Hidden Horrors

Transitions: Asia and Asian America

Series Editor, Mark Seiden
Hidden Horrors:
Japanese War Crimes in World War II,
Yuki Tanaka
Encountering Macau: A Portuguese City-State
on the Periphery of China, 1557-1999,
Geoffrey C. Gunn
How the Farmers Changed China: Power of the People,
Kate Xiao Zhou
From Plan to Market: The Economic Transition in Vietnam,
Adam Fforde and Stefan de Vylder
A "New Woman" of Japan: A Political History c f Katô Shidzue,
Helen M. Hopper
Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan: Land Tenure,
Development, and Dependency, 1895-1945,
Chih-mingKa
Vietnam's Rural Transformation, edited by
Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet and Doug J. Porter
Prívatizing Malaysia: Rents, Rhetoric, Realities,
edited by Jomo K. S.
The Origins of the Great Leap Forward:
The Case of One Chinese Province,
Jean-Luc Domenach
The Politics of Democratization:
Generalizing East Asian Experiences,
edited by Edward Friedman
Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir,
Kayano Shigeru
The Political Economy of China's Financial Reforms:
Finance in Late Development,
Paul Bowles and Gordon White
Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism:
Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective,
edited by William S. Turley and Mark Seiden
Hidden
Horrors
Japanese War Crimes
in World War II

YUKI TANAKA
with o Foreword by
John W. Dower
First published 1996 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright© 1996 by Westview Press, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01015-7 (hbk)

For Tom Uren, former Japanese POW
and good friend of the Japanese people,
who says: There's no progress in hate.
Contents

List o f Illustrations XI
Foreword, John W. Dower x iii
Acknowledgments xvii
Author's Note XIX

Introduction 1

1 The Sandakan POW Camp and the Geneva Convention 11

The Forgotten POW Camp, 11
Establishment of the Camp and the Labor Issue, 12
Escapes and Nonescape Contracts, 18
The Sandakan Incident and the Kempeitai, 23
The System and Purpose of Gunrítsu Kaigi, 29
Mistreatment of POWs and the Formosan Guards, 34

2 The Sandakan Death M arches and the Elimination

of POWs 45
The First Death March, 45
The Second Death March, 52
The Elimination and Crucifixion of POWs, 59
Responsibility for Maltreatment and Massacre of POWs, 67
Japanese POW Policy, 70
The Psychology of Cruelty, 74

3 Rape and War: The Japanese Experience 79

Rape and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, 79
The Massacre of Nurses at Banka Island, 81
The Threat of Prostitution, 88
The Establishment of Comfort Houses, 92
The Universality of Rape in War, 100
War, Rape, and Patriarchy, 105
X Contents

4 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 111

The Tokyo Tribunal and Cannibalism, 111
Evidence of Japanese Cannibalism, 112
Allied Victims of Cannibalism, 115
Cannibalism of Asian POWs, 120
Cannibalism of the Indigenous Population, 124
Starvation and Group Psychosis, 126
Responsibility and Reaction, 129
Aftermath of the Tribunal, 131

5 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans and Experiments

on POWs 135
Unit 731 and Biological Warfare Plans, 135
Biological Warfare Plans in the Southwest Pacific, 139
POWs in Rabaul and Medical Experiments, 145
Australian Responses to Experiments on POWs, 157
The Ethics of Japanese Military Doctors
and "Doubling," 160

6 M assacre of Civilians at Kavieng 167

The Japanese Invasion of Kavieng, 167
Discovery of the Akíkaze Massacre, 171
Responsibility Under the Australian War Crimes Act, 179
A Clue to the Discovery of the Kavieng Massacre, 182
Reconstruction of Events at Kavieng, 185
Japanese Soldiers, International Law, and Gyokusai, 193

Conclusion: Understanding Japanese Brutality

in the Asia-Pacific War 197
The Japanese Concept of Basic Human Rights, 197
Japanese Moral Concepts and the Emperor Ideology, 201
The Corruption of Bushidõ, 206
Toward Further Research, 212

Notes 217
About the Book and Author 251
Index 253
Illustrations

Tables
1.1 Number of Allied POWs and death rate under the Japanese 3

Maps
1.1 Borneo 14
2.1 Sandakan-to-Ranau route 47
3.1 Location of Banka Island 85
4.1 New Guinea 113
5.1 Distribution of the Epidemic Prevention and
Water Purification Department 146
5.2 Location of Tunnel Hill POW camp 148
6.1 Courses taken by the ships Akikaze and Kowa Maru 172

Charts
6.1 The 83rd Naval Garrison Unit 169

Figures
6.1 Layout of the Akikaze and sketch of execution method 176
6.2 Detailed sketch of the execution 178

Photographs following page 110

Drawing of an Australian POW
Improvised kitchen utensils used by POWs
Australian soldiers on the Kokoda trail
Captain Hoshijima, Major General Manaki Takanobu,
and other officers in Sandakan
British and Australian officers inspect a Japanese POW camp
Captain Lionel Matthews, a leader of the intelligence-gathering
group at Sandakan POW camp
Kulang, a chief of the Dasan tribe
Lieutenant General Yamawaki Masataka
Part of destroyed Camp No. 1 of Sandakan POW camp
Members of the Australian Army inspect the graves of Allied
POWs at Sandakan POW camp
Wong Hiong testifies to an Australian officer
Russian officers, POWs of the Japanese
xii Illustrations

Orchestra formed by German POWs during World War I

Australian soldiers observing Japanese POWs after
Japan's surrender
Australian military nurses newly arrived in Singapore in 1941
Mrs. Vivian Bullwinkel, sole survivor of the Banka Island Massacre
A group of Korean "comfort women"
Sir William Webb, president of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal
Indian POWs of the Japanese being treated by Australian
soldiers after Japan's surrender
The port of Rabaul and Simpson Bay
The entrance of a cave in Tunnel Hill
A Japanese hideout in Tunnel Hill near Rabaul, New Britain
The graves of Allied POWs
Rear Admiral Tamura Ryūkichi
Kavieng in March 1944—bombs bursting at the main
Japanese base
Kavieng in March 1944—camouflaged house used as
Japanese officers' quarters
Kavieng wharf destroyed by Allied bombing
Captain Sanagi Tsuyoshi
Foreword
John W. Dower

The fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War Π, commemorated

throughout the world in 1995, was a doubly sobering occasion. It was
sobering, of course, to confront again the scenes of atrocity and rampant
destruction that characterized that merciless conflict. We reencountered a
world gone murderously mad. At the same time, and of a different order, it
also was sobering to observe how the war was recalled in most countries.
Everywhere, people tended to excavate particularistic shards of memory
from the wartime experience, to dwell on their own sacrifice and victimiza-
tion, to localize and personalize the murder and mayhem that engulfed the
world. Such intimate recollections, often intensely moving, tended to re-
main compartmentalized. The fragmentary nature of this mosaic of mem-
ory made clear that, even after half a century, our ability to fully compre-
hend the war—to truly imagine its extraordinary breadth and grasp its
tangled imperatives and psychopathologies—remains rudimentary.
Even some of the most elemental and brutal aspects of the war, such as
conventional war crimes and atrocities committed by the forces of Impe-
rial Japan, remain incompletely comprehended. At first glance, this might
seem implausible. The barbarous behavior of Japanese fighting men, epit-
omized at an early date in the Rape of Nanking, received worldwide con-
demnation beginning in 1937, when Japan launched its all-out war of ag-
gression against China. Japanese brutalization of Allied prisoners of war,
initially withheld from public knowledge in the West, became widely
publicized in the English-speaking countries beginning in 1944. The fero-
cious Rape of Manila that accompanied the death throes of the emperor's
military machine early in 1945 was made known to the world in shocking
black-and-white photos and documentary footage taken by the U.S.
forces that liberated the Philippines. From mid-1946 to the end of 1948,
the "Class A" war crimes trials conducted by the victorious Allied powers
in Tokyo—the Japanese counterpart to the Nuremberg trials of German
leaders—provided a forum for exposing the "crimes against peace" and
"crimes against humanity" allegedly committed or abetted by top Japa-
nese leaders. Simultaneously, as Yuki Tanaka reminds us, in scores of
locales throughout Asia the victors brought to trial thousands of generally
xiv Foreword

