Cannibalism in the IJA

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zstar
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Cannibalism in the IJA

#1

Post by zstar » 11 Dec 2004, 05:01

Was it policy to eat humans?

As you already know Bush snr in WW2 himself nearly ended up a sushi dish but i know many stories in China where the Japanese military would start eating Chinese civilians and stir frying them and giving them to officers to eat.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v283/zstar2k/10.jpg


For example this unlucky man here ended up having his leg meat cut off and eaten by a bunch of Japanese soldiers.

and this quote by a former soldier.
There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost would be killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him. He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women. But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were regarded as the object of our hunger

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Peter H
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#2

Post by Peter H » 11 Dec 2004, 05:47

zstar,
I deleted your hot link photo.

Refer to Forum guidelines here:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962
2. Atrocity photographs

Atrocity photographs are not specifically covered in the forum rules. The policy here is, if the photos are "graphic," the contributor should post a link to the photographs, rather than the photographs themselves, so that the other viewers have a choice as to whether or not to take a look.

That leaves us with the question of what is "graphic." This is apparently discretionary with the moderator/host. Here's my view on it:

I don't care who is supposed to have committed the atrocities in the photographs. Whether the subject matter is Nazi, communist, ethnic, regional, racial, religious or any other type of atrocity, links and descriptions should be posted for the following classes of photographs and illustrations:

(a) Mutilated persons, alive or dead;

(b) Severed body parts, insufficient in themselves to constitute a person; and

(c) Dead persons who are not only dead, but who clearly appear to be the worse for wear.

There are specialty sites which cater to necro-voyeurs, but this isn't one of them. In case of doubt, ask first via private message.

Nocomplying posts will be deleted without warning.
Peter


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Peter H
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Re: Cannibalism in the IJA

#3

Post by Peter H » 11 Dec 2004, 05:56

zstar wrote:Was it policy to eat humans?

As you already know Bush snr in WW2 himself nearly ended up a sushi dish
George Bush snr bailed out and ended up adrift at sea.What evidence have you got that if a Japanese Navy craft had picked him up they would have consumed him?

but i know many stories in China where the Japanese military would start eating Chinese civilians and stir frying them and giving them to officers to eat.
Please provide documentation on these stories so their validity can be established.
"There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost would be killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him. He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women. But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were regarded as the object of our hunger"
A Stalingrad documentary I saw last week had a former German officer on stating that he witnessed starving German soldiers eating one of their own,a fat Quartermaster killed in a bombardment.When your starving do the considered taboos of eating your own disappear as a result?

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Phil V
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#4

Post by Phil V » 11 Dec 2004, 06:40

zstar wrote:
For example this unlucky man here ended up having his leg meat cut off and eaten by a bunch of Japanese soldiers.
Is there evidence that Japanese soldiers did this?

Could it have been an animal?

The link photo appears to have nil information attached to it.

P

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Barry Graham
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#5

Post by Barry Graham » 11 Dec 2004, 07:23

There are references to cannibilism by Japanese forces in PNG in all the following books:

"A Bastard of a Place" - Peter Brune

"Blood and Iron" - Lex McAulay

"To Kokoda and Beyond" - Victor Austin

including references in captured Japanese diaries.

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Cannibalism in the IJA

#6

Post by JamesNo1 » 11 Dec 2004, 08:52

Zstar asks "Was it policy (for the Imperial Japanese Army) to eat humans?"

To the best of my knowledge, it was forbidden for Japanese Imperial Army troops to eat their own dead, but the eating of enemy prisoners of war and enemy dead was not specifically covered by orders.

The issue of Japanese cannibalism appears to have arisen most commonly in New Guinea and other Pacific Islands. In some cases starvation was put forward as an excuse for this behaviour. In other cases, it appears to have taken place as a form of ritual in the officers' mess and appears to have involved the eating of bodies of executed Allied airmen. As you are probably aware, the Japanese went to extraordinary lengths at the end of the war to destroy documentary evidence of their numerous war crimes, and most of the cases mentioned below came to light from eyewitnesses who survived imprisonment.

