied to the Japanese such terminology as "mad dogs" and "yellow vermin." An article in the U.S. Army weekly Yank referred to Japanese working on the airfield on Guadalcanal as "termites." The official U.S. Navy film on the capture of Tarawa characterized the Japanese defenders as "living, snarling rats." Pictorially, Japanese were commonly represented as apes or monkeys, but also as insects, reptiles, and bats. A particularly repugnant caricature appeared on the cover of Collier's magazine commemorating the first anniversary of the air raid on Pearl Harbor. A hideous, slant-eyed creature with huge fangs and large, pointed ears, wearing a "samurai sword," is shown descending on Oahu on bat wings, preparing to loose a bomb on the ships anchored in the harbor beneath.3

The mixture of underlying racism exacerbated by wartime propaganda in combination with hatred generated by Japanese aggression and real and imagined atrocities was a potent brew. The Japanese were loathed more intensely than any enemies of the United States before or since.

One U.S. veteran of the Pacific war has written that: the Japanese made a perfect enemy. They had so many characteristics that an American Marine could hate. Physically, they were small, a strange color and, by some standards, unattractive... . Marines did not consider that they were killing men. They were wiping out dirty animals.4

The widespread conviction that the Japanese were "animals" or "subhuman" had its battlefield consequences. American troops were notoriously reluctant to take prisoners which, along with the equally notorious reluctance of Japanese troops to surrender, accounts for the fact that the maximum number of Japanese prisoners in U.S. operated POW compounds was a mere 5,424. As late as October 1944, no more than 604 Japanese had been captured by all of the Allied power^.^ In the minds of many American soldiers, combat against Japanese troops assumed the character of a hunt, the object of which was the killing of cunning, but distinctly inhuman creatures.

If, moreover, as a Marine Corps general noted, "Killing a Japanese was like killing a rattlesnake," then it might not seem inappropriate to detach something comparable to the reptile's skin or rattles for the pleasure of the victorious combatant and the entertainment of his friends and relatives back home.

The percentage of U.S. troops who engaged in the collection of Japanese body parts cannot be ascertained, but it is clear that the practice was not uncommon. U.S. Marines on their way to Guadalcanal relished the prospect of making necklaces of Japanese gold teeth and "pickling" Japanese ears as keepsakes.10 An American officer told Charles Lindbergh in 1944 that he had seen Japanese bodies with ears and noses cut off. Our boys cut them off to show their friends in fun, or to dry and take back to the States when they go. We found one Marine with a Japanese head. He was trying to get the ants to clean the flesh off the skull, but the odor got so bad we had to take it away from him. "It is the same story everywhere I go," Lindbergh concluded.ll

A Marine Corps veteran of the fierce fighting on Peleliu recorded in his memoirs the horrific scene of another Marine extracting gold teeth from the jaw of a wounded but still struggling Japanese, a task which he had attempted to facilitate by slashing his victim's cheeks from ear to ear and kneeling on his chin.12 Atrocities of this nature were widely reported. Early in 1943, Yank published a cartoon depicting the parents of an American soldier receiving a pair of "Jap" ears mailed to them by their loving "Junior," then fighting in the Pacific.13 Newspapers regaled "the folks back home" with a story of a U.S. soldier collecting Japanese teeth and of another service-man who purportedly possessed photographs illustrating the steps in "cooking and scraping" the heads of Japanese dead for souvenir skulls.14 Such photographs may have been included in a large number of sets of lurid prints which had been sold by Seabees on Guadalcanal to merchant seamen and which, to the navy's consternation, found wide circulation on the West Coast, particularly among patients in the naval hospitals at San Diego and Oakland.15 In the context of a war characterized by the slaughter of tens of millions, the mutilation of those already dead may seem a trivial matter, and was regarded as relatively unimportant by the military and naval leaders whose responsibility it was to guide U.S. forces to victory. But these acts vividly symbolized the racist attitudes which informed the U.S. war against Japan. To be sure, objections to the desecration of Japanese dead were raised by armed forces jurists, the State Department, religious leaders, and private citizens, but to many Americans the Japanese adversary was no more than an animal, and abuse of his remains carried with it no moral stigma. The widespread inability to empathize with the purportedly subhuman foe was dramatically reflected in the contrast between American treatment of Japanese dead and the extreme solicitude shown by the United States for its own war dead which were interred in elaborate cemeteries or brought back to the United States after the war at considerable expense.