low-level Japanese accused of more conventional "Class B" and "Class C"
war crimes.
Surely, one might think, more than a decade of such relentless exposure
and denunciation of Japanese atrocities, from the late 1930s to late 1940s,
should have provided an ample and enduring perspective on at least this
atrocious aspect of the war in Asia. In fact, it did not; and the reasons why
tell us something about the political and ideological construction of our
popular "memories." In the postwar milieu, where defeated Japan was
immediately subordinated to U.S. authority and soon thereafter resusci-
tated as America's rearmed and preeminent cold-war ally in Asia, sanitiz-
ing the Japanese past quickly became a collaborative Japanese-American
undertaking. Certain egregious Japanese war crimes were covered up to
serve American interests. These involved, most notoriously, a murderous
program of "medical" experiments pertinent to the development of an
advanced biological-warfare capability and the forced enlistment of sev-
eral hundred thousand non-Japanese young women to provide sexual
services for the emperor's soldiers and sailors. As the cold war replaced
the old war, policies of forgetting rather than remembering soon became
promoted bilaterally, since dwelling on Japan's recent aggression and
atrocious war conduct was hardly conducive to eliciting support for its
remilitarization. Consideration of war crimes and war responsibility be-
came inseparable from cold war polemics. Within Japan itself, for exam-
ple, academics and public figures who continued to call attention to
Japan's war record commonly were aligned with the political left; their
persistent critique of Japan's recent past was inseparable from their op-
position to Japanese rearmament under the bilateral U.S.-Japan military
relationship. Even when the issue of Japanese war crimes was faced
squarely, moreover, Japanese as well as non-Japanese commentators
tended to fall into a discourse about Japanese "peculiarity" that con-
tributed little to understanding why our modem world has been so horri-
bly scarred, almost everywhere one looks, by atrocious behavior.
This present study, originally published in a shorter Japanese version
under the title Shirarezaru Sensō Hanzai (Unknown war crimes), breaks
from the postwar and cold war mold in several ways. It addresses the
issue of "ordinary" Japanese war crimes through a series of excruciat-
ingly detailed case studies. There have been few such new accounts in
English since the late 1940s, and very few indeed of an academic nature.
At the same time—in contrast to the bulk of critical Japanese writings on
these matters, which tend to focus on the Japanese victimization of other
Asians—the atrocities analyzed here involve captured Caucasians. Race
and ethnicity constitute a ground bass in most wartime atrocities; cer-
tainly racist contempt must be taken into account when we try to explain
the callous behavior of Japanese fighting men vis-à-vis other Asians. In
Foreword xv

the present case studies of Japanese brutality against "white " prisoners,
however, we confront the racial hatreds of World War II in Asia in their
starkest form.
Yuki Tanaka's signal accomplishment, however, lies not merely in re-
constructing these events but rather in trying to comprehend why, in an
earlier generation, his countrymen performed such atrocious deeds. Such
probing, self-critical consciousness makes this an exemplary "post-1995"
book. Hidden Horrors dwells not on victimization but on victimizing. It
seeks to understand the atrocities of ordinary fighting men not in popular
mythic terms of abiding "cultural" legacies (such as bxishidō) but rather in
more precise historical, political, sociological, and psychological terms.
The implications of such an approach are far-reaching, for ultimately one
moves from the concrete atrocities themselves to the peculiar circum-
stances and socialization that fostered such behavior—and from this, in
turn, to a broader understanding of how and why atrocities accompany
war everywhere.
By placing the criminal acts of his Japanese protagonists firmly in the
context of the post-World War I "emperor system" ideology that mili-
tarists and civilian ideologues drilled into the populace, for example, Yuki
Tanaka not only reminds us of the modernity of Japan's emperor worship
but also prompts us to think more generally about the political uses of
"tradition" and ideological manipulation of "culture" and "history" in all
societies. In observing that the Japanese victimizers of others often were
simultaneously victims themselves—low-level links in a "transfer of op-
pression" that extended from top to bottom domestically in Imperial
Japan's rigidly hierarchical society (and was replicated with particular
harshness within the military)—he calls our attention to a pecking order
of brutalization and dehumanization that had distinctive Japanese char-
acteristics but that ultimately was hardly peculiar to Japan.
Few recent books have been as relentless as this in recreating the horror
of Japanese war crimes. For many readers, however, the greatest shock
may lie in discovering that many of the individuals who committed these
atrocities were simply ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances—
manipulated by their leaders and dehumanized by the very nature of war
itself. Their acts become all the more horrible when we no longer can re-
gard them as having been committed by people utterly unlike ourselves.
Acknowledgments

Throughout the writing of this book, I constantly received valuable ad-

vice and moral support from various people. I appreciate particularly the
many supporting letters from those people in various countries whom I
have never met but who apparently came to know of my research
through media reports on my work. Disappointingly, media reports have
often distorted not only the content but also the intention of my research,
thus causing ill feelings in certain circles. To receive such warm-hearted
letters was therefore particularly encouraging when I encountered criti-
cisms, most of which were based upon misunderstanding.
I thank many Japanese, Taiwanese, and Australian veterans who pro-
vided me with much indispensable information. At the same time, I apol-
ogize for frequently making difficult requests to them to recollect and talk
about traumatic war experiences that they probably wanted to forget for-
ever. These interviews gave me the valuable opportunity to contemplate
human behavior and consequently deepened my knowledge of the na-
ture of human beings considerably.
The draft of Chapters 1 and 2 led to the production of a television docu-
mentary film, Return to Sandakan. I am grateful to Ray Quint and Julian
Leatherdale, who read an early draft and subsequently used this as the
backbone for their excellent film.
The draft of Chapter 3, which I presented at a Japanese studies confer-
ence held at Australian National University in September 1993, caused a
tremendous controversy in Australia that I had never expected. My refer-
ence to the misconduct in Hiroshima by some members of the Australian
occupation forces soon after the war upset some Australians. As a result, I
was bombarded with criticism not only by concerned people but also by
some Australian media. However, this nationwide controversy suddenly
ended when a former Australian soldier of the occupation forces, Allan
Clifton, publicly supported my statement by quoting his own memoirs.
Allan Clifton passed away in July 1995. Regrettably, I missed the opportu-
nity to meet him and to express my gratitude.
However, I had a delightful experience, too. During my research I came
across many interrogation reports prepared by an investigator named
Albert Klestadt of the Australian War Crimes Section. I was curious about
xviii Acknowledgments

this person with a German name who apparently spoke good Japanese.
Eventually I found that he lives only a few kilometers away from my
home here in Melbourne. Fortuitously, I was able to meet him and to ask
him to read the draft of Chapter 6 on the war crimes case that he investi-
gated nearly 50 years ago. I thank him for his assurance on the accuracy
of my historical analysis of this crime case.
I offer my thanks also to the many other individuals with specialized
knowledge who were extremely helpful: David Barrett, Tim Bowden,
Michael Dutton, Hugh Clarke, Syd Crawcour, Sheila Jeffrey, Peter
Lisowski, Ian Maddocks, Hank Nelson, Tìlman Ruff, Arthur Stockwin,
Don Wall, Awaya Kentarō, Fujiwara Akira, Goto Kenichi, Hanasaki
Kōhei, Hayashi Hirofumi, Ienaga Saburõ, Igarashi Kenichi, Irokawa Dai-
kichi, Nakagawa Sadamu, Oda Makoto, Sugimoto Yoshio, Takemae Eiichi,
Tsuneishi Keiichi, Utsumi Aiko, Yoshida Yutaka, and Yoshimi Yoshiaki.
Special thanks are due to Mark Seiden who gave me the most detailed
comments on my draft manuscripts. Without his help and encourage-
ment, I could not have finished this book. I wish also to thank John
Dower for his most articulate and informative Foreword. Finally, I extend
my sincere gratitude to my long-standing friends Gavan and Fusako
McCormack for their continuous support and friendship.
For help in searching archival documents, photos, and pictures, I thank
Esta Carey of the Melbourne branch of the Australian National Archives;
Moira Smythe of the same Archives in Canberra; all the staff of the Aus-
tralian War Memorial, in particular, Ian Afflex, George Imasheve, and
Elena Rench; Rick Boyland of the U.S. National Archives, Suitland; and
Aijima Hiroshi and Hoshi Kenichi of the Japanese Diet Library. I also
thank the Australian War Memorial for the research grant I received be-
tween 1994 and 1 9 9 5 .1 also wish to express my gratitude to Sakaguchi
Eiko and Aoki Hidekazu for obtaining relevant Japanese books for me.
For help with refining my English writing, I thank Bill King, Guy Run-
dle, and Anita Punton.
Finally and most of all, thanks to my wife, Jo, who did the final editing
work. The moral support I received from Jo and our daughters, Mika and
Alisa, made the completion of this project possible.

Yuki Tanaka
Author's Note

All Japanese names, including authors of Japanese texts, have been cited
in traditional Japanese order with the surname first. All dates and times
are dted according to the date and time west of the International Date
Line, unless otherwise indicated. For instance, although in the United
States the attack on Pearl Harbor is referred to as having taken place on
December 7,1941, in this book I use the date December 8.

