During the Battle of Saipan, a Japanese soldier who had been seriously injured by tetanus was treated for tetanus on the aircraft carrier USS Sargent Bay on July 28, 1944. He soon died of tetanus infection and his body was buried in the Pacific Ocean.

    During the Battle of Saipan in the Pacific War of World War II, the American military took prisoner a Japanese soldier who was seriously ill with tetanus. On the aircraft carrier USS Sargent Bay, the prisoner was treated for tetanus on July 28th 1944. He soon died of tetanus infection and his body was buried in the Pacific Ocean. After a period of 3 days to 3 weeks of being infected with tetanus bacteria, symptoms such as difficulty opening the mouth, stiffness in the neck, and body pain appear. After that, numbness and pain spread throughout the body, and after the appearance of a posture that bends the whole body into a bow and breathing difficulties, death occurs.

    As the situation for the Japanese forces in the Battle of Saipan worsened, the Allied forces produced a large number of leaflets and newspapers calling for mass surrender, and many of these were dropped into the hands of Japanese soldiers, along with submission forms that explained how to surrender. With the situation becoming increasingly desperate, an increasing number of Japanese soldiers were swayed by the sweet whispers of the leaflets and loudspeakers. The psychological tendency of Japanese soldiers to understand the claims of the leaflets and respond to them was cultivated. Japanese prisoners of war were to play a role in spreading the wisdom of how to adapt to captivity and life in the camps to the Japanese people as a whole when they returned home after the surrender.

   The Office of War Information (OWI) and other American military agencies and units began to use leaflets and loudspeakers to encourage surrender, and they stepped up their propaganda efforts. The number of soldiers appearing from the jungle with surrender papers increased. Among the many Japanese soldiers who were hesitant to surrender, a small number of voluntary surrenderers appeared. As the war situation deteriorated further, deserters from units that still had fighting strength also began to appear. The number of cases of sick or injured soldiers who were unable to move due to illness or starvation being captured by the enemy American forces and becoming prisoners of war increased. The number of cases of soldiers falling asleep away from the main Japanese army and being attacked by American-backed indigenous guerrillas and becoming prisoners of war also increased. There were also cases of people who had failed to commit suicide using grenades or razors surrendering.