The Japanese were pretty evil. Where's their apology?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ignatowski Ignatowski's death is also mentioned in the book Flags of Our Fathers, coauthored by the son of flag raiser John Bradley. The following are his recollections of Ignatowski's death:
"I have tried so hard to block this out. To forget it. We could choose a buddy to go in with. My buddy was a guy from Milwaukee. We were pinned down in one area. Someone elsewhere fell injured and I ran to help out, and when I came back my buddy was gone. I couldn’t figure out where he was. I could see all around, but he wasn’t there. And nobody knew where he was.
A few days later someone yelled that they’d found him. They called me over because I was a corpsman. The Japanese had pulled him underground and tortured him. His fingernails... his tongue... It was terrible. I’ve tried hard to forget all this."
Many years later, in researching my father’s life, I asked Cliff Langley, Doc’s co-corpsman, about the discovery of Iggy’s body. Langley told me it looked to him as though Ralph Ignatowski had endured just about every variety of physical cruelty imaginable.
"Both his arms were fractured," Langley said. "They just hung there, there like arms on a broken doll. He had been bayoneted repeatedly. The back of his head had been smashed in."
Other eyewitness reports further indicated that Ignatowski had been tortured in the cave by the Japanese for three days, during which time they also cut out his eyes, cut off his ears, smashed in his teeth, and cut off his genitalia.