Y.T.
Introduction

"Why open Pandora's box?" "What do you hope to achieve by revealing

the painful and horrifying events of the past?" Such are the questions
that, as a historian specializing in the study of war crimes committed by
Japanese troops during the Asia-Pacific War, I frequently encounter not
only from incredulous Japanese people but also from citizens of former
Allied nations against whose soldiers various atrocities were committed
by Japanese forces.
"To master the past"—what the Germans call Vergangenheitsbewälti-
gung—is, I believe, the most appropriate answer to such questions. This
does not mean simply to comprehend events of the past intellectually but
also to exercise moral imagination. Moral imagination requires us to take
responsibility for past wrongdoings and at the same time stimulates us to
project our thoughts toward the future through the creative examination
of our past. My aim in investigating the war crimes and atrocities com-
mitted by the Japanese is therefore to master the past. To this end I will
begin with a general analysis of the war crimes tribunals conducted by
the Allied nations.
After World War II, the Allied nations prosecuted Japanese and Ger-
man military personnel and civilian collaborators who were alleged to
have committed war crimes against Allied soldiers and noncombatants.
Three types of war crime categories were established. The A Class con-
sisted of "crimes against peace," and those who were prosecuted in-
cluded military leaders and politicians who had instigated the war
against the Allied nations and bore final responsibility for the various war
crimes committed by their own forces. The B Class encompassed more
"conventional" war crimes—those committed by soldiers in the field
against either enemy soldiers or civilians of enemy countries. The C
Class, which covered "crimes against humanity," consisted of crimes
against civilians of any nationality. This last category was specially cre-
ated in order to prosecute Nazi war criminals who had committed crimes
against their own citizens, most notably Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the
mentally ill, and communists. In this sense, C Class was a "nonconven-
tional" supplement to the B Class conventional war crimes. However, be-
cause in the Japanese case the difference between the B and C categories
2 Introduction

was not always clear, they were usually combined to form a single B and
C Class for the purposes of prosecution.1
On May 3, 1946, the International M ilitary Tribunal for the Far East
(usually known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) was convened in
Tokyo to prosecute A Class war criminals. On November 12, 1948, the
judgment of the court was handed down. Of 28 war leaders charged with
war crimes, 25 were found guilty, 1 was declared insane, and the remain-
ing 2 died before completion of the trial. Among these 25, 7—including
General Tõjō Hideki, the commander in chief of Japanese imperial
forces—were sentenced to death and hanged on December 2 3 ,1948.2
Tribunals for B and C Class war criminals were conducted between
October 1945 and April 1951 by seven Allied nations— the United States,
Britain, Australia, Holland, France, the Philippines, and China (Taipei
government)— in 49 locations in the Asia-Pacific region. The locations
of the tribunals included Singapore, Rabaul, Manila, Hong Kong, and
Yokohama. A total of 5,379 Japanese, 173 Formosans, and 148 Koreans
were tried. Of these, 984 were sentenced to death. A further 475 were sen-
tenced to life imprisonment, and 2,944 were sentenced to various terms of
imprisonment.3
W hether the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and the B and C Class tri-
bunals were completely impartial remains an open question.4 What can-
not be doubted from the results of them, however, is that the Japanese
were responsible for many war crimes throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Seventy-three percent of those prosecuted at the B and C Class tribunals
were found to have committed war crimes, as defined by the Hague and
Geneva Conventions, including ill-treatment and murder, against Allied
prisoners of war.5 This figure alone indicates the degree of cruelty exer-
cised by the Japanese on POWs during the Asia-Pacific War. Of the esti-
mated 350,000 prisoners under the Japanese during the war, 210,000 were
captured in the first three months after the outbreak of war in the Pacific,
and 290,000 were captured in the first six months.6 Therefore most of the
POWs who survived had endured an arduous and painful internment of
more than three years. According to the findings of the Tokyo War Crimes
Tribunal, of the 350,000 POWs, 132,134 were from Britain, the Nether-
lands, Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, and 35,756
died while detained, a death rate of about 27 percent.7 (For details of the
breakdown of POWs by nation, see Table I.1.) In contrast, deaths among
the 235,473 Allied POWs interned by Germans and Italians reached 9,348,
a rate of 4 percent.8 In other words, the death rate for POWs under the
Japanese was seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.
Moreover, the postwar death rate among surviving POWs of the Japanese
was also higher. For example, from 1945 to 1959, the death rate among
former Australian POWs who had been detained by the Japanese was
Introduction 3

TABLE I.1 Number of Allied POWs and Death Rate Under the Japanese
Death Rate
Country Number of POWs Number of Deaths (percent)
Australia 21,726 7,412 34.1
Britain 50,016 12,433 24.8
Canada 1,691 273 16.1
New Zealand 121 31 25.6
United States 21,580 7,107 32.9
Holland 37,000 8,500 22.9

Total 132,134 35,756

Average death rate 27.1

Source: Based on data in "Horyo Saishū Ronkoku Fuzoku-sho 'B'," Kykutõ
Kokusai Gunji Saiben No. 337, February 19,1948.

four times the rate among Australian POWs imprisoned by German and
Italian forces,9 although many of the latter had been held longer than
those imprisoned by the Japanese because the war in Europe started
earlier.
The Allied nations found the Japanese treatment of POWs in places like
the Burma-Thailand railway almost beyond comprehension.10 The post-
war trials built on and strengthened the widely held belief that the Japa-
nese were a peculiar people, particularly in their propensity to cruelty, a
belief that took root in the Allied nations during the war and has per-
sisted since. This is one of the foundations of the current dominant image
of the Japanese as peculiarly group-oriented and cooperative among
themselves yet extremely aggressive in pursuing their own interests ex-
ternally, particularly economic interests.
Many Japanese have also continued to hold on to the notion that they
are "different." This thinking can even be seen in the work of critical
Japanese historians who have attempted to come to terms with Japan's
role in the Asia-Pacific War. They too have persistently assumed that
Japan is a special case. This can be seen in recent work on the "comfort
women" issue in Japan.11 Critical historians, who have severely criticized
Japanese government policies on military prostitution, have unfortu-
nately approached the issue of the wartime exploitation of women as if it
was peculiar to the Japanese armed forces at the time. Needless to say, it
is the responsibility of Japanese intellectuals to face up to the issue of
Japanese war crimes and critically examine the specific events. Important
contributions have been made in bringing to light the inhuman treatment
of comfort women and other victims of Japanese aggression. Yet virtually
all of these studies, whether by Japanese, by authors from the countries
4 Introduction

occupied by Japan during the war, or by Western authors, have treated

Japanese war crimes as if they are unique.
Japanese historians in general and historians of the Asia-Pacific War in
particular rarely write comparatively, partly because they presuppose
that Japanese war crimes are a special case. In the absence of studies of
war crimes of other nations, Japanese scholars have reinforced beliefs in
Japan's uniqueness, including a unique proclivity to torture, violence,
and inhumanity.
Much analysis of Japanese culture by foreign Japanologists and histori-
ans has been based on the belief in this uniqueness—both as a blamewor-
thy trait and one to be celebrated. For example, Ezra Vogeľs Japan as
Number One (the epitomy of celebratory Japanology) and Karel von
Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power12 (representative of the highly
critical revisionist Japanology), though ostensibly presenting opposing
views of Japan, share an underlying image of Japan as a peculiar nation
and the Japanese as a peculiar people. These works, together with much
other recent Japanology, present a more sophisticated picture than World
War II Allied propaganda. But they remain propaganda nonetheless.
These works, some of which have been best-sellers both in the West and
in Japan, have reinforced images of the Japanese as "different." In short,
both ithin and outside Japan, and regardless of whether the intent is to
celebrate or criticize, Japan and the Japanese are frequently represented
as peculiar or, at least, "different."
Gavan Daws's recent book, Prisoners of the Japanese,13 is undoubtedly a
masterpiece in the sense that no other books hitherto have presented such
a detailed account of the treatment of POWs by the Japanese during the
Asia-Pacific War. His meticulous analysis of extensive information that he
obtained from a vast number of interviews conducted with former POWs
over a ten-year period gives us a real picture of the cruelty that the Japa-
nese inflicted upon their captives and the traumatic legacy thus engraved
on the minds of surviving POWs. Yet because of the absence of any expla-
nation as to why the Japanese were capable of committing such cruelty,
his book unfortunately also gives readers the strong impression of the
Japanese as a people with "unique characteristics."
In this book I focus on specific instances of Japanese war crimes and at-
tempt to explain the cause of these in a way that challenges culturally
based notions of Japanese uniqueness. Comparative historical methods
offer a sound basis for achieving this aim. War crimes are not a uniquely
Japanese phenomenon. By documenting and analyzing the historical
roots of Japanese war crimes, I am seeking to illuminate the specific dy-
namics of Japanese culture and society during the Asia-Pacific War but
within the context of a broader analysis of the universal problem of
wartime hatreds and war crimes. Japanese war crimes, rather than deriv-
Introduction 5

ing from a peculiar Japaneseness or national character, must be under-

stood in relation to the specific conditions of Japanese society in general
and the Japanese military in particular both during the Asia-Pacific War
and in the years leading up to it. Unfortunately, Japanese historians have
failed to strike an appropriate balance between specificity and universal-
ity when dealing with war crimes, although recently some Western ana-
lysts such as John Dower and Mark Seiden have successfully made com-
parative analyses of the war crimes committed by Americans with those
committed by the Japanese.14
The consequences of this scholarship of the "unique" have been pro-
found in shaping images of Japan at home and abroad. Although critical
Japanese historians have readily acknowledged past wrongs and even
war crimes, they have failed to find the cultural taproot of war crimes and
thus have been unable to contribute to an understanding that might help
prevent future war crimes. Although rightly criticizing Japanese war
crimes and calling for appropriate recompense, they have failed to see
that Japan's dark past is far from unique. Specific features are of great im-
portance, but war crimes were and are the monopoly of no people or na-
tion. Their study, if appropriately framed in a comparative perspective,
can provide valuable lessons for everyone.
Comparing Japanese war crimes with those of the Nazis or the Allies
during World War II or even with those of more recent wars, such as in
Vietnam, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, highlights the univer-
sality of this phenomenon. It is this possibility that makes past crimes
worth remembering, even after all victims and perpetrators have died.
Unless we have an eye to the present and future as well as the past, facing
up to the past is of little value. It is the relevance of what has happened in
the past to what is happening right now or what might happen in the fu-
ture that matters most. Past wrongs have already occurred, but perhaps
the study of the past can help prevent future wrongs and atrocities.
The study of Japanese war crimes by Japanese scholars frequently suf-
fers from a fundamental lack of methodological rigor, most clearly seen in
the complacent attitude of mainstream nationalist Japanese historians.
Nationalist historians in Japan have consistently played up the fact that
the Japanese were victims as well as perpetrators of war crimes, often to
the point of being concerned only with Japan's role as victim. It is un-
doubtedly true that the Japanese were victims as well as aggressors, but
nationalist historians have systematically glossed over the specificities of
Japanese war crimes.15 Their goal has been to exculpate Japan by render-
ing it morally equivalent to every other nation and by seeing universal re-
sponsibility as equivalent to no one's responsibility.
A truly universal account must deal honestly and critically with the war
crimes of every participating nation—and that means paying attention to
6 Introduction

