The Pacific War

Factual Questions
1

Watching a programme on UKTV last night I noticed that whenever Japanese soldiers surrendered or were taken prisoner they were either:

  1. Naked
  2. In rags
  3. Wearing just a loincloth

I wondered why this was so and could think of only 2 reasons:

  1. Their uniforms had rotted because of the jungle/humidity and supplies had not been able to get through with fresh ones.

  2. The Americans had insisted on this “disrobing” for fear that they were carrying concealed weapons.

There may be other reasons but I can’t think of any

2

That’s it. The American blockade was two-pronged: first with submarines interdicting resupply very effectively, and secondly with air and naval forces cutting off any island the Americans were going to invade. What supplies did get through undoubtedly consisted of mostly ammunition and key military must-haves.

Guadalcanal and many of the southwestern islands were steaming jungles, fetid and crawling with vermin. Iwo and the northern islands were often mostly volcanic pumice – it must have been like lying in road grit or worse 24 hours a day. Uniforms were probably shredded very quickly.

Sailboat