Prisoners of War are, by definition, not combatants.
TokyoBayer’s self-quoted post, I think, says all that really needs to be said to understand why the topic is still a hot one in Asia, on both sides.
Prisoners of War were looked down upon as less than human by the Japanese military, and civilian populations of defeated cities (“abandoned by their own”) were looked upon as even lower. However, this military culture was not particularly promulgated among the civilian population back at home, and the worst acts of cruelty were largely hushed up after the war instead of forced to the light by the Allies, to cement Japan as a regional Cold War ally against the Communists
My own (Chinese) family have contrasting wartime stories about the Japanese during the war. We are originally from Jiangsu Province, of which Nanjing is the capital. Both of my parents were born during the war, in 1935 and 1940. They recall stampedes of civilians with people trampled to death as they rushed for bomb shelter coverage during air raids, my grandfathers fought in the war, and grew up hearing horrible stories of what happened to civilians in Nanjing, and to captured soldiers.
I only met my grandfather in person once in my living memory, on a month-long visit to Taiwan when I was 10 where he had ended up after the Communist takeover, and asked him what happened to his leg.
He was in a “guerilla resistance group” fighting against the Japanese. One memorable time (a story which my grandmother recounted quite often), my grandparents barely escaped with their lives when the Japanese identified him as such and broke down the door of their house in the middle of the night to capture him. Fortunately their bedroom was in the rear of the house, and they managed to slip the net.
In a later incident, he was shot in the leg in the field (without my grandmother around) and captured. While awaiting “processing”, the leg became infected. A Japanese doctor who spoke some Chinese pulled him out and examined the leg, cleaned it out and stitched it up… Then, shortly before his turn for interrogation was to come up, allowed him to use the latrine, in a small garden area through a door with three one-story walls around it. Alone.
He did the obvious thing, and scrabbled up and over the wall to freedom. What with an injured leg and all it was not particularly easy, and he was pretty sure the doctor could hear what he was doing, but didn’t call for any guards.
So while cursing the Japanese army, he would always stop to honor “that Japanese doctor who saved my leg and my life”.