specificities. Critical Japanese historians have effectively demolished the

self-serving analyses of the nationalist,16 but the effect of their critiques
has been limited by an inability to analyze effectively both specific and
universal elements. Caught up in a polar opposition with the conserva-
tives, they have tended to focus exclusively on the unique and timeless
features of Japanese aggression and inhumanity. Critical historians have
thus far failed to place their detailed knowledge about specific cases of
Japanese war crimes in an appropriate interpretive context. Sometimes
they have even unwittingly distanced themselves from the problem by
rendering war criminals as an "other" with which they share nothing, in-
cluding responsibility.
Those who fought in the Asia-Pacific War were in reality mostly ordi-
nary Japanese men. They were our fathers and grandfathers. We need to
face up to the fact that we could easily become this "other" ourselves in
changed circumstances. What then would prevent us from committing
crimes comparable to those committed on the Burma-Thailand railway or
at Nanjing?17The extraordinary events of war crimes have a closer connec-
tion with the everyday life of ordinary people than we might want to ac-
knowledge. In closely studying the history of specific Japanese war crimes
so as to understand how they could have been committed by ordinary
people, we can gain a sense of how they remain our problem to this day.
In contrast to the Japanese, German war historians, influenced by All-
tagsgeschichìe (history of everyday life), have made repeated efforts to ex-
amine German war crimes critically and understand how intimately they
were connected with the everyday life of ordinary people.18 We Japanese,
too, need to reexperience the crimes of our fathers and grandfathers as
deeply and as viscerally as the Germans have reexperienced their past. It
is not enough for us to gain a purely intellectual understanding of them.
In so doing, though, it is important to understand that crimes of war were
not unique to Japan and to ask the question: Under what circumstances
did (and do) human beings conduct themselves as war criminals?
Historical analysis of everyday life is not without its pitfalls, however,
and we must take care not to be trapped in them. In examining particular
cases there is a tendency to place all responsibility on the individual and
to neglect the political and social context in which those individuals
acted. In focusing, for example, on the perpetrator of a rape or murder,
there is a danger of neglecting the responsibility of the military and the
state. When dealing with the individual cases of B and C Class war
crimes, we must always maintain an awareness of the interrelationship
between the actions and responsibilities of individuals and the structure
of power of the Japanese military and state. To overlook this need leads
invariably to a confrontationist stalemate between specificity and univer-
sality. The approach of this study is from the bottom upward, from indi-
Introduction 7

viduals to social structures, but with the aim always to maintain a link be-
tween the two levels.
The insights provided by Oda Makoto, a well-known Japanese novel-
ist, social critic, and activist, are also useful here. Oda sought to explore
issues of responsibility in both aggressors and victims. From this angle
we can see that most perpetrators of war crimes were themselves victims
who were subject to the orders of superiors and that many of them com-
mitted crimes unwillingly. This is particularly obvious in the case of
Taiwanese and Koreans, many of whom were conscripted to serve in
low-ranking POW guard positions with the Japanese forces. Many war
criminals were thus no more masters of their own fate than were their vic-
tims. Every soldier is a victim of the state that drafts him, sends him to
war, and demands that he kill the enemy. However, at the same time, this
soldier still bears responsibility for his actions as an aggressor or war
criminal. For Oda, the way to rescue the soldier from the simultaneous
and intertwined fate as victim and aggressor is to establish a principle
higher than the state—one that resides in the recognition by the soldier
that he is not the state and that he has no right to kill others. Oda called
this the principle of "absolute peace."19
So far we Japanese have not adequately examined ourselves as aggres-
sors and as victims at the same time. The view of most Japanese on the
Asia-Pacific War is overwhelmingly inclined toward seeing ourselves
only as the victim. There are several reasons for this myopia, such as the
fact that we were victims of the world's only nuclear holocaust; that, un-
like in Germany, the Japanese committed no racial genocide within their
own country or abroad; that we were threatened by economic and politi-
cal advancement of Western powers into Asia; and that Japan's national
ethos specific to its fascist ideology was based upon the emperor ideol-
ogy. This national ethos prevented us Japanese from perceiving ourselves
as the aggressors that we were. I will discuss this issue further in the
Conclusion.
The general feeling of the Japanese people immediately after the war—
that we had been deceived by the state or that the state bore responsibility
for the war—gave us the opportunity to realize that we were a separate
entity from the state. Yet this way of thinking obscured our own responsi-
bility for collaborating with the state, even if in many instances it was un-
willingly. Consequently, we Japanese have failed to recognize ourselves
as aggressors, still less as perpetrators of war crimes. Moreover, because
of the widespread perception of ourselves as the victims of war, the no-
tion of "victim" gradually expanded even to the point that the Japanese
state was also seen as a victim of war.
Nonetheless, because of this strong self-perception as victims of war,
the majority of Japanese welcomed Article 9 of their new U.S.-imposed
8 Introduction

postwar constitution, which refers to the "renunciation of war." Now,

after 50 years, this "victim " consciousness is rapidly disappearing, along
with the consciousness of having been an aggressor. This is clearly indi-
cated in recent newspaper polls that reflect the popular attitude toward
Japan's m ilitary roles in world political affairs, despite people's aware-
ness that such m ilitary activities outside Japanese territory are clearly in
breach of Article 9 of the constitution.20 Now many Japanese, especially
the young, regard Article 9 as no longer relevant to the political situation
in Japan.
Recently, some Japanese political leaders have made public statements
about the nation's war crimes and have even apologized to the citizens of
those countries that suffered. However, these official apologies seem per-
functory in the light of O da's "principle of absolute peace." Their real mo-
tivation seems more likely to be found in the realm of international poli-
tics: to make amends with these nations to improve economic and trading
terms.21 Indeed the majority of Japanese politicians lack a clear recogni-
tion of Japan's war responsibility. In August 1995 at the fiftieth anniver-
sary of the end of World War II, then Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi
tried to issue an official apology as the head of the Japanese government.
However, because of political pressure from the conservative members of
the coalitionist Liberal Democratic Party, he was forced to apologize as an
individual rather than in his official capacity of prime minister.
The aim in this book is to examine closely the specific cases of war
crimes committed by the Japanese forces from the viewpoint of perpetra-
tors and of victims concurrently. At the same time, I will attempt to focus
on fundamental characteristics of war in general: the dehumanization of
the "other" and the brutalization of the "self" as a result.
Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the massacre of prisoners in Sandakan POW
camp in North Borneo. More than 2,500 POWs—most of them Australian
soldiers—were held in this camp. Only six survived the depredation of
forced labor, starvation, mass execution, lack of medical treatment, and
two death marches in which prisoners were forced to walk 260 kilome-
ters. Why did Japanese forces eliminate these POWs in such a gratuitous
manner? Answers are sought in an analysis of the particular power struc-
tures and goals of the Japanese military.
In Chapter 3 I examine the massacre of 21 Australian military nurses on
Banka Island in Indonesia and the attempt to coerce 32 other nurses into
prostitution for the Japanese officers. W hat were the reasons for this mas-
sacre of noncombatants who had already surrendered? In this chapter I
examine the links between this incident and the more general phenome-
non of rape and enforced prostitution in wartime. I also consider the de-
gree to which this was unique to the Japanese m ilitary in the Asia-Pacific
War.
Introduction 9

