Japanese War Crimes Trials

michael mills · #16

David Thompson wrote:

The treatment accorded by the Japanese to their captured prisoners -- American, British, Australian, Sikh, Chinese and Filipino -- was a bestial disgrace.

The above statement contains an element of cliche.

Japanese treatment of POWs and civilian prisoners varied from place to place, and over time. In general, it can be said that, apart from individual incidents of atrocity during the rapid advance at the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, the Japanese treatment of prisoners was reasonable at the beginning, and then gradually got worse, particularly in the last two years of the war. The essential factor causing that worsening of treatment was the supply crisis within the Japanese-occupied area resulting from the Allied interdiction of sea transport, meaning that rations were drastically curtailed to bare subsistence level.

The Australian prisoners of war may serve as an example. About one-third of them died, about the same mortality rate as that of German POWs in Soviet hands. Almost all these prisoners had been taken at the fall of Singapore, at the beginning of 1942. That means that some two-thirds survived about three and a half years of imprisonment in Japanese-held areas that were increasingly under siege.

The same consideration applies to other Allied POWs and civilian prisoners. The vast majority were captured at the beginning of the Japanese advance, and were held for several years; their survival rate therefore needs to be seen against the length of time of their captivity, and general conditions within Japanese-held areas.

A comparison may be made with German POWs in Soviet hands. As stated, their mortality rate was about the same as that of Australian prisoners of the Japanese. However, the pattern of mortality was quite different.

About half of the German POWs in Soviet hands were captured during the war, the great majority in the last year of the war; the other half went into captivity after the German surrender. Almost all of those captured in the first two years of the German-Soviet war died in captivity; for example, 90% of the Germans taken prisoner at Stalingrad died. Those taken prisoner in 1944 had a lower death rate, and those who went into captivity at the end of the war had a still lower death rate; but the German POWs continued to die in relatively high numbers even after the end of the war.

By contrast, in the case of the Australian POWs, the death rate was very low to begin with, and then got a lot higher as conditions worsened. Thus, Australians taken prisoner by the Japanese at the beginning of the Pacific war had a much higher chance of survival (over 60%) than Germans taken prisoner in the first two years of the German-Soviet war (less than 10%). I imagine that the pattern of mortality among other Allied prisoners was similar to that of the Australian POWs.

As I stated, the treatment of the prisoners also varied from place to place. While the Australian POWs held at the main POW camp at Changi, in Singapore, were more or less left to their own devices within the camp perimeter, and were thus able to grow their own food and institute other organisational measures to maximise their chances survival, those sent to work on the Burma-Siam railway suffered an appallingly high mortality rate from disease, due to a combination of poor diet, exposure to extreme climatic conditions (especially during the wet season), and harsh treatment dictated by the work tempo.

It is interesting that the single most common cause of death of Australian POWs in Japanese hands was attack by Allied forces on localities where they were held. Thus, the largest number to die in a single incident were those who perished when the ship taking them to Japan was torpedoed.

However, most died from exposure and a wide variety of diseases, exacerbated by malnutrition. Only a small number were actively killed by the Japanese, either individually or during sporadic massacres. The largest single massacre of Australian POWs occurred during the Sandakan "death march", at the very end of the war, when their Japanese guards were trying to escape the Allied forces which had landed in Borneo.

The case of the Indian POWsis also interesting. Although they suffered much the same conditions as other Allied prisoners, a substantial minority joined the Japanese, and fought with them against the British in Burma. It is those Indian POWs that are honoured in India today, rather than those who remained loyal to Britain.

David Thompson · #17

A cliche is a truth which has become too well-known to be fashionable.

Dan W. · #18

Ulcus tropicum, tropical sloughing phagdena: A disease of food, filth and friction.

