Japanese Crimes

Hi guys...Thank you for those excellent posts!....I Just want to say that the things I said were a result of many years of pent up frustration....me as a person, raised on War movies.(Im 54 years old)...When I was a boy, just about every single grown up I knew was a Veteran. Every Saterday on tv was "victory at Sea"..."the Big picture"....and "Crusaid in the Pacific"....I was raised on this stuff, and I saw our guys being killed (on film)so I grew up hateing the enemy....but please understand, that what got me interested in my later years was a desire to know in my hart if I should hate these enimmies still?...The answer is no. I mean that from my hart. It has troubled me for many years, but I think I am at peace with it now.It may not have sounded like it in my last post, but it is true...reading the posts before mine got me to thinking, and I became angry at the death and suffering of so many......I spoke in anger. I am sorry for cussing, and I did not mean to sound so mean spirited, but I have strong feelings about this. I admire you guys for not answering me back in a hateful way...I salute you !....You showed more control than I did....I think I stated my case in the best way I know how, and I stick by my statements, but I would like to say that I know that thier were many men in ALL the armies who were desent men.
I think that part of my anger is because when I look at the world, it's like world war two has taught us NOTHING !......Im sure you guys have noticed the amazing paralells in whats happining right now, and the events that lead up to ww11. We dont seem to have progressed much in the last sixty years......anyway I did not mean to run on like this. You are a great bunch of guys. The way you answered my last post proves that.....Walt

 

Ron...I missed spelled your name (boy, thats a surprise !)...I think I put Don, and of course I meant Ron...sorry.....Walt

 

Thats one of the many things I like about these forums, there are no grudge matches here.

Also, dont worry about making "angry" postings--many of us have here at times--myself included more than a few times.

Dont worry about misspelled words--im also the "King of misspelled words" on these forums.

Your right--these guys ARE a great bunch of guys.

 

Well that's just the straw that broke the camels back!
heh heh s'ok

 

Some facts found in the net on Japanese atrocities. Once again be careful as you read as this is not any easy reading:

The Knights of Bushido: the Shocking History of Japanese War Atrocities
by Lord Edward Fredrick Russell, Dutton, 1958. Companion volume to his The Scourge of The Swastika.
Some items from the book.
Jan 1942. Dutch naval POWs taken to the spot where their ship had fired on a Japanese destroyer, decapitated and thrown into the the sea.
16Feb42. British evacuees from Singapore on the island of Bauka surrendered to a Japanese detail. The 26 soldiers were executed, the 22 Army nurses were marched into the sea and machine gunned, the twelve stretcher cases were bayoneted. -- Story told by the surviving nurse, who, though shot, was washed ashore.
March 1942. Kota Radja, Indonesia. Dutch prisoners put on a barge, towed out to sea, shot and thrown overboard.
7 Oct 43. Wake Island. On the order of RAdm Sakibara, 96 prisoners were blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs and massacred.
Oct 1944. New Guinea. A battalion commander confessed after the war, "I asked if I could get an American POW and kill him." Two were delivered, blindfolded, stabbed with a bayonet and decapitated with shovels.
12 Nov 44. New Britain. US fighter pilot made a forced landing. Beheaded, flesh cut form his body, cut into small pieces, fried and served to a large group of officers.
14 Dec 44. Palawan, Philippines. About 100 army and 50 marines had been warned if the US invades, they would be killed. When American planes attacked, Lt. Sato led 50 soldiers to pour buckets of gasoline on the entrances to shelters and ignite it. As the men came out they were bayoneted, shot or clubbed. -- Told by one of five survivors who escaped over a fence, though shot in the leg.
12 Nov 45. Guam. The flesh of LTjg H___, aviator, was served to an infantry battalion. [ The Japanese order for this communion-like sacrifice was captured.]

Nanking, China. Over 200,000 Chinese men used for bayonet practice, machine gunned, or set on fire. Thousands more were murdered. 20,000 women and girls were raped, killed or mutilated. The massacre of a quarter million people was an intentional policy to force China to make peace. It did not happen. World opinion, which until this time had accepted modern Japan's desire to oversee backward China, was repelled in horror.

Korean Comfort Women "forced by the Imperial Japanese Army to repeatedly provide sex for Japanese soldiers throughout Asia are said to number between 80,000 and 200,000. Many of the victims were underage at the time, and either died in despair or suffered health impairments.

Malaya. Japanese troops decapitated 200 wounded Australians and Indians left behind when Australian troops withdrew through the jungle from Muar.