My focus in Chapter 4 is on the widespread cannibalism by Japanese

soldiers in New Guinea. The Australian military forces gathered exten-
sive information on Japanese cannibalism committed against many Aus-
tralian soldiers, Asian POWs, and New Guinean locals. Yet despite such
extensive evidence, Australia did not present this case to the Tokyo War
Crimes Tribunal and chose instead to pursue prosecutions for this crime
only at the lower-level B and C Class tribunals. Who made the decision to
take this course of action, and what were the reasons behind it? Why did
the Japanese forces commit such grotesque crimes?
In Chapter 5 I analyze the Japanese forces' plan for bacteriological war-
fare in the Pacific War as well as the medical experiments carried out on
POWs in the Southwest Pacific. Japanese medical officers conducted vari-
ous experiments on POWs in order to discover how to combat tropical
disease and starvation. Why was no one prosecuted, despite the fact that
the Australian War Crimes Section collected ample evidence of such ex-
periments? In this chapter, I undertake comparative analysis between
Japanese medical doctors involved in the experiments and Nazi doctors
who conducted equally horrific experiments on their prisoners.
The massacre of German missionaries and Allied civilians in the South-
west Pacific by Japanese naval forces is discussed in Chapter 6. Why were
these noncombatants massacred, despite the fact that they offered no
threat to the Japanese? I examine not only the lack of knowledge of inter-
national law among the Japanese officers and soldiers but also how the
Japanese wartime belief in gyokusai ("glorious self-annihilation") con-
tributed to the disregard for basic human rights. I highlight the typical ex-
ample of the Japanese forces committing suicide in the face of defeat and
the psychological effect this intention had on their behavior.
In the Conclusion, I argue that inhumane treatment of POWs by the
Japanese was a specific phenomenon occurring between the so-called
China incident (Japan's invasion of China) in 1937 and the end of World
War II in 1945 and that Japanese POW policy prior to the China incident
was quite the opposite. I explore a possible explanation as to why the
Japanese POW policy was corrupted by analyzing the changes that oc-
curred in Japanese political culture from 1910 onward. My basic argu-
ment is that the brutality of the Japanese forces during the Asia-Pacific
War did not derive from an inherently peculiar Japaneseness but was an
inevitable product of the emperor ideology based upon the "fam ily-state"
concept, which was gradually strengthened in the late Meiji and Taishō
periods.
Through this study of Japanese war crimes, we can learn how easily a
person, regardless of nationality, can be trapped by the psychology of
brutality when involved in war. Such brutality is often caused by hatred
of others, as is clearly illustrated in acts of racism. The most fundamental
10 Introduction

problem we must address when dealing with any war crime is the pro-
found fear of death that soldiers experience. In order to overcome fear
during war, people tend to rely upon violence, which in turn degrades
their morals and manifests itself as an outbreak of brutality. War is the
most unproductive human activity, and death in war is thus the most un-
productive death possible. Therefore violence and brutality as exempli-
fied by war crimes are probably the most negative manifestations of a
human being's desire to live.
1

The Sαndαkαn POW Camp and

the Geneva Convention

The Forgotten POW Camp

What images does the name "Śandakan" evoke for the Japanese? Many
know of it as a place somewhere on Borneo, yet few know of its exact lo-
cation. Some know of it through Yamazaki Tomoko's novel Sαndαkαn
Hachiban Shōkan (Sαndαkαn Brothel Number Eight), a story (also made into a
film) about the military brothels located there and the Japanese women—
the karayuki-san, or "women travelers"—who worked there. In World War
Π, Sandakan was a key strategic point that linked the oil fields of the east
coast of Borneo to the Philippines and to the whole of the Japanese-
occupied Asia-Pacific. It also contained a large POW camp.
Few people outside Japan are familiar with the name "Sandakan," and
even in Australia fewer still know of the extraordinary events that oc-
curred there. By September 1943 Sandakan POW camp held about 2,000
Australian POWs and 500 British POWs; only 6 survived to the end of the
war—a survival rate of 0.24 percent. At Ambon POW camp 123 out of a
total of 528 Australian POWs survived;1 in this case the survival rate was
23 percent. A total of 60,500 POWs worked on the construction of the
Burma-Thailand railroad; about 12,000 died, a survival rate of more than
80 percent. Of the 9,500 Australian POWs who worked there, the survival
rate was 72 percent—2,646 died.2 Of course, comparison of the survival
rates should not overshadow the raw figures.
Construction of the Burma-Thailand railway and other such incidents
have remained vivid memories in Australian history, yet Sandakan has
been forgotten. Why is this so? It may be that the relatively large number
of survivors of the more notorious incidents has ensured that many
stories, memories, and publications circulated through the Australian
12 The Sandakan POW Camp

community in the postwar years. The survivors of Sandakan were so few,

and their experience was so extreme, that in some respects it is beyond
telling. The psychological legacy is so overpowering that the remaining
survivors find it difficult to talk about their experience at all. It was only
in the early 1980s—when interviews were recorded with the survivors for
an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) radio program— that the
name of Sandakan began to be heard.
Sandakan is similarly forgotten in Japan, though for a different reason.
All of the guards at the Sandakan camp were Formosans (Taiwanese),
under the command of Japanese officers, so there were few returnees to
Japan who had any knowledge of the incident. And all documents relat-
ing to the camp were burned sometime toward the end of the war.
I conducted several interviews with surviving former Japanese military
officers, soldiers, and Formosan guards who dealt with POWs in San-
dakan. However, it was quite difficult to obtain honest accounts of their
wartime experiences because of the nature of their inhumane acts against
the POWs as well as the stigma attached to the label "w ar crim inal." In
particular, Formosans are extremely reluctant to tell of their ordeal, first
because of the shame about their own conduct in dealing with the POWs
and second because of a deep mistrust of the Japanese, including me.
These former Formosan guards regard themselves as victims rather than
perpetrators of war crimes, much more so than the Japanese do. This
seems to be quite natural since they did not voluntarily become POW
guards but were forced to work for the Japanese forces. As a result, the
amount of valuable information obtained through the interviews with the
Japanese and Formosans was quite limited.
Yet the Sandakan incident provides the clearest picture possible of the
relationship between the power structure of the Japanese army and the
occurrence of war crimes. Warrant Officer William Stiepewich, one of the
survivors of Sandakan, gave evidence at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal
about the ill-treatment and ultimate massacre of POWs there. Stiepewich's
testimony, together with an affidavit from another survivor, Keith Botterill,
ran to 109 pages.3 This testimony, the documents and transcripts from the
B and C Class trials, and the interviews recorded for the ABC give us a
fairly clear picture of the three-year ordeal of those who lived and died in
Sandakan.4

Establishment of the Camp and the Labor Issue

Prior to World War II Borneo was divided into two regions, Northwest
Borneo, occupied by the British, and Southeast Borneo, which was a
Dutch colony. The conquest of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra was a high pri-
ority for the Japanese forces, as the area had a number of major oil
The Sandakan POW Camp 13

fields— Tarakan, Sangasanga, and Balikpapan on the east coast and Seria
(now Brunei) and Miri on the west coast (Map 1.1). The destruction of
Pearl Harbor and the siege of Singapore in late 1941 made it possible for
an invasion force sailing from China to take these islands without fear of
being outflanked by British Commonwealth forces, the South China Sea
already being under the firm control of the Japanese forces. Seria and Miri
oil fields and the refinery in Lutong were captured in mid-December, and
on January 1 1 , 1942, Japanese paratroops attacked Menado. Tarakan was
taken on the fourteenth, Balikpapan on the twenty-third, and Pontianak,
the largest city on the west coast, on the twenty-ninth. By the end of the
month the whole of Borneo was in Japanese hands. The invasion force
was followed in by the Oil Corps, a division of the Army composed of
drafted engineers, who took over the operation of the oil fields and re-
fineries from British and Dutch operators.5
The distance between the Philippines and Singapore (both of which
had fallen to Japanese forces by early 1942) was too great for Japanese air-
craft to fly in one stretch, and so it was decided there should be an airfield
at Sandakan to provide a refueling point. The Sandakan airfield would
also serve as a refueling point for aircraft en route to islands to the south,
such as Java, the Celebes, and Timor.6 It was clear to the planners that
construction of this airfield would require an enormous amount of forced
labor. However, the Japanese forces had difficulty in gaining local labor-
ers because most of them were mobilized for the construction of essential
roads and m ilitary facilities in the Sandakan area at that time. Therefore, a
POW camp was established at Sandakan for the purpose of exploiting the
labor force of POWs. The Sandakan camp was established as a branch
of the larger Kuching POW camp, the center of the Borneo POW camp
network.
The notorious Changi camp in Singapore was used as a pool from
which to draw POW labor. Changi held more than 50,000 prisoners, most
of them British, Australian, and Indian men who had been captured in
Singapore, Malaya, and Timor. From these prisoners a number of labor
groups were formed. The first, A Force, consisting of 3,000 Australian
POWs, was sent to South Burma in May 1942 and was mobilized to build
an airfield there. These men were later sent to work on the Burma-
Thailand railway. B Force, consisting of 1,494 POWs (145 officers, 312
NCOs, and 1,037 enlisted men) was sent to Sandakan.7 Some prisoners
were conscripted into B Force by the Japanese, but the majority were pris-
oners who had volunteered for a work detail. They were not told by the
Japanese what sort of work they would be given, but they were told that
they would receive better rations and be located in a healthier environ-
ment than those who remained at Changi. B Force was moved from
Changi in July 1942. By this time a number of Japanese war crimes had
 14

Map 1.1 Borneo.

