Atrocities

One of the things about this war that got the American public extremely angry was the nature of Japanese atrocities. Although it seems not to have been considered much of a concern before the US got into the war (despite the Rape of Nanking), once American soldiers started being murdered by the Japanese the US public got really angry.

Japan had not signed the Geneva Convention, and thus didn't adhere to any "official" rules of conduct of how prisoners of war were to be treated. In addition, their own culture taught their soldiers that surrender was not an option and that it was really an act of disgrace, so anyone who was taken prisoner was considered to be a very lowly type of person.

One of these posters refers to what happened to some of the flyers from the Doolittle mission; one refers to the Bataan death march.

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