All it took ot start an ulcer was a break in the skin. The treatment was to anesthitize the patient, curette the dead flesh, apply a strong cauterizing disinfectant such as carbolic and a dusting of iodoform powder, then bandage. POW medical officers had no such medicines at all. In the Phillipines they used a salve of margarine, or burned the bad flesh out with picric acid from unexploded bombs. On Ambon they tried out copper sulfate, which the Japanese used for toughening horses hooves. On Haruku the Japanese has POW's busting coral for a runway- rock chips flying everywhere, perfect for ulcers. When an air raid blew up the brothel used by "comfort women" they scrounged the Korean's white face powder to dust on their ulcerated legs, and liberated condoms for their toes.

The worst ulcers in the world were on the railroad. Sixty-thousand plus prisoners were laboring barefoot, in shorts or G-strings. A slip with the chunkel, a scratch from a rock chip or sharp bamboo, a guards heightening productivity for the emporer by raking his boot down a POW's shin, something as insignificant as an insect bite - and overnight a sore appeared, about the size of a nickel. With some men it went no further. With others the the ulcer grew by the hour. In a matter of days it could eat a hole in a leg the depth and size of a saucer, a yellow, moist, stinking slough, expanding at the the edges. It could grow to the size of a dinner plate. It could eat its way down to the tendons and expose the bone. In under two weeks it could kill a man.

The slightest touch on an ulcer could make a strong man scream, and having the ulcer cleaned out was more than a touch - it meant cutting away the dead flesh to expose live flesh. The doctors had no anesthetics So, a wog cigarette for a stupefier, a length of bamboo to bite down on and four strong men to hold the patient down while the doctor went at the ulcer with a spoon sharpened to a knife edge. A hideous business. There were men who would try to hide their ulcer, even from friends, because the friends might turn them in to the butcher shops, and there were doctors who came away from the this dreadful work shaking and sweating profusely. The worst human sound on the railroad was the ulcer patients screaming.

Doc had no anesthetics, no idoform. His helper, Slug, graduated to ulcers and kept a sharpened spoon for him. Doc taught him how to spread axle grease on the live flesh of the spooned out crater, zinc oxide if there was any, which was rarely, and cod-liver oil for the vitamins, if a bottle happened to turn up and could be swiped. Then a leaf-and-latex bandage to keep out the flies. After two or three days, clean out with gasoline siphoned from Japanese trucks on the sly, wipe the crater down to bright live flesh, like a raw steak, and start all over with the axle grease.

Without idoform the body had to heal the ulcer from its own resources, and a starved and exhausted body could not heal well. Tropical ulcers were dreadfully persistent. The word Doc used was intractable requiring lengthy hospitalization, and the word hospital did not exist on the railroad. An essential part of the treatment was rest, and that did not exist on the railroad either.

Men with ulcers could not always find a doctor. They had to look after themselves. They made shin guards out of bamboo, like hockey players. If they had no bandages they used torn up clothes. If no clothes to spare then torn up mosquito net. If no net then mud packs. The sharpened spoon was a horror - every prisoner heard the screams and thought to himself Anything but that. Some men tried to clean it the Burmese way: heat a rock over a fire, hold the rock over the ulcer and knock the soot into it. There were Englishmen pissing into the hole in their own leg. The British were strong for rice poultrices too. The Dutch said no, a hot mash of rice on an ulcer was a disaster, a breeding ground for infection. There were Australians using rock salt, pounding it to powder, heating it, and packing it in. Men would collect latrine maggots and poke a dozen into their ulcer to eat away the rotten flesh. They counted carefully and made sure they pulled every last one out. If they missed one it would keep burrowing into live flesh and they would have to dig it out, and that pain was unearthly. They put leeches in to suck the blood. A leech was good for two suckings; it would fill up once, vomit, and suck again until the toxic blood killed it. Men would drag themselves to the river, dangle their ulcerous legs into the water and little silver fish the size of minnows, with sharp teeth, would come and nibble away at the dead flesh.

Either an ulcer got better or it didn't. A relapse of malaria, a bad attack of pellagra diarrhea, or the body sinking into protein edema, and the ulcer could get radically worse. Beyond a certain stage the ulcer had to be excised and a skin graft performed. But in the railroad camps their were no doctors who could perform skin grafts, and no sick huts with the equipment anyway. So ulcers went beyond the skin graft stage to being life threatening. Then it was amputation or death, the bone saw or the burial detail.