Singapore. Japanese soldiers bayonet 300 patients and staff of Alexandra military hospital 9 Feb 1942. British women had their hands behind their backs and repeatedly raped. All Chinese residents were interviewed and 5,000 selected for execution.

Wake Island. A construction crew of 1,200 mostly Idaho youths, captured when Wake Island fell, were shipped to Japanese prison camps. Five were beheaded to encourage good behavior on the trip. The Japanese decided to keep 100 of the civilian contractors on the island to complete the airbase, which became functional in 1943 . When US Navy planes attacked the island, the Japanese commander executed the civilians.

Dutch East Indies. Those Dutch accused of resisting Japan or participating in the destruction of the oil refineries had arms or legs chopped off. 20,000 men were forced into the ocean and machine gunned. 20,000 women and children were repeatedly raped, then many were killed.

Dutch Borneo. The entire white population of Balikpapan was executed.

Java. The entire white male population of Tjepu was executed. Women were raped.
Survivors of USS Edsall (DD-219) are beheaded.

Philippines. Any soldier captured before the surrender was executed.
The Bataan Death March -- 7,000 surrendered men died. Those that could not keep up the pace were clubbed, stabbed, shot, beheaded or buried alive.
Once the prison camp had been reached, disease, malnutrition and brutality claimed up to 400 American and Filipinos -- each day.

Thailand. 15,000 military prisoners and 75,000 native laborers died building a railroad between Bangkok and Rangoo

Japan. Eight US airmen were used for medical dissection at Kyushu Imperial University with organs removed while the prisoners were still alive.

http://www.ww2pacific.com/atrocity.html

 

I think you have to single out the Soviet POW's terminated by the Germans in your calculation to get that low percentage. The death rate among Soviet POW's was approx. 60%.

Last I heart the Soviets were "Allies", too.

I'm far from being an expert in Japanese history of WW II, but I assume that most Japanese studies dealing with Japanese war crimes are just ignored in western scholarship (I made the observation that many excellent newer Russian studies or former Soviet studies on some special aspects of the Russo-German war are completely ignored because of the language problem).

So I'm not an expert, but I think there are several Japanese studies dealing with Japanese crimes:

Seiichi Morimura: "Akuma no Hoshoku", Tokyo 1981

Nitchu Senso: "Nankin Daigyakusatsu Shiryoshu", Tokyo 1985

Katsuichi Honda: "The Nanking Massacre" New York 1999

Numerous studies by Yuji Ishida.

Iris Chang's popular study "The Rape of Nanking", New York, 1997 was planned to be translated into Japanese, but serious (japanese and western) historians were able to show weaknesses and mistakes in her book so this project was put on ice.

Cheers,

 

Some horrible proof of the Japanese terror...

As such excellent evidence but horrible truth...

Don´t look at the pics on this site unless you´re ready for it!!! BE warned!Examples:

Bayonetting POWs and captured civilians.
Burying alive.
Two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Iwa Noda, held a competition of beheading Chinese. They denied the accusation as "imagination" but were confronted with the above evidence published in Tokyo Nicinichi Shimbun. They were executed in 1947 in Nanjing.

http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/NanjingMassacre/NMFOTO02.html

 

Good point about adding Russians into the percentage argument. Still the Japanese are tops in torture. Putting out cigarettes on the back of a sub commanders neck, machine gunning pilots in parachutes & in suvival rafts. these were low rank soldiers doing this kind of thing. So it would seem as this kind of behavoiur spanned all ranks, not just higher ups. On the flip side, read "Devil on my heels" about a B-24 bombadier. He spent 2&1/2 yrs as pow. He went through incredible torture, but also was treated well by some Japanese soldiers & civilians.

 

There's no doubt at all that the Pacific War was a terrible war, full of many atrocities by both sides. It was for the US what the eastern front was for Germany.

Regardless of how bad this sounds now, most US troops that fought in the Pacific thought that they were at war with sub-humans and they acted accordingly. A perfect example is the submarine USS Wahoo, whose crew shot thousands of Japanese soldiers of a troop-convoy they had just sunk. And there's a colour film footage of this action. The captain was never charged because of it.

And I think some of the figures posted by Kai are way too high. 7.000 Americans dead in the Death March? I have the figures somewhere. I don't think those were that high.

20.000 people machine-gunned in the East Dutch Indies? Too high number to pass unnoticed in war books...

 

A friend of mine told me that a Japanese ship was sunk & boats were sent out to pick up survivors & the Japanese fought with knives & refused to give up, so the captain fired a hedgehog & killed em all. So remember, some Japanese even in the water fefused to surrender.