How the Japanese torture Americans during World War 2

How the Japanese torture Americans during World War 2

To say that the Japanese were barbaric in the treatment of American and other POWs is a gross understatement. Their prison guards were unspeakably cruel and sadistic. Here are some of the inhumane things the Japanese prison guards and other Japanese in the POW camps did:

The Japanese starved POWs by feeding them one ball of rice a day, often with worms and maggots in the food.

For extra punishment, the Japanese would starve prisoners with no food for a number of days.

The Japanese would steal items out of the POWs’ Red Cross packages.

Prisoners caught trying to get food, such as coconuts and mangoes from trees around the camp or outside the camp where they worked, would be beat to a bloody pulp (I mean literally) with wooden clubs or rifle butts, often until they were unconscious, and sometimes breaking their bones.

The Japanese denied the POWs proper medical care. Prisoners usually had to fend for themselves for medical care, as the cruel Japanese often did not provide them with any medical equipment, antibiotics, or other medicines. Sometimes, surgical operations had to be done by the POWs without anesthetic.

The POWs would then often have to sew up prisoners incisions with cat gut, or leave the incision open.

Prisoners would be hung by the wrists by chains on stone walls, and thus be unable to swat at the mosquitoes that would be biting them and giving them disease.

The Japanese practiced bayonet fighting by stabbing live prisoners with their bayonets. Can you imagine the brutal mentality of doing such a thing?

The Japanese would tie or handcuff a prisoner’s hands behind his back, and then hoist them to the ceiling with a rope tied around their wrists, and leave them there for hours to dangle in agony.

Japanese “doctors” in some of the camps would use a common needle when inoculating prisoners against disease, thus actually helping to spread the disease these sickos were supposedly trying to cure the prisoners of.

Beatings with rifle butts, clubs, the flat sides of swords, and other solid objects were administered for the slightest or imagined infraction of rules. These beatings would sometimes be carried out for hour after consecutive hour, and sometimes even for days.

Prisoners were forced to do slave labor. If they did not work to the satisfaction of the guards or the camp commander, they would be beaten and starved as described above.

Prisoners had to wear rags and were not supplied with clothes. Prisoners often had to sleep on hard floors, as the Japanese would not provide them with beds nor bedding material.

The Japanese burned POWs alive.

The Japanese seemed to have used the most cruel misfits they could find as prison guards. Not only that, they used Koreans as guards as well. Some of the most sadistic of the POW guards were in fact Koreans.

And what is perhaps the most disgusting thing is that when the Japanese and Koreans would be administering this barbaric punishment and torture, they would often be laughing and having a good time. Sickening.

As documentation of the above, I invite you to read the following books, which cover the topic of the treatment of POWs by the Japanese:

As Good As Dead by Stephen L. Moore - Tells the story of numerous American POWs, primarily on the island of Palawan in the Philippines, who escaped from a particular POW camp. It covers all the methods of torture and cruelty that the Japanese inflicted on the POWs before they decided to burn the POWs alive.

Ship of Ghosts by James D. Hornfischer - Tells the story of the survivors of the American heavy cruiser USS Houston, and their imprisonment in POW camps in Southeast Asia, where many of them were used as slave labor to help build a railroad. Of particular note are the fairly numerous cases where the POWs were able to turn the table on the sadistic Japanese and extract wonderful and just revenge.

Clear the Bridge by Richard H. O’Kane - Most of the book covers the war patrols of the American Submarine USS Tang, but the last chapter covers in detail the imprisonment of the survivors of the USS Tang after she was sunk by a circular run of her final torpedo on the fifth patrol. It tells of the sadism the guards inflicted on the prisoners, and even on the Japanese civilians who were caught slipping food to the prisoners.

It is patently despicable how disgustingly sadistic and cruel most Japanese and Korean prison guards were towards the POWs in their charge. (There were a few good guards, but they were in the minority.) From a nation of mostly good people, the Japanese military culled the worst thugs and rejects and put them to work as prison guards in POW camps. The guards thought that the Americans were inhuman and worthy of only the utmost contempt.

Instead, by their criminal barbarity, the Japanese (at least those in POW service) proved that they were the inhumans worthy of the utmost contempt.