Three very highly regarded books are worth consulting on this unpleasant aspect of Pacific War history:

"The Knights of Bushido" (1958) by Lord Russell of Liverpool. This is the classic work on Japanese war crimes. Lord Russell was a former senior war crimes prosecutor, and also wrote "The Scourge of the Swastika". Lord Russell mentions one extraordinary case of ritual cannibalism of a captured American airman and quotes verbatim the Japanese document containing detailed instructions concerning the manner in which this war crime was to take place. A Japanese general and a senior Japanese naval officer were present in the mess when this cannibalism occurred.

"Horror in the East" (2001) was written by Laurence Rees who also produced the acclaimed BBC documentary of the same title.

"Prisoners of the Japanese" (1994) by Gavan Daws; reprinted 2004 by Scribe Publications.

None of these works makes any attempt to sensationalise the issue of Japanese cannibalism, and perhaps that serves to make the documented cases even more horrifying.

If you want convenient access to several documented examples of Japanese cannibalism you might like to click on the Japanese war crimes section of my Pacific War Web-site at:

http://www.users.bigpond.com/battlefora ... Intro.html

The cases that I have mentioned are all sourced to the books mentioned above.

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#7

Post by Larso » 11 Dec 2004, 15:07

Paul Ham in 'Kokoda' also revisits this issue. He lists a number of instances of dead Australians found 'cut' in peculiar ways, sometimes with human flesh found in cooking pots nearby. He also quotes a Japanese army directive instructing soldiers not to eat their own dead but the way it was worded implied that eating enemy dead was permissable. Quite a few captured diaries refer to it taking place. It was referred to as 'white pork'.

While I'd read of this in the other books mentioned, I read for the first time of an instance where lost Australian troops resorted to it as well. He based this claim on the research of someone named Freund (or similar - now I can't find the place again) and 'others'. It seems a lot like those cases where sailors are lost at sea. I was still surprised though to read of this for the first time. Does anyone else know more of this? I'll try and find the exact reference he gave.

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#8

Post by Larso » 12 Dec 2004, 14:05

Found it!!

OK it was a George Friend 'and others' that Ham lists as his source (page 347) but there is no bibliographical reference backing it up. So I 'Google Searched' around and found there is a George Friend at -

http://www.kokoda.com/company/staff.george.shtml

Now he was a regular soldier for 20 years from the 1970s and has made (and I think still making) films about Kokoda. There was no mention where I looked of the incident in question.

As for that Japanese Army order I mentioned. Ham writes "Cannibalism was later officially sanctioned as a means of keeping the army not simply alive, but able to fight. This was formalised in an order issued on 10th December 1944 by the Eighteenth Army '.... those who have consumed human flesh - EXCLUDING THAT OF THE ENEMY - will be sentenced to death for committing the worst possible crime against humanity' "

I find this a very bizarrely worded order!!!

He goes on to add a POW statement by Yanagizawa Eiichi, 239th Reg, 41st Div, who quoted a speech by May-Gen Aotsu Kikutaro (commander 41st Div) who said on 1 Nov 44 "that troops must fight the enemy even to the extent of eating him". He then adds more to the 18th Army statement above "troops are permitted to eat the flesh of the enemy dead, but must not eat their own dead". There is evidence though that some Japanese soldiers are their own dead though.

Bizarrely there is evidence that sometimes ("frequently' is the word he uses) Japanese troops chose to eat human flesh even when other food was available. Ham gives references for this (page 348)


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Kim Sung
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#10

Post by Kim Sung » 05 Jan 2007, 16:24

According to multiple accounts from former comfort women, the Japanese troops provided them human flesh.

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Peter H
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#11

Post by Peter H » 05 Jan 2007, 22:59

Please provide some of these multiple accounts.

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