Allied Pows

Japan had many ways of treating and controlling their australian prisoners of war one of the most common physical punishment given was when POW’s had failed to acknowledge or salute a japanese soldier or officer. In result of this prisoners would suffer face-slapping, often done with a hard instrument, such as a bamboo stick or a shovel. This result of punishment was done by the japanese guards in order not to lose respect from the prisoners. Another punishment that was given to Australian prisoners of war were that they had to hold heavy stones above their heads for many hours. In result of this punishment the australian prisoners suffered and with this punishment had resulted in death. Lastly a severe type of physical punishment given was prisoners having to kneel on a piece of bamboo for a number of days. POW’s that suffered through this physical punishment were left with scars, it so hard to imagine what it felt like but Tom Uren had described how a young Aboriginal soldier was made to kneel on a piece of bamboo for a number of days. The bamboo cut into him, causing gangrene and the eventual loss of his

The camps that the Japanese-Americans were taken to had the worse conditions imaginable. “More than 120,000 Americans of Japanese Ancestry were incarcerated in 10 camps scattered throughout the Western United States during World War II” (Children of the Camps Project 1). Detainees spent many years in these camps. They were locked behind barbed wire fences, and armed guards patrolled the camps. The conditions were comparable to the Jewish camps in Eastern Europe. Entire families lived in quarters that were poorly constructed and horribly cramped. These areas were also unbearably cramped and unclean. There was also no hot water for dishes or showers in the living quarters. In addition, lice was a huge problem in the internment camps. These camps and the laws that our government passed against the Japanese community were atrocious. The United States experienced a terrible tragedy when Pearl Harbor was attacked. However, the American government had no right to make these innocent Americans prisoners of war. During the 1940s and 1950s the Japanese

The Japanese had to go to camps mainly because it was their civil duty. They could not function properly in society because of racism, especially when the Japanese attacked pearl harbor. After the attack nobody trusted Japanese-Americans. The government felt that they needed to protect them from society. Americans had very strong feelings towards these people and there was propaganda made to encourage the withdrawal of Japanese people. Even the creators of looney tune cartoons made an episode of how the Japanese man is a savage and extremely ruthless person to anything. Some episodes were about the Germans as well, and how they train the youth to believe in these horrible things, and growing up

At the beginning of World War II there were nine million Jews, at the end there were three million. In the Jewish concentration camp’s, there were about six million Jews killed under Adolf Hitler’s commands. In the Japanese internment camp’s, there were about 127,000 people imprisoned. There was a total of 11,127,000 people imprisoned in the internment and the concentration camps combined. The Japanese camp’s and the Jewish concentration camp’s situation were the same because both cultures were excluded from their communities, both were forced to live in undesirable places, and they were both treated cruelly and unfairly.

The Japanese Internment Camps were unfair to majority of the Japanese that did not participate in spying for Japan during the war, but it was somewhat necessary to limit the few who would harm the U.S. The Japanese were subjected to imprisonment because of rumors and fear. They were forced to live in poor living conditions. Even though their everyday life was normal there were still watch towers to remind them that they had their life stolen from them.

In 1942, 112,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States were forced to relocated to ten internment camps that were considered very similar to the Holocaust concentration camps. These internment camps were permanent camps where Japanese Americans were detained for the simple fact of being of Japanese descent similar to how the Nazis forced the Jews to relocate to the concentration camps for the sole reason of being a Jewish. These camps would also hold captive people of many origins, the majority of the prisoners being Japanese-Americans. This compares to how Adolf Hitler would come to force Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, Ukrainian, Russians, French, German, and Jewish to concentration camps (The Holocaust). Hitler’s concentration camps forced its incarcerated to either work to death or die, many did not get a choice in the matter.

The Japanese soldiers had no sense of remorse or sorrow for the prisoners instead they pushed them to their breaking point. Many prisoners collapsed which proved fatal because if you fell behind you became a practice dummy for the Japanese to sharpen their bayonet skills and techniques of killing on you. On one occasion, a prisoner was falling behind in the rear so tanks that followed lined themselves up to run over the victim and squish him into the pavement to make it look as if he were from a cartoon. Since the Japanese could

In the past conscientious objectors have been imprisoned, executed, and stolen from for what they believe in. During WWII many conscientious objectors were sent to work at mental institutions as doctors, but ended up working as the equivalent to modern day custodians. The mental institutions that were sent to work at were often referred to as “hellholes” because they were overcrowded, there was a horrible stench, there was no furniture, and it consisted of many concrete rooms with half naked humans slumped up against the walls. An account by Charles Lord, a conscientious objector during WWII, says that “you have three men taking care of 350 incontinent patients, with feces and urine all over the floor”. He was sent to work at Byberry, a Philadelphia

Moreover, the Japanese’s treatment of prisoners affected how Americans saw them. The Americans believed the Japanese were brutal human beings. The Americans saw them as that because during the Bataan Death March, if you stopped marching, the Japanese would kill you with a bayonet or rifle. Then, if you tried to help someone who fell, you would get beaten or stabbed. Also for a sport, Japanese soldiers would fracture sculls with rifle butts. Mostly, the prisoners would receive almost to no food or water and they were forced to walk 65

The Japanese treated the Americans terribly in the camps they were brought to. Some were treated more harshly than others because they had a certain ranks in the military. It is a fact that the Japanese treated POWs harshly, through punishments of beatings, humiliation, and starvation. The degrees of treatment varied from the beginning of World War 2, the middle of World War 2, and the end of World War 2.

