The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect. The IJA also relied on physical punishment to discipline its own troops.
The Japanese were very brutal to their prisoners of war. Prisoners of war endured gruesome tortures with rats and ate grasshoppers for nourishment. Some were used for medical experiments and target practice. About 50,000 Allied prisoners of war died, many from brutal treatment.
Believing themselves to be of divine origin, they treated all other races as inferior; therefore, the POWs suffered cruelties as sub-humans. The Japanese inflicted punishment and torture in the name of their emperor, believing that they did so through divine instruction.
The treatment of American and allied prisoners by the Japanese is one of the abiding horrors of World War II. Prisoners were routinely beaten, starved and abused and forced to work in mines and war-related factories in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.
It was for the people who couldn't hack it in better regiments, or sometimes were simply uniformed criminals, and they were constantly disrespected by their superiors as a result – as you can imagine, the “Crabbes and Goyles” of the IJA turned the humiliation and frustration on the most convenient punching bags there ...
Unprepared for coping with so many captured European prisoners, the Japanese held those who surrendered to them in contempt, especially the women. The men at least could be put to work as common laborers, but women and children were "useless mouths." This attitude would dictate Japanese policy until the end of the war.
7 Answers. Show activity on this post. If you are asking about people who were prisoners of the Germans, then British and Americans did the best, although this was certainly no joyride.
The Chichijima incident (also known as the Ogasawara incident) occurred in late 1944. Japanese soldiers killed eight American airmen on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands, and cannibalized four of the airmen.
Shigematsu Sakaibara, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, orders the execution of 96 Americans POWs, claiming they were trying to make radio contact with U.S. forces.
Crucifixion was a form of punishment, torture and/or execution that the Japanese military sometimes used against prisoners during the war.
Large numbers of the Russian prisoners ended up in special sections of German POW camps. Held by the Nazis to be racially and politically inferior, they were starved and brutalised. The appalling suffering of these POWs was witnessed by British and Commonwealth prisoners held in separate compounds.
Most prisoners of war (POWs) existed on a very poor diet of rice and vegetables, which led to severe malnutrition. Red Cross parcels were deliberately withheld and prisoners tried to supplement their rations with whatever they could barter or grow themselves.
In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed.
The Tokyo War Crimes Trials unequivocally declared the attack on Pearl Harbor illegal.
Nazi Germany, as part of a deliberate program of extermination, systematically killed over 11 million people including 6 million Jews. In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulags (labor camps) led to the deaths of 3.6 million civilians.
Some, their supply lines cut off, were genuinely hungry. But in other cases, officers ordered troops to eat human flesh to give them a "feeling of victory," Tanaka said.
As the Allied liberation of the Philippines was underway, Japanese commanders acted on orders to annihilate American POWs rather than allow them to assist enemy efforts, and in December 1944 cruelly executed 139 American POWs on Palawan.
The battle is known for claims that many Japanese soldiers were killed by crocodiles in the mangrove swamps of Ramree. Some editions of the Guinness Book of World Records have attributed the highest number of fatalities in a crocodile attack to the battle; zoologists and military historians have debunked this.
At least initially, Germans regarded British and American soldiers (especially Americans) as somewhat amateurish, although their opinion of American, British, and Empire troops grew as the war progressed. German certainly saw shortcomings in the ways the Allied used infantry.
During World War II, the Germans held American POWs in a system of nearly 100 camps spread throughout German-occupied territory. Major camps, as well as camps mentioned throughout the exhibit, are indicated on this map.
Captive or POW Pay and Allowance Entitlements: Soldiers are entitled to all pay and allowances that were authorized prior to the POW period. Soldiers who are in a POW status are authorized payment of 50% of the worldwide average per diem rate for each day held in captive status.
In WWII, American soldiers commonly called Germans and Japanese as krauts and Japs.
While the Committee has some evidence suggesting the possibility a POW may have survived to the present, and while some information remains yet to be investigated, there is, at this time, no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia.