Wow, Allied POWs in the Pacific

[masraum]

I guess I just never really heard much about or thought about POWs. The only thing that I'd ever really thought or heard about were the POWs from Vietnam, and much of that "info" was sparked by Stallone or Norris movies.

I just read a book, Surviving the Sword: Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East 1942 - 1945 by Brian MacArthur. I remember lots and lots of world history both from college and before, but I don't really remember much about WWII in the Pacific. It seems like most of the WWII talk was about Europe. I just didn't realize how much of the Pacific and Far East the Japanese invaded and held. I guess I just hadn't watched enough war movies.

It's a great book that managed to keep my interest all of the way through. Besides the treatment and atrocities, what really struck me was the ingenuity of the POWs. Their ability to overcome their lack of normal resources (like adequate food and vitamins) and more mundane every day items like razors, toothbrushes, needles, thread, etc....

I have a hard time imagining modern soldiers being able to manage as well under the same circumstances (Can the young kids even address a letter?).

For instance "sifted wood ash made toothpaste and, when combined with palm oil, produced enough soap... brushes, brooms and toothbrushes were fashioned from coconut fiber. Rubber was tapped, and some was used for patching tears in uniforms until men began to make their own thread; it was also turned into adhesive plasters and was used to mend boots or to make sandals.
...Deep laterite clay, washed, dried, and powdered, furnished a cure for diarrhea... Vehicle springs made good hollow-ground open razors and surgical instruments."

They ate hibiscus leaves for vitamin C, and made teas of several different plants to provide other vitamins. They had running yeast production to provide B vitamins and learned how to use mold to break down soy beans so they would be more nutritious and digestible.

They figured out an 80 hour process to make yeast from rice that helped with avitaminosis.

In other sections of the book they talk about "illegal" radios that were built and hidden in various camps. One in particular was "...hidden under the cookhouse fire. The receiver was made from the stolen damper of a Norton motorbike, a coil from a bakelite soap container, and the variable condenser from a stripped and remodeled biscuit tin. A hearing aid supplied a resistor and valves, a shaving-soap container the high-frequency choke; stolen brass, bakelite and wire became a rheostat, while glass and mica purloined from the airfield were used for insulation. Work parties "salvaged" scarp iron, soft Swedish iron, and copper from the docks."

In another instance, the radio was bricked up in a wall. A time switch was built that would only turn the radio on the times of day when the BBC nets broadcasts took place. There was a nail in the wall whose tip just touched the diaphragm of a headphone within the wall cavity. "We listened to it with a kind of stethoscope. All you had to do was put the end of a bit of rubber tubing over the head of this nail, and hold it tight with your finger..."

I just have a hard time picturing modern folks pulling off some of this stuff. Hell, if you take the up and coming generation into account, it's mind boggling. How would they manage anything without a cell phone, the Internet or Cable.

It's also hard to imagine guys that before the war weighed anywhere from 160 to up over 200# being between 80 and 100# because of the lack of food and hard labor that they were forced to do. I can't even imagine what it would be take to get me down to 85#.





Anyway, the book was a good read. Now I've got a book on the Bataan Death March and another on the Escape from Davao.

[Jim Bremner]

I had read sometime ago that we didn't prosecute certain Japanese Dr's that did LIVE VIVISECTION on our GI's because we used their work.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Jim Bremner

I had read sometime ago that we didn't prosecute certain Japanese Dr's that did LIVE VIVISECTION on our GI's because we used their work.

Sort of. My understanding is that the Japanese "Unit 731" did lots of "experiments" on mostly Chinese. We didn't prosecute them as long as they agreed to give us their research.

Yes, there were also Americans (pilots and flight crews) that were experimented on while they were alive. I believe some of the folks involved in that were tried and hanged. I believe, based on what I've read, that this was a much more limited incident of a relative handful of people (compared to lots and lots of Chinese).

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by masraum

Sort of. My understanding is that the Japanese "Unit 731" did lots of "experiments" on mostly Chinese. We didn't prosecute them as long as they agreed to give us their research.

That was the one in Harbin, IIRC. They used an old sawmill for the facility and called the Chinese prisoners "logs." One of the great travesties of WWII is that we totally let Japan skate for their atrocities against allied POW's. We should have publicly tried and executed Hirohito and his whole family. Because MacArthur wanted to let them skate, to this day Japan teaches in its schools that they were the victim, not the aggressor, in WWII. I doubt any school kids there know anything about Unit 731, the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March.

[HarryD]

Brings back memories. In the late 70's I was working at a new job and and at lunch one day, I offered one of my co-workers an extra banana from my lunch pail. He looked at it, turned white as a sheet and said no thanks. I was confused. Later, when I knew him better, I asked him about the incident. He took a long breath, told me about his time in the Japanese POW Camp where his diet consisted of only bananas and coconuts. when he was liberated, he decided he would never again eat a coconut or banana.

If I did not hear this first hand, I would not have believed the story.

[billybek]

There was an older operations manager that our service company worked for that wouldn't allow two Japanese guys from our company to set foot in his buildings.
He was a Brit that spent a long time in a Japanese POW camp.

[lisa_spyder]

Steve,

You may like to read a book written by Australian Historian Gavan Daws entitled "Prisoners of the Japanese; POWs of World War II in the Pacific" (Scribe Publications).

It is one of the most confronting; yet powerful books I have ever read (and I read a lot). I admit I found certain passages of text and personal accounts very, very difficult to read. I shed a lot of tears before I finished it . I have lent it to friends who have not been able to finish it...at times it is very hard to accept what happened to these POWs.

