American mutilation of Japanese war dead

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, some United States military personnel mutilated dead Japanese service personnel in the Pacific theater of operations. The mutilation of Japanese service personnel included the taking of body parts as “war souvenirs” and “war trophies”. Teeth and skulls

Human skull

The human skull is a bony structure, skeleton, that is in the human head and which supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.In humans, the adult skull is normally made up of 22 bones...

were the most commonly taken "trophies", although other body parts were also collected.

The phenomenon of "trophy-taking" was widespread enough that discussion of it featured prominently in magazines and newspapers, and Franklin Roosevelt himself was reportedly given, by a US Congressman, a gift of a letter-opener made of a man's arm (Roosevelt later ordered that the gift be returned and called for its proper burial). The behavior was officially prohibited by the U.S. military, which issued additional guidance as early as 1942 condemning it specifically. Nonetheless, the behavior continued throughout the war in the Pacific Theater, and has resulted in continued discoveries of "trophy skulls" of Japanese combatants in American possession, as well as American and Japanese efforts to repatriate the remains of the Japanese dead.

Trophy taking

A number of firsthand accounts, including those of American servicemen involved in or witness to the atrocities, attest to the taking of "trophies" from the corpses of Imperial Japanese troops in the Pacific Theater

Pacific War

The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...

during World War II

World War II

. Historians have attributed the phenomenon to a campaign of dehumanization of the Japanese in the U.S. media, to various racist tropes latent in American society, to the depravity of warfare under desperate circumstances, to the perceived inhuman cruelty of Imperial Japanese forces, lust for revenge, or any combination of those factors. The taking of so-called "trophies" was widespread enough that, by September 1942, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet ordered that "No part of the enemy's body may be used as a souvenir", and any American servicemen violating that principle would face "stern disciplinary action".

Trophy skulls are the most notorious of the so-called "souvenirs". Teeth, ears and other such body parts were occasionally modified, for example by writing on them or fashioning them into utilities or other artifacts.

Eugene Sledge

Eugene Sledge

Eugene Bondurant Sledge was a United States Marine, university professor, and author. His 1981 memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa chronicled his combat experiences during World War II and was subsequently used as source material for Ken Burns's PBS documentary, The War, as well as...

relates a few instances of fellow Marines extracting gold teeth from the Japanese, including one from an enemy soldier who was still alive.

But the Japanese wasn't dead. He had been wounded severely in the back and couldn't move his arms; otherwise he would have resisted to his last breath. The Japanese's mouth glowed with huge gold-crowned teeth, and his captor wanted them. He put the point of his kabar
KA-BAR
KA-BAR is the contemporary popular name for the combat knife first adopted by the United States Marine Corps in November 1942 as the 1219C2 Combat Knife , and subsequently adopted by the United States Navy as the U.S. Navy Utility Knife, Mark 2...

on the base of a tooth and hit the handle with the palm of his hand. Because the Japanese was kicking his feet and thrashing about, the knife point glanced off the tooth and sank deeply into the victim's mouth. The Marine cursed him and with a slash cut his cheeks open to each ear. He put his foot on the sufferer's lower jaw and tried again. Blood poured out of the soldier's mouth. He made a gurgling noise and thrashed wildly. I shouted, “Put the man out of his misery.” All I got for an answer was a cussing out. Another Marine ran up, put a bullet in the enemy soldier's brain, and ended his agony. The scavenger grumbled and continued extracting his prizes undisturbed.

US Marine veteran Donald Fall attributed the mutilation of enemy corpses to hatred and desire for vengeance:

On the second day of Guadalcanal we captured a big Jap bivouac with all kinds of beer and supplies... But they also found a lot of pictures of Marines that had been cut up and mutilated on Wake Island. The next thing you know there are Marines walking around with Jap ears stuck on their belts with safety pins. They issued an order reminding Marines that mutilation was a court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...

offense... You get into a nasty frame of mind in combat. You see what's been done to you. You'd find a dead Marine that the Japs had booby-trapped. We found dead Japs that were booby-trapped. And they mutilated the dead. We began to get down to their level.

