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Pacific Historical Review.
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Trophies of War:
U.S. Troops and the Mutilation of
Japanese War Dead, 1941-1945
JAMES J. WEINGARTNER
The author is a member of the history department
in Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
1. Reproduced in John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the
Pacific War (New York, 1986), 181. This splendid book is indispensable for an
understanding of the temper of the war between the United States.
Pacific Historical Review ? 1992 by the Pacific Coast Branch American Historical Association 53
54 PacificHistoricalReview
9. Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan
(New York, 1985), 410.
10. Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary (New York, 1942), 15-16. The
collection of Japanese skulls by U.S. servicemen seems to have begun on Gua-
dalcanal. See Paul Fussell, Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New
York, 1988), 48.
11. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh
(New York, 1970), 919
12. Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (Novato,
Calif., 1981), 120.
13. Yank,Jan. 13, 1943, p. 24.
Trophies of War 57
26. Hull to Forrestal, Aug. 19, 1944; Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Ser-
vice, Federal Communications Commission, Far Eastern Section, International
Comment, Aug. 4, 1944, page R 1, both in NARS, CNO. Charles Lindbergh
reported that fighter control personnel at the U.S. airbase at Noemfoor some-
times conducted patrols to collect Japanese femurs from which paper knives
and penholders were made. Lindbergh, WartimeJournals, 906.
27. Foreign Broadcast Intelligence service, Far Eastern Section, Aug. 4,
p. R 1, NARS, CNO.
28. Ibid.
29. Shillony, Politics and Culture, 99.
62 Pacific Historical Review
45. Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, Far Eastern Section, Aug. 11,
1944, p. R 1, NARS, CNO.
46. "Tucker Deplores Desecration of Foe," New YorkTimes,Oct. 14, 1944,
p. 6.
47. Memorandum to the Secretary of the Navy, Nov. 27, 1944, NARS,
Navy.
48. Fussell, ThankGodfor the Atom Bomb, 51-52.
Trophies of War 67