Please provide backing support/citations for any opinions on the article. Thank you.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 17:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Didn't read all discussions yet. First source is review of Peter Schrijvers. The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II. New York: New York University Press by Xavier Guillaume (Department of Political Science, University of Geneva) at H-Net which is WP:RS but Nick says the review has factual errors or contains OR somehow, second one is Carl Kosta Savich. I will try reviewing the case, also since the H-Net review become a big debate after all, I will try contacting the writers about facts and quotes. Kasaalan (talk) 18:46, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

According to Nick-D: "the frist H-Net Review: Xavier Guillaume on The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II wrongly claims that Peter Schrivvers' wrote that the bodies of most dead Japanese were desecrated. He does not make this claim on the page of the book where it is attibuted to him (pg 209 of the 2002 edition) and I can't find it elsewhere in the book. Instead he states that "yet the enemy dead were not always simply ignored" and then has a single para on the mistreatment of corpses (his argument is that it was far more common for the Americans to ignore Japanese corpses than it was for them to desecrate them - not sure if that belongs in the article?)."

I have also checked the book now, to verify what Nick-D claimed. I find huge flaws int the argument that Nick-D attributes to Schreiber that "it was far more common for the Americans to ignore Japanese corpses than it was for them to desecrate them". This is just a case of Nick-D's POV used to misinterpret the source in order to remove sourced material that displeases him. Actually, what Schreiber very clearly is referring to when he talks about "yet the enemy dead were not always simply ignored" was that few efforts were made to bury Japanese corpses, they were left to lie where they fell and usually GI's didn't give the decaying corpses a second look. Not bothering to give dead persons a decent burial, and instead letting them lie where they fell is something quite different from the frequent mutilations. Read carefully what Guillaume wrote: "Most dead Japanese were desecrated and mutilated", and compare it with what Nick-D claimed: "it was far more common for the Americans to ignore Japanese corpses than it was for them to desecrate them", and you find something of a straw man. Guillaume talks about the corpses themselves, Nick-D changes the argument to instead talk about Americans. So what if most Americans passing by ignored the rotting bodies, it doesn't change anything as to whether most of these bodies had suffered mutilation and desecration. It takes one American to mutilate a body, while many others thereafter can walk past the corpse without giving a shit about it.

The mutilations themselves fall into 3 categories. 1. Taking body-parts as trophies. 2. mutilating them for pleasure. 3. Shooting or bayoneting bodies to make sure they are not feigning death. I attach some quotes below, you be the judge of Nick-D's interpretation.

Quite often, dead Japanese simply remained were they had fallen; their remains, at best, hurriedly sprayed with sodium arsenite.

No one would move a dead enemy,” the officer of a bomb disposal company on Okinawa noted. “If it was in the road, they just ran over it until it was flattened out and then the dust covered it.”

Yet the enemy dead were not always simply ignored. They were desecrated. American soldiers on Okinawa were seen urinating into the gaping mouths of the slain. They were “rebutchered.” “As the bodies jerked and quivered,” a marine on Guadalcanal wrote of the repeated shooting of corpses, “we would laugh gleefully and hysterically.” They were mutilated. “All of the skulls are minus their teeth,” a horrified engineer said of the countless unburied Japanese on New Georgia, “because souvenir hunters use them for bracelets.” They were interested in more than bracelets. Some Americans had pouches tied to their belts. In them, they carried small pairs of pliers to be used for extracting the enemy’s gold teeth, as if they were just another kind of Oriental riches, there for the taking. Less sophisticated scavengers used knives, or they smashed the skulls with rifle butts, if they did not simply kick the teeth out.

Although America’s armed forces expressed disapproval at such behavior, James Weingartner has shown that their “half-hearted measures were not likely to halt practices as popular as they were gruesome.”

As late as the Okinawan campaign, sailors who found the lower leg of a kamikazewho had crashed into their ship were cleaning the bone and crafting it into souvenir rings without the least inhibition. On the island itself, squads of the 77th Division, sent out to eliminate snipers, returned with rifles as well as ears to document missions accomplished. A corporal of the 6th Marine Division on Okinawa claimed he actually saw “some Nip bodies that had been scalped.”

...‘kill or be killed’ came to be applied all too easily to any Japanese in uniform. Including those with their hands up, always suspected of faking surrender. Including even the slain, often “rebutchered” simply because GIs feared from experience that they might be feigning death.

--Stor stark7 ^Speak 12:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

"So what if most Americans passing by ignored the rotting bodies, it doesn't change anything as to whether most of these bodies had suffered mutilation and desecration. It takes one American to mutilate a body, while many others thereafter can walk past the corpse without giving a shit about it." From memory, the book doesn't state that most Japanese corpses had been mutilated so that seems to be your personal speculation. The quotes you've provided from the book were identified by me above, and don't constitute a statement that this happened to most dead Japanese as the book review claimed. I'm not going to respond to your renewed personal attacks other than to ask, again, that you stop them. Nick-D (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that you at least no longer repeat your earlier claim, and instead focus on the word "most" used by Guillaume. As I've said before, I will let others judge it as they please, but in the quotes above, that you did allude to but never spelled out, we have. “All of the skulls are minus their teeth,”,"often “rebutchered”", "practices as popular as they were gruesome",

I note your request, and respond with a repeat request of my own. I will repeat my request that you stop calling it a personal attack whenever I point out how you have edited based on POV. --Stor stark7 ^Speak 23:18, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Gathering support on other talk pages

I've noticed that Nick Dowling has several times on other talk pages been trying to bring in editors to comment on/edit this article, sometimes giving his POV view of it. Now, going around to talk pages where there may be editors prone to support your POV, and particularly trying to bias them beforehand is not very nice. I propose that this behaviour stop, or that we agree on a neutral text to use when inviting people on other talk pages to comment,e.g. "please have a look at article x". May I also humbly request that from now on we list here which other articles talk pages we try to bring in people from? Thank You Very Much!--Stor stark7 ^Speak 17:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

That is no more than an unofficial WP:RfC. It's a common practice when article need more 'eyes on' or may be considered by the prevailing orthodoxy - systematic bias - borderline. Given that en:Wikipedia is to a great degree edited by male Caucasians from the first world with enough money to own a computer, access the internet, and have time to spare, we are biased in a particular way. This is not a nice article and will not fit with many users' preconceptions. It needs to be balanced a little more - expansion of the 'Revenge' section with links to articles discussing Japanese war crimes, to expand on motivations more, have all the citation tags given sources, as quickly as possible, and have its supporting references thoroughly checked, but at an initial first glance, it's a detailed look at a particularly nasty bit of World War II, not much more. I haven't done the detailed line-by-line analysis that Nick has yet, though. Buckshot06(prof) 22:02, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

As noted by Buckshot, this is a standard part of the dispute resolution process - I had no problem with you raising this matter at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Undue Weight Criteria a few days ago as it's a very good place to seek other editors' views on this topic, as is the relevant Wikiproject. Given that my views on this article are very clear on this talk page, I didn't see any reason to pretend that I was neutral when I sought Buckshot's views (on the grounds that I respect his views and experiance in dealing with articles on sensititve topics and I have provided him with a second opinion in the past - which hasn't always agreed with his views) and the views of other editors on the WW2 Wikiproject. Editors who have responded to these two notifications have provided views which are somewhat more measured than my own - their views are that this is a legitimate topic for an article, but the article needs more comprehensive sourcing and tighter wording. These look like good ideas to me and a good way forward for the article. Nick Dowling (talk) 08:28, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with enlisting additional editors, as long as the enlisting is done using a neutral wording and does not predispose a certain POV in those who are induced to participate here, e.g. by using words such as "fringe views" and stating POV opinions as if they were facts.

To try to bring a more balanced editor population besides those interested in "war" topics, I've asked for contributions from the Japan and the Sociology projects. Although somehow, based on the assumed demographics of the wikipedia editing population, I sadly have the inkling that those reading those portals will be quite significantly fewer in number than those reading the military portal etc talk pages.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 15:24, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

No worries. I've also invited comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States. Nick Dowling (talk) 08:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Fatally Flawed Article

This article has a number of problems that render it fatally flawed, specifically:

(1) Misleadingly giving the reader the impression that these were widespread practices when the sources given actually indicate they were rare and isolated;

(2) Incessant use of and hiding behind weasel words and peacock terms (i.e., "Many writers and veterans...," "...widely held view that the Japanese were subhuman," "...majority had some knowledge that these practices were occurring," "Many Australian soldiers also mutilated Japanese bodies," etc.);

(3) Lack of primary sources;

(4) Lack of diversity among sources (overreliance on a handful of sources, essentially elevating them to Gospel);

(5) Numerous uncited claims;

(6) Original research (basically, this article reads like somebody's senior thesis rather than an encyclopedic article; a clumsy attempt to synthesize information from a handful of sources in order to advance a particular point of view), and

(7) Redundancy (this subject is already covered in the Allied war crimes during World War II article.

In light of its myriad of severe infirmities, I firmly believe this article should be deleted, or, at the very least, redirected to the aforementioned Allied war crimes during World War II article.-PassionoftheDamon (talk) 04:28, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

• I remember seeing on several made for TV documentaries on the war in the pacific that veterans themselves say that they didn't really consider Japanese to be humans, in fact I might add those as references if I track down which one I watched, and this for me confirms that this was a generally held view although no verifiable proof of whether a majority or a minority of U.S military personnel engaged in mutilation of Japanese war dead, it certainly did occur, enough for the U.S military to investigate the practice, and enough for at least 2 pictures to be published in Life magazine. The subject discusses in this article is itself notable and should not be deleted, and it is encyclopedic. This article is too large to be merged into another, and it is considered more practical to split up large articles not to merge into a massive article. (so a redirect to allied war crimes is not feasible, whether the subject is a war crime is debatable) Thisglad (talk) 12:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

This article is clearly on a notable enough subject. After reading it, I get the impression of an at worst slightly slanted article (and even that is relative, i.e. there is no clear INTENT visible to push a POV). Primary sources also aren't a holy grail, BTW, because they can be just as slanted as any other source - sometimes more, due to anecdotal impact. Ingolfson (talk) 09:56, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Restructure