Another example of mutilation was related by Ore Marion, a US Marine who suggested,

We learned about savagery from the Japanese... But those sixteen-to-nineteen-year old kids we had on the Canal were fast learners... At daybreak, a couple of our kids, bearded, dirty, skinny from hunger, slightly wounded by bayonets, clothes worn and torn, wack off three Jap heads and jam them on poles facing the 'Jap side' of the river... The colonel sees Jap heads on the poles and says, 'Jesus men, what are you doing? You're acting like animals.' A dirty, stinking young kid says, 'That's right Colonel, we are animals. We live like animals, we eat and are treated like animals–what the fuck do you expect?'

On February 1, 1943, Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

magazine published a photograph taken by Ralph Morse

Ralph Morse

Ralph Morse was a career staff photographer for Life magazine known for his inventive mind and his creative style. Encyclopedias and history books abound with his photos, as he has photographed some of the most widely seen pictures of World War II, the United States space program, and sports...

during the Guadalcanal campaign

Guadalcanal campaign

The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and codenamed Operation Watchtower by Allied forces, was a military campaign fought between August 7, 1942 and February 9, 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theatre of World War II...

showing a decapitated Japanese head that US marines had propped up below the gun turret of a tank. Life received letters of protest from people "in disbelief that American soldiers were capable of such brutality toward the enemy." The editors responded that "war is unpleasant, cruel, and inhuman. And it is more dangerous to forget this than to be shocked by reminders." However, the image of the decapitated head generated less than half the amount of protest letters that an image of a mistreated cat in the very same issue received.

In October 1943, the U.S. High Command expressed alarm over recent newspaper articles, for example one where a soldier made a string of beads using Japanese teeth, and another about a soldier with pictures showing the steps in preparing a skull, involving cooking and scraping of the Japanese heads.

In 1944 the American poet Winfield Townley Scott

Winfield Townley Scott

Winfield Townley Scott was an American poet, critic and diarist.-Life:He was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, seven days after the arrival of Halley's Comet. He graduated from Brown University in 1931....

was working as a reporter in Rhode Island

Rhode Island

The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

when a sailor displayed his skull trophy in the newspaper office. This led to the poem The U.S. sailor with the Japanese skull, which described one method for preparation of skulls (the head is skinned, towed in a net behind a ship to clean and polish it, and in the end scrubbed with caustic soda).

Charles Lindbergh

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...

refers in his diary entries to several instances of mutilations, for example in the entry for August 14, 1944 he notes a conversation he had with a marine officer, who claimed that he had seen many Japanese corpses with an ear or nose cut off. In the case of the skulls however, most were not collected from freshly killed Japanese; most came from already partially or fully skeletonised Japanese bodies. Lindberg also noted in his diary his experiences from an air base in New Guinea, where according to him the troops killed the remaining Japanese stragglers "as a sort of hobby" and often used their leg-bones to carve utilities.

Extent of practice

According to Weingartner it is not possible to determine the percentage of US troops that collected Japanese body parts, "but it is clear that the practice was not uncommon". According to Harrison only a minority of US troops collected Japanese body parts as trophies, but "their behaviour reflected attitudes which were very widely shared." According to Dower most U.S. combatants in the Pacific did not engage in "souvenir hunting" for bodyparts. The majority had some knowledge that these practices were occurring, however, and "accepted them as inevitable under the circumstances". The incidence of soldiers collecting Japanese body parts occurred 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". The degree of acceptance of the practice varied between units. Taking of teeth was generally accepted by enlisted men and also by officers, while acceptance for taking other body parts varied greatly. In the experience of one serviceman turned author, Weinstein, ownership of skulls and teeth were widespread practices.

When interviewed by researchers former servicemen have related to the practice of taking gold teeth from the dead – and sometimes also from the living – as having been widespread.

There is some disagreement between historians over what the more common forms of 'trophy hunting

War trophy

In ancient Greece and Rome, military victories were commemorated with a display of captured arms and standards. A trophy was originally a war memorial assembled from such items on a battlefield. The Roman triumph‎ also displayed these items as well as cultural objects, which later came to be...

