Beheaded at whim and worked to death: Japan's repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs

Hitler’s war on Christ: Joel Miller explores Nazi plan to eradicate the Church

“The fragile, typewritten documents from the 1940s lay out the Nazi plan in grim detail,” writes Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Edward Colimore: “Take over the churches from within, using party sympathizers. Discredit, jail or kill Christian leaders. And re-indoctrinate the congregants. Give them a new faith – in Germany’s Third Reich.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/606793/posts

If you haven’t read it already The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is the best book on the subject that I have read. It is very readable.

However I can not recommend Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes. I just could not get through it. It just plodded along.

The Japanese military were worse than animals before and during WWII.

A civil engineer who I will call Bill (not his real name) I once worked with and who became a close friend in spite of the age difference was captured on Bataan in early 1942 after hiding in the jungle for weeks when the Filipino US Army unit he commanded became separated from the main US force and was practically destroyed. He was shipped to Japan in the hold of one of the Japanese POW "hellships" and somehow managed to stay alive until his camp was liberated after hostilities ended in 1945. But of the approximately 2000 original POWs in his camp at the beginning only about 80 were still alive at the end. Of course thousands more prisoners were brought in to replace the dead, so the camp remained crowded and filthy throughout the war.

He was in a camp near the coal mines on the northern island of Hokkaido where the winters are cold and snowy. They had no shelter from the winter weather except a wooden plank floor surrounded by a board fence with large gaps between boards and a rusty tin roof that leaked like a sieve. They were worked 12-14 hour days 7 days a week in the coal mines with guards standing watch to make sure they worked hard and steady. They were given a 5 centimeter rice ball dipped in a thin fish broth at morning and another rice ball with a few ounces of broth at night. Bill was 6' tall and weighed 190 lbs when captured and only 85 lbs when liberated. His back was covered with scars where guards crushed out their cigarette butts just for the fun of it. Jis face and arms were also scarred by various abuses, and his teeth were false because his natural teeth had been either knocked out by guards or had decayed so badly they had to be pulled after he was liberated. All prisoners were treated that way, and if a prisoner looked up or made a sound when he was burned by a cigarette butt he was beaten to the ground with a rifle butt and then stomped and kicked by the guards.

Bill saw thousands of prisoners die for lack of food, exposure to freezing weather, overwork, and not even the most basic medical care, and many more died because of severe abuse and torture by the sadistic guards. Each morning started with the prisoners lined up facing each other. They were ordered to punch the man opposite them in the face with their fists, and if the guards thought either man didn't punch hard enough both men were beaten to the ground with rifle butts or wooden truncheons. Minor rules infractions were severely punished, often by beheading or bayoneting witnessed by the other prisoners. Breaking a shovel or other mining tool was punishable by beheading if the officer in charge felt like it would set an example, or by a severe beating if he didn't.

My friend Bill passionately hated the Japanese one and all until the day he died, and who could blame him? Several years after the war he was arrested and briefly jailed in California when a Japanese-American man standing on a downtown sidewalk made a disparaging remark to his wife in Japanese when Bill walked by. Bill understood Japanese, and he attacked the man with his fists until passers by pulled him off. Until he passed away he would not ride in a Japanese car or have any Japanese made appliance, TV, radio, or any other item in his home.

Some people who knew Bill thought he was wrong to be so deeply prejudiced against the Japanese people long after the war was over and Japan had become one of our closest allies. But I respected his feelings, and I admit that I can understand his hatred to some degree myself even after all the years since Bill passed away. The Japanese military personnel got off way too easy after the war to suit me after the inhuman cruelty that was done by them to Allied POWs during that war. IMHO every Japanese army and navy officer should have been hung or shot for allowing and often encouraging their men to abuse and kill POWs.

But I don't hate the Japanese people today. I believe they belong to a far different kind of culture than that of their militaristic grandfathers and great-grandfathers in Imperial Japan 60-odd years ago. As a committed Christian I am commanded by Christ to forgive everyone who asks for forgiveness, and I do when asked and also when not asked in many instances. But AFAIK no Japanese official has ever asked for forgiveness from their former American prisoners or their families.

What a moving and touching story, thank you so much for posting.

So very much pain remains after all this time....it’s evident in so many posts here. There is so much pain in this thread that I haven’t been able to bring myself to respond to every post, as I always ‘try’ to do in other threads. The pain here is too great, and I hope that posters whom I haven’t replied to don’t feel offended.

I am thinking that perhaps one reason why there hasn’t been any sort of ‘national apology’ for these barbaric acts from Japan is that even after all of this time, most Japanese people honestly do not know the extent of these horrors. They have likely been shielded from knowledge of them by generation after generation who didn’t want their exalted grandfathers to ‘lose face’ in history.

Having never been to Japan, this is only my guess based upon reading, but it seems to me that it would be one possible logical explanation. The specter of having to contend with ‘loss of face’ over their defeat in WW2 would be magnified exponentially by coming to terms, on a national / cultural level, with a true, unvarnished and complete understanding that their own fathers and grandfathers joyfully engaged in such depraved inhumanity.