As a result of Stor and my edits, this article's structure is now a mess. Much of the material is dupliated and the handling of different opinions on this topic isn't very clear. I'd like to propose the following structure:

• Incidence (describes the frequency with which this kind of behaviour is believed to have occured - stressing that it was relatively uncommon - and including comparisons with Australians, Japanese and any other nationalities for which citations can be found to make it clear that not only US troops were committing war crimes. A quote from Dower on the war in the Pacific being a race war in many ways seems appropriate. This would include the material in the current 'Trophy taking' section, which is poorly named IMO.)
• Motives (this needs to stress that there are different theories and no apparant consensus)
• Responses
  • US response
  • Japanese response

The 'context' and 'Contemporary' section should go, in my view, as these are not needed and can be largely worked into the body of the article. All of the items in the 'see also' section can also be integrated, and this should also be done in line with WP:SEEALSO. Thoughts? Nick Dowling (talk) 10:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I dont think I have the time to deal with this properly, but just some quick comments.

• "stressing that it was relatively uncommon" sounds very much like you want to work your POV into the article. Lets quote Weingartner: "The percentage of U.S. troops who engaged in the collection of Japanese body parts cannot be ascertained, but it is clear that the practice was not uncommon." Perhaps you are referring to skulls? Please clearly point that out in that case, lest you mislead the reader. Lets also quote Harrison "In Sledge’s experience, the taking of teeth seems to have been largely accepted or tolerated, by both officers and enlisted men, but not of other parts of the body.....Undoubtedly, only a minority of men extended souvenir-taking to body parts, and of those, fewer still went so far as to collect trophy skulls or carve bones into desk ornaments. But their behavior reflected attitudes which were very widely shared, and such practices were a source of constant disquiet to the military authorities." What are we to make of that? My impression is that Harrison is referring to non-teeth body parts when stating "minority". Teeth would then have been taken by more than a minority. And even if it were a minority, it does not state what a minority is, perhaps 40%??? nor does it state how active this "minority" were. A G.I. with an ear necklace means quite a lot of ear less corpses. Some more Harrison quotes: "A perceived demand for Japanese remains among their civilian relatives seems to have been driving the behaviour of some servicemen. In April 1943, a Baltimore newspaper wrote of a local mother seeking permission from the authorities for her son to send her a Japanese ear which she wanted to nail to her front door; and a Detroit newspaper in the same month ran a story ‘of an underage youth who had enlisted and “bribed” his chaplain not to disclose his age by promising him the third pair of ears he collected’"
• "make it clear that not only US troops were committing war crimes" This sounds like relativism to me, but fine, gives me an opportunity to also include the U.S. rapes in the article, and Weingardners comparison to Hiroshima.
• Motives should stress that the two scholars who have made a focused investigation -Harrison, Wingartner - are at consensus. It is the others who seem unaware of previous work on the topic who "allegedly" scatter their opinions around the place. Just look how surprised this scholar was by what he found. I guess the others you refer to are equally clueless.
• We should include the LIFE magazine image under a fair use label. I found a good copy of it here. We can decrease the resolution and argue fair use, it is quite a striking and explanatory image. And it did have a huge impact.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 19:02, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Some responses:

• Please note that I'm proposing re-arranging the content for readibility and consistancy, and not content-warring. Do you have any comments on the structure I'm proposing? - I think that it's a clearer way of presenting the same material.
• Harrison and Dower both explicitly state that only a minority of US soldiers engaged in this kind of stuff. Weingartner seems to be the odd man out, and he provides no source for his claim and given that he also states that it's not possible to calculate the percentage who mutilated corpses its unclear how he can support his statement. I don't understand why you are quoting annecdotes from Harrison given that he doesn't support what you're trying to attribute to him here, and you seem to be speculating on the incidence of this without providing any evidence (which is the central problem with having a whole article on the topic, IMO)
• I am proposing that the article mention Australian and Japanese mutilation of war dead in the Pacific War, as this seems highly relevant to explaining US behaviour [eg, that all the Armies in the South West Pacific had similar problems], especially as the incident where the Japanese mutilated dead marines on Wake contributed to the US Marines taking revenge against Japanese corpses on Guadacanal. Given that this article is on the very narrow topic of "American mutilation of Japanese war dead" I don't understand why you are proposing bringing in a shopping list of other US war crimes.
• What source states that Harrison and Wingartner are the only historians to have investigated this topic, that they are "at consensus" and that the conclusions they make were not disputed by experts? Dower, Bergerud and Spector are well regarded historians and came up with different conclusions in their books, which are among the standard works on the Pacific War - who says that they have been proven wrong? The news story about Prof. Aldrich seems to add nothing new - Dower and Bergerud both mention similar stuff in their books, as does Mark Johnson in his book on Australian soldiers.
• I agree that the LIFE photo should be included and a fair use claim would probably be justified. Alternetly, the external image template can be used to directly link to the photo. Nick Dowling (talk) 05:11, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge this article

