The Japs didn't agree to the rules and sure as fuck didn't follow them. I would expect this jerk in particular to have already thumbed his grenade's confidence pin.
Why would you expect that? He’s an infantryman in what looks to be a battle battalion. He’s not a high ranking officer who orders atrocities nor is it likely he’s someone who had to carry them out. He was most likely conscripted if it’s that late in the war and probably doesn’t want to be there at all. He could have fought to the death taking out as many GIs as he could but he chose the more passive route of hide and escape. A vast majority of the combatants in WW2 were just regular guys.
The Rape of Nanking, the torture and execution of POWs, the fanatical loyalty to the emperor, the preference of suicide bombings or banzai charges over surrender or capture, the practice of rigging dead and dying soldiers to explosives, the enslavement of Filipino, Korean, and Chinese women, and so much more paint a different image of the Imperial Japanese Soldier.
He's probably worse the later in the War this was, by all accounts the Japs went mad with desperation as we encircled their land. Worse than the Nazis, soldiers fighting the IJA should fight them like we are trained to fight ISIS: keep your head on a swivel, never allow yourself to be taken captive, shoot to kill, and never trust a surrendering or dead enemy unless they're naked, or you pump some lead into them.
He's probably worse the later in the War this was, by all accounts the Japs went mad with desperation as we encircled their land. Worse than the Nazis, soldiers fighting the IJA should fight them like we are trained to fight ISIS: keep your head on a swivel, never allow yourself to be taken captive, shoot to kill, and never trust a surrendering or dead enemy unless they're naked, or you pump some lead into them.