World War II - The Pacific War's Grim Anniversary
Posted on: June 04, 2008Written by: UWSA Staff
WORLD WAR II: THE PACIFIC WAR'S GRIM ANNIVERSARY
BOOK REVIEW: GAVAN DAWS, PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE:POW'S OF WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC (MORROW: NEW YORK: 1994)
Gavan Daws, the Australian-born author of PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE, has brought the world a grim fiftieth anniversary remembrance of the end of World War II. His book documents atrocities committed by the Japanese armed forces against 140,000 plus allied POWs � American, Australian, British and Dutch. Daws concludes that Japan owes an apology not only for crimes against POWs but also crimes against white civilian internees and the civilian populations of China, Manchuria, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and South-East Asia.
Daws is quick to point out that the allied armies also have war crimes to explain, esepcially the killing of the Japanese soldiers seeking to surrender in the last years and months of the war. By then the Japanese military ideal of death rather than surrender was overtaken by force of circumstance � but Daws says "scores of thousands " of Japanese troops were killed rather than being taken prisoner. Those relatively few thousand who were captured and kept alive as POWs were, however, treated humanely � in contrast with POWs held by the Japanese.
To add insult to injury, Daws says , the plight of the US and other allied POWs was downplayed after the war, by politicians and military historians so as not offend Japan, which was being enlisted as an ally against Communism in Asia.
Daws credits allied surpreme commander Douglas McArthur with fine combat generalship in the retaking of the Pacific islands, but says McArthur did not do enough to save the lives of POWs. Prioners in tens of thousands were transported by sea from Manila and Singapore for slave labor in the Japanese home islands. Even though this was known to McArthur, the ships carrying them in convoy were attacked by submarines and bombers. This "friendly fire" killed almost 11,000 POWs � a figure exceeded only by the death rate on the infamous Burma-Siam railroad.
Daws also documents McArthur's post-war deal with Japanese military medical scientists who performed lethal expriements on POWs and civilians to gain germ warfare knowledge.
On the controversial issue of the use of A-bombs, Daws points to the little-known fact that if the allies had to invade Japan, the 100,000 POWs surviving at mid-1945 would have been massacred and the 100,000 surviving civilian internees would have been in danger of being starved to death.
Daws says there was brutality on both sides of the Pacific War. Neither side emerged with clean hands. His conclusion is: "It was a race war, on both sides."
In an interview with SAM TRADE, Daws discussed some of the issues raised by his book with a particular emphasis on the plight of the POWs:
SAM: Why were the Japanese so cruel to the POWs?
Daws: They weren't always. In the Russo-Japanese war, 1904-1905, they went out of their way to be scrupulous in their treatment of POWs. In World War I, the German priosners they took in the Pacific and in China were well-treated. After World War I, in the multi-national military expedition against the Bolsheviks, the Red Cross singled out two nations for their humane treatment of POWs � Japan and the United States. But in the 1920s and the 1930s, the military rose to absolute power in Japan and taught that surrender rather than death on the battlefield was dishonorable and survival as a prisoner rather than suicide was despicable. So here were more than 140,000 allied POWs who, in Japanese eyes, did not deserve to live. They were seen as subhuman. This gave prison camp commandants and guards free license for brutality.
SAM: Examples?
Daws: Americans taken prisoner on Wake island were beheaded. Virtually the first Australian prisoners the Japanese took in Malaya were tied in barbed wire and set on fire with gasoline. After McArthur's army in the Philippines was taken, the Bataan death march left a corpse every ten or fifteen yards for 100 miles. On the Burma-Siam railroad, the combination of slave labor, starvation, disease and beatings left a POW dead for each and every Japanese railroad regiment soldier � 12,500 POW bodies along a 250 mile track. Overall in the Pacific War, about one in three American, Australian and British POWS died horribly � a dreadful death rate, worse than the death rate for allied soldiers in combat against the Japanese.
SAM: Survival factors?
Daws: The best survivors tended to be Americans and Australians from rural backgrounds, Depression kids who grew up in tough circumstances, self-reliant, not expecting life to be handed to them on a platter. Also, because often times whole units were recruited from the same area, there was a sense community among these men. I call it a "tribal" feeling � that they were all in it together and had moral obligation to look after each other. For example, there was a battalion of Texans taken on Java who were used as slave labor on the Burma-Siam railroad. They were a National Guard unit, full of friends and relations, a very tight tribe. Their survival rate was way better than average. The same thing goes for U.S. Marines � bound together by toughness and esprit de corps. In other parts of the service, for example, the big miscellaneous U.S. army in the Philippines, this was not the case and the death rate was much higher. Among them were men who would trade to the death � trading cigarettes for rice, so that hooked smokers might smoke themselves to death, or lending rice at exorbitant interest rates, so that borrowers fell behind in the rations and starved. On those "hell ships" to Japan, there were cases of men killing each other in the holds.
SAM TRADE: Compared to the Vietnam era POW's, we have heard a lot less about the plight of U.S. and allied POWs of the Japanese. Why is that?
Daws: Today, there is more a sense of entitlement not just in the United States but in other parts of the world that is different than it was for those who grew up in these earlier times. In the United States there is a culture of victimization which there wasn't then...
SAM: There was different treatment for officers and enlisted men in the camps?
Daws: One of the few shreds of the Geneva Convention (on the treatment of prisoners of war) which the Japanese observed was in not requiring officers to work as slave labor. They did, however, work the enlisted men as slave labor and many of the enlisted men came back from captivity saying that their officers did little or nothing to protect their men other than to sit around in their huts, while the enlisted men were worked to death. There were exceptions to this. Some officers did try to shield enlisted men, did care for them when they were too sick to work - and with the Japanese you had to be unable to move in order to get off of work. There were exceptional officers, but - and I am saying this not having been in their shoes- for the most part officers turned their backs on their men being beaten, worked to death and starved. When I have travelled around the United States speaking to military groups I got the strongest reaction from stating these facts. They aren't pretty but they are true.
SAM: How did the POWs do after World War II?
Daws: These POWs came back from the terrible suffering they endured on the part of the Japanese and after they were debriefed they were told to go back home and get on with their lives... The problem for many of these people was they suffered a nightmare a month or a week or every time their heads hit the pillow. They dreamed they were back in the POW camps.
SAM: One of the premises of your book is that unlike Germany, Japan has not atoned for its actions during World War II including the treatment of POWs.
Daws: Unlike the holocaust victims of Nazi Germany who have received substantial compensation from the German government, the victims of Japanese atrocities in POW camps have yet to receive a yen.
I think after fifty years, the Japanese government needs to make an apology for what they did to the POWs and for their actions in Korea, China and elsewhere.
TO ORDER PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE: Call the publisher, William Morrow & Company, if you have problems finding the book at your local bookstore. The publicity department number is 212-261-6500