Doc Hekking was quite proud of his high success rate with amputations. Over 50% of those amputee's lived over 2 months after their amputation.
Even if a man died after the operation, at least he would be leaving life in less pain, and with more dignity, his leg a clean cut stump instead of a foul gangrenous horror.

Prisoners of the Japanese by Gavan Daws, pgs, 196, 197, 198.

Dan W. · #19

Please you two, the topic is not Bergen-Belsen, it is atrocities in the Pacific!

Moderator, could we please keep this thread on topic before it turns into yet another round of petty insults, charges and counter-charges that will eventually have little to do with the intended discussion?

Thanks in advance.

Marcus · #20

As Dan has already pointed out, let's keep the thread on topic.
A post by Roberto was moved to a new thread entitled "Bergen-Belsen".

/Marcus

michael mills · #21

Dan Weakley wrote:

Please you two, the topic is not Bergen-Belsen, it is atrocities in the Pacific!

If I am one of the two referred to, I wish to say that I have no intention of hi-jacking this thread, which is primarily about the post-war trials of Japanese political and military leaders.

I introduced some material about the trial of the Major Japanese War Criminals which illustrated certain interesting features which differentiated those trials from the trials of accused Germans conducted at Nuremberg.

One of those interesting features was that the Japanese were defended by American attorneys, leading to a more vigorous defence than that of their German counterparts by intimidated German lawyers. I drew a parallel with the Belsen Trial, where the accused Germans were defended by British officers, likewise leading to a more vigorous defence.

I trust that Dan Weakley will agree that my reference to the Belsen Trial was not out of place within the context of this thread, which is primarily about trials for warcrimes, rather than the warcrimes themselves. I was comparing one trial with another.

I would like to take this opportunity to comment on the passage quoted by Dan Weakley concerning tropical ulcers.

It was a very interesting passage, but in what way does it demonstrate Japanese bestiality toward the POWs held by them?

The cause of the suffering of the POWs seems to be a result of two factors:
1. The tropical climate, conducive to the development of ulcers.
2. Lack of medicines to treat the ulcers, and lack of appropriate protective clothing and footwear to prevent the initial wounds that became ulcerous.

Perhaps the Japanese could be blamed for not supplying medicines and proper clothing to their prisoners, thus allowing the ulcers to occur.

But if the supply of medicines and clothing was dependant on ships getting through from Japan, and if those ships were constantly being sunk by Allied aerial and submarine attack, then it would be quite reasonable for the Japanese to reserve whatever meagre supplies got through for their own use, leaving little or nothing for the prisoners.

I note from the quoted passage that the Japanese do not seem to have done anything to prevent the prisoners scrounging whatever they could to treat the ulcers, nor did they prevent the POW doctors from providing whatever limited care they could.

The whole context is not one of Japanese "bestiality", but rather of a lack of supplies caused primarily by the Allied way of waging war.

Another noteworthy feature is the reference to the brothel that was destroyed by Allied air attack. Why were the Allies bombing brothels? Yet another military target?

However, the bombing of the brothel illustrates one of the points I made, namely that one of the main dangers to the lives and safety of the POWs was Allied air and sea attack, which caused many thousands of casualties among them.

It has become fashionable to criticise Japan for its use of Korean "comfort women", and no doubt the Korean women killed in the attack on the brothel would be included in the tally of victims of Japanese "bestiality". But the immediate cause of their deaths, and those of POWs killed in similar circumstances, was the Allied policy of indiscriminate bombing of the Japanese-held areas.

Dan W. · #22

When they were beating prisoners, the Japanese were shameless about being short; they would stand on a box to bring themselves up to a white mans height, or they would make him stand in a ditch so they could get at his face. Somebody somewhere was always taking a beating. A section of prisoners might be sitting in their hut after dark, chewing on their evening handful of rubbery rice, and the night detail of guards would take it into their heads to creep up silently in their rubber soled boots so as to be able to peek in unnoticed and pick out a man to beat for eating with his feet at the wrong angle. Or they would burst in and bash the man nearest the door for not shouting KI O TSUKE! quickly enough, and then beat everyone else for not jumping to attention instantly on his call. Or they would come stumping in one after the other, so that prisoners had to jump up and bow each time, not being fast enough warranting a beating. Or, half an hour before lights out one guard would order everyone into bed, and three minutes later guards would come in and beat everybody for being in bed before regulation time.