This article should be merged with Allied war crimes during World War II. It is obviously being given undue weight by one editor (Stor stark7) who has a slanted viewpoint on the subject. Are we required to have a whole separate article about every miniscule aspect of a country's conduct in wartime now? If so, where is the Nazi mutilation of Holocaust victims article? How about Soviet army raping of German women? -- Grandpafootsoldier (talk) 22:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you, but when we went out for comments on the article a few months ago the responses were that this is a sustainable stand-alone topic. It may be worth listing this at Wikipedia:Proposed mergers and posting notifications on relevant project pages. Nick Dowling (talk) 08:43, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Well for what it is worth I consider you both Nick and Grandpa, to have slanted viewpoint point on the subject. I consider your attempts at merging this article as simply as a weasly alternative way to deletion to suppress the topic. The Topic is clearly notable, sizable, and merits expansion. And your comparisons are clearly indicating your bias. "miniscule aspect"??? As to the Holocaust there seems to be an ample number of Holocaust articles, and if mutilations of Holocaust victims had happened at this scale then I'm sure someone would probably already have written a siceable article on the topic. As it is we already have for example Soap made from human corpses. We also have a good start on the article you propose in Soviet_war_crimes#Rapes_and_pacifications As it is I expect it can eventually be made into a Rape article in its own right, perhaps also making it into an Allied Rapes article including the many rapes committed by Australians and others. To sum it up, give up your crusade, we are here to build and expand an encyclopedia, not to trim down notable topics by using arguments such as comparisons to other topics which haven't had time to be expanded yet, or which are in a way lower notability class.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 15:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The irony of your response is quite amusing, Stor stark7. You urge editors such as myself to "give up your crusade", and claim "we are trying to build an encyclopedia", when it is obviously you, and you alone who are ruling the roost on this page and has a "crusading" outlook on this particular subject. Also, sorry, but pointing to another dubiously notable article (and yes, I think having a whole article just for Soap made from human corpses is rather dubious) in of itself is not a valid argument, as stated in Wikipedia:Other stuff exists.

Nick, as for the measures you suggested, I'll try to get around to those as soon as possible. -- Grandpafootsoldier (talk) 07:57, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

As Nick wrote "the responses were that this is a sustainable stand-alone topic". From to your evident ignorance of the existence of the other articles when you made your first comment I would be inclined to guess that you are arguing about a topic area that you do not know much about but nevertheless voice strong opinions about.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 09:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I also said that I agreed with him. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:21, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

And I also agree. The article seems to be complete OR, Synthesis and collection of quotes to support a thesis. I have trouble seeing anything worth saving

--Molobo (talk) 22:49, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Dehumanization Spelling

I believe it's spelled "dehumanization," not "dehumanisation" Rittiville (talk) 01:34, 11 December 2008 (UTC)Rittiville

Depends on your country. I can't remember the policy, but I think in articles related to America American spelling is used, but I'm not sure. 92.0.150.111 (talk) 13:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Congressman Walter

I just made an edit specifying who "Congressman Walter" was, and realised I should probably note down my sources. The original text read "On 13 June 1944 the press reported that President Roosevelt had been presented with a letter-opener made out of a Japanese soldier's arm bone by Congressman Walter", and the reference is to Harrison, p. 825. According to 78th United States Congress which covers that date, there was only one Walter in the House, Francis E. Walter. I realise this is arguably WP:OR or synthesis, but it's so minor I figure I can get away with it. If anyone has sources to the contrary, please correct the text. Orpheus (talk) 00:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Reference number 32 is irrelevant and needs to be deleted - the source is inadequate and is not a valid counterargument

Weingartner believes that these actions were premeditated, however, and states that U.S. Marines were openly declaring their intent to "pickle" Japanese ears already while en-route to Guadacanal.[32]

- Weingartner does not affirmatively claim that the savagery was " premeditated " , this is not a part of his argument at all . The notion of " premediation " is Bergerud's claim - a factual claim - Weingardner's is more of a suggestion to the state of mind . The source suggests that the " savagery " was due to in " greater part " ... " cultural and physical differences " ... that's all .

- The source is inadequate - no where in it does the author state that the " U.S. Marines were openly declaring their intent to "pickle" Japanese ears already while en-route to Guadacanal " and Weingartner makes a suggestion not an argument .

