Following the bayonetting of a Russian soldier, however, Kaji is increasingly sick of combat and decides to abandon any pretense of rejoining the army.

Between that and the slopes which came up was a mêlée of South Staffords and Japanese bayonetting, fighting with each other, with some Japanese just throwing grenades from the flanks into the mêlée."

The enemy was constantly and effectively demonized, both at home and abroad in the neutral United States, with lurid stories of the rape of Belgian nuns and the bayonetting of children as documented in the Bryce report.