Every so often, out of nowhere, the guards would grab some prisoner and put him in a cage where he could not stand and could not sit. Or they would put him on exhibit outside the guardhouse, where the other prisoners could not help but see, forcing him to stand in the sun for hours, eyes open and no hat; or make him kneel bare-legged on sharp stones with a log behind his knees to cut off the circulation. Or they would truss him up like a pig with signal wire or barbed wire pulled tight. When the guards changed shift they would pretend to give him a drag on a cigarette and then shove it down his throat, or stick it in his nose or ear, or grind it out on him. Or beat him. Then every prisoner going by had to beat him to or get beaten himself. It was nothing for a Japanese to beat a man and leave him hanging from the wire; he could die hanging.

No one could imagine anything worse than a Japanese guard until Korean guards began showing up in the camps. The Japanese had had Korea under their thumb since the turn of the century. They were forced into conscription, and forced to take Japanese names. They were forced to work in heavy industry as well, and by 1941 there were over a million and a half in Japan. There were Koreans toiling to exhaustion in coal mines, slaving in steel mills. Korean females were rounded up, many pulled out of school, some as young as eleven or tweleve, and shipped off to be prostitutes for the emperor's soldiers all over Asia. Comfort Women the Japanese called them, there may have been a hundred thousand, could have been two hundred thousand, the Japanese never gave a true count.

Japanese guards treated Korean guards no better then prisoners, like another breed of mongrel dog to kick. One Korean, who learned a bit of English in the camps used to say on the quiet, Japan no pucking good, and the prisoners christened him George Pucking. He preferred this name over the Japanese name. But he could not bite back at the Japanese, no Korean could. One said to an Englishmen Ingerris-Korean samo, all prisoner nippon. Another said to an Australian You me samo. But for every decent Korean who openly resented the Japanese there were all the others out to impress them, Hatchet Face, Shadrach the Shitbag, and the rest, taking out their rage against the Japanese on the POW's.

The Undertaker was Korean. Doctor Death, the one with three hairs growing out of the mole on his chin, was Japanese. The Lizard and The Mad Mongrel were Korean; so were Rubberlips and Pig's Vomit. The Big Pig and The Blind Boil were Japanese. So was The Lavatory Brush. The Boy Bastard and The Boy Bastard's Cobber (named by the Aussie's and known as The BB and The BBC) There was Joe Louis, Babe Ruth, Pickhandle Pete, Plugugly, Poxy Paws, Storm Trooper, Battlegong, The Bodysnatcher, The Wolf, Bloodhound One and Bloodhound Two, Big Misery and Little Misery, The Yellow Express, The Bombay Duck, The Black Adder, The Iguana, Simon Legree, The Mad Mullah, Ming the Merciless, Scarface, Dillinger, Five O'Clock Shadow, Make Me More Beautiful, Shit San, Hot Shit Harry and The Blue Arse Fly. And there was a matched pair, Mori Masao, a Japanese known as Bamboo Mori for the way he laid on the stick, and Kasayama Yoshikichi, a Korean. They were a plague condition, like dysentery. The prisoners called them Blood and Slime

Note: "Blood and Slime" were caught and executed at wars end.

Prisoners of the Japanese by Gavan Daws
pgs. 103, 104 and 105.

Dan W. · #23

michael mills wrote:Dan Weakley wrote:

Please you two, the topic is not Bergen-Belsen, it is atrocities in the Pacific!

I would like to take this opportunity to comment on the passage quoted by Dan Weakley concerning tropical ulcers.

It was a very interesting passage, but in what way does it demonstrate Japanese bestiality toward the POWs held by them?

