Crewmen on the submarine I-8, where Allied prisoners were slaughtered
Posted on 11/03/2007 6:56:30 PM PDT by Stoat
The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.
Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention.
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Crewmen on the submarine I-8, where Allied prisoners were slaughtered
"Many of the Japanese sailors who committed such terrible deeds are still alive today," he said.
"No one and nothing has bothered these men in six decades. There is only one documented case of a German U-boat skipper being responsible for cold-blooded murder of survivors. In the Japanese Imperial Navy, it was official orders."
Felton has compiled a chilling list of atrocities. He said: "The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats.
"Allied air crew were rescued from the ocean and then tortured to death on the decks of ships.
"Naval landing parties rounded up civilians then raped and massacred them. Some were taken out to sea and fed to sharks. Others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, beheading, hanging, drowning, burying alive, burning or crucifixion.
"I also unearthed details of medical experiments by naval doctors, with prisoners being dissected while still alive."
Felton's research reveals for the first time the full extent of the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, a force that traditionally modelled itself on the Royal Navy. Previously unknown documents suggest that at least 12,500 British sailors and a further 7,500 Australians were butchered.
Felton cites the case of the British merchantman Behar, sunk by the heavy cruiser Tone on March 9, 1944. The Tone's captain Haruo Mayuzumi picked up survivors and, after ten days of captivity below decks, had 85 of them assembled, hands bound, on his ship's stern.
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Target: the merchant ship Behar. Its surviving crew were beheaded with swords
Kicked in their stomachs and testicles by the Japanese, they were then, one by one, beheaded with swords and their bodies dumped overboard.
A solitary senior officer, Commander Junsuke Mii, risked his career by dissenting. But he gave evidence at a subsequent war crimes tribunal only under duress. Meanwhile, most of the officers who conducted the execution remained at liberty after the war.
Felton also tells the horrifying story of James Blears, a 21-year-old radio operator and one of several Britons on the Dutch-registered merchant ship Tjisalak, which was torpedoed by the submarine I-8 on March 26, 1944, while sailing from Melbourne to Ceylon with 103 passengers and crew.
Fished from the sea or ordered out of lifeboats, Blears and his fellow survivors were assembled on the sub's foredeck.
From the conning tower, Commander Shinji Uchino issued the ominous order: "Do not look back because that will be too bad for you," Blears recalled.
One by one, the prisoners were shot, decapitated with swords or simply bludgeoned with a sledge-hammer and thrown on to the churning propellers.
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Atrocity: The Japanese executing prisoners
According to Blears: "One guy, they cut off his head halfway and let him flop around on the deck. The others I saw, they just lopped them off with one slice and threw them overboard. The Japanese were laughing and one even filmed the whole thing with a cine camera."
Blears waited for his turn, then pulled his hands out of his bindings and dived overboard amid machine-gun fire.
He swam for hours until he found a lifeboat, in which he was joined by two other officers and later an Indian crewman who had escaped alone after 22 of his fellow countrymen had been tied to a rope behind the I-8 and dragged to their deaths as it dived underwater.
Uchino, who was hailed a Japanese hero, ended the war in a senior land-based role and was never brought to trial.
Felton said: "This kind of behaviour was encouraged under a navy order dated March 20, 1943, which read, 'Do not stop at the sinking of enemy ships and cargoes. At the same time carry out the complete destruction of the crews'."
In the months after that order, the submarine I-37 sank four British merchant ships and one armed vessel and, in every case, the survivors were machine-gunned in the sea.
The submarine's commander was sentenced to eight years in prison at a war crimes trial, but was freed three years later when the Japanese government ruled his actions to have been "legal acts of war".
Felton said: "Most disturbing is the Japanese amnesia about their war record and senior politicians' outrageous statements about the war and their rewriting of history.
"The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.
"It's a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning."
The geographical breadth of the navy's crimes, the heinous nature of the acts themselves and the sadistic behaviour of the officers and men concerned are almost unimaginable.
For example, the execution of 312 Australian and Dutch defenders of the Laha Airfield, Java, was ordered by Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama on February 24 and 25, 1942.
The facts were squeezed out of two Japanese witnesses by Australian army interrogators as there were no Allied survivors.
One of the Japanese sailors described how the first prisoner to be killed, an Australian, was led forward to the edge of a pit, forced to his knees and beheaded with a samurai sword by a Warrant Officer Sasaki, prompting a great cry of admiration from the watching Japanese.
Sasaki dispatched four more prisoners, and then the ordinary sailors came forward one by one to commit murder.
They laughed and joked with each other even when the executions were terribly botched, the victims pushed into the pit with their heads half attached, jerking feebly and moaning.
