Found a video on how to deal with sunken ship survivors
 

I know there was a thread recently where we were talking about this. This is from the pacific but I thought the way survivors from the sunk merchant were handled was interesting. *semi graphic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmyq2...eature=related

War is probably the most offensive of all human activities.

There were heroes on all sides of the conflict, just as there were atrocities committed by all sides. This is undeniable.

On thing that made the pacific war so dreadful is the particularly high level of hatred both sides had for one another and the particularly high level of desperation with which many of the battles were fought.

no words from any historian or scholar will ever justify the actions of some.

The important question is "what would you do?"

Personally, as i sit here in the safety and comfort of my own home its easy to say i would provide the survivors with what water could be spared and point them in the direction of land...i would stop short of 'rendering aide to the enemy' and i would do my best to remember that we are all human beings and that it could just as easily be me floating in that water.

on the other hand...

I cant promise the answer would be the same in the adrenaline fueled, highly emotional heat of battle.

as a civilian playing a game we have the luxury of speculation, but until you wear a uniform and put your arse on the line like some here have... you wont know.

I might regret it later but I would probably do the same thing because that was back when America was a great nation. It was a free country worth fighting over and Pearl Harbor was fresh on everyones minds. That America doesn't exist anymore and I could never kill anyone present day so America can rob everyone blind and build a McDonalds with a Wal-Mart.

im going to have to respectfully disagree with you.

America is a great nation worthy of my best efforts on the battlefield.

despite the darkness she currently finds herself temporarily lost in... this is far from her darkest hour.

That said... she is currently crippled by poor leadership. The two parties in power have griped and pissed and moaned and they have forgotten who they work for...

..YOU AND ME.

there are loud noisy revolutions, and there are quiet, patient revolutions. America was founded by revolution and revolution will sustain her.

Never give up the ship mate! Stand tall with your head held high. Be proud to be an American...

Her cause your cause, her flag... your flag. :up:

Hello,
hmm even when some scenes were constructed, two or three give evidence that they indeed shot at castaways - which the survivors obviously were after suviving a sinking ship, or a crashed plane. Very bad, i have heard of "Mush" Morton and others etc., but to see it ... this definitely is a war crime.
I think some films should probably not be shown in utube or publicly.
Even if it is "the Pacific" and "a lot of hate", why ? Every war starts with one nation attacking another without real warning - why this special hate towards the japanese ? Seems this propaganda machine has once more raised its ugly head.
Greetings,
Catfish

oh it did happen numerous times.

I have heard some veterans of that terrible war explain that some guys did it just because, others were ordered to do it because the surivors often planted live grenades on themselves with intent to detonate them once dragged aboard.

very sad either way you look at it

Wow, that was distrubing!
Sure i know about the Kamikaze and stuff, but I had no idea that the Silen Service used to gun down the survivors of the Torpedoed Shipping!
:shifty:

But then again the hidden explosives make kinda sense! Not that this a justification of any kind or any side!

Cound not have said that better myself:up:

Hello,
i have heard the story of hand grenades as an excuse or justification for so much situations - this is probably not the whole truth.
Gunning down wounded japanese in a hospital " ... we thought they had hand grenades under their blankets ...", survivors of destroyed ships, Kamikaze and "normal" japanese pilots, normal soldiers, officers with their Samurai codex of honour, all with hand grenades ? :shifty:

I take it that in a situation were you may be killed every second, and thus living on a high alert level and adrenaline, together with propaganda constantly dehumanizing the enemy in every sentence and spreading gruesome stories, it will make you kill "just because".

"Would you do it?" Thank god i never was in a situation to have to decide it. When the situation occurs you have no time of thoroughly deciding, and if you are young and foolish, believing propaganda, you probably just do it. But everyone has to live with what one did for the rest of his/her life, even if some may not even waste a thought at it when it's over, for the rest of their life.

This is an interesting as well as a disturbing thread, but i will not bump it again in posting here.

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

Its a tough topic. And has little or nothing to do with SH3.

I expect it will be locked quite soon.

The good part of japanese soldiers haved an SAMURAI-like spirit builded in their minds, and you know what is samurais thinking about the enemy, surender and war prisoners. All japs. soldiers( including those WW2 samurais and all other...meaning on thos who did not know what a fu..k they doing there) are trained with high wildnes, fanaticsm (for the Emperor), unhumain torture of their officers(during training and service) and contempt against death. So that it is not very odd when they act very wildly to their POW´s when they did not showing no more remorse to their own people. Normaly that this way of behaveior was reflected to US soldiers and later lead to mutual heatred.

Japanese officers(normaly not all of them but good part did practice this) did not speaking with their lower ranks/soldiers becaus this was below their honor.

I read Saburo Sakai´s book "Samurai" (fantastic autobiography and i recommend you all to read this, for those who did not know Sakai is jap. WW2 air ace) and he was write in his book nice examples about those odd behavior of their officers.

NORMALY at the end, did not every jap. and amer. soldier a war criminal but 10 lunatics is enough to fu..k up entire brigades honor and respect, so you can´t blaim every japanese or american for some war crimes and you can´t put them all in same pocket like they were all cold blooded kilers.

Why? Why do we have serial killers and child molesters? Because some people are just wrong. Couple this with the fact that sixty years ago the screening process was nowhere near as sophisticated as it is today (is it really that good today), and some bad folks get in. Couple it with the fact that in reality the very people who are the most physically able to fight - the young - are also the most impressionable, and you have people who would "never hurt a fly" perfectly ready to do the most horrible things to each other.

No-one goes into combat without first being trained, physically and mentally, to kill; and if you don't hate your enemy you aren't going to be inclined to try to kill him. I'm sure there are a lot of other factors involved, but it's a simple fact that if you're ready to go to war, you're only a step or two away from doing exactly what you might later call "war crimes".

My appologies if this came off as too controversial. I wasn't trying to rock anyones boat or anything. I just thought it was a good rare color WW2 video dealing with submarines. I was surprised when they shot them in the water with small arms. Then again I wasn't. This video is only viewable now that it is 2008 and the government does not control all the media anymore. You have to remember in America anyway color photos of WW2 were not allowed because color was deemed "too graphic" for sensitive Americans. This is also shocking because world war 2 films always show the "bad guys" doing bad things and not the other way around. The guy who filmed this is probably dead. He kept it though.

I'm sort of surprised you all are shocked at this. When you step off the discovery channel you see bad things like shooting the unarmed, torture, rape and looting was not done by axis forces only. It's just history. I'm not Monday night quarterbacking or anything. Like I said I just stumbled onto this looking at what I thought was a run of the mill WW2 submarine film.

Ditto to GoldenRivet. Good clip find for history but highly disturbing for all Honorable sub skippers. I am glad I have heard more good things then bad things.

http://silent-hunter-addict.com

I just finished watching the video, that was disturbing! (although it's nice to see any footage in colour, that's rare!)
At first I thought the Americans shot the pilot who was floating in the sea, but it appears he pulled a grenade himself :huh: