Infused with racial hatred, burning with anger over Pearl Harbor and a slew of wartime atrocities, few of the American frontline soldiers felt any enthusiasm about the notion of taking Japanese prisoners. “To the average GI, the Jap is no more than a yellow rat,” Lieutenant Colonel William Shaw later candidly commented to an Army interviewer. “They have no use for them and just shoot them like anyone would kill a rattlesnake. They hunted the Japs like one would a deer, and shot them without mercy.”