Remember that Bergerud's claim is factually based , it is not a theory of mind argument similar to what the editor is expressing - since the factually based claim is superior he needs to directly invalidate the existing evidence that supports the factual claim and establish the facts as lies ... instead of finding short suggestive statements that really do not even connect with the specificities of his own statement . Wernergerman (talk) 16:45, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

That sounds fair enough to me. When I got hold of the articles which were mainly used to reference the article I found a number of statements had been wrongly attributed to them and qualifiers which had been removed, and I'm sure that there are some left in the article. Nick-D (talk) 00:03, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the revenge theory

The text as it stands says that:

According to Bergerud U.S. troops in Guadacanal first began taking ears from Japanese corpses after photos of mutilated bodies of Marines on Wake Island were found in Japanese engineers' personal effects.

Is this really Bergerud saying this regarding the whole of Guadacanal, or is it so that there is simply a quote in his book from some serviceman stating something to this effect?

I found in another book a long quote referring to a veteran speaking of his hatred of the Japanese, and noting that the US soldiers suddenly were walking around with ears pinned on their belts after the atrocity pictures had been discovered. However, this is not really a strong connection to cause and effect, and neither does it say anything about when collecting ears started, it just relates to marines now suddenly publicly displaying ears, which is why I would like to have more information on what supports the Bergerud claim. It would be interesting to know also if he mentions when teeth, which were the more common collectors item, started being gathered from living and dead Japanese.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 17:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC) --Stor stark7 ^Speak 17:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The book quotes a USMC veteran (Donald Fall) as saying that marines took ears from Japanese soldiers after they found photos of Marines mutilated at Wake Island in a captured Japanese camp site on the second day after the landing on Guadacanal. Nick-D (talk) 09:32, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, to me it sounds then like Bergerud uses the same quote that is used in other books. I presume that it is not Bergerud who draws the conclusion that ears were not taken until the pictures had been found, rather that some editor has inferred that from the quote and mistakenly attributed the conclusion to Bergerud? I've added the relevant parts of the quote from Donald Fall, and put some tags on the Bergerud sentence. If we cant clear it up soon I think it is better just to have the quote from the one serviceman and not some possibly erroneous conclusions drawn by a wikipedia editor from the Fall quote. Again, my main issue is that the time Marines started carrying their trophies around may not necessarily be the same time they started collecting them. And also one veteran can not speak for what happened on an entire island, so better make clear that this is what this veteran saw, verbatim.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 13:14, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm very concerned that you're removing material on the importance of Japanese war crimes in developing Allied troops unusually hostile attitudes towards the Japanese in edits such as this and seeking to remove much of the other material on this topic - which is a central theme in works on the nature of the fighting in the Pacific. It appears that you are attempting to push your personal interpretation of events by excluding material which states otherwise, again. I recall that you pushed against including this material originally, and you seem to be having a another go at removing it. Nick-D (talk) 23:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The text I removed mentioned nothing about trophy collection. Certainly Japanese real and imagined Japanese crimes had an effect in creating a hostile atmosphere against the Japanese, alongside racism, U.S. propaganda, and probably other factors. And many sources apparently cite it as one of the motives for the apparent practice of essentially not taking prisoners. Therefore if we expand the section in Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II#Asia_and_the_Pacific_War regarding the killing of prisoners and Japanese trying to surrender into it's own article then it certainly has a place there, as long a the sources make the connection to the killings. But putting it into this article straight of without the source supporting the connection to trophy hunting makes no sence and most importantly is bad editing policy. You might then as well also try to insert it into the Rape during the occupation of Japan article as some sort of justification. I don't know what you "recall", and frankly don't care much. I recall you wanted to have this whole article deleted, but failed to gain support for that approach.x

Looking at you edits in another article you seem to have differing standards for what you delete and add depending on the article. Here you seem to be stringently exclusionary.[16],[17],[18] Could it be that you are biased or pushing POV? --Stor stark7 ^Speak 01:48, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

be consistent

The material in question from Mark Johnston's book (pages 84-100) is his explanation of why Australian soldiers were so hostile to the Japanese, which included sometimes mutilating the bodies of soldiers (page 82), so is clearly relevant to the topic of this article. Nick-D (talk) 09:01, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

The section "context", if for setting the US activity in perspective. I don't see this very general sentence on Australians that you added as contributing anything to that. "unusually murderous behavior" is obviously more tied to killing the living than desecrating the already dead. Am i mistaken in assuming that on the 16 pages that you lump together in your one cite Johnston mainly discusses killing Japanese prisoners and Japanese trying to surrender, and that the single page where mutilation is mentioned shows this to be of small relevance to the attitudes that he attempts to explain? If Johnston actually explicitly argues that it was a question of tit-for-tat, mutilation in revenge for mutilation, then cite that specifically. If you cant, or want to broaden the scope to your included "murder and mutilation of Australian", then be honest and balanced and mention the other more prevalent "revenge" activities the Australians engaged in, i.e. murder of Japanese, as well--Stor stark7 ^Speak 15:07, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

It's a summation of the chapter on the 'sources of hate' such as the 'hatred' he refers to on page 82 and the text in the article states that this is the reason for "unusually murderous behavior". As such seems relevant to me and is presented accurately. Nick-D (talk) 09:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Extent Issue

There is one tricky issue here that needs to be analyzed and structured, as regards the "extent" of mutilations. There are several interrelated issues confusingly intermingled, and we should at a minimum bring them to the readers attentions so we dont confuse them when saying "minority" etc.

• . What was the percentage of troops that engaged in taking body-parts? The best we have for now is "a minority". So in effect the majority (note that I don't use the term "vast majority") did not cut pieces of the dead.

• . What was the percentage of Japanese bodies that were desecrated in this way? Presumably many in the "minority" that engaged in the practice did not stop at one tooth or one ear. Stories of necklaces of ears and teeth seem to be common. Thus I can well imagine a situation where a minority of U.S. troops desecrate a majority of available corpses. The deficit of skulls on the Mariana islands seems to point in this direction. This could explain the estimates that the practice was "widespread" and "not uncommon", despite being performed by a "minority".

• . Soldiers and others that did not themselves collect the items, but instead bought them from the body-part producing "minority". Obviously merchant sailors were buying skulls, so there was a certain trade going on out from the battle zone. Presumably there was also internal trade amongst U.S. troops and marines, so a Marine who did not belong to the "minority" may well be the owner of an ear or bone letter opener or other body part nevertheless. Where do we put these people in the estimates? Are they bundled up in the minority, or do they belong to the "majority"? They at least help explain the "widespread" and "not uncommon" versus "minority".

• . As a minor aspect. What was the percentage of "dead" versus "alive" teeth collecting? Gold teeth seems to be a special case, and it could well be that equal amounts were taken from live Japanese as from corpses? One quote indicates they were more commonly taken from live Japanese than from dead.

--Stor stark7 ^Speak 19:00, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The article already has a section on 'Extent of practice' which answers most of those questions to the extent that the available sources allow - which as I'm sure you've noticed isn't terribly satisfactory as the sources are generally vaguely worded (a common problem with revisionist works which draw on individual interviews). In regards to the text on the Mariana islands, the source actually states "skulls were missing from about 60 per cent of the remains of Japanese war dead repatriated from the Mariana Islands in 1984" - as it doesn't say why they were missing or what proportion of Japanese killed in the Mariana Islands were repatriated in 1984 (as Japanese war dead were generally interred in cemeteries/memorials in the combat zones, the number returned to Japan 40 years after the fighting may not be high) its rather difficult to draw any inferences from this as you seem to want to do. Nick-D (talk) 23:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

As I seem to want to do.... Indeed... Your dodgy interpretation above aside the fact remains that is it Weingartner, an academic writing in the Pacific Historical Review that makes the inference.

“ Sledzik and Ousley (1991: 521) report that skulls were missing from about 60 per cent of the remains of Japanese war dead repatriated from the Mariana Islands in 1984. A Japanese priest who visited Iwo Jima regularly since 1952 to conduct ceremonies for the dead reported similarly in 1985 that skulls had been taken from many of the remains, presumably for souvenirs (Ross 1986: 357-9; see also Fussell 1988: 51). Such evidence suggests that a substantial quantity of human remains may have been imported into the United States during the war, and perhaps also in the immediate post-war years, though US customs took measures to prevent it. ”

--Stor stark7 ^Speak 03:11, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

On this topic, the claim by Simon Harrison that the Joint Chiefs of Staff directive and other prohibitions "seem to have been implemented only partially and unevenly by local commanders" is not supported by the reference he provides. On page 827 he references this statement to 'cf.Winslow 1998'. However, the article by Donna Winslow he refers to 'Misplaced loyalties: the role of military culture in the breakdown of discipline in peace operations' discusses only the breakdown in discipline in two Canadian Army units during peacekeeping deployments in the 1990s, and does not mention the Pacific War at all. Harrison then goes on to identify accounts by individual veterans and a photo as evidence that skulls continued to be taken, which seems remarkably weak evidence to support a claim that an order originating at the highest level of the US military was 'implemented only partially and unevenly by local commanders'. Nick-D (talk) 00:22, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

As anyone with experience of writing academic text, or indeed reading them, should be able to tell you: "cf. is an abbreviation for the Latin word confer, meaning "compare" or "consult". What you apparently mistook for a reference is a pointer for any interested reader to literature on comparable failures of the high command to keep control. There are many similar cases from the Pacific too, or have you already forgotten for example that in 1943, "a secret [U.S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."?--Stor stark7 ^Speak 03:11, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, I wasn't familiar with that term (despite having two degrees!). That hardly improves things in my view, but I guess it made it into an academic journal... Nick-D (talk) 08:56, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Relish

The verb relish was put there by historian Weingartner, it is a short way of saying "pleasurably looking forward to" or similar. It is the interpretation of an academic, and I think it is therefore valid to keep here. They did not do this reluctantly, or in a neutral fashion, they were looking forward to it before they had even seen any Japanese. Wikipedia not here to maintain the "honor" of marines or anyone else. The foornote by Weingartner is:

10. Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary (New York, 1942), 15-16. The collection of Japanese skulls by U.S. servicemen seems to have begun on Guadalcanal. See Paul Fussell, Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York, 1988), 48.