' undertaken by U.S. personnel were. John W. Dower

John W. Dower

John W. Dower is an American author and historian.Dower earned a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Amherst College in 1959, and a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University in 1972, where he studied under Albert M. Craig...

states that ears were the most common form of trophy which was taken, and skulls and bones were less commonly collected. In particular he states that "skulls were not popular trophies" as they were difficult to carry and the process for removing the flesh was offensive. This view is supported by Simon Harrison. In contrast, Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson

Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.....

states that "boiling the flesh off enemy [Japanese] skulls to make souvenirs was a not uncommon practice. Ears, bones and teeth were also collected".

The collection of Japanese body parts began quite early in the campaign, prompting a September 1942 order for disciplinary action against such souvenir taking. Harrison concludes that since this was the first real opportunity to take such items (the battle of Guadalcanal), "Clearly, the collection of body parts on a scale large enough to concern the military authorities had started as soon as the first living or dead Japanese bodies were encountered." When Charles Lindbergh passed through customs at Hawaii in 1944, one of the customs declarations he was asked to make was whether or not he was carrying any bones. He was told after expressing some shock at the question that it had become a routine point. This was because of the large number of souvenir bones discovered in customs, also including “green” (uncured) skulls.

In 1984, Japanese soldiers' remains were repatriated from the Mariana Islands

Mariana Islands

The Mariana Islands are an arc-shaped archipelago made up by the summits of 15 volcanic mountains in the north-western Pacific Ocean between the 12th and 21st parallels north and along the 145th meridian east...

. Roughly 60 percent were missing their skulls. Likewise it has been reported that many of the Japanese remains in Iwo Jima

Iwo Jima

Iwo Jima, officially , is an island of the Japanese Volcano Islands chain, which lie south of the Ogasawara Islands and together with them form the Ogasawara Archipelago. The island is located south of mainland Tokyo and administered as part of Ogasawara, one of eight villages of Tokyo...

are missing their skulls. It is possible that the souvenir collection of remains continued also in the immediate post-war period.

Context

According to Simon Harrison, all of the "trophy skulls" from the World War II era in the forensic record in the U.S. attributable to an ethnicity are of Japanese origin; none come from Europe. (A seemingly rare exception to this rule was the case of a German soldier scalped by an American soldier, in accordance with Winnebago

Ho-Chunk

The Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....

tribal custom.) Skulls from World War II, and also from the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

, continue turning up in the U.S., sometimes returned by former servicemen or their relatives, or discovered by police. According to Harrison, contrary to the situation in average head-hunting societies, the trophies do not fit in in American society. While the taking of the objects was socially accepted at the time, after the war, when the Japanese in time became seen as fully human again, the objects for the most part became seen as unacceptable and unsuitable for display. Therefore in time they and the practice that had generated them were largely forgotten.

Australian soldiers also mutilated Japanese bodies at times, most commonly by taking gold teeth from corpses. This was officially discouraged by the Australian Army

Australian Army

The Australian Army is Australia's military land force. It is part of the Australian Defence Force along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. While the Chief of Defence commands the Australian Defence Force , the Army is commanded by the Chief of Army...

. Johnson states that "one could argue that greed rather than hatred was the motive" for this behavior but "utter contempt for the enemy was also present". Australians are also known to have taken gold teeth also from German corpses, "but the practice was obviously more common in the South-West Pacific". "The vast majority of Australians clearly found such behaviour abhorrent, but" some of the soldiers who engaged in it were not 'hard cases'. According to Johnston Australian soldiers' "unusually murderous behavior" towards their Japanese opponents (such as killing prisoners) was caused by racism, a lack of understanding of Japanese military culture and, most significantly, a desire to take revenge against the murder and mutilation of Australian prisoners and native New Guineans during the Battle of Milne Bay

Battle of Milne Bay

The Battle of Milne Bay, also known as Operation RE by the Japanese, was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II. Japanese marines attacked the Australian base at Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea on 25 August 1942, and fighting continued until the Japanese retreated on 5...

and subsequent battles.

From the Burma Campaign

Burma Campaign

The Burma Campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily between British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of the Empire of Japan, Thailand, and the Indian National Army. British Commonwealth land forces were drawn primarily from...

there are recorded instances of British troops removing gold teeth and displaying Japanese skulls as trophies.