The cause of the suffering of the POWs seems to be a result of two factors:
1. The tropical climate, conducive to the development of ulcers.
2. Lack of medicines to treat the ulcers, and lack of appropriate protective clothing and footwear to prevent the initial wounds that became ulcerous.

Perhaps the Japanese could be blamed for not supplying medicines and proper clothing to their prisoners, thus allowing the ulcers to occur.

Please Mr. Mills, your excusing of bestial treatment and horrible neglect is astounding, considering we are not speaking of Jews in this regard but your countrymen and mine. You need to read the book by Gavan Daws, as enlightenment would surely be the end result.

But if the supply of medicines and clothing was dependant on ships getting through from Japan, and if those ships were constantly being sunk by Allied aerial and submarine attack, then it would be quite reasonable for the Japanese to reserve whatever meagre supplies got through for their own use, leaving little or nothing for the prisoners.

Again, the lack of medical supplies and food was not due to shortages, and even if it were, it was the beatings and overwork that exacerbated whatever conditions made the prisoners sick, and the reasons were myriad. They all would have been comitted to a hospital were one available. Instead they toiled under extreme conditions doing backbreaking labor with only the most primitive of tools.

I note from the quoted passage that the Japanese do not seem to have done anything to prevent the prisoners scrounging whatever they could to treat the ulcers, nor did they prevent the POW doctors from providing whatever limited care they could.

Again, incorrect. "Scrounging" was completely forbidden. If one was caught with a rotten vegetable that the Japanese threw in the garbage he would be beaten severely, perhaps even to death. Scrounging was not allowed. This was apparent during the Bataan Death March, when the thirsting prisoners were not only made to walk past clear natural spring pools of water but were often forced to stop nearby, standing in a blazing sun for hours while only being able to look at the water. Then they were forced marched away. An precursor of things to come.

The whole context is not one of Japanese "bestiality", but rather of a lack of supplies caused primarily by the Allied way of waging war.

There are too many instances to mention of bestialty. Some of the torture methods were absolutely sickening, and I won't even mention Unit 731 or the Hell Ships. Everyday life was starvation, overwork in extreme conditions, lack of medical care and too many diseases to mention by name. 731 and the packed holds of the transport ships are both quite extensive examples in their own right of atrocities.

Another noteworthy feature is the reference to the brothel that was destroyed by Allied air attack. Why were the Allies bombing brothels? Yet another military target?

The brothel in question was located at the end of an airstrip the prisoners were hacking out of the coral with primitive shovels and pickaxes in some God-forsaken location. It was obviously not the intended target.

However, the bombing of the brothel illustrates one of the points I made, namely that one of the main dangers to the lives and safety of the POWs was Allied air and sea attack, which caused many thousands of casualties among them.

Are you kidding me? That is an incredible statement to make. Perhaps one of the main dangers was Allied bombings in reagrds to the Hell Ships, but being locked into an airless confine packed to the bursting point with sick prisoners, little water, horrible conditions and rampant disease literally drove men mad. There were many way to die packed into these holds.

It has become fashionable to criticise Japan for its use of Korean "comfort women", and no doubt the Korean women killed in the attack on the brothel would be included in the tally of victims of Japanese "bestiality". But the immediate cause of their deaths, and those of POWs killed in similar circumstances, was the Allied policy of indiscriminate bombing of the Japanese-held areas.

Nothing "fashionable" about criticizing the Japanese for the rape of Asia and their pillaging of Korea during WWII. They have never shown remorse for many of their actions, and may have once offered a half-hearted apology to these women. However, they have never apologised to China for their mass murdering in that country.

David Thompson · #24

michael mills · #25

One very important point that has been made by former Australian POWs that the major factor determining the mortality rate was the degree to which groups of POWs were organised and looked after by their officers.

When the POWs were not actually working, the Japanese more or less left them alone in their camps, to survive as best they could. Where the POW officers maintained discipline and organised the men, ensuring that whatever food and medicines were available were shared equitably, and that the men helped each other, the mortality rate was relatively low.

