16-323 Garand Picture of the Day
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1. A United States Marine combat medic tends to a wounded Japanese boy who suffered injuries during the Battle of Saipan as his mother bows in appreciation. Like many Japanese civilians on Saipan, the two had hidden themselves in bunkers during the battle, fearing they would be tortured or killed by U.S. military personnel if they surrendered. Japanese military officials gave radio broadcasts to the civilian population detailing fabricated accounts of how they would be systematically tortured if they fell into the hands of the Americans. At the end of June 1944, with the battle winding down and a U.S. victory apparent, Japanese Emperor Hirohito sent out an imperial order encouraging the civilians of Saipan to commit suicide. The order authorized the commander of Saipan to promise civilians who died there an equal spiritual status in the afterlife with those of soldiers perishing in combat. By the time the U.S. Marines advanced on the north tip of the island, between 8 to 12 July 1944, approximately 1,000 Japanese civilians committed suicide to take the offered privileged place in the afterlife, some jumping from locations that would be later named “Suicide Cliff” and “Banzai Cliff”. Saipan, South Pacific Mandate (now, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). July 1944. Image taken by W. Eugene Smith.
Documented Japanese canbanalism
Lt George Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot, was among nine airmen who escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichi Jima, a tiny island 700 miles south of Tokyo, in September 1944 - and was the only one to evade capture by the Japanese.
The horrific fate of the other eight "flyboys" was established in subsequent war crimes trials on the island of Guam, but details were sealed in top secret files in Washington to spare their families distress.
Mr Bradley has established that they were tortured, beaten and then executed, either by beheading with swords or by multiple stab-wounds from bayonets and sharpened bamboo stakes. Four were then butchered by the island garrison's surgeons and their livers and meat from their thighs eaten by senior Japanese officers.
The next day a Japanese officer, Major Sueo Matoba, decided to include American flesh in a sake-fuelled feast he laid on for officers including the commander-in-chief on the island, Gen Yoshio Tachibana. Both men were later tried and executed for war crimes.
A Japanese medical orderly who helped the surgeon prepare the ingredients said: "Dr Teraki cut open the chest and took out the liver. I removed a piece of flesh from the flyer's thigh, weighing about six pounds and measuring four inches wide, about a foot long."
Another crewman, Floyd Hall, met a similar fate. Adml Kinizo Mori, the senior naval officer on Chichi Jima, told the court that Major Matoba brought "a delicacy" to a party at his quarters - a specially prepared dish of Floyd Hall's liver.
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According to Adml Mori, Matoba told him: "I had it pierced with bamboo sticks and cooked with soy sauce and vegetables." They ate it in "very small pieces", believing it "good medicine for the stomach", the admiral recalled.
A third victim of cannibalism, Jimmy Dye, had been put to work as a translator when, several weeks later, Capt Shizuo Yoshii - who was later tried and executed - called for his liver to be served at a party for fellow officers. https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...mie2Bdye-1.jpg
James Wesley Dye
Parts of a fourth airman, Warren Earl Vaughn, were also eaten and the remaining four were executed, one by being clubbed to death.
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Warren Earl Vaughn
