It has been my limited experience, that the soldiers from the Pacific theater, have far less forgiveness and understanding in their hearts, after having to deal with the mentality of that type of fighter. I also seem to remember seeing something to that effect in a documentary. I don't want anyone to think I am trying to minimize any one else's contribution, but the Japanese, seemed to have a tad less respect for life.
I'm going to try to restrain myself from writing an essay as I'm pretty passionate about this subject.
But I would definitely want to point it wasn't exclusive to the Japanese. Both sides were equally as brutal, racist and looked at the other as literally sub-human.
One issue is victor's justice; you hear all about the Axis atrocities in large part because they were prosecuted for their crimes. Allied war crimes, not so much. In fact, zero: not a single allied solider/leader/etc was convicted of a war crime in WWII. But it's not for a lack of material:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/03/humanities.highereducation
I'll leave it at that about that debate, since this thread is about warships. But I do want to add to John's story about another perspective. I've met more than several children & grandchildren of former Japanese WWII soldiers, and they tell me their father/grandfather dealt with PTSD in a much, much different way. Patton might have been berated for how he dealt with PTSD (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton_slapping_incidents), but that was pretty much standard in the Japanese military at the time. And that didn't change immediately following the war, where the Japanese soldiers too, suffered the same mental health effects. But between rebuilding a decimated country from scratch, foreign powers in charge and the complete dissolution of the entire Japanese military (including medical units), mental health support for soldiers wasn't exactly a priority.
So after the war, many veterans dealt with their mental health issues like so many other do: drinking. Japan was running out of adults to recruit in the later years of WWII, so they resorted increasingly on younger conscripts (many kamikaze pilots were literally teenagers - several films, books and documentaries on that). So many of them got their first taste of alcohol in the military, in a warzone, and you can imagine that's not the ideal way to develop your drinking habits.
So many of them would go into drunken rants about their experiences in the war, their grievances, and everything else. And you could imagine the effect that had on their children/grandchildren who saw this.
Unlike the allied soldiers, Japanese (and I would imagine German) veterans were not respected or honored. This was in large part to the "War Guilt Information Program" (WGIP)
http://www.sdh-fact.com/review-arti...s psychological,And it succeeded brilliantly.You can google the details, but basically the occupation force in Japan instilled how Japan was wrong about everything regarding the war, and imposed a sense of guilt and shame on those who participated - especially soldiers. So you had the families of the soldiers looking at them as monsters, and the soldiers themselves second-guessing themselves, even regretting participating in a war in which they had no choice.
So imagine being the child/grandchild of a Japanese solider, being indoctrinated through the WGIP and having that image of your elder as a horrific monster re-enforced through their drunken, incoherent rants about their experiences in the war. It's a far cry from gathering around an allied veteran and listening to their heroic war stories with admiring eyes. The Japanese veterans would be further shunned by their families, go into further depression, and dealt with it by, you guessed it, further drinking. And the vicious cycle continued.
Sorry for that getting long, but it's something I heard first hand from these families which doesn't get a lot of attention, but feel it really should. Because as bad as the Allies treated the mental health issues of their veterans, I feel that the soldiers on the other side got it worse.
