"Please Kill Us Quickly!" Japanese Nurses Begged - But British Soldiers Offered Tea and Biscuits
July 1945. Temporary field hospital, northern Okinawa. The young Japanese nurse dropped to her knees before the approaching British soldier, hands trembling as she pressed her forehead to the dirt. "Please kill us quickly," she begged in broken English learned during three years of military nursing training. "No torture. Quick death only." Around her, eleven other Japanese nursing corps members assumed identical positions, their white uniforms stained with the mud and blood of retreat, their voices joining in a desperate chorus for merciful execution.