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

The Daily Mail (U.K.) ^ | September 17, 2007 | Max Hastings

[Last Dakotan]

Japan has become a productive, constructive participant...

Japan just moved from a shooting war to an economic one, with only one side fighting.

[Last Dakotan]

Never have been able to figure out how the Japanese people went from fanaticism to docility virtually overnight.

I had a similar conversation with an old French friend. He said the French are always looking for the switch on the back of Germans. "You know, the one that makes them go from happy, singing beer drinkers to organized killers."

[IronJack]

The German telegram was included in this book as well. And you're right, it was a poignant hallmark of just how demented the Japanese were. There were also copies of newspapers listing the "winners" of a recent contest in which two Japanese officers had competed to behead the most prisoners.

I almost threw up.

[359Henrie]

Between the two, the job was finished.

[Last Dakotan]

Our values come from our Judeo/Christian culture.

I don't know. Germany in the 1930's had a much longer experience with Judeo-err Christian culture than we have. Look what much of their population willingly did over the next decade.

[Bender2]

Re: In the midst of all this, they were occasionally permitted to dispatch cards home, couched in terms that mocked their condition, and phrases usually dictated by their jailers. "Dear Mum & all," wrote Fred Thompson from Java to his family in Essex, "I am very well and hope you are too.

"The Japanese treat us well. My daily work is easy and we are paid. We have plenty of food and much recreation. Goodbye, God bless you, my love to you all."

Thompson expressed reality in the privacy of his diary: "Somehow we keep going. We are all skeletons, just living from day to day. This life just teaches one not to hope or expect anything. My emotions are non-existent."

Sounds like what nowadays GOP Presidential Candidate Fred Thompson would write home if he were taken prisoner at Move On.Org...

You think I'm joking... The Move On crowd make the WW2 Japs and Islamic Terrorists look tame!

These Move On folk do not take prisoners! They aim to kill anyone who does not follow them in lockstep.

Go, Fred, Go!

Large scan of above at my FR Homepage

[Last Dakotan]

Lastly, I would be more than happy to buy a Ford or Chevy if they were not junk compared to Toyotas and Hondas.

Maybe for reparations we should have the Japanese take over GM and Ford, run them for five years, and then give them back.

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

It could be pointed out, however, that the Third Reich, and much of Europe, had deviated from a Christian culture to a more atheist one by that time.

[LibWhacker]

We hanged some of the leaders but far too many murderous “japs” got off scott free.

[SergeiRachmaninov]

PBS did a good job on this subject in their Burma Railway (River Kwai) episode on “Secrets of The Dead”.

I caught this myself...just the other night. Quite a story.

[AmericanInTokyo]

They are pretty cool these days, and got it out of their system for the most part.

But don't ever forget.

If North Koreans covert agents (and there are many of them here on Japanese soil) set off a dirty bomb in downtown Osaka, let me tell you, there will be sheet HELL to pay for anyone Korean walking down a street in Japan after that, anyone resembling a Korean or with a Korean last name.

The Old Days would and will return in no time flat, and I would not want to be on the receiving end of uncontrollable Japanese Rage, in 1943 or 2007 for that matter.

[Doctor Don]

Bill Zumar, an orphan boy, lived with us in Comanche, Oklahoma through his highschool years. After Pearl Harbor, he joined the army and was sent to the Philipines. He endured the Bataan Death March. Sent to Japan on a “Hell Ship”, he worked in the coal mines near Nagasaki. The horrors he experienced are described in a book “My Hitch in Hell” written by a former prisoner who had a similar POW experience. He returned to the US and lived out his short life in Oklahoma and Texas. He was my all time Hero!

[gaijin]

I used to join in heartely on these kind of threads, heaping war responsibility on Japan. And they WERE responsible. And completely terrible.

But year after year as China looms large, this stuff becomes like the tinkling of wind chimes in the bitter cold of winter....

One day, gripped with fear and our eyes on a once-again frothy Pacific we will be groping around for Godzilla, beseeching every last remaining able-bodied kook in Japan to lustily take up arms and help Uncle Sam....!

And mark my words we'll dredge all of this same stuff up....

AND ASK THEM TO DO IT *AGAIN*.

[Grizzled Bear]

The Japanese simply don’t care about their workers the way domestics do - it has not been a level playing field for a long time.

---

I saw a program, many years ago, about the life of Japanese office workers. The workers would arrive before the boss and stay after. Often the boss would return to check who left first after his departure.

After work the ones who wanted a promotion would go to the “right” bars.

They showed one young man who had a stroke through overwork and stress. He couldn’t remember the names of his wife or children but he recited detailed information about his company and job.

Since it was one of the MSM evening news programs during the 80s or 90s I won’t guarantee it’s veracity.

[Malsua]

Nothing brought this home for me until I visited the Kwai Bridge museum in Thailand.

The Japs really really abused their prisoners. I heard so much “anti-jap” speech regularly I was surprised. The Thais still hate the Japanese and won’t hesitate to tell you of it.

Here’s some pics I took a 4 years ago.

http://www.geocities.com/malbor2/china-thailand/page2.html

[Last Dakotan]

Inside that box I found snapshots that I'm sure were from the Bataan Death March.

Your story is a troubling one. As a human being if you have evidence of such atrocities against other humans you have a responsibility to bring it forward rather than hiding it in a cigar box.

[AmericanInTokyo]

The solution under Supreme Commander Allied Pacific (SCAP) and GHQ, in my opinion, should have been for Emperor Hirohito to abdicate right after VJ-Day, and give the throne to his son Akihito (who is the current Emperor).

Two birds with one stone.

Japan would have kept an Emperor and the de-fanged, representative democracy-based Imperial System, to keep the Japanese people united, focused and positive in their post-war rebuilding, and at the same time, keep Soviet-inspired Communism at-bay from taking root in Japan. (This was the Cold War, we recall, many Communists were released from Japanese prison and made quite a political comeback).

And finally, a ten-year old boy who had no war responsibility, taking over as Emperor of Japan would be absolved the Chrysanthemum Throne of all War Guilt in the Postwar period, and would not have been such a thorn in the side of Japan's angry regional neighbors (China, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, etc) all the time through the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s until Hirohito himself died. (I know in my own case, I personally saw Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo on about five occaisions, at various open Palace events, but amid all the flag waving--often done by foreigners more than Japanese--always thought in the back of my mind, "My goodness, this frail, harmless looking litle man, this human being presided over so much evil and destruction." I would never have thought that about Akihito.

This is the way I see it.

[Paulus Invictus]

One of my neighbors who just passed away, was in the Bataan Death March. He had no good memories of his time in Nip prison camps. His memories were of constant deaths of thousands of Americans from starvation and beatings. The Nip Army was conditoned to hate and mistreat prisoners and they did so with no mercy. I still have a hard time liking the Japanese as they also tried several times to kill my Marine brother. They failed, thank goodness!

[isthisnickcool]

As a human being if you have evidence of such atrocities against other humans you have a responsibility to bring it forward rather than hiding it in a cigar box.

They were old black and white photos. A couple of them were of dead Japanese soldiers. Maybe they were copies? Maybe not? He was a good man who raised 4 children and watched his wife die of cancer. He did not seem to be the kind of man to hide anything or let injustice pass him by. He was from Hell's Kitchen and a Jew.

I was pretty young at the time and and felt that he simply did not want to tell me the horrors he had been involved in. Because he and his generation fought and died so I would not have to see such horrors myself.

Not the kind of guy to hide anything.