The Sandakan POW Camp 15

already been committed against Allied POWs in other parts of the occu-
pied Asia-Pacific. An example is the Bataan death march, which occurred
in April 1942. About 16,000 Filipino and 2,000 American POWs, who had
been captured during the fall of the Philippines, died after being forced to
march 100 kilometers with little food and water.8 A Force had already
commenced work in the extremely harsh conditions that were to become
standard for POW labor, yet the prospective members of B Force knew
nothing of these events.
POWs in all of the camps located in the Singapore area were obliged to
take part in work details, but the work was not excessive and the treat-
ment of prisoners by Japanese guards was relatively humane. (At this
stage, prison guards were all Japanese. Conscripted Korean and For-
mosan guards were not used before May 1942.) But there were 50,000
prisoners in Changi, and they often went hungry. The opportunity to join
a work detail, in which promised rations were relatively generous, must
have been the major attraction for many.
Others might also have believed that their chances for escape would be
greater in a smaller and more remote prison camp. Many found the at-
mosphere of Singapore—the city as well as the camps around it—ex-
tremely depressing. An air of humiliation and shame hung about the
place. There were other, grisly reminders of death and defeat, such as the
decapitated heads of Chinese and Indian civilians who had resisted
Japanese rule, which were on display in the streets of the city and often
seen by the prisoners when they were trucked from place to place on
work details.9
The 1,500 members of B Force left Singapore in the 3,000-metric-ton Ubi
Maru on July 7, 1942.10 Conditions were extremely uncomfortable. The
Ubi Maru was a cargo ship, and the prisoners were camped on deck with
no space to move around. They were also given little food and water
throughout the journey. The ship took 10 days to reach Sandakan, sailing
via Miri. During the voyage many of the prisoners noticed that the Ubi
Maru had no naval escort and that relatively few guards or sailors were
on board. This led to discussion of the possibility of taking over the ship
by sheer force of numbers. Ultimately, however, it was decided by the
ranking officers in B Force that it was "too early" to take over the ship and
that the force should wait for a better opportunity for a mass escape to
present itself. Subsequently, they were informed that a Japanese subma-
rine had been following the ship at all times.11
B Force arrived in Sandakan on July 17 and was held 13 kilometers in-
land from the port, in what had previously been a British experimental
farm. An internment camp had been built there by the British for Japa-
nese residents of Borneo at the outbreak of the Pacific War. It had intern-
ment quarters with an intended holding capacity of 200, in which all
16 The Sandakan POW Camp

1,500 members of B Force were held. However, aside from the overcrowd-
ing, conditions were relatively good at first. The healthy POWs walked
the 13 kilometers, and the POWs who were ill were ferried from the port
to the camp by truck together with all heavy equipment.12
Several weeks after arrival in Sandakan, B Force was mobilized to build
the airfield and the road that would be used to connect the airfield and
the town. The original plan called for two landing strips each 850 meters
long and 50 meters wide, which were completed in the first three months.
But in order that large bomber-type planes could land, airstrips had to be
extended to 1,400 meters long. Both ends of the 850-meter airstrips were
valleys, and thus the extension work of filling up the valley was ex-
tremely hard.13 The prisoners left camp at 7:30 every morning and walked
to the construction site eight kilometers away. They worked until 5:00 in
the evening with a lunchbreak and even special rations, such as coffee, for
those who had worked hard. There was no work on Sunday, so the pris-
oners usually held entertainment functions, such as a concert or a boxing
match, on Saturday night. Prisoners received a small amount of pay, and
there was a camp canteen from which they could purchase coconuts, tur-
tle eggs, bananas, tobacco, and other goods.14 They also set up vegetable
gardens within the camp. Thus, although the rations could not be said to
be plentiful, they were at least sufficient for basic good health. Colonel
Suga Tatsuji, the head of the POW camps in Borneo, appears to have been
a relatively humane officer, as a number of events show. On the occasions
when he visited the Sandakan camp, the prisoners' rations would be im-
proved (although they usually reverted to normal on his departure) by
the prison officers, who must have presumed Suga would be impressed
that the POWs were receiving relatively good rations (rather than the re-
verse). On another occasion he granted prisoners a three-day holiday, an
extremely unusual act for a camp commandant. When he visited the civil-
ian camp at Kuching, he would bring biscuits and other gifts and play
with the children of the interned Commonwealth and Dutch families.15
It was not a war crime to put POWs to work, so long as they were paid.
Article VI of an annex to the Hague Convention of 1907 (which was rati-
fied by Japan) states that

The state may utilise the labour of prisoners of war Work done for the
state is paid at the rates in force for work of similar kind done by soldiers of
the national army, or, if there are none in force, at a rate according to the
work executed. When work is for other branches of the public services, or
for private persons, the conditions are settled in agreement with the military
authorities.16

This article was further developed in Section 3 of the Geneva Convention

(1929) governing work by prisoners of war. The Japanese government
The Sandakan POW Camp 17

had signed the Geneva Convention but never ratified it because of strong
opposition from the Japanese military.17Soon after the Pacific War began,
the Allied nations demanded that the Japanese government make a com-
mitment to abide by the convention, a demand to which the Japanese
government agreed.18 In accordance, the Japanese government enacted a
regulation regarding POW wages in February 1942, which guaranteed
wages for working POWs along the lines suggested by the convention.
Further regulations of this sort were enacted regarding transport of POW
labor (October 1942), treatment of POWs (April 1943), and work by POWs
(May 1943). Overall, the content of these regulations was in line with the
conditions set down by the two conventions.19
But one clause present in the convention articles regarding work by
POWs was conspicuously absent from the Japanese regulations of 1943:
the clause that prohibits putting POWs to work on projects directly con-
nected to "the operations of war." Furthermore, in May 1943 the Japanese
government amended the October 1942 regulation regarding transport of
POW labor to specify that the military was prepared to receive requests
from vital industries— such as munitions or aircraft factories— for the
supply of POWs as labor.20 The Japanese government went to great
lengths to obscure the degree to which POWs were being used for war
work. Yet the amendment cited clearly demonstrates that the use of
POWs for war work was part of official policy.
Because of the discrepancy with the Geneva Convention and the com-
plicated nature of the official Japanese position in relation to the conven-
tion, there was immediate conflict between the Allied POW officers and
the Japanese camp commandants as to the legality of putting prisoners to
work on the airfield. Australian officers complained to Captain Hoshijima
Susumu, the commandant of Sandakan POW camp, and to Colonel Suga
that putting prisoners to work on the airfield was a breach of interna-
tional law. Both commandants told the Australians, untruthfully, that the
airfield would be purely for commercial use.21 This lie was to become a
major point of contention at the B and C Class trials held in Labuan after
the war. However, both Hoshijima and Suga were caught in a bind, for
the Japanese government did not formalize its guidelines for treatment of
prisoners until the enactment of the 1943 regulations on POWs and
work.22
In August 1942, when work on the airfield began, existing Japanese reg-
ulations contained no guide as to what types of work, if any, could not be
undertaken with POW labor. Furthermore, individual initiative was not a
highly regarded virtue within Japanese military culture, and middle-
range Japanese officers were expected to follow closely and enact orders
from higher authorities. It would have been completely out of military
character for them to make their own interpretation of Japan's relation to
the Geneva Convention over and above the carrying out of their explicit
18 The Sandakan POW Camp

military duty. In fact, the use of POWs as labor on military projects was
not merely a common occurrence during the war; it was an important part
of the overall war strategy and was explicitly ordered by Minister of
Army General Tōjō Hideki in his July 1942 address to newly appointed
POW camp commandants.23 Therefore, the final responsibility for this
problem lies with the Japanese war leaders who refused to make explicit
their divergence from the Geneva Convention on this matter or to create
regulations that acknowledged their clear intention to use prisoners for
military work. Instead they left a gray area, where the military imperative
to use prisoners for war work was clear, but the regulatory framework
within which this could legally occur remained obscure.
Of course, Australian POWs were always aware that the Sandakan
aerodrome would be for military use and that the commandants were
lying, but they let the matter drop quite quickly and continued to work
on the airfield. The somewhat half-hearted nature of the officers' resis-
tance to enforced military work stemmed not only from their powerless-
ness as POWs but also perhaps from their privileged position in relation
to enlisted men who were POWs. Both the Hague and Geneva Conven-
tions state that officer POWs should not have to engage in work, although
they may volunteer for such. However, the conventions also state that
even officers who refused work were to be paid, and their pay was to be
the same amount as that of officers of comparable rank of the army that
had captured them.24 At first the Japanese respected this division between
officers and enlisted POWs. The officers were given comfortable quarters
in solidly built wooden huts, and the enlisted men were housed in
thatched barracks. Officers were paid and could shop at a special officers-
only canteen in the camp. Whether the work being performed by the en-
listed men was in accordance with the Geneva Convention had, at best,
less direct impact on the officers because they were not obliged to take
part in it, and this may well have been one reason their resistance to the
use of POWs for war work was so weak. One must look not only at the
Japanese military hierarchy but also at the Geneva Convention with its
assumptions and values in order to gain an understanding of how this
work came to be performed.

