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The stories about General Pershing ordering Muslim prisoners to die in religious shame while wrapped in pigskins is ... for want of a better word ... hogwash. I doubt if the General ran into many Muslims in his Mexican expeditions, which were in 1915, and against Pancho Villa and other Catholic banditos. The rumor of wrapping Muslim prisoners in pigskins probably came from old English barrack tales from the 1800s, when many of the native people they were adding to the British Empire took exception and revolted.

While it was never official British Army policy, maybe some similar incidents of that kind actually happened. But the pigskin story probably was popularized in America by 1930s movies about the British wars of conquest, such as "Gunga Din". I believe there was a scene where Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cary Grant and Victor McLaughlin threatened to do the pig-wrap routine to get a Muslim prisoner to talk. The guy did the required crawling and begging to make the scene believable.

Torture among civilized people cannot usually be justified, but it has always happened and will continue as long as man tries to kill man in wars or terrorism. During World War II the American movies further demonized the Japanese and German enemy by emphasizing their torture of prisoners and POWs. This actually happened, of course, but the propaganda stories such as the Bataan Death March and the Massacre at Malmedy, helped stoke the anger of American troops.

My own WWII experience, though I never witnessed it personally, was the reported torture of Japanese officer POWs during the bloody battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. As a crewman on a Navy troopship, we put Marines ashore for those campaigns. The stories were based on the fact that the Japanese had prepared massive networks of caves and underground bunkers, and took heavy tolls on Americans above. In attempts to stop this, Marine officers needed to know where the secret places were. It was costly trying to root out each one, usually resulting in Marine casualties at each of the thousands of defense locations.

What I heard from Marines and our ship's shore parties, was that whenever a Japanese officer was captured alive, which was very seldom, he was brought before Marine intelligence officers. Of course, he didn't know how to speak English and ignored all questions about bunker locations. Then, as the stories went, the Marine took out his weapon, a blow torch. While he lighted it, the Japanese officers suddenly remembered they could speak English, some as perfectly as a UCLA grad, which many were. All the Japanese POWs lived, although some had to nurse some burned body parts for awhile.

That's how, at least according to the stories, the Marines saved thousands of casualties, both US and Japanese, in those final two horrific battles of World War II. Even if you are a sworn peacenik and lover of all humanity and little beasties, what would you do in that situation?

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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