Ralph Morse

The severed head of a napalmed Japanese soldier is propped up below the gun turret of a disabled Japanese tank in the Solomon Islands in 1943.

US soldiers routinely used Japanese skulls as ornaments on military vehicles and as war trophies, after the flesh was boiled in lye or left to be eaten by ants. On February 1, 1943, Life magazine published a famous photograph by Ralph Morse which showed the charred, open-mouthed, decapitated skull of a Japanese soldier killed by US Marines at Guadalcanal, which was placed on the tank. The caption read as follows: “A Japanese soldier’s skull is propped up on a burned-out Jap tank by U.S. troops.” Life received letters of protest from mothers who had sons in the war and others “in disbelief that American soldiers were capable of such brutality toward the enemy.” The editors of Life explained that “war is unpleasant, cruel, and inhuman. And it is more dangerous to forget this than to be shocked by reminders.”

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