The POWs suffered frequent beatings and mistreatment from their Japanese guards, food was the barest minimum, and disease and injuries went untreated. Although the POWs finally received Red Cross packages in January 1944, the Japanese had removed all the drugs and medical supplies.
Many of the women and children were held in prison camps in terrible conditions and forced on death marches. Some women were killed on sight and others were raped, beaten, and forced to become sex slaves. Much of the book showcases the words of the people who lived through this period.
Indeed, they endured years of not only malnutrition and starvation, disease and general neglect -- resisting all the while -- but also torture, slave labor and other war crimes. Many POWs were murdered outright by their captors. In fact, only a little more than half of them ever saw home again.
During World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (towards Soviet POWs and Western Allied commandos) were notorious for atrocities against prisoners of war.
Japan's early successes in the Far East during the Second World War resulted in over 190,000 British and Commonwealth troops being taken prisoner. Japanese military philosophy held that anyone surrendering was beneath contempt. As a result, their treatment of captives was harsh.
Others, often starved and treated brutally, worked for months under shellfire close behind German lines. In camps in Germany conditions were better, but prisoners suffered increasingly from shortages caused by the British blockade. Many survived only because of regular Red Cross parcels.
The POWs suffered frequent beatings and mistreatment from their Japanese guards, food was the barest minimum, and disease and injuries went untreated. Although the POWs finally received Red Cross packages in January 1944, the Japanese had removed all the drugs and medical supplies.
The Japanese used many types of physical punishment. Some prisoners were made to hold a heavy stone above their heads for many hours. Others might be forced into small cells with little food or water. Tom Uren described how a young Aboriginal soldier was made to kneel on a piece of bamboo for a number of days.
Crucifixion was a form of punishment, torture and/or execution that the Japanese military sometimes used against prisoners during the war. Edwards and the others were initially bound at the wrists with fencing wire, suspended from a tree and beaten with a baseball bat.
Of the 22,376 Australian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese, some 8,031 died while in captivity. After the end of the war, War Crimes Trials were held to investigate reports of atrocities, massacres and other causes of death.
They were accused of ill-treatment of Indian PoWs on way to and at Bebelthuap Palau, causing death to many by imposing severe hardships and beatings, and also executing Sepoy Mohammed Shafi of the Indian Army by beheading for allegedly trying to escape; eight others were beaten to death for allegedly stealing sugar ...
Most of the Australians (14,972) were captured in Singapore; other principal Australian prisoner-of-war groups were captured in Java (2,736), Timor (1,137), Ambon (1,075), and New Britain (1,049).
The Soviets killed and raped civilians and looted their homes and shops while Japanese soldiers were imprisoned and put into hard labour, mostly in Siberia. The number of POWs was initially estimated at 600,000 but recent disclosures from Soviet archives have kept revising the number upward.
Miraculously, the nurses all survived the long imprisonment from May 1942 to February 1945, but after liberation, received little recognition as military prisoners of war. But most of the nurses said that they didn't do anything extraordinary, they were just doing their jobs.
From Florena Budwin, a Civil War woman who disguised herself as a man to join Union troops and was held in a Confederate prison camp, to the 67 Army nurses who were taken captive by the Japanese in World War II, there have been less than 100 military women held as POWs throughout American history.
There were 2.3 million military deaths, of whom 1.4 million died away from the battlefield, succumbing to disease and starvation.
August 10, 2000: Consul-General of Japan in Hong Kong Itaru Umezu said: "In fact, Japan has clearly and repeatedly expressed its sincere remorse and apologies, and has dealt sincerely with reparation issues.
As a highly conformist society, the Japanese military virtually controlled Japan's destiny. Their belief in a master-race convinced many of their divine right to rule and enabled them to carry out massacres without remorse.
These stereotypes served to conflate Nikkei-Australians with the soldiers in the Japanese military that Australia witnessed during wartime, who were regarded as “subhuman beast[s]” and “vermin” (Saunders 1994, 325–27).
Japanese plans
In early March 1942, the Japanese had debated what to do now that Japan had so easily gained her objectives. The Navy wanted to invade Australia and deny the country as a base to either America or Britain. The Army felt it did not have the strength to invade and fully occupy so vast a continent.
Germany's 'Escape-Proof' Castle POW Camp Actually Had the Worst Record for Escapes. Situated just south of Leipzig, Germany, lies Colditz Castle. During World War II, it was used as a prison camp by the German Heer.
The Fate of Emperor Hirohito
Six defendants were sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace (Class A, B, and C).
For British and American prisoners, Stalag IX B was one of the worst camps in Germany. Conditions were appalling from the start and continued to deteriorate as the war progressed. The first transport of American prisoners arrived in late December 1944. By January 24, the camp had 4,075 Americans, held in 16 barracks.
Fear of being killed after surrendering was one of the main factors which influenced Japanese troops to fight to the death, and a wartime US Office of Wartime Information report stated that it may have been more important than fear of disgrace and a desire to die for Japan.