Where, by contrast, the officers neglected their men, allowing them to fight each other for survival, the mortality rate was much higher.

According to those Australian accounts, the Australian officers looked after their men in most cases, whereas the British officers were more negligent, resulting in a much higher death rate among the British POWs. Whether that is just an Australian nationalist myth I do not know.

However, the fact is that the Japanese authorities did not deliberately set out to cause the deaths of as many POWs as possible. Rather they were indifferent as to whether they lived or died. If the POWs were able to organise themselves so that they grew food and could provide a minimal level of medical care, thereby increasing their chances of survival, the Japanese did not interfere to ensure their deaths. In fact, the Japanese authorities wanted the POW doctors to keep the men as healthy as possible (without of course giving them sufficient medicine, since they hardly had enough for themselves) so that they could be used for labour.

One of the most interesting books I read on the experiences of Allied prisoners in Japanese hands was "King Rat". Rather than concentrate on the cliche of POWs tortured by the bestial Japanese, it revealed the extent to which the POWs, in an extreme situation, brutalised and exploited each other. The main exploiter was, needless to say, an American.

As for the cliche question, if anyone wants to find examples of Japanese "bestiality", then they will have no difficulty in doing so, since there were very many instances of brutality, bad treatment and outright atrocity, such as massacres.

But the essential issue is to determine the real driving force behind the "bestiality". During the war itself, and its immediate aftermath, the general explanation was one based on racial considerations; the Japanese were an "oriental" people, and hence they could not be expected to behave in a civilised manner. It needs to be borne in mind that for Americans, British and Australians of that time, it was a tremendous psychological shock to suddenly find themselves in a subordinate position to non-whites, and be placed on a par with the lowest Asian coolies. That shock probably magnified in their minds the horror of the situation in which they found themselves.

My own conclusion is that the nature of Japanese treatment of the POWs in their hands was determined by the supply situation. According to accounts which I have read, treatment was reasonable during the first two years of captivity, and food was adequate. Thereafter, conditions worsened and Japanese brutality increased, in tandem with the increasingly desperate situation of the Japanese forces basically cut off in Asia and the Pacific due to Allied interdiction of their supply lines. Many of the atrocities occurred in that later period.

Of course, there were instances of atrocity in the first period, mainly due to the Japanese need to keep up the tempo of their advance. Another factor was the suppression of potential resistance, which affected mainly the ethnic Chinese rather than the POWs.

michael mills · #26

Dan Weakley wrote:

Please Mr. Mills, your excusing of bestial treatment and horrible neglect is astounding, considering we are not speaking of Jews in this regard but your countrymen and mine. You need to read the book by Gavan Daws, as enlightenment would surely be the end result.

With respect, the above statement is remarkably silly.

I draw no distinction between Jews on the one hand and Australians and Americans on the other, as persons. When it comes to their treatment in captivity, I try to determine the motivating forces behind that treatment, in in that respect I might point out differences between the treatment of Jews by the Germans and that of enemy aliens and POWs by the Japanese.

In fact, there was a group of Jews that fell into Japanese hands, the German and Polish Jews who had taken refuge in Shanghai. These were interned along with the other European residents of the city, in 1941.

Although the Shanghai Jews experienced a lot of privation caused by wartime conditions, according to their accounts they did not experience their treatment at Japanese hands as "bestial". At worst they suffered from bureaucratic chicanery. That bears out the statement I made in an earlier posting, that Japanese treatment of the POWs and civilian prisoners in their hands varied from place to place, and was often determined by local conditions.

Roberto · #27

michael mills wrote:One of the most interesting books I read on the experiences of Allied prisoners in Japanese hands was "King Rat". Rather than concentrate on the cliche of POWs tortured by the bestial Japanese, it revealed the extent to which the POWs, in an extreme situation, brutalised and exploited each other. The main exploiter was, needless to say, an American.

