The American Spectator

Reader Mail

p> PRISONERS DILEMMA br> Re: Thom Bateman's letter (under "The Overhanging Branch") in Reader Mail's Drawing the Line : /p>

Thom Bateman's recounting of his father's experience guarding Japanese prisoners of war is fully consistent with others stories concerning the behavior of Japanese soldiers in captivity. Mr. Bateman, however, does not state accurately the reason for the subservience of Japanese POWs (or EPWs, to use current terminology).

The Japanese soldier was indoctrinated never to surrender. To be taken prisoner was an absolute disgrace, which is why, until very late in World War II, very few unwounded Japanese were captured. Most of the prisoners we took were either seriously wounded or unconscious, and upon awakening, quite a few tried to commit suicide before becoming reconciled to their fate. As far as Japan and the their families were concerned, these men were dead. Their names were posted as dead, and their families mourned for them. The Japanese government never acknowledged receipt of their identities from the International Red Cross, and never passed on their names to next of kin.

Small wonder, then, that Japanese prisoners of war became so very cooperative with their captors, to the point of becoming willing collaborators in ways we would find treasonous. For instance, they participated in Japanese language broadcasts, urging fellow soldiers to surrender; they pointed out Japanese positions to American forces; they performed personal services for American GIs. To be cut off from their homeland and their families created an unsustainable psychological burden for these men. Like the "ronin" ("wave men" or masterless samurai), they had not connections, no roots, and therefore more or less adopted America as their new homeland, the GIs as their new masters.

p>It is unlikely that Islamic terrorists will behave in such a manner. To them, capture is not an end of the struggle, but the transition of the struggle into a new phase, one in which active and passive resistance and the exploitation of any opportunity to harm the infidel must be exploited. That is why some of the Guantanamo detainees are even more dangerous in captivity than when free. We are eventually going to have to face up to the fact that quite a number of these men can neither be released nor be kept safely in captivity, but will have to be executed. Rabid dogs pose a continuing danger, even when locked in cages. br> -- Stuart Koehl br> Falls Church, Virginia /p> p>

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