Since the beginning of ancient civilizations, the topic of war has been an inevitable topic to approach. No matter how minuscule or gigantic, wars have certain key events and roles they play. When thinking about war people imagine two parties quarreling on some disagreement, but if you look under the microscope there is more to it. During war there are thousands of individuals that are taken captive by their oppositional party. These captives are known as prisoners of war or POW’s for short. Prisoners of war were a huge factor into country warfare and the way nations fight, even for today. Life as a prisoner of war was a brutal task, most captive soldiers did not make it out of the camps by the end of the war. POW’s had to undergo lack of nourishment, abuse, and labor filled jobs. In Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken readers get to receive detailed imagery about life in POW camps.

Surrender is a large part of honour, especially for the Japanese. The Allied and Japanese attitudes towards surrender were very different. The Allied attitude was based on the Roman war strategy that inherited by most of the West. Under this strategy, war was not about annihilating the enemy, but controlling them. Unnecessary killing and destruction was to be avoided. Thus, surrender was generally regarded as honourable when further resistance was pointless. However, leading to 1942, allied troops became very reluctant to surrender, because of the fear of atrocities to come from the Japanese .The Japanese Senjin Kun warrior code issued in 1941, and did not cite specific or rigid guidelines to describe how a warrior should behave. It did, however state that a soldier who had become a POW had lost all honour. Allied POWs angered guards in prisons, as they showed no shame for becoming a prisoner. It is argued by many historians that overall, many POW camps across Europe as well were harsh. Although this is a true fact, they acknowledged the Geneva Convention, and had standards to maintain. Japan, however, never ratified the Geneva Convention, only the Hague convention. The Japanese saw no reason to accord other nations considerations they did not ask for themselves. They were also

“When we walked through those gates…1 saw in front of me the walking dead. There they stood. They were skin and bone. They had skeletal faces with deep set eyes. Their heads had been clean shaved. They were holding each other for stability. I couldn’t understand this. I just couldn’t. So I walked around the camp; I wanted to…understand more. I went to a building where they stored body parts from ‘medical experiments’ in jars of formaldehyde. I saw fingers and eyes and the hearts and genitals. I saw mounds of little children’s clothing. Little children who didn’t survive. I saw…all of those things that belong to little children. But I never saw a child….If this could happen here, it could happen anywhere. It could happen to me. .one often wonder what I would have done if, in 1939, my family and I had been caught up in this and for all those years nobody, not nobody, would help us. I would have been a bitter man…” This statement was spoken by Leon Ball, a liberator of Buchenwald, the first concentration camp to be discovered by the American forces (“Oh, No, It Can’t Be”). When the United States army discovered the concentration camps, it refuted their previous thoughts that everything heard was exaggerated; these exaggerations were now seen as understatements. Though the troops who had seen the horrific images of the camps and survivors had much sympathy for the survivors, it was lacking that sympathy once the United States

What drove the Japanese soldiers to commit these inhuman crimes is that they thought it was necessary for their own survival. “They all rationalize all actions to be necessary in order to ensure its own survival and to free Asia from the grips of Western imperialism” (Larkin 2). In this quote it shows why they wanted to do these horrible crimes. All i see this though is an excuse to kill because the Japanese killed one to many people. Not only did they kill, they raped, tortured and mutilated. The Japanese thought killing was the only way to protect themselves. But the Japanese did not kill anyone, but innocent civilians of nanking. Also rape innocent girls that meant no harm to the Japanese from young children to the elderly. The Japanese

The prisoners of war was mostly treated like they were animals. No animals were treated better and fed better than the prisoners. Often time there were treated like slaves also, they worked for the enemy. They prisoners were fed coffee for breakfast, vegetable soup with meat cubes for lunch and a piece of bread. Often time the germans soldiers where nice to the captives. Once a german soldier gave a prisoner a bag of biscuits and his coffee ration. After the prisoners were captured they marched to there prison but first they had to stop for the night. The prisoners slept in a hut used to store coal. Many prisoners felt that this treatment felt like HELL. The prisoner kept marching until the wasthey reached a sawmill in Tanny. When they reached