Escapes and Nonescape Contracts

At first, when food was adequate and brutal treatment of prisoners had
not yet occurred, there were relatively few attempts to escape from San-
dakan. The camp was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, but initially
the perimeter guard detail was very low-key; at one stage it consisted of a
single guard standing at the front gate. A number of POWs took advan-
tage of this one night, crawled under the fence, and went for an evening
The Sandakan POW Camp 19

walk, returning to camp when they had taken sufficient night air. Nine
days after arrival at the camp, two POWs made an escape; a few days
later, another four escaped. After a few weeks, five more escaped. At
morning roll calls their absence was concealed by other prisoners for a
time.25
All of these groups of POWs were hiding in the jungle. Their plan was
to make contact with the local people and to get food, supplies, and a boat
in which to sail back to Australia via a large number of short hops be-
tween islands. They had almost no chance of success, for they had no
maps or navigation instruments, and at this early stage of the Pacific War,
the entire region was under secure Japanese control. All were eventually
recaptured. Only the group of five actually made it as far as putting to
sea. They had made contact with some Malay Chinese, among whom
anti-Japanese sentiment was strong, and had been given supplies and a
boat. They made a hut and lived in the jungle for several months, waiting
for the end of the monsoon season, after which they put to sea, and were
recaptured by the Japanese while still in Sandakan Bay.26
The two POWs who had been the first to escape— Herb Trackson and
Matt Carr—were recaptured six weeks after escape, at the end of August
1942, and brought back to Sandakan. They were interrogated at the San-
dakan jail. They told the Japanese that their commanding officers— Major
G.N. Campbell and Captain J.H. Scribner—had ordered them to take any
possible opportunity to escape. These two officers were also arrested and
interrogated by members of the Kempeitai (the Japanese Army police
force, the Japanese equivalent of the Gestapo) in Sandakan and again in
Kuching. At the same time the POW commander of B Force, Colonel A. W.
Walsh, was also interrogated. Walsh told the Kempeitai that under Aus-
tralian Army regulations it was a POW 's duty to take any reasonable op-
portunity to escape and that consequently he had no authority to order
prisoners not to attempt to escape. The Kempeitai became concerned that
the prisoners would attempt a mass escape and notified the 37th Army
(the Borneo Garrison) headquarters in Kuching of this danger. The barbed-
wire perimeter fence was secured, and the guard detail increased 27
In August 1942 camp commandant Hoshijima was instructed by head-
quarters to confiscate all writing materials from POWs and to order them
to sign a nonescape contract—a pledge that they would not attempt to es-
cape. On September 2 Hoshijima gathered all POWs together and ordered
Colonel Walsh to read and sign the contract. The contract contained three
demands:

1. We will attempt to accomplish any order given by the Japanese.

2. We will not attempt to escape.
3. We are aware that we will be shot if we attempt to escape.
20 The Sandakan POW Camp

Walsh read the contract and then told Hoshijima that he could not sign it
because it was in breach of the Geneva Convention. Hoshijima became
very angry and instructed guards to tie Walsh's hands behind his back
and take him outside the barbed-wire fence. A machine gun was then set
up facing him. The other POWs were also surrounded by guards with
guns. There was silence.
One of the prisoners, Major J. Workman, believed that the contract
would be invalid because it would be signed under duress, and he there-
fore urged his fellow prisoners to sign it and thus avoid bloodshed. But
he stipulated one condition: that the wording of the contract would have
to be changed from "w e" to "I" and that each prisoner would have to sign
an individual contract. Workman argued that it was not possible for the
representative of a group of people to sign a contract on their behalf. With
a fair degree of audacity— given that he did not regard the contract as
valid in any way—he argued that each soldier would have to sign his
own contract in order for it to be binding. Hoshijima agreed to individual
signatures and— not lacking in audacity himself and unwilling to create a
thousand copies of the document—changed the wording of the contract
from "w e" to "w e individuals" and asked all prisoners to sign on the one
sheet of paper! Both of these performances were topped by the large
number of prisoners who signed themselves as "Ned Kelly" (a famous
Australian "bushranger" and something of a Robin Hood figure in Aus-
tralian folklore) or as any one of a number of movie stars. Thus the pris-
oners overcame the first crisis of their time at Sandakan.28
The contract incident highlighted the distinction between Japanese and
Western attitudes to law and the contradictions between the Geneva Con-
vention and the principles of Japanese military law. The Geneva Conven-
tion did not make it illegal for armies to punish POWs who attempted to
escape, but it also recognized a POW 's right to attempt to escape and
specified that the maximum possible punishment that could be applied to
a POW who had unsuccessfully attempted to escape was 30 days in soli-
tary confinement.29 Thus the Australian Army regulations, which specifi-
cally obliged an Australian POW to attempt to escape at any reasonable
opportunity, were not in contravention of the Geneva Convention. How-
ever, the contract that Hoshijima was asking the POWs to sign was, for it
tried to remove their right to attempt to escape and to have them consent
to being executed by firing squad if recaptured.
The seventh article of the Japanese law on punishment of prisoners
states that the leader of a group of prisoners who had been captured
while attempting to escape would be punishable by death or between 10
years and life imprisonment and all other members of the group by im-
prisonment for a minimum of one year. The regulation on the treatment
of POWs stipulates that POWs must sign a contract promising not to
The Sandakan POW Camp 21

escape and that any prisoner who did not sign such a contract would
have thereby expressed an intention to attempt to escape and therefore be
subject to heavier surveillance.30 If a prisoner did sign such an oath and
subsequently attempted to escape, he would also be subject to a mini-
mum sentence of one year's imprisonment.31 These laws and regula-
tions—which are in clear contravention of the Geneva Convention—were
ratified and brought into force after Japan had agreed to abide by the
rules of war set out in the convention. (The law on punishment of prison-
ers dated from 1905 and was reconfirmed and modified in March 1943,
and the regulation on treatment of POWs was formulated in April 1943.
The Japanese government had made a commitment to the Allies to apply
to the Geneva Convention on January 29, 1942.) A Japanese law dating
from 1904 gave Japanese prison guards the right to shoot at escaping pris-
oners when such action was necessary to prevent the prisoner from suc-
cessfully escaping.32 However, the law gave no explicit guidance as to
what constituted "necessity" in such a case.
Obviously any contract signed under duress would be invalid under
any reasonable conception of contract law, but this was not the belief of the
Japanese at Sandakan. Once the contracts were signed, the Japanese were
satisfied that the prisoners had made a firm commitment not to escape.
Consequently, those prisoners who did attempt to escape but failed were
usually shot, either in the escape attempt or by firing squad on recapture.
They were regarded as criminals by Hoshijima and denied the dignity of a
graveyard burial accorded to prisoners who had died of illness. Instead
they were buried on a patch of land close to the place where work was
being carried out on the airfield, as a warning to the other prisoners.
Virtually all Japanese POW guards at other camps would shoot prison-
ers who made unsuccessful escape attempts, despite the Geneva Conven-
tion and the regulations of both the Japanese military and the armies of
the POWs. Virtually all prisoners who were captured while attempting to
escape were shot or died while being tortured. The case of Private G.A.
Arbin serves as an example of this practice. Arbin was an Australian
POW in the Orio camp in Fukuoka. Unable to stand prison life, he es-
caped in August 1943, despite the fact that he had absolutely no chance of
reaching friendly territory. He was recaptured three days later and com-
plied fully with the interrogation by the military police. Despite these cir-
cumstances he was taken out and shot after interrogation, without trial.
The documents relating to his case were then falsified to suggest that he
had attempted a second escape, which according to Japanese practice at
the time would have made it permissible to shoot him.33 Falsification of
events was a common practice in these cases.
In many cases the commandants and guards of the prison camps were
unaware of the contents or even the existence of the Geneva Convention
22 The Sandakan POW Camp

and of Japan's relation to it. Major General Saitō Masazumi, who was ap-
pointed commandant of the Java POW camp in July 1942, attended a
briefing for all new POW camp commandants at Army Headquarters in
Tokyo during that month. In his testimony to the Tokyo War Crimes Tri-
bunal after the war, he stated that the issue of international law in relation
to POWs was never raised at that meeting, that he personally had no
knowledge at the time of the international law relevant to POWs, and that
he did not ask about it.34 Lieutenant Colonel Yanagida Shōichi, comman-
dant of a POW work camp on the Burma-Thailand railway, also testified
that he had no knowledge of the Geneva Convention.35 Thus it is quite
possible that Hoshijima—who was a conscripted officer (he was a chemi-
cal engineer by profession) rather than a professional soldier—had very
little knowledge about either the Geneva Convention or the specifics of
Japanese military law. Nor did he feel any need to pay serious attention to
the protocols of international m ilitary law. Protests by POW officers that
treatment of prisoners was against the Geneva Convention were met with
the response that the Geneva Convention was of no importance to him
and that his principal duty was to Japanese m ilitary law. The overriding
importance of unquestioning obedience to both the overall Imperial Code
and the Field Service Code was impressed upon all Japanese soldiers,
whether professional or conscripted, from the day they began military
service.
Hoshijima's firm stand on the issue of the nonescape contracts was in
startling contrast to his more conciliatory position in relation to earlier
protests by prisoners that the content of their work (the construction of
the airfield) was in contravention of the Geneva Convention article for-
bidding the use of POWs for m ilitary work. But in that situation the
Japanese military law was ambiguous, and he had been obliged to make
an independent decision. On the issue of the nonescape contracts, the law
was explicit, and Hoshijima's duty was clear. It is also possible that he
was under pressure from the Kempeitai to tighten security around the
POWs. H oshijim a's personality may also be a factor in these events. He
was a typical "organization m an"—proud and continually insistent about
his university degrees and civilian qualifications, arrogant in his treat-
ment of those under his command, yet sycophantic and deferential to his
superiors. There is little doubt that he would have been fearful of Kem-
peitai officials and eager to do everything necessary to maintain their ap-
proval of him.
However, Hoshijima cannot be held solely to blame for the conditions
at the prison camp at this stage; he was but one of a number of culpable
figures. Without exculpating Hoshijima in any way, it is important to un-
derstand how he would have seen his role. He was sent to Sandakan in
his capacity as an engineer to oversee construction of the airfield, and he
The Sandakan POW Camp 23

had no expectation of being made camp commandant.36His position as

commandant of the POW camp was an additional duty, and he left much
of the day-to-day running of the camp to his subordinates. His principal
task was the construction of the airfield, and the POWs were the raw ma-
terial with which he was to complete that task. Their welfare was doubt-
less a secondary issue for him.
Indeed, the responsibility for what occurred at Sandakan could be
taken higher, to Lieutenant General Maeda Toshitame, the commandant
of the Borneo defense forces (he died in September 1942 in an airplane ac-
cident and was replaced by Lieutenant General Yamawaki Masataka). It
was Maeda who appointed Hoshijima as both commandant of the POW
camp and officer in charge of the construction of the airfield. These two
tasks made contradictory demands on Hoshijima, as the imperatives for
the construction of the airfield were often against the best interests of the
prisoners and their welfare.