By suggesting this, I don’t by any means intend to say that it excuses them; quite the contrary.

Particularly considering the ease by which so much of this information is available nowadays, for an entire culture to wilfully turn it’s back upon it’s own horrific transgressions against all of humanity makes them far less than an honorable and virtuous culture and nation.

But I don’t think that Japan is alone.....has Russia issued a “national apology” for the gulags and the millions who died under Stalin? Have they tried to make amends, paltry as any effort would be?

Although I think that it’s wonderful and commendable that many are able to forgive these evils from within the context of Christianity or Judaism, this, I think, addresses the place that the Christian or the Jew occupies in the view of God. It does not, however, address the place that the Japanese or the Russians occupy with God, and my hope is that all guilty parties will one day be called to answer for what they have done, as well as their failure to come to terms with what they have failed to acknowledge to their fellow man while on Earth.

and my hope is that all guilty parties will one day be called to answer for what they have done, as well as their failure to come to terms with what they have failed to acknowledge to their fellow man while on Earth.

I believe you can be sure of that.

I have to believe that if God is omniscient, just, and fair, and he is, he will mete out much more severe punishment in the spiritual phase of life that I believe follows this physical phase of life to those unrepentant sinners who cruelly tortured and killed helpless victims here on planet earth than to unrepentant souls who sinned as all men have sinned, but did not commit such horrendous crimes against humanity.

It appears to us now that the WWII Japanese torturers, Nazi death camp fiends, Stalinist Russians, wicked religious inquisitors, and all other human monsters who down through history have tortured and killed helpless men, women, and children got away with their horrible atrocities scot free, but the last chapter in their book of life has not yet been opened and read. God's mill grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine.

Overall death rate for allied POW’s of the Japanese during WW2 was 27%. Overall death rate for WESTERN allied (not Soviet) POW’s of Germany was 4%.
Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides also documents atrocities as well as some kindnesses done to American and British POW’s by Japanese captors.

Do you agree with this?

I don't agree at all - I didn't come away from that book thinking Bradley was trying to equate any conduct of the allies with the atrocities of the Japanese.

“The Japanese were not punished nearly enough for their unspeakable crimes. Right about now they should be rediscovering fire enabling them to move out of their caves.”

Admiral Nimitz? Is that you?

Admiral Nimitz? Is that you?

No, but I worked for him for a while.

And they killed some 200,000 Chinese and others doing chemical and biological warfare experiments on them. Someone said they made the Nazi death camp folks look like Boy Scouts.

It's not like the Japanese are paying any price for their barbaric treatment of American POWs and allied civilians.

We dropped two bombs on their sorry ass. I'm willing to call it even.

How did he get out?

And they killed some 200,000 Chinese and others doing chemical and biological warfare experiments on them. Someone said they made the Nazi death camp folks look like Boy Scouts.

It appears that books such as this might serve as documentation for what you (and others) say on this topic:

Amazon.com Factories of Death Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-Up Books Sheldon Harris

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Harris, professor emeritus of history at California State University, here presents evidence from Chinese, American and KGB archives that Japanese scientists used human beings, including Allied prisoners of war, in biologial warfare (BW) research during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The project was carried out in large part by the notorious Army Unit 731 under the direction of Major (later Lieutenant General) Ishii Shiro. Harris, who also maintains that American authorities made a postwar deal whereby Ishii and his staff disclosed their BW data in exchange for immunity from war-crimes prosecution, notes that U.S. intelligence agencies have only selectively released material pertaining to the Japanese BW program. The author inconclusively considers charges made during the 1950-53 Korean War that U.S. forces employed BW agents on the battlefield, possibly with the assistance of Japanese specialists. Scholars will appreciate Harris's assiduous research and analysis, but his dry presentation makes his book of doubtful interest to general readers.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

International Herald Tribune
"...Will surely be the classic work for many years to come."

“No, but I worked for him for a while.”

Really? Tell us about it.

There should have been a Japanese Nuremberg..

"The two things the bother me the most of these facts are one; the uniformity of the Japanese in mistreating POW's (you never hear of any good or fair officers) and two; the persistence of the Japanese to this day in their refusal to assume any national guilt for these actions."

My father was a prisoner of the Japanese. Every account I know of about the conduct of the Japanese military with regard to their treatment of PW's and civilians in conquered territories is disgraceful. That said, My father (who was very close-mouthed about the experience) did tell me that guards in Hoten Prison (Mukden, Manchuria) where he spent most of his captivity would on a few occaisions sneak food to them.

What they would do is walk up to them and slap, punch and knock them down, at which time they would surreptitiously drop a boiled egg or a piece of fruit next to them and walk away. They did this as some risk, as any humanity shown to the PW's was severely punished. As perverse as this sounds, the prisoners desperately needed the food, and getting roughed up was the price to pay.

I am humbled by your father’s service to his country.

So am I. He now lies in the National Cemetery at Ft. Bliss, Texas. I miss him terribly.