I read parts of James Clavell’s King Rat in a German magazine and wasn’t under the impression that the "King", an American POW who earns his nick-name by breeding rats and trading their meat, is portrayed as an exploiter rather than an entrepreneur whose ingenuity saved lives and improved the conditions of a number of prisoners. But it is true that the Japanese captors hardly figure in the novel. This is related to the specific conditions at Changi prison on the isle of Singapore, the site of the novel, where the Japanese left the prisoners mostly to themselves. Clavell’s novel, a work of fiction, seems to have portrayed Changi prison camp as a place more gruesome than it actually was. At least this what the Journal of the Australian War Memorial tells us under

http://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j33/blackburn.htm#16

michael mills wrote:Of course, there were instances of atrocity in the first period, mainly due to the Japanese need to keep up the tempo of their advance.

Exceptions to this "mainly" rule being the massacres at Hong-Kong in December 1941 and atrocities committed against American and Filipino prisoners captured on Bataan peninsula in April 1942, among others.

michael mills wrote:Another factor was the suppression of potential resistance, which affected mainly the ethnic Chinese rather than the POWs.

Were the massacres in the Nanking region in 1937/38 related to this factor?

Thanks to Dan for pointing out this interesting site, by the way:

http://web.missouri.edu/~jschool/nankin ... /table.htm

David Thompson · #28

Michael -- In what I thought was an interesting passage, you said: "As for the cliche question, if anyone wants to find examples of Japanese "bestiality", then they will have no difficulty in doing so, since there were very many instances of brutality, bad treatment and outright atrocity, such as massacres.

But the essential issue is to determine the real driving force behind the "bestiality". During the war itself, and its immediate aftermath, the general explanation was one based on racial considerations; the Japanese were an "oriental" people, and hence they could not be expected to behave in a civilised manner. It needs to be borne in mind that for Americans, British and Australians of that time, it was a tremendous psychological shock to suddenly find themselves in a subordinate position to non-whites, and be placed on a par with the lowest Asian coolies. That shock probably magnified in their minds the horror of the situation in which they found themselves.

My own conclusion is that the nature of Japanese treatment of the POWs in their hands was determined by the supply situation. According to accounts which I have read, treatment was reasonable during the first two years of captivity, and food was adequate. Thereafter, conditions worsened and Japanese brutality increased, in tandem with the increasingly desperate situation of the Japanese forces basically cut off in Asia and the Pacific due to Allied interdiction of their supply lines. Many of the atrocities occurred in that later period.

Of course, there were instances of atrocity in the first period, mainly due to the Japanese need to keep up the tempo of their advance. Another factor was the suppression of potential resistance, which affected mainly the ethnic Chinese rather than the POWs."

I too reject a racist explanation for the Japanese brutality toward POWs, but I do think there was a substantial cultural factor at work. In the first place, the pre-war Japanese culture was itself racist, treating groups like the Koreans as "sub-humans" (Jap. "senjin"). In the second place, the "victory or death" orientation (no pun intended) of the Bushido spirit inclined the members of the Japanese armed forces to be contemptuous of soldiers who had surrendered. There are rare instances of humane Japanese conduct towards the POWs, but for the most part the POWs were regarded as an ignoble lot deserving of an ignominious fate.

Furthermore, the Japanese troops had a very strong sense of "social order." In part this "social order" was culture-specific, and in part it was based on illegal military orders regarding treatment of POWs. When the behavior of allied prisoners deviated even slightly from the Japanese concept of social order, whether because of cultural differences or from an insistence on their Geneva Convention rights, the Japanese prison camp administration responded with beatings, torture and executions.

I have not gotten the same impression that you have, namely that: "treatment was reasonable during the first two years of captivity, and food was adequate." The accounts I've read indicate a consistently sadistic treatment by camp guards, with the level of violence and mistreatment varying somewhat from camp to camp and guard to guard. To this extent, I agree with your statement that "that Japanese treatment of the POWs and civilian prisoners in their hands varied from place to place, and was often determined by local conditions." Certainly, the diet allowed by the Japanese guards encouraged disease, which the Japanese doctors would not or could not adequately treat. I am not inclined to blame these conditions entirely on "supply problems," either, since the POWs were ill-treated from the hour of their surrender until the end of the war.

michael mills · #29

David,

May I suggest that you look up the link to the Australian War memorial site posted by Roberto, and also this one:

http://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j34/blackburn.htm

You will see that the two articles by Blackburn corroborate much of what I wrote in my posts. Blackburn uses the word "stereotypical" to describe public perceptions of universal brutality by the Japanese captors; I used the word "cliche", but they amount to the same thing.

