War Crimes Committed in World War II

Australian Prisoners of War Over 22,000 Australian servicemen and almost forty nurses were captured by the Japanese. Most soldiers and nurses were captured early in 1942 when Japanese forces captured Malaya, Singapore, New Britain, and the Netherlands. Good morning, I am Reagan Baillie and I am here to inform you about the significance of the Australian POWs during the Second World War. In this speech I will be talking about the reason the Japanese captured the Australians, what they were being used for, the living conditions in the camps, how the troops survived the harsh conditions and also the experiences of the army surgeon Colonel Sir Edward Ernest 'Weary' Dunlop.

Consistent with Japanese propaganda the nationalist leaders held belief that Japan was “the leader, protector and light of Asia”. However, this perception of liberation from colonial rule was a façade as the civilians of occupied nations experienced harsher treatment under the Japanese than they did under the colonial authorities.

In addition to the conditions face by the Japanese soldiers barely being covered, there was no real depiction of them at all. In all shots of the Japanese in the film, their faces were either concealed by darkness or the shot was of the back of their head. For example, when the Japanese were attacking the Australians, they were hidden among darkness with only enough light to outline their bodies and the fighting. This indicates that the film portrayed the Japanese as the enemy and grouped them together as one dark force. The depersonalisation of them discreetly rid their humanity and took away their perspective of the war. For example, the film shows a scene where they were torturing an Australian soldier and only the back of the Japanese head could be seen. This gives the impression that it was only the Japanese that were doing wrong and that they were evil. However, historian Kede Lawson, states that they were fighting for their beliefs and their country, and what they thought was right, just as the Australians were. A Japanese soldier that fought at Kokoda, Minoru Honda, stated that he lost one of his best mates to an Australian air strike. This

People go into war for countless reasons; however, power remains as one of the main factors of war. Wanting to have more power over the world can lead to a global conflict. By the end of the first world war, the Treaty of Versailles kept peace in Europe until Hitler of Germany began violating its contracts. Thus, began World War II that corrected the evil of Hitler with a justifiable cause. Although the second World War brought many casualties, World War II resulted as a justifiable war because it saved nations from German exploitation, began as a last resort after all forms of appeasement failed, and brought the German powers to an unconditional surrender.

From 1941 to 1945, Jews were systematically murdered in one of the deadliest genocides in history, which was part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazi regime. Every arm of Germany 's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics and the carrying out of the genocide. Other victims of Nazi crimes included Romanians, Ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah 's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled. A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate victims for slave labor, mass murder, and other human rights abuses. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators. Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. Every person designated as a Jew in German territory was marked with a yellow star making them open targets. Thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR. Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz and many more. That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust. Beginning in late 1941, the Germans

The Japanese had strong discipline and a war attitude, which they brought with them to the Battle of Kokoda. The odds were always in the Japanese favour, there was approximately four Japanese to every one Australian. “The Japanese warriors – the samurai – had always lived to die, if you won,

The relevance that the event still has on today’s society can be seen when Japan’s senior vice-minister for Economy Tadahiro Matsushita stated “Japan had caused tremendous damage and suffering to people of many countries, which was a cause of deep remorse and a heartfelt apology”.

His dignity was trampled when the Japanese mistreated him and his health has deteriorated to the point whereby he nearly died at the age of 21 while working for the Japanese (Venables 2007, p. 42). These were mentioned in order to gain the sympathy from the readers through the cruelty and heartless characteristics of the Japanese. At the same time, a psychological barrier made of anger was formed towards the Japanese so that Australian would stand on his side and disapprove of the agreement.

Japanese soldiers are widely remembered as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied prisoners of war. Cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment, humiliation and neglect. Some prisoners were made to hold a heavy stone above their heads for many hours. Others might be forced into small cells with little food or water.

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

World War II was a devastating war, whether you were directly in the war zone, or away from the battlefield, you were impacted greatly. Flyboys is a book written by James Bradley, in this book Bradley tells stories of World War II using first-hand accounts. In chapter five, Bradley discusses “The Rape of China” which was a battle that took place in 1937 during the beginning of World War II. In this battle, the Japanese fight the Chinese and destroy China. Both Japan and China had very different moral beliefs on fighting in the war. China believed that the soldiers needed to “be courteous,” and to also be “neither selfish nor unjust” to civilians (Bradley 54). Meanwhile, the Japanese had totally opposite policies known as the “Three Alls” meaning

World War II produced an overwhelming amount of war criminals, mostly due to the mass murders of Jewish people during the Holocaust. The cruel and devastating nature of these crimes warranted justice, and there was some level of confusion on how to go about punishing the offenders. Unfortunately, because of the numerous amount of criminals, some of them would go without punishment. While the allies did their best to serve justice as widely and fairly as possible, many people would slip through the cracks of the legal system, and many people deserving of prosecution did not get fairly punished

Fujitani does not solely describe the cruelty exhibited by the Japanese and the Americans; he includes positive measures that were taken by both as well. Fujitani claims that “A historically responsible and empirically sound critique of wartime racism in these two nation-state-based empires cannot simply deny their life-enhancing efforts, but must somehow account for the uneasy fit between what can only be recognized as their gross cruelty toward minority and colonial subjects and their apparent concern for the life, reproduction, welfare, and sometimes even happiness of these same peoples” (Fujitani 13). The paradox that exists is dutifully acknowledged as Japan and the United States are not treating the minority populations with complete respect, but consequently, respect them out of necessity.

In my opinion, World War I was partially Germany’s fault, but I wouldn’t say entirely. I do believe Germany could have kept Austria in check but instead Germany wanted to have the upper hand in the situation. Also not to mention the war could have been between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, after the heir (Archduke Francis Ferdinand) was assassinated. Instead of that happening, Germany stepped in and then Russia stepped in causing a large disastrous war. Before all that happened the tension was already there between the divided alliances (Austria, Germany, and Italy vs. France, Great Britain, and Russia). It seemed like it was about competition rather cooperating with one another,

The conflict between the Allies and the Axis was a horrific and deadly one, which consisted of genocide and mass bombings. Innocent citizens were killed with the estimated sixty million casualties, which lead to the question as to the morality of the different actors—Germany, Japan, England and America— in WWII. In order to truly assess their guilt, meaning their moral innocence, each country will be measured upon the morality of their intent and execution of the different controversial mass killings that Germany (the Holocaust), Japan (Nanking), and the Allied forces (Dresden and Hiroshima) took part in. This hierarchy of evil can be judged upon how Japan’s tyranny and the Allies’ area bombing compare to the genocide performed by Germany. Similarly, these countries will be judged on the whether these different acts were premeditated versus in response to another act, as well as the proportionality to which these acts were carried out. This measurement of evil places each party on an overall scale, which depicts the total guilt that each country or countries deserve. WWII exemplifies that while war is an unavoidable aspect of human nature, there is no such thing as a just war. Similarly, while there is a definite hierarchy of morality between the different actors of WWII, each of the countries at play are immoral in their intent and execution of the attacks on opposing countries.