The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect.
The POWs suffered frequent beatings and mistreatment from their Japanese guards, food was the barest minimum, and disease and injuries went untreated.
During World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (towards Soviet POWs and Western Allied commandos) were notorious for atrocities against prisoners of war.
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.
Australian troops were also captured on Java, Timor, Ambon and New Britain. Prisoners of war were formed into work parties to provide forced labour for the Japanese army.
The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect. The IJA also relied on physical punishment to discipline its own troops.
The Japanese treated these POWs, and civilian internees, with at best indifference and, at worst, considerable brutality. They were forced into hard labour, many shipped in dangerous conditions to work in Japan.
Following the war, the victorious Chinese Communist government began repatriating Japanese prisoners home, though some were put on trial for war crimes and had to serve prison sentences of varying length before being allowed to return. The last Japanese prisoner returned from China in 1964.
Then in 1992, a Japanese historian named Toshiyuki Tanaka found incontrovertible evidence of Japanese atrocities, including cannibalism, on Indians and other Allied prisoners. His initial findings were printed by The Japan Times.
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.
More than half of the total number of casualties are accounted for by the dead of the Republic of China and of the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany from 1934 to 1945, is among the worst single-person disasters to befall the world. Had he never been born, millions would've escaped an untimely cruel death, and history may have taken a radically different path. Hitler was a madman bent on world domination.
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny was one of the most celebrated and feared commandos of World War II. Daring operations such as the rescue of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and missions behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge made him known as "the most dangerous man in Europe."
Both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan committed horrifying atrocities during World War II, for example. Both also suffered greatly during World War II – Germany in fact lost a greater percentage of its population in the fighting, but Japan suffered the ill-effects of two nuclear bombs.
people were buried alive underground. First the soldiers would have the Chinese dig a hole in the dirt, go inside and let the soldiers bury them alive. Bayonets: Young also reported that new Japanese soldiers who joined the army, would practice bayoneting Chinese POW soldiers in order to gain experience.
Japan's culture, during WWII, was not one which praised surrender. Soldiers, upon deployment, were expected to either return home victorious or die in battle. Bushido ethics remained prevalent within the country and the samurai mentality experienced a resurgence.
On October 7, 1943, Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, orders the execution of 96 Americans POWs, claiming they were trying to make radio contact with U.S. forces.
"A high number of Indians lost their lives and many were resettled in the Riau islands. At times, Indians who caught diseases were burnt in their huts by the Japanese." While the INA served as an inspiration for many Indians, Prof Rai said that some of the support the outfit received was pragmatic.
Lukacs. The book is the story of the only large-scale group of American prisoners of war to escape from a Japanese prison camp in the Pacific Theater during World War II. The ten escaped POWs were the first to break the news of the infamous Bataan Death March and other atrocities committed by the Japanese to the world.
This brutality caused many in the United States to hate the Japanese way of fighting and argued that the atomic bombs were justified because they were equally brutal towards Japan. Regardless, Japan was a difficult enemy to defeat due to the commitment of its soldiers to fight to the death and resist surrender.
Still, the Soviets inflicted terrible brutality on their Japanese captives. A labor shortage meant that these prisoners of war could expect arduous toil. They did so in a completely foreign, Siberian environment and climate that was merciless. Food, or the lack of it, and the elements worked against the men.
He surrendered at midnight. All 11,500 surviving Allied troops were evacuated to a prison stockade in Manila. General Wainwright remained a POW until 1945.
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.
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.
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.