Hi,
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the guy in charge was so mad they surrendered, that they executed all 12 of the U.S. crews from the 345th, but beheading them.
The cultural differences between East and West are illustrated with your example. As I incompletely understand it, The Japanese code of Bushido(?) used during WWII and which had been warped from the Samurai Code was that you either died in battle or you won. Surrender was considered a great sin against the god Emperor of Japan and considered one of the greatest evils to exist.
The Japanese code said that a fallen enemy that had not died but had fought honorably was to be beheaded (highest honor) by someone of equal or higher rank. The executioner had a soldier with a pistol pointed at his head so that the executioner would be shot if the beheading was not done or properly done.
To us in the west, this is barbaric.
The Japanese code of Honor was one of the reasons that the Japanese lost Guadalcanal. The Japanese Army did not know how bad the Japanese Navy's defeat at Midway was. The Japanese Navy did not let it out because it would have been a loss of face (dishonorable).
Likewise, the losses by the Japanese Army at Guadalcanal was not fully understood by the Japanese Navy.
Another point was a result of the "loss of face" was that the higher ups in the Japanese military could not admit the possibility that the codes could be broken. The US had broken many of the Japanese codes during the war and the Japanese never changed them so the US had a limited peephole into the Japanese military communications. One result was the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto's (?) plane over Bougainville(?) by a squadron of P38's. FDR himself decided that the killing of Yamamoto was worth the risk to the possibility of the Japanese being tipped off that their intercepts being read by the US.
It is hard to think in a way that is alien to the way I was brought up but understanding the way the Japanese think brings out a better understanding (to me) of how the war in the Pacific happened as it did.
Doug vV