Blackburn confirms that Japanese treatment of their prisoners varied from place to place, exactly what I wrote. The catastrophic conditions at the construction sites on the Burma-Siam railroad were not typical for all camps where POWs were held.

Last year I attended a lecture given by the senior historian at the Australian War Memorial, which is here in Canberra, in the context of the 60th anniversary of the fall of Singapore. That lecture discounted many widely held but false impressions of the war, for example the belief that the Japanese planned to invade Australia and we were only saved from a horrible fate by the United States.

Much of what I wrote was derived from materials presented at the Australian War Memorial. For example, my statement that food rations were adequate during the first two years of captivity but worsened thereafter, leading to wide-spread malnutrition, derived from recorded oral testimony from an Australian POW held at Sandakan in Borneo, one of the camps where conditions were harsher than at Changi (he was one of the few survivors of the Sandakan "death march").

Finally, I would like to say that the treatment of the Allied POWs needs to be seen within the context of Japanese strategic planning.

The sudden Japanese offensive into the possessions of Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and Australia in South-East Asia and the Pacific was an act of desperation, designed to seize the oil and other resources of which Japan was being starved due to the embargo imposed by the United States, Britain and the Netherlands East Indies.

Japan hoped that once it had seized the resource-rich territories of Malaya, Burma and the Netherlands East Indies and established a defensive cordon extended far into the Pacific, the Allies would be induced to negotiate a settlement that would give Japan control over the resources it needed. Thus, Japan never expected to be holding Allied civilian and military prisoners for a long period of time; it expected to have them off its hands quite soon, after a peace had been negotiated.

The Allied decision to refuse negotiation and wage total war until unconditional surrender meant that the prisoners held by the Japanese were abandoned to their fate, which was kept secret from their relatives at home. The absence of any neutral powers in the area (unlike the situation in Europe, where Sweden and Spain, and to a lesser extent Spain and Portugal, could act as intermediaries) made intervention by the International Red Cross impracticable.

michael mills · #30

David Thompson wrote:

I too reject a racist explanation for the Japanese brutality toward POWs, but I do think there was a substantial cultural factor at work. In the first place, the pre-war Japanese culture was itself racist, treating groups like the Koreans as "sub-humans" (Jap. "senjin"). In the second place, the "victory or death" orientation (no pun intended) of the Bushido spirit inclined the members of the Japanese armed forces to be contemptuous of soldiers who had surrendered. There are rare instances of humane Japanese conduct towards the POWs, but for the most part the POWs were regarded as an ignoble lot deserving of an ignominious fate.

David,

The belief in a Japanese culture of contempt toward soldiers who do not die in combat but allow themselves to be taken prisoner, supposedly derived from Bushidoo, is wide-spread, but not compatible with Japanese treatment of the Russians it took prisoner in 1904, or of the Germans taken prisoner in 1914. Throughout that period, the Japanese military culture was based on Bushidoo, so that cannot be the reason why Japanese treatment of the prisoners taken in 1941-2 differed so markedly from the earlier experience.

My own feeling is that the difference is due to the objective material situation in which Japan found itself. In 1904 and 1914, Japan was not blockaded, and had support from outside (in 1904, it was a de facto ally of Britain, and a formal ally in 1914), so there were no hindrances to its supplying food and all other necessities to its prisoners. At both times it was not in a desperate situation, fighting for its own national survival, and hence had the latitude to treat its prisoners humanely.

In 1941, the situation was entirely different. Japan was in extremis, cut off from its only allies in Europe, and subject to blockade by all the major powers in the Asian and Pacific areas. Therefore, it could not afford to ensure humane treatment for its prisoners, being scarcely able to provide for its own people.