All Intensive Purposes

The history of World War II teaches us . . . the immense importance of the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners in mitigating the human costs of war. All through Hastings's narrative, we see a stark contrast between two kinds of war, the war in the West following the Geneva rules and the war in the East fought without rules. A large number of witnesses of the western war, German as well as British and American, owe their lives to the Geneva conventions. In the western war, soldiers fought as long as fighting made sense, and surrendered when fighting did not make sense, with a good chance of being treated decently as prisoners of war. Many of the prisoners on both sides were killed in the heat of battle before reaching prison camps, but most of them survived. Those who reached prison camps were treated in a civilized fashion, with some supervision by delegates of the International Red Cross. They were neither starved nor tortured.

At the same time, on the eastern side of the war, brutality was the rule and the International Red Cross had no voice. Civilians were routinely raped and murdered, and prisoners of war were starved. Soldiers were expected to fight to the death, and most of them did, since they had litle hope of survival as prisoners. It is not possible to calculate the numbers of lives saved in the West and lost in the East by following and not following the Geneva rules. The numbers certainly amount to hundreds of thousands in the West and millions in the East.

Mr. Harnsberger landed on Iwo Jima on the Pacific island's D-Day, Feb. 19, 1945. In his effort find some code books, Mr. Harnsberger joined up with front line companies in the 5th Marine Division, showing Marines a sample Japanese code and telling them, "If you guys find any weird stuff that looks like this sample, please get it to me."

"But even with their help," he wrote in his diary, "I never found any Japanese code materials! Nothing! No code messages, no codebooks, no code machines." One morning, after he had spent a month at this fruitless effort, Mr. Harnsberger was ordered to help interrogate a Japanese prisoner.

The prisoner kept saying, "I don't know" when asked by the U.S. company commander about the positions of Japanese army units. Finally, the exasperated captain told Mr. Harnsberger, "He is worthless. He is yours."

Mr. Harnsberger was told to check the prisoner in at battalion headquarters. During their walk, they became acquainted. When Mr. Harnsberger asked him, "what did you do in the Japanese army," the man said, "I ran the code room of the Japanese Army headquarters on Iwo Jima."

From then on, because no one else appeared willing to be responsible, Mr. Harnsberger took over the care and feeding of the young man, enlisting him, one day, to help Mr. Harnsberger coax some Japanese soldiers from a tunnel.

Shouting deep into the tunnel that U.S. forces would "repatriate you to your homeland in Japan as soon as this war is over," Mr. Harnsberger wrote, "I said over and over, 'We do not kill prisoners!' I can still remember how unsure I was in saying that, for I had observed several times Japanese being shot when they attempted to surrender. Iwo Jima was very close to a 'take-no- prisoners battle.' "

Sitting next to him, the Japanese code expert was equally cajoling, imploring his comrades, "The U.S. lieutenant (Mr. Harnsberger) tells the truth! He saved my life! And he can save yours!"

When the nine soldiers eventually emerged, "the U.S. Marines shot them all dead immediately...", Mr. Harnsberger wrote in his diary.

Eventually, he added, "the Japanese code-POW and I became friends." Mr. Harnsberger, in an effort to keep his POW alive, brought him back to 5th Marine Division headquarters and convinced the colonel that he had a highly valuable prisoner with him. The Navy flew the POW to Hawaii for interrogation and Mr. Harnsberger lost contact with him.

// posted by t.s. @ 11:19 AM