Hatakeyama was arraigned by the Australians, but died before his trial could begin. Four senior officers were hanged, but a lack of Allied witnesses made prosecuting others very difficult.
Felton said that the Americans were the most assiduous of the Allied powers in collecting evidence of crimes against their servicemen, including those of Surgeon Commander Chisato Ueno and eight staff who were tried and hanged for dissecting an American prisoner while he was alive in the Philippines in 1945.
However, the British authorities lacked the staff, money and resources of the Americans, and the British Labour government was not fully committed to pursuing Japanese war criminals into the Fifties.
• Slaughter At Sea: The Story Of Japan's Naval War Crimes by Mark Felton is published by Pen & Sword on November 20 at £19.99.
Yes. The Japs used anthrax and other types of germ warfare in China and other countries. Some of the cultures they released are still active. There was a show about this on the History Channel.
I wonder if historians generally agree on this number.
It seems high to me, although I don't remember reading any number for Asian civilian deaths attributed to the Japanese.
It’s a shame we stopped at two nukes.
My dad fought them in the Philippines as well. He saw what the japanese did to his fellow soldiers. He never mentioned the bomb or very little else about the war. He just drank to forget. I heard horror stories from some of the guys who served with him.
When my daughter was in eighth grade she learned about the holocaust. She asked about Japanese atrocities they told her they weren’t mature enough to learn that and it was being saved until high school. She is now a senior and heard nothing from the school about it at all. I taught her a lot about the Japs from my own studies.
It started at her school when her 8th grade teacher asked the class if they thought it was right that we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan and my daughter said, “Yes. They started the war.” At which point the teacher (of Japanese descent) told her how terrible the bomb was.
A couple of years ago, I was talking to a local media droid, a tv videographer, who is quite an admirer of Japan and Japanese culture. Unlike me, he has never been there.
The discussion turned to World War 2 and Japanese atrocities, particularly against PoWs. He chided me for condemning this, since the Japanese were taught that it was a disgrace to be captured and that prisoners deserved to be abused and tortured. “So, you see, it was just part of their culture.”
I responded “Well, it’s just part of our culture to fire-bomb people who do that kind of s**t.”
None of them had kids, wives or families that I recall. They just worked and drank.
God Bless them and hold them close as they had a glimpse of Hell while on Earth.
Outstanding response!
btt
“”The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while “liberating” what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.”
China’s day of reckoning with Japan ain’t gonna be pretty.
My Father was in the Philippines and New Guinea also. He was a bombardier on a B-24. He once told me the reason that flight crews carried a .45 was not for defense if the plane went down, but to use on themselves in case they survived the crash and were about to be taken prisoner by the Japs.
“We only had one more, and it was intended for Germany. But Truman ordered it shipped to the Pacific when Japan waited so long to surrender after the first two nukes.”
We were going nuke Germany 3 months after it had surrendered?
Fascinating...I don't believe that this is very widely known. Although of course when it comes to Japan's involvement in WW2 it seems that all we in the USA hear about these days is what awful people WE are for the internment camps and for the A-Bombs....we generally don't hear much else about Japan from that era.
I am guessing that unlike the numerous (Leftist) organizations and Governmental bodies both here in the USA and in Europe that take great pains at every possible opportunity to paint America as the quintessential warcrime nation for our dropping of the A-bombs and those rather plush camps, that there are no similar organizations in Japan or elsewhere that castigate the Japanese for the germ warfare that you mention as well as innumerable other atrocities.
From the article:
"The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.
"It's a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning."
The geographical breadth of the navy's crimes, the heinous nature of the acts themselves and the sadistic behaviour of the officers and men concerned are almost unimaginable.
True justice never slumbers nor sleeps muawiyah, the Japanese behaved shamefully in WW2, from the ghosts of Battan to the murdered via bayonet in Nanking, some never forget what they did in WW2.
Now they are backing away from even supporting the War in Iraq, and want us to leave Okinawa.
Tough nokkie, there is a reason why MacArthur stipulated that the Japanese Command staff et al had to dispose of their swords in Tokyo Bay....
They were extremely brutal...tough fighters too....glad we nuked ‘em.
They’ll have to fight that out with Murtha, won’t they? Doesn’t Murtha want our troops in Iraq to be redeployed to Okinawa?
Devious and cruel people.
when european descent people are murdered at the hands of others, it is ignored. it is only the mean disgusting white people who are condemned for their actions.
I recently read that syphillus was one of the diseases the american indians gave europeans. I am sure there is more.
“They’ll have to fight that out with Murtha, won’t they? Doesn’t Murtha want our troops in Iraq to be redeployed to Okinawa?”
That’s because Ol’ John “jack” Murtha is culturally insensitive...
Or he is so busy condemning fellow Marines that he doesn’t know the difference....
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