No Surrender

Site Issues 2007 Archive Room
#1

From the Australian War Memorial’s collection. (Their caps, not mine.)

PAPUA. CAPE ENGAIDAIRE: WHEN THE FIRST LINE OF AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY PASSED OVER THEIR POSITIONS FOUR JAPANESE RACED INTO THE WATER. CALLED ON TO SURRENDER, THREE OF THEM STARTED TO SWIM OUT TO SEA AND WERE SHOT. THE FOURTH PUT UP HIS HANDS AND STARTED TO WADE INTO THE BEACH. HE WADED IN WITH ONE HAND UNOPENED. WHEN ABOUT 10 YARDS AWAY HE OPENED HIS HAND TO REVEAL A GRENADE. CALLED ON TO DROP THE GRENADE, HE SUDDENLY TAPPED IT ON HIS HEAD AND WAS BLOWN TO PIECES. THE ONLY TRACE LEFT BEING A WIDENING CIRCLE OF RIPPLES WHERE HE SANK.
http://cas.awm.gov.au/item/013970

Note the Aussie is a left hander, which wouldn’t help with the bolt handle on the right on his SMLE.

Final image next post

#2

#3

What a crazy m…:shock:

Impressive pics, thanks for posting.

#4

Well, each side:

  1. Killed lot of surrendered soldiers…
  2. Brainwashed soldiers about “monster” enemy…

“Many American GIs, who had scarcely heard of the Japanese, regarded them as inhuman yellow-bellies. It made it easier for one of Laurence Rees’s American interviewees, a prosperous Oklahoma lawyer James Eagleton, to muse with pride that in his two years of fighting the Japanese he never saw a Japanese taken prisoner: they were always shot dead as they came out to surrender.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/books/authors.html?in_article_id=479085&in_page_id=1826

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#5

I wouldn’t dispute that practice, by Americans or Australians, but in the series of pictures I’ve posted it’s clear that the attempt is being made to take the Japanese soldier prisoner, and that he killed himself. Otherwise he’d be dead in the first picture.