Dehumanization

In the U.S. there was a widely held view that the Japanese were subhuman

Subhuman

- Biology :* Any of the extinct or living members of the clade Hominoidea other than Homo or alternatively just H. sapiens sapiens.-Music:* subHuman , a 2007 music album by Recoil...

. There was also popular anger in U.S. at the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor

Attack on Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...

amplifying pre-war racial prejudices. The U.S. media helped propagate this view of the Japanese, for example describing them as “yellow vermin”. In an official U.S. Navy film Japanese troops were described as “living, snarling rats”. The mixture of underlying American racism, which was added to by US wartime propaganda, hatred caused by the Japanese War of aggression

War of aggression

A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The phrase is distinctly modern and diametrically opposed to the prior legal international standard of "might makes right", under...

, and both real and also fabricated Japanese atrocities

Japanese war crimes

Japanese war crimes occurred during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Some of the incidents have also been described as an Asian Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities...

led to a general loathing of the Japanese. And although there were objections to the mutilation from amongst other military jurists, "to many Americans the Japanese adversary was no more than an animal, and abuse of his remains carried with it no moral stigma

Social stigma

Social stigma is the severe disapproval of or discontent with a person on the grounds of characteristics that distinguish them from other members of a society.Almost all stigma is based on a person differing from social or cultural norms...

.

According to Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson

Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.....

: "To the historian who has specialized in German history, this is one of the most troubling aspects of the Second World War: the fact that Allied troops often regarded the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians – as Untermensch

Untermensch

Untermensch is a term that became infamous when the Nazi racial ideology used it to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Gypsies, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Serbs, Belarussians and Ukrainians...

en." Since the Japanese were regarded as animals it is not surprising that the Japanese remains were treated in the same way as animal remains.

Simon Harrison comes to the conclusion in his paper “Skull trophies of the Pacific War: transgressive objects of remembrance” that the minority of U.S. personnel who collected Japanese skulls did so as they came from a society which placed much value in hunting as a symbol of masculinity, combined with a de-humanization of the enemy.

Brutalization

Some writers and veterans state that the body parts trophy and souvenir taking was a side effect of the brutalizing effects of a harsh campaign.

Harrison argues that while brutalization could explain part of the mutilations, this explanation does not explain the servicemen who already before shipping off for the Pacific proclaimed their intention to acquire such objects. According to Harrison it also does not explain the many cases of servicemen collecting the objects as gifts for people back home. Harrison concludes that there is no evidence that the average serviceman collecting this type of souvenirs was suffering from "combat fatigue". They were normal men who felt this was what their loved ones wanted them to collect for them. Skulls were sometimes also collected as souvenirs by non-combat personnel.

Revenge

Bergerud writes that U.S. troops hostility towards their Japanese opponents largely arose from incidents in which Japanese soldiers committed war crimes against Americans, such as the Bataan Death March

Bataan Death March

The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer, by the Imperial Japanese Army, of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of prisoners.The march was characterized by...

and other incidents conducted by individual soldiers. For instance, Bergerud states that the U.S. Marines on Guadacanal were aware that the Japanese had beheaded some of the marines captured on Wake Island

Wake Island

Wake Island is a coral atoll having a coastline of in the North Pacific Ocean, located about two-thirds of the way from Honolulu west to Guam east. It is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States, administered by the Office of Insular Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior...

prior to the start of the campaign. However this type of knowledge did not necessarily lead to revenge mutilations, one marine states that they falsely thought the Japanese had not taken any prisoners at Wake Island, and therefore as revenge they killed all Japanese that tried to surrender. (see also Allied war crimes during World War II)

The earliest account of U.S. troops wearing ears from Japanese corpses he recounts took place, according to one Marine, on the second day of the Guadalcanal Campaign

Guadalcanal campaign

in August 1942 and occurred after photos of the mutilated bodies of Marines on Wake Island were found in Japanese engineers' personal effects. The account of the same marine also states that Japanese troops booby trapped some of their own dead as well as some dead marines, and also mutilated corpses; the effect on marines being "We began to get down to their level". According to Bradley A. Thayer, referring to Bergerud and interviews conducted by Bergerud, the behaviors of American and Australian soldiers were affected by "intense fear, coupled with a powerful lust for revenge".

