Atrocities, Conscience, and Unrestricted Warfare

Abstract

This article explores the meanings of ‘unrestricted warfare’ as practised by US submarines in the Pacific during the Second World War. The submarine war in the Pacific is typically represented as a series of torpedo attacks that devastated Japanese warships, freighters, and tankers. There was also, however, a less familiar submarine war fought on the surface with deck guns. Particularly in the later stages of the war, submarines attacked hundreds of small craft of questionable military value. Drawing on comparisons with Allied aerial bombing campaigns, it is argued that, while the submarine war involved a similar blurring of combat and atrocity, submariners frequently acted on their consciences in encounters with the enemy and civilians.