If you read through the Guadalcanal diary (published already 1942 so the public knew well what was going on) The relevant quote from Tregaskis is: While working over their weapons, the marines passed their inevitable chatter, "shooting the breezze",..A lot of it was about the Japs. "Is it true that the Japs put a gray paint on their faces, put some red stuff besides their mouths and lie down and play dead until you pass'em?" one fellow asked me. I said I did not know. "Well, if they do" he said "I'll stick them first.." Another marine offered: "They say the Japs have a lot of gold teeth. I'm going to make myself a necklace." "I'm going to bring back some Jap ears," said another. "pickled". --Stor stark7 ^Speak 10:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I am glad, Stor, that you have stated your disdain for ulterior political motives; I may have been a little concerned that this article has an agenda which is something quite more political than the grotesque phenomenon itself. Still, I'm worried that many sources cited have been cited selectively to take information out of context in order to demonize American servicemen. As far as using a page like this to maintain the "honor of the Marine corps", well, that would surely be an uphill battle! But perhaps some people editing this page are trying to say something about the essence of the Marine Corps, and don't really care about this butchery and dehumanization outside the context of anti-Americanism...

The Weingartner quotation seems to have been selected for its being out of step with other historians' accounts, which depict outrage on the part of many U.S. Marines in regards to the practice, and the context of their horror and fear at the atrocities Imperial forces were inflicting upon Americans, including but not limited to cannibalism. Although the Marine Corps and many US Marines condemned the practice, the article prefers to attribute the guilt to the group rather than the individuals. It seems like the dehumanization of their Imperial foes in the WWII era is being turned on the US Marines here in Wikipedia, in the language and the selective quotation of the sources. Is it virulent bigotry only when Marines de-individuate Imperial troops, or is it also wrong to do it to US Marines? (And, is this article doing so against the sources it claims to represent?)

Just as a thought experiment, could you replace the word "relished" with the phrase "were disgusted by", and have the sentence be equally true according to the citations? (eg [19]) I look forward to working with you more on this, bro; we'll talk it out! Cheers, DBaba (talk) 14:54, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Hooray. Great. Another way to make WP the perfect horror panopticon.

Yes really. To me, this whole article should be deleted. It's just LURID from A to Z and rather belongs in some horror-loving mass-circulation paper, together with mistreated animals, seas of blood gushing etc. -andy 77.7.117.26 (talk) 14:58, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

This article provides information about the past. The images help to convey the information. fds^Talk 05:49, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Time magazine photo

Didn't the famous photo from time magazine use to be shown on this article? Did it get removed?71.94.221.239 (talk) 07:02, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Mistake in my edit summary

In this edit I stated that the first sentence in the para I removed was tagged as being dubious since May 2008. The correct date is May 2010 - my mistake. Nick-D (talk) 00:07, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Books LLC, Alphascript, Betascript, Fastbook Publishing...

I've removed the following Books LLC reference:

• [http://www.amazon.com/s?search-alias=stripbooks&field-isbn=9781155206899|accessdate=24 January 2011 Human Trophy Collecting: American Mutilation of Japanese War Dead, Headhunting, Scalping, Mimizuka, Skull Cup, Anthropodermic Bibliopegy]. Books LLC. 2010-05. ISBN 9781155206899. {{cite book}}: Check |url= value (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)

See: User:Fences and windows/Unreliable sources and Amazon.com controversies#Sale of Wikipedia.27s material as books. °°Playmobilonhishorse (talk) 03:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

LIEUTENANT (JUNIOR GRADE) E. V. MCPHERSON

An editor has removed this name from one of the images as "not needed". The name is well sourced, and "not needed" isn't a criteria. Can anyone offer a better justification for this censorship, or should we restore the subject's name? Rklawton (talk) 15:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

If the individual in a photo can be identified, then he or she should be identified. The subject's name should be restored. Boneyard90 (talk) 20:59, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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Japanese Mutilation of American War Dead

I'm looking for an article on this subject, but maybe I've got the title wrong. Any help? Rklawton (talk) 19:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

No talk about the Japanese treatment of American dead?

Considering the numerous atrocities committed by Japan, it seems puzzling to not include even one sentence about how Japanese soldiers treated dead Americans. I hope not, but whoever wrote this seems very biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.49.40.87 (talk) 01:29, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Can you please suggest sources on that topic? Better still, please go ahead and write something if you're aware of incidents and have references to support them. I agree that this article is highly biased and problematic. Nick-D (talk) 04:13, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

See Japanese mutilation of American war dead. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 07:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)