Highest casualty rate

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The Basket

Senior Master Sergeant
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Jun 27, 2007
I looked at Tarawa and the Japanese casualty rate was 99.5%! Out of 3636 Japanese soldiers on 17 survived. Astounding.
Was this the highest loss ratio of the war?
 
I think when reviewing Japanese WW2 figures that the Japanese Warrior Cults that figured heavily in military training at this time believed it was honourable to die for one's country is a major factor in this. The Japanese soldiers were prepared to fight to the last man at all costs. Indeed it wasn't that long ago that they found an old Japanese soldier that had to be convinced the end of the war was not an Allied Propaganda trick...

WW2 Japanese soldiers were the original creators of Jungle guerrilla warfare with all sorts of hidden tricks which influenced some of the Viet Cong tactics during Vietnam...
 
WW2 Japanese soldiers were the original creators of Jungle guerrilla warfare with all sorts of hidden tricks which influenced some of the Viet Cong tactics during Vietnam...
I think that it is much older, the people behind the legend of Robin Hood did exactly the same. Napoleons army in Spain outnumbered its opponents by about 10 to 1 but lost eventually because they were in a hostile land that did everything it could to get rid of them.
 

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