Under current US military law, and/or the Geneva Conventions, what’s the status of enemies who fake a surrender? Here’s the scenario - a lawful enemy combatant in uniform surrenders to some infantry. He’s on his knees, hands on head, shouting “I surrender!”. One of the soldiers comes closer to him, and he whips out the gun he had taped to his back (ala Bruce Willis)and shoots the soldier. Before any of the other soldiers can react, he drops the gun, throws his hands in the air, and shouts “I surrender!” again.
At that point, what can the other soldiers legally do? Can they shoot him on the spot for surrendering while still armed? Does his second surrender protect him again? If so, can he be prosecuted for murder for killing a soldier while in the surrendered state?
In this case, I truly believe that the guy would get wasted before he had a chance to shoot someone. They are very careful to prevent this sort of thing when capturing a gunman. Standard police tactics - things like making the person lay down on their stomach, and fully extend their arms, and put their face down - those sorts of measures generally prevent these type of attacks.
But, to stay within the parameters of the hypo - the question is when did they actually capture the guy? It’s not just when he yells “I surrender.” It’s when they have him under their control. I doubt that situation has occurred and, therefore, they are still in a battlefield adversarial position with regard to the enemy until he has been fully disarmed and disabled from battle.
However, lets say that they did have him under control before he shot the soldier - he has been captured (albeit with a secret gun). Article II states that “Measures of reprisal against [POWs] are forbidden.” That would lead me to believe that they cannot simply execute the enemy soldier. Whether they could try him for murder depends on whether they could get jurisdiction.
So there you go. Worth about as much as the ink it’s written with.
I dispute that “fake surrenders” occured frequently in the Pacific front.
Surrender itself was pretty infrequent, Japanese soldiers famously refused to surrender even when their death had absolutely no military value. Surrounded hopeless units would frequently simply charge the enemy so they could be killed rather than face the disgrace of capture.
Given that the average US serviceman would hardly ever see a surrendering Japanese soldier, the frequency of false surrenders would be even more infrequent. And any soldier who surrendered, fired, and tried to surrender again would simply be shot.
Yeah, I know the OP wasn’t asking what would really happen (99.99 times out of 100 the faker would be killed), but whether simply shooting the faker would be legal or a violation of the Geneva Convention. IANAL, so I couldn’t say, but a fake surrender is itself a violation of the Geneva Convention. So it seems to me that a soldier who pretends to surrender but actually continues to fight is not captured. Simply yelling “I surrender” doesn’t make you a POW.
Quartz. Unless you were referring to Jewish American Princesses, I think you could try to not use terms that are considered, with good reason, denigrating in todays world. Thanks.
I have I have it on the authority of my long dead father that in North Africa an offer to surrender at the last minute after a fair amount of fighting and casualties taken was often met with the comment, “Too late, Mate.” BANG! The experience in Vietnam was similar but complicated by an unhealthy racial attitude. For a recent example look at the young Marine who shot a wounded Iraqi, was videotaped doing it and was vigorously defended on these boards. Often the niceties of rules and behavior are not scrupulously observed or enforced on the battlefield.
Surrendering can be a tricky business. If you are going to surrender you‘d better do it pretty damn quick, unequivocally and not screw around about it. If you don’t you will not be in a position to complain about it and it is likely that no one else will either.
OTOH, as a Brit, if you called someone from Pakistan a Paki, it’d be considered a BIG no-no (in the US, it’s apparently not a big deal, or at least so says Wikipedia). It’s all context, really. Jap is offensive. Yank is not. It just worked out that way.
Oh, and IIRC, wasn’t Yankee originally used as a slur to refer to English Colonists in North America? It became not-offensive because we stole a British Army marching song and made it into a goofy annoying kid’s tune.
I would consider it offensive to call an individual a Jap but google” the japs” or “the pakis” etc and a plenty of hits come up, it’s hardly offensive to us it as a collective term is it?
I heard that in WWII that it was a problem with very young Germans, basically Hitler Youth.
In the Falklands Argentinian conscripts surrendered, but others opened fire, the result was a lot of dead conscripts.
There was also a problem in Afghanistan when advancing forces (Northern Alliance) found three CIA agents and a large number of Taliban sitting in a field. Supposedly after surrender the NA started beating up the Taliban and they had held back weopons. A massacre ensued.
According to my uncle, who was in Burma, the British were not particularly interested in surrender and flushed out Japanese troops with flame throwers. He did not talk about it much.
Personally I don’t think that the Geneva Convention comes into this sort of situation.
I’m not sure I understand your reasoning here. If a term is offensive to an individual, why would it cease to be offensive just because you’ve applied it to a group of people? Why would the fact that Google shows lots of hits make it less offensive?
When did this happen? After the WWII genaration started dying out I guess. My dad called them that his whole life and said the the best years of his life was spent killing J(*&s by the bushel load (he was a 16" battleship gunner). He actually respected them quite a lot, said they were a worthy foe.
I can see where it could be like the differance between talking about the Nazi’s and calling someone a Nazi. I think that Quartz was referring to our enemy during WWII in it’s common usage, not denigrating the Japanese people of today.
Actually, a WWII movie was one of my inspirations for this question. In Gung Ho!, starring Randolph Scott (Randolph Scott? Randolph Scott!), a group of Marines takes an island from the Japanese. There’s a scene where 3 Japanese soldiers walk up to a squad of Marines, hands in the air to surrender. While one of the squad members doesn’t trust them, the guy who’s a minister at home walks up to them. The one in the middle drops to the ground, revealing the machine gun taped to his back which they use to kill the minister and fire at the rest of the squad. The squad returns fire and kills all 3 of them of course, but I was curious what would happen legally if they tried to surrender again.
It’s a pure propaganda movie BTW. It was released in 1943, and has scene where the Marines paint a US flag on the roof of the captured headquarters, then retreat just as some Japanese fighters arrive. The Japanese soldiers reoccupy the headquarters, just to be strafed by their own Navy because of the flag on the roof. The fighter pilots are laughing maniacally as they kill their own troops.