Weingartner writes however that U.S. Marines were intent on taking gold teeth

Gold teeth

Gold teeth are a form of dental prosthesis. They are sometimes used for cosmetic purposes.-Dental restoration:Dentists have used gold for filling cavities , for crowns, and for other purposes. Gold is malleable, nearly immune to corrosion, and hard enough to form a biting surface that can be used...

and making keepsakes of Japanese ears already while en-route to Guadacanal.

Souvenirs and bartering

Factors relevant to the collection of body parts were their economic value, the desire both of the "folks back home" for a souvenir and of the servicemen themselves to keep a keepsake when they returned home.

Some of the collected souvenir bones were modified, e.g. turned into letter-openers, and may be an extension of trench art

Trench art

Trench art is commonly defined as any decorative item made by soldiers, prisoners of war or civilians, where the manufacture is directly linked to armed conflict or its consequences....

.

Pictures showing the "cooking and scraping" of Japanese heads may have formed part of the large set of Guadalcanal photographs sold to sailors which were circulating on the U.S. West-coast. According to Paul Fussel, pictures showing this type of activity, i.e. boiling human heads; "were taken (and preserved for a lifetime) because the marines were proud of their success".

According to Weingartner some of the U.S. Marines who were about to take part in the Guadalcanal Campaign

Guadalcanal campaign

were already while en-route looking forward to collecting Japanese gold teeth for necklaces and to preserving Japanese ears as souvenirs.

In many cases (and unexplainable by battlefield conditions) the collected body parts were not for the use of the collector but were instead meant to be gifts to family and friends at home. In some cases as the result of specific requests from home. Newspapers reported of cases such as a mother requesting permission for her son to send her an ear, a bribed chaplain that was promised by an underage youth "the third pair of ears he collected". A better known example of those servicemen who left for battle already planning to send home a trophy is the Life Magazine picture of the week, whose caption begins:

"When he said goodby two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big, handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends,..."

Another example of this type of press is Yank

Yank

Yank may refer to:* Yank, the Army Weekly, a newspaper for American soldiers during World War II* Yank , the rate of change in force* Yanks, a 1979 film* Short form of Yankee, a slang term for someone of American origin or heritage...

that in early 1943 published a cartoon showing the parents of a soldier receiving a pair of ears from their son. In 1942 Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...

recorded a blues song where a black soldier promises to send his child a Japanese skull, and a tooth. Harrison also makes note of the Congressman that gave President Roosevelt a letter-opener carved out of bone as examples of the social range of these attitudes.

Trade sometimes occurred with the items, such as "members of the Naval Construction Battalions stationed on Guadalcanal selling Japanese skulls to merchant seamen" as reported in an Allied intelligence report from early 1944. Sometimes teeth (particularly the less common gold teeth) were also seen as a trade-able commodity.

U.S. reaction

“Stern disciplinary action” against human remains souvenir taking was ordered by the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet as early as September 1942. In October 1943 General George C. Marshall radioed General Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...

about “his concern over current reports of atrocities committed by American soldiers”. In January 1944 the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Joint Chiefs of Staff

The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...

issued a directive against the taking of Japanese body parts. Simon Harrison writes that directives of this type may have been effective in some areas, "but they seem to have been implemented only partially and unevenly by local commanders".

On May 22, 1944 Life Magazine
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

published a photo of an American girl with a Japanese skull sent to her by her naval officer boyfriend. The letters Life received from its readers in response to this photo were "overwhelmingly condemnatory" and the Army directed its Bureau of Public Relations to inform U.S. publishers that “the publication of such stories would be likely to encourage the enemy to take reprisals against American dead and prisoners of war.” The junior officer who had sent the skull was also traced and officially reprimanded. This was done reluctantly however, and the punishment was not severe.

The Life photo also led to the U.S. Military to take further action against the mutilation of Japanese carcasses. In a memorandum dated June 13, 1944, the Army JAG

Judge Advocate General's Corps

Judge Advocate General's Corps, also known as JAG or JAG Corps, refers to the legal branch or specialty of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, and Navy. Officers serving in the JAG Corps are typically called Judge Advocates. The Marine Corps and Coast Guard do not maintain separate JAG Corps...

asserted that “such atrocious and brutal policies” in addition to being repugnant also were violations of the laws of war, and recommended the distribution to all commanders of a directive pointing out that “the maltreatment of enemy war dead was a blatant violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention on the sick and wounded, which provided that: After every engagement, the belligerent who remains in possession of the field shall take measures to search for wounded and the dead and to protect them from robbery and ill treatment.” Such practices were in addition also in violation of the unwritten customary rules of land warfare and could lead to the death penalty. The Navy JAG mirrored that opinion one week later, and also added that “the atrocious conduct of which some U.S. servicemen were guilty could lead to retaliation by the Japanese which would be justified under international law”.

On June 13, 1944 the press reported that President Roosevelt had been presented with a letter-opener made out of a Japanese soldier's arm bone by Francis E. Walter

Francis E. Walter

Francis Eugene Walter was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.-Biography:...

, a Democratic congressman. Several weeks later it was reported that it had been given back with the explanation that the President did not want this type of object and recommended it be buried instead. In doing so, Roosevelt was acting in response to the concerns which had been expressed by the military authorities and some of the civilian population, including church leaders.

In October 1944 the Right Rev. Henry St. George Tucker

Henry St. George Tucker (bishop)

Henry St. George Tucker , the 19th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, was an Episcopal priest and bishop. His parents were Beverley Dandridge Tucker and Anna Maria Washington and is descended from St. George Tucker of Williamsburg. In the earlier part of his career, he went as a...

, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, issued a statement which deplored "'isolated' acts of desecration with respect to the bodies of slain Japanese soldiers and appealed to American soldiers as a group to discourage such actions on the part of individuals."

Japanese reaction

News that President Roosevelt had been given a bone letter opener by a congressman were widely reported in Japan. The Americans were portrayed as “deranged, primitive, racist and inhuman”. This reporting was compounded by the previous May 22, 1944 Life Magazine picture of the week publication of a young woman with a skull trophy. Edwin P. Hoyt in "Japan’s war: the great Pacific conflict" argues that two U.S. media reports of Japanese skulls and bones being sent home were exploited by Japanese propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

very effectively, and this coupled to the Shinto

Shinto

or Shintoism, also kami-no-michi, is the indigenous spirituality of Japan and the Japanese people. It is a set of practices, to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present day Japan and its ancient past. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written...

religion which places much higher emotional value on the treatment of human remains, 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. According to Hoyt, "The thought of a Japanese soldier's skull becoming an American ashtray was as horrifying in Tokyo as the thought of an American prisoner used for bayonet practice was in New York."

External links

One War Is Enough War Correspondent EDGAR L. JONES 1946
American troops 'murdered Japanese PoWs'
The US Sailor with the Japanese Skull by Winfield Townley Scott
Eerie Souvenirs From the Vietnam War Washington Post July 3, 2007 By Michelle Boorstein
2002 Virginia Festival of the Book: Trophy Skulls
War against subhumans: comparisons between the German War against the Soviet Union and the American war against Japan, 1941-1945 The Historian
The Historian
The Historian interweaves the history and folklore of Vlad Ţepeş, a 15th-century prince of Wallachia known as "Vlad the Impaler", and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula together with the story of Paul, a professor; his 16-year-old daughter; and their quest for Vlad's tomb...

3/22/1996, Weingartner, James
Racism in Japanese in U.S. wartime propaganda The Historian
The Historian
The Historian interweaves the history and folklore of Vlad Ţepeş, a 15th-century prince of Wallachia known as "Vlad the Impaler", and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula together with the story of Paul, a professor; his 16-year-old daughter; and their quest for Vlad's tomb...

6/22/1994 Brcak, Nancy; Pavia, John R.
MACABRE MYSTERY Coroner tries to find origin of skull found during raid by deputies The Pueblo Chieftain Online.
Skull from WWII casualty to be buried in grave for Japanese unknown soldiers Stars and Stripes
HNET review of Peter Schrijvers. The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II.
February 1, 1943 Life Magazine of japanese skull .p.27
The May 1944 Life Magazine picture of the week (Image)

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Trophy taking

Extent of practice

Context

Dehumanization

Brutalization

Revenge

Souvenirs and bartering

U.S. reaction

Japanese reaction

See also

Further reading

External links