But it gave me a real insight into what truly happened in those horrible years. It is wonderfully written. From the rear cover...

"This great book, written by one of the most gifted of Australian historians, whose work is known worldwide, has never been published previously in Australia.
Gavan Daws combined ten years of documentary research and hundreds of interviews with POWs on three continents to write this shattering re-creation of the experience of Allied POWs of World War II in the Pacific - Australian, British, American and Dutch.....
Daws' account, which was neither researched nor written under military auspices, is the humanly indispensable reverse side of official history. This book is his 'best effort to tell a story conspicuously absent from the official histories of both sides, missing in action, so to speak: the truth of life according to the POW'. In this, he has succeeded masterfully".

[Willem Fick]

It is interesting to note that, when we speak of WWII, images of Nazi concentration camps spring to mind, and very few people are aware of what happened on the opposite side of the globe at that time.

The atrocities committed by the Japanese leading up to and during that period are almost forgotten, and often glanced over. The history of the taking of Singapore, the Bataan Death March, the Bataan Railway, and of course the near extermination of the city on Nanking should never be forgotten, if only out of respect for the suffering of those involved.

For a real eye opener to do an Internet search on "the rape of Nanking". After that you will probably agree that It is a real shame that the Japanese were never prosecuted to the same extent as the Nazis, as I feel that in many instances their levels of cruelty and barbarism far eclipsed that of the Germans.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by lisa_spyder

Steve,

You may like to read a book written by Australian Historian Gavan Daws entitled "Prisoners of the Japanese; POWs of World War II in the Pacific" (Scribe Publications).

Yes, I've seen that book. I found the three that I have at a used book shop and picked them up. I believe I've seen that one available as a Kindle book, so I have plans of downloading it to my ipad once I finish the current group. The book that I've already read also had passages both in the author's hand and first hand accounts from FEPOWs (from interviews, memoirs and diaries while they were POWs) describing the atrocities committed in the Hell Ships, building the Thai-Burma railway, Bataan, in Japan, etc.... There were definitely parts that were hard to read and sort of hard to comprehend. It's amazing what people can endure mentally, physically and spiritually.

Originally Posted by Willem Fick

For a real eye opener to do an Internet search on "the rape of Nanking". After that you will probably agree that It is a real shame that the Japanese were never prosecuted to the same extent as the Nazis, as I feel that in many instances their levels of cruelty and barbarism far eclipsed that of the Germans.

Yes, I've also done a lot of reading about Nanking and other Japanese-->Chinese atrocities. And yes, it is a shame. It's one of the few times when even being the loser, they seem to have been able to write history the way they want.

[Seahawk]

Another excellent, very personal account is:

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand.

[jluetjen]

It's a sad commentary on our education system that so many people seem to have grown up oblivious to half of WWII. When I was growing up in the late '60's and '70's, the Japanese Theater was just as well known as the European Theater.

What happened???

[masraum]

Well, for me it could have just been bad luck. Dad was in the military so there was lots of moving around. It's possible that at some point one school taught the war in the pacific in the spring and the next school had gone over it in the fall.

[shinrai]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

to this day Japan teaches in its schools that they were the victim, not the aggressor, in WWII. I doubt any school kids there know anything about Unit 731, the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March.

Completely agree. I didn't know of the above atrocities until I lived in China and was constantly told about their hate for the Japanese because of what happened in the Pacific Theater. Absolutely atrocious.
I visited Hiroshima last August and was sad to see loudspeakers in town calling for America to apologize. I imagine all of the Japanese history books are washed.

[sammyg2]

According to historian Chalmers Johnson,
Germany was responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and 20 million russian civilians during WWII.
Japan murdered over 30 million Chinese, Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese civilians.

1 out of every 20 Filipinos was murdered.
LRB · Chalmers Johnson · The Looting of Asia


Some of the experiments were so brutal they are hard to imagine or believe.

To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.
http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0403105-134542/unrestricted/ByrdG042805f.pdf

[s_wilwerding]

Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides is also a good book detailing some the atrocities against POWs.

[Loomis]

Originally Posted by Willem Fick

The atrocities committed by the Japanese leading up to and during that period are almost forgotten, and often glanced over. The history of the taking of Singapore, the Bataan Death March, the Bataan Railway, and of course the near extermination of the city on Nanking should never be forgotten, if only out of respect for the suffering of those involved.

Well...at least we are constantly reminded of the internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Never a mention of the other stuff, though.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

I am one generation in my family removed from these events and there is no way I could accomplish or survive what they did. My father's older brother died in the Bataan death march. My mother's older brother was shot down over the English Channel. Her other brother spent time in a nazi "hotel" before escaping and bombing them some more. Both my parents served during WWII.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Loomis

Well...at least we are constantly reminded of the internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Never a mention of the other stuff, though.

Reminds me of when an austrailian pelican posted about how evil our American soldiers were because a couple of them reportedly took gold fillings out of teeth of dead japanese soldiers.

[billh1963]

My ex father-in-law (now deceased) served in the US Army from 1939-1946. He was on the beach on D-Day and fought hand-to-hand during the Battle of the Bulge (where was was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star). He saw the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan and was so overcome he had to be sedated as the memories he had suppressed all those years ago came flooding back.

He hated the Germans because of all the things he saw during his time in battle. He would never knowingly buy anything German or Japanese made. He lost many of his friends and family fighting the enemy....something he never forgave the Germans or Japanese for.

[RPKESQ]

Originally Posted by Loomis

Well...at least we are constantly reminded of the internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Never a mention of the other stuff, though.

As we should be. They were American citizens. They had nothing to do with the evil out of Japan in WW II.