I was reading a fine detailed book on WWII Pacific submarine warfare,** (Undersea Victory**, Holmes, 1966) when I came upon this line: Ever since Halsey had been told about the crucifixion of captured fliers from the Doolittle raid, he had resolved to visit Tokyo with a carrier task force in retaliation.
That brought me up short. I’m no historian, but was surprised I’d never seen mention of this. A casual Google search turned up nothing.
The Wikipedia entry on Doolittle’s Raid, doesn’t mention it, so I’m thinking it was just a wartime rumor. However, the Wikipedia article claims that the Japanese killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese while searching for Doolittle’s men. The source is that is Doolittle’s Tokyo Raiders, by C.V. Glines (1998).
My questions:
My book gave no reference for the crucifixion story. Has anyone else heard of this, or know the source of the wartime rumor?
Is the claim for a quarter-million Chinese being killed during the search for Doolittle’s men well documented?
Not much help, but I’ve never read about the IJA ever crucifying anyone. They certainly were barbaric monsters in terms of POW treatment and executions, but the standard method I’ve always read about (including the fate of all the captured Doolittle crew) was beheading by sword.
Can’t see why they would use crucifixion. Any religious symbolism for them at that time is lost on me…
If the IJA were going to do that, the point would be the religious symbolism for us, not them. And the point of the exercise would be lost unless the US government and public heard about it in a deliberate propaganda-ish way. Which it seems we did not. Or else it’d be part of the established lore of WWII, like the Bataan Death March, always spelled in Title Case.
I’d say its a war time rumor at best, or something dreamt up by the US propagandists to foment further US citizen anger. Not that we needed much artificial egging on by that point in the war.
My IMO bottom line: rumor, or mistranslation. Japanese language press release: “We executed the evil American prisoners in the cermonial fashion.” US translation: “They crucified our heroic pilots”
Just as today with the Arab and Islamic countries, it’s hard to overestimate the cultural cluelessness which permeated both the US official’s and the US public’s understanding of Japan at the time.
Yeah, I doubt they literally crucified captured U.S. and Allied personnel. But they barbarically killed far too many, by gun, torture, sword, starvation, experiment and untreated illness. In the OP’s cited passage, I assume the author meant to suggest that the slain were some kind of secular martyrs to the Empire, in essence.
Crucifixion has a religious symbolism now because Jesus was crucified. But obviously the fact that he was crucified shows that it was also used as a general means of unpleasant execution.
That said, while I’ve heard numerous accounts of Japanese cruelty to POW’s, I’ve never heard about any crucifixions.
Also remember, in the quoted section, the book isn’t saying that any of the Doolittle fliers had been crucified (and I don’t believe any had). It said that Halsey had been told some had, and that was motivating his desire for a carrier strike on Tokyo. It wouldn’t be the only time in history where a commander had incorrect information about the actions of the enemy.
Most of the Doolittle Raid crewmen survived. According to this website, 8 were captured and three of those were executed – the website does not say how – and one died of mistreatment. The other four were imprisoned for the duration. Crucifixion could certainly have been the method of execution.
64 were helped to escape by the Chinese despite Japanese savagery intended to terrorize them into tiurning over the Americans. Many Chinese were killed and some villages destroyed.
The Japanese treatment of the pilots and the Chinese civilians inflamed American attitudes through the end of the war.
Thank-you for the responses, with a special hat tip to madmonk28
I checked out the bibliography in Undersea Victory and the crucifixion reference seems most likely to have come from Admiral Halsey’s Story, J. Bryan 1947.
That appears to be one of the leading books on Halsey, but it’s not available in the St. Louis County library system. I also found it printed on-line, but reading it required a subscription.
Here’s a couple of excerpt from on-line info about Japanese crucifixion (“harisuke”):
The one from answers.com seems to include an actual crucifixion photo from the 1860’s
**Japan
Crucifixion was introduced in Japan during the Age of Civil Wars (1138-1560), after a 350-year period with no capital punishment.[43] It is believed to have been suggested to the Japanese by the introduction of Christianity to the region. (…)
The condemned, usually a sentenced criminal, was hoisted upon a T-shaped cross. The executioner finished him off with spear thrusts, then the body was left to hang for a time before burial.
In 1597, twenty-six Christians were nailed to crosses at Nagasaki…
**
The Wikipedia article on Ringer Edwards says: Edwards and the others were initially bound at the wrists with fencing wire, suspended from a tree and beaten with a baseball bat. When Edwards managed to free his right hand, the wire was driven through the palms of his hands. His comrades managed to smuggle food to him and he survived his ordeal. The other two men crucified at the same time did not survive.
The only thing I would argue with in this article is the ludicrous assertion that there was no capital punishment. Believe me, the Japanese loved capital punisment. They just didn’t have a justice system, instead preferring to have whomever was handy start killing poeple with the nearest pointy object. Actually, to this today one can argue about whether Japan has a justice system yet, so…
There’s actually some evidence that late Nara Heian Japan actually did abolish capital punishment, replacing it with imprisonment, torture and corporal punishments, and banishment. The Heian court had embraced a form of strict Buddhism, and as such had turned against the practice.
which is not quite the same thing. Also the wiki article on that Japanese operation notes that number was a Chinese estimate, and that the operation had a secondary purpose of denying access to the area to the Allies for the building of airbases.
So without having a counter-cite, I’d say it’s very likely the Chinese estimate is unrealistically high, and what deaths there were, while doubtless large numbers, were not all due to the search for the Doolittle fliers per se.
I’ve heard that before, but it only seems to have applied, well, to the court. The Heian government really only had power in the imediate Kyoto region, and everything else was under the power of the warrior elite who at least nominally acknowledged Heian authority. Certainly, the warriors had no problem killing each other.
The Japanese still get “credit” for killing vast numbers of Chinese civilians, using methods including chemical and bacteriologic warfare (i.e. inducing plague outbreaks).
“The Chinese casualties (for the 1937-45 war) were 3.22 million soldiers, 9.13 million civilians who were collateral damage, and another 8.4 million were non-military casualties. According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, at least 2.7 million civilians died during the “kill all, loot all, burn all” operation (Three Alls Policy, or sanko sakusen) implemented in May 1942 in North China by general Yasuji Okamura and authorized on 3 December 1941 by Imperial Headquarter Order number 575.”