I’ve found no shortage of info (although I’m always looking for more) on conditions of captivity, wartime experiences, locations of camps, memoirs, etc. for German (or european Axis) prisoners of war during WW II. What I’m not finding is such for Japanese POWs held by the Allies.
While I know the (Bushido) currents that permeated the mid-century Japanese military left us with far fewer captives of war than we harvested from the European Theatre, we nevertheless gathered some. Where were the Japanese POWs kept, and what were the conditions of their captivity? And reparation?
Are you talking about Japanese soldiers that were taken prisoner during combat, or the Japanese who were put into internment camps in the U.S. during the war?
I was under the impression (factoid time) that the Japanese never allowed themselves to be captured alive. Have I been watching too many old war movies?
Also, (WAG time) I think the Pacific war was mostly an island-to-island airborne/bombing war, with not that much hand-to-hand combat, where you could take prisoners. So maybe you can’t find any information on Japanese POW camps because there just weren’t any.
beatle - let me know if you were referring to a column. I can’t seem to find it.
If not, I’ll close this and you can repost to GQ.
DDG - some Japanese troops did surrender, but it was in very small numbers from what I’ve read, so you could be right in assuming that there were no Japanese POW camps (at least not large ones).
Thanks for the shot at some help, Jill; the fact of the matter is I just goofed and posted it in the wrong forum. As per Arnold’s suggestion, I’ll repost it in GQ (and go ahead and close this, if you will - thanks).
