Imperial Japan S Allied Prisoners Of War In The South Pacific

Three weeks after Imperial Japan’s surrender, five men dressed in baggy khaki uniforms stared at the camera. They and two colleagues were the only survivors out of the 210 Allied airmen which Imperial Japan had imprisoned in “paradise.” Joining them were 18 British soldiers, the only survivors of 600 of their countrymen similarly but separately imprisoned. Another 10,000 Allied soldiers and civilians were also imprisoned on the South Pacific island of New Britain. More than half died before liberation. What motivated such inhumane treatment? This book’s quest for an answer traces the genesis of Bushido, Imperial Japan’s martial code, and surveys the prisoners’ recollections of their ordeal as the Battle for Rabaul raged around them from 1942 to March 1944.

Three weeks after Imperial Japanâ (TM)s surrender, five men dressed in baggy khaki uniforms stared at the camera. They and two colleagues were the only survivors out of the 210 Allied airmen which Imperial Japan had imprisoned in â oeparadise.â Joining them were 18 British soldiers, the only survivors of 600 of their countrymen similarly but separately imprisoned. Another 10,000 Allied soldiers and civilians were also imprisoned on the South Pacific island of New Britain. More than half died before liberation. What motivated such inhumane treatment? This bookâ (TM)s quest for an answer traces the genesis of Bushido, Imperial Japanâ (TM)s martial code, and surveys the prisonersâ (TM) recollections of their ordeal as the Battle for Rabaul raged around them from 1942 to March 1944.

A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps, challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire systematically mistreated Allied prisoners. In only five months, from the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to the fall of Corregidor in May 1942, the Japanese Empire took prisoner more than 140,000 Allied servicemen and 130,000 civilians from a dozen different countries. From Manchuria to Java, Burma to New Guinea, the Japanese army hastily set up over seven hundred camps to imprison these unfortunates. In the chaos, 40 percent of American POWs did not survive. More Australians died in captivity than were killed in combat. Sarah Kovner offers the first portrait of detention in the Pacific theater that explains why so many suffered. She follows Allied servicemen in Singapore and the Philippines transported to Japan on “hellships” and singled out for hard labor, but also describes the experience of guards and camp commanders, who were completely unprepared for the task. Much of the worst treatment resulted from a lack of planning, poor training, and bureaucratic incoherence rather than an established policy of debasing and tormenting prisoners. The struggle of POWs tended to be greatest where Tokyo exercised the least control, and many were killed by Allied bombs and torpedoes rather than deliberate mistreatment. By going beyond the horrific accounts of captivity to actually explain why inmates were neglected and abused, Prisoners of the Empire contributes to ongoing debates over POW treatment across myriad war zones, even to the present day.

During the Second World War the Japanese were stereotyped in the European and American imagination as fanatical, cruel and almost inhuman. This view is unhistorical and simplistic. It fails to recognise that the Japanese were acting at a time of supreme national crisis and it fails to take account of their own historical tradition. The essays in Japanese Prisoners of War, by both Western and Japanese scholars, explore the question from a balanced viewpoint, looking at it in the light of longer-term influences, notably the Japanese attempt to establish themselves as an honorary white race. The book also addresses the other side of the question, looking at the treatment of Japanese prisoners in Allied captivity.

Now available in paperback, Death on the Hellships chronicles the true dimensions of the Allied POW experience at sea. It is a disturbing story; many believe the Bataan Death March even pales by comparison. Survivors describe their ordeal in the Japanese hellships as the absolute worst experience of their captivity. Crammed by the thousands into the holds of the ships, moved from island to island and put to work, they endured all the horrors of the prison camps magnified tenfold. Gregory Michno draws on American, British, Australian, and Dutch POW accounts as well as Japanese convoy histories, declassified radio intelligence reports, and a wealth of archival sources to present a detailed picture of the horror.

Gavan Daws combined ten years of documentary research and hundreds of interviews with surrviving POWs to write this explosive, first-and-only account of the experiences of the Allied POWs of World War II. The Japanese Army took over 140,000 Allied prisoners, and one in four died the hands of their captors. Here Daws reveals the survivors' haunting experiences, from the atrocities perpetrated during the Bataan Death March and the building of the Burma-Siam railroad to descriptions of disease, torture, and execution.

Over 140,000 Allied prisoners were taken by the Japanese during World War II. Based on hundreds of interviews with those who survived, here are the harrowing, moving recollections of Americans before, during, and after their capture--men whose ordeal has been overlooked by independent historians and purposely ignored by official accounts. 16 pages of photos.

“A respected historian and researcher” —Publishers Weekly “A prize is waiting somewhere out there, which Linda Holmes richly deserves for revisiting some appalling realities in a positive way fifty years after the fact.” —Nancy Steffens Seaman, Smithsonian Magazine’s Board of Editors “A tribute to courage and determination of the men who endured it...I ate the book up, and was disappointed to come to the end so fast, and this hasn’t happened to me in a long time.” —Otto Schwarz, Burma Railway survivor and founder, USS Houston Survivors’ Association. ”Linda Goetz Holmes has focused on a most interesting, and somewhat neglected, period of the Allied POW experience — the hiatus between the end of the war and the return home... A useful addition to the growing body of literature on the Allied POW experience in Asia.”—Tim Bowden, Australian author and documentary producer. During the early days of World War II, Cecil Dickson and much of the 2/2 Australian Pioneer Battalion were forced to surrender to the Japanese. This group of POWs, along with captured American National Guard soldiers from Texas and California, and survivors from the sunk USS Houston, were shipped to Burma and Thailand to construct the infamous “Railway of Death” immortalized in the film Bridge Over the River Kwai. 16,000 Allied POWs would die toiling on the railway, and those who lived endured over three years of harsh slave labor until they were released to journey home. Respected military historian Linda Goetz Holmes tells Dickson’s story of his experiences in Japanese labor camps and his determined plan to survive and return to a normal life. Amazing photographs, taken secretly by other prisoners, and personal letters help chronicle this dark chapter in the history of Allied troops in the Pacific.