Japanese WW II POWs

Factual Questions
1

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 held 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?

2

beatle, whilst not about conditions in the POW camps for Japanese in Australia per se, the following cite may be of interest to you.
The Cowra Prison Breakout (Aug 1944)

There is a Japanese shrine in the Japanese Garden and Cultural Centre at Cowra as a memorial to the incident.

3

Short answer:

Australia, New Zealand,the USA, some in USSR, and some in India (including a number who were used to write propaganda leaflets for the Burma front).

Try:

http://worldwar2database.com/html/japanpow.htm

4

Rodd and woolly, thanks a lot. I was getting nowhere and you’ve given me some traction points.

5

Not a lot here, but it does give the numbers of prisoners at different points in the war:
International Committee of the Red Cross: Far East

This site has only a brief explanation of the low prisoner count with a couple of tantalizing references to prisoner riots that it does not explain. It has further links to sites that would appear to explain further, but the links were quirky (You might be able to go to the New York Public Library site and get their links that way_:
Japanese POWs

One Japanese escape attempt:
Cowra Breakout

6

I’ve read of, and don’t ask where because I forgot, Allied POW camps in America and England, where the prisoners were treated most excellently.

The British would use volunteer German POWs to help farmers and the farmers would respond by feeding the prisoners with great portions of farm cooking that they loved and escapes were low. Probably because of the good way they were treated.

In the States, the POW camp was in the Midwest, on the edge of a desert and not only were the POWs treated well, but occasionally allowed to go into the nearest town for R&R, to take in a movie or have a malted. There was only 1 escape attempt and the Americans did not make a big thing out of it because the desert was nothing like anything the Germans were used to. Three escaped, two returned after a few days of broiling during the day and freezing at night and the last held out nearly two weeks before he got tired of nearly starving and turned himself in.

I have heard that the Japanese Prisoners were treated with dignity, something they did not do for allied POWs, but do not recall where their camps were.

I think Canada had a POW camp and Australia had one.

I read how German, Italian, French and Japanese POWs expected to be treated like dirt, because that’s pretty much how they treated prisoners, but were surprised at how well they were cared for and fed. Especially towards the end of the war, when most of them were running on low rations. They found plenty of food awaiting them in the POW camps, which I think contributed heavily to low levels of escape attempts.

The Germans treated the Jews differently from everyone else, wiping them out as fast as possible, while solders placed in POW camps were treated quite a bit better. The Japanese considered everyone captured as a coward and inferior, because they, themselves, considered it abhorrent to surrender, and treated POWs like animals and slaves, killing many before they even got to containment camps and brutally abusing and killing even more when they arrived.

If you read the Heriot books, (All things Bright and Beautiful) about the English Vet, who just died not too long ago, he describes how the German POWs were used on farms, along with Italian and French prisoners. (Absolutely wonderful and great writer! From his works, he had to have been a prince among men! I was sad to find out that he passed on.)

7

Har. The Germans murdered at least 2,000,000 Russian prisoners of war, and Western Allied POWs were murdered en masse on many occasions.

8

I’m not going to disagree on the shameful treatment of the Russian POWs but I might add that the Russian record in this respect wasn’t any better.

Western Allied POWs were indeed murdered - Hitler’s infamous “commando order”, for instance, decreed that all special forces were to be killed on capture. (Rommel, BTW, had the decency to ignore that order in Africa.)

But before we get carried away, remember that both sides had their incidents of POWs being murdered shortly after capture - when in the hands of the troops he just fought (and whose pals he just might have killed), a prisoner’s life is cheap. This is where most POWs are murdered.

Western Allied POWs who made it to a German POW camp were generally speaking not systematically mistreated or murdered. They did suffer from lack of supplies, but it can be argued that so did a considerable part of the Germans.

S. Norman