The S αndαkαn Incident and the Kempeitai

For a period of time after the signing of the nonescape contracts, there
were no major incidents at Sandakan camp. Outside Borneo, however, the
Pacific War had escalated. In August 1942 U.S. forces landed at Guadal-
canal Island, and from September onward there was fierce island-to-
island fighting in the surrounding region. By the end of 1942 the Japanese
force in this area was near starvation. There were 31,400 soldiers gar-
risoned at Guadalcanal; 20,748 perished, 70 percent of these from disease
and starvation. In New Guinea the Kokoda battle began in July 1942, and
Japanese casualties were heavy. By the end of November the Japanese
forces were pushed back to Gona and Buna. In this battle the Japanese
lost 12,000 of their 18,000 men. By January 1943 Japan had been driven
back to the north of New Guinea. On April 1 8 ,1943, Admiral Yamamoto
Isoroku, the commander of the Japanese fleet, died when his plane was
shot down over the Bougainville Islands. On May 29 the Japanese force at
Attu Island was defeated.37
As these conflicts were occurring, the POWs at Sandakan meanwhile
began to suffer significantly from the spread of tropical diseases: malaria,
dysentery, beriberi, and tropical ulcers. Although the Japanese Army had
adequate supplies of medicine for its own men, it did not provide the
POWs with sufficient medicine to treat these diseases. Illness thus signifi-
cantly depleted the labor force, and the construction of the airfield fell be-
hind schedule. In March 1943, 750 British POWs were brought in from
Kuching, and in April, another 500 POWs (E Force) were brought in from
Changi. They were held on Bahara Island in Sandakan Bay until addi-
tional huts were completed in June. The original Sandakan labor force
24 The Sandakan POW Camp

was housed in Camp No. 1, the British in Camp No. 2, and E Force in
Camp No. 3. Sandakan had become a large POW camp holding 2,750
prisoners. It was now compulsory for officer POWs to work on the air-
field, and those who refused were to be denied rations. Nobody refused.38
When B Force had first arrived at Sandakan in July 1942, Captain Li-
onel Matthews had formed a group of about 20 officers and NCOs in
order to gather intelligence about the region. These men volunteered to
work in the vegetable garden (which was located outside the camp) on
the pretext that they needed the exercise. Security was lax for a time, and
Matthews managed to make contact with a native Malaysian, Dick Magi-
nal, who was employed by the Japanese as a gardener in the vegetable
garden and who was sympathetic to the Allies. From Maginal, Matthews
obtained information that about 90 British civilians who had lived in San-
dakan before the war were being detained on Bahara Island, guarded by
local police officers and a small contingent of Japanese soldiers. Maginal
managed to arrange a meeting between Matthews and the local police of-
ficer, Ahbin (a member of the Dasan tribe), who visited the Sandakan
camp and Bahara Island camp regularly, and an information link between
the two camps was thus established.39A number of Allied civilians— most
of them doctors and dentists—had not been interned at Bahara and had
been given permission to remain in the Sandakan township. Again
through Ahbin, Matthews managed to make contact with an Australian
doctor, J.P. Taylor.40 Taylor arranged to smuggle essential medical sup-
plies to the POWs; these supplies would be left at a cache in the jungle
and picked up by POWs who had been sent out on a work detail to collect
wood for cooking and for the electricity-generating boiler. These wood-
gathering parties were led by a Lieutenant Rod Wells, a member of the in-
telligence group organized by Matthews. Taylor also supplied regular in-
formation on Japanese troop movements via the same method.41
The traffic of information and supplies between the Sandakan camp
and the town community even extended to the provision of parts for a
radio receiver—supplied by local Chinese merchants and workers whose
anti-Japanese sentiments stemmed largely from the fact that the Japanese
forces had destroyed their highly protected and profitable stranglehold
on local business activity. Some prisoners had already smuggled in radio
parts when B Force was initially transferred from Singapore. Two prison-
ers who had a knowledge of radio mechanics— Lieutenant Weynton and
Corporal Richards— used these and additional parts supplied by the Chi-
nese civilians to construct a radio receiver, which was completed by No-
vember 1942.42 However, in order to operate this radio, they required a
good electricity supply. The wood-fired electricity generator was located
some distance from the POW barracks and was operated by four civil-
ians. Lieutenant Wells made an arrangement with the foreman of this
The Sandakan POW Camp 25

group—a Chinese civilian named Ah Ping—whereby Wells would sup-

ply them with extra wood, in order for them to increase the amount of
power generated at ten o'clock each night, which would then be used to
run the radio receiver. To secure this arrangement, Wells arranged for Ah
Ping to make a request for additional manpower to operate the generator,
a request that was granted. Another member of Matthew's intelligence
group—one Sergeant Stevens—was assigned to the generator shed to as-
sist the four locals in maintaining the electricity supply. From this point
he could also pass information between Wells and Ah Ping.43
The intelligence group began radio reception on November 4, 1942,
with the increased power supply they had obtained. They picked up BBC
and American news reports and gathered the information contained in
these—which unsurprisingly differed greatly from the war reports of-
fered by the Japanese military—into a weekly written bulletin that was
passed on to Dr. Taylor and the interned civilian population by the police
officer, Ahbin.
Matthews had always believed that obtaining arms and smuggling
them into camp were high-priority tasks for the intelligence group. He
was confident that the Allies would attempt to recapture Borneo at some
stage and that such a landing would offer an opportunity for the San-
dakan prisoners to launch an armed uprising within the prison. The news
the radio brought him of Japanese losses and setbacks in the wider Pacific
War made such a project all the more imperative. He had already ob-
tained a pistol, some ammunition, and a map of North Borneo from a
Chinese collaborator, Alex Funk. Through Funk, Matthews also made
contact with anti-Japanese guerrillas operating in the southern Philip-
pines, and these guerrillas arranged for the supply of 2 machine guns, 27
rifles, and 2,500 rounds of ammunition to the POWs. These were hidden
in a cache 24 kilometers from the town of Sandakan.44
In May 1943 the Matthews group decided to build a radio transmitter.
They received some radio parts that had been smuggled in by E Force,
which had arrived the previous month, and once again they attempted to
obtain the remainder from sympathetic Chinese civilians. But this time
disaster struck. One of the sympathetic Chinese—a local worker named
Joe Ming—was caught assisting the POWs by one of his coworkers, an In-
dian named Dominic Koh. Koh attempted to blackmail Ming and gain
money and further information about the extent of contact between
POWs and civilians. When Ming refused to cooperate, Koh passed on
such information as he had to a Chinese civilian, Jackie Lo, who was act-
ing as a Japanese spy at the camp.45
Lo informed the Japanese, who arrested Ming and his father and tor-
tured them until they gave names of other Chinese collaborators, includ-
ing Alex Funk, who were also tortured and gave details of all those
26 The Sandakan POW Camp

involved in the attempt to build a radio transmitter. All members of the

Matthews intelligence group as well as Dr. Taylor and the police officer
Ahbin were subsequently arrested by the Kempeitai. On July 22 the camp
was searched, and two pistols, some maps, and a note from Lieutenant
Wells to Ahbin (hidden in Wells's boots) were found. The radio was not
detected. On July 24 a second search was made, and this time a list of the
radio parts smuggled into camp was discovered. Hoshijima showed the
list of parts to Lieutenant Wells and demanded he tell where the radio
was hidden. After interrogation and torture Wells decided to hand over
the half-completed transmitter in an attempt to convince the Japanese
that this was all they possessed and to keep the receiver undetected. But
his interrogators were not fooled and continued to torture Wells and
other members of M atthews's group. Eventually one of them confessed
and the receiver was discovered. The torture and interrogation continued
for three months, and the initial refusal of civilians and POWs to talk was
eventually broken down.46 The Kempeitai called this episode the "San-
dakan incident."
The Kempeitai was a military police force established in 1881 for the
purpose of maintaining discipline within the armed forces. In the late
1920s, as the Japanese government strengthened its anticommunist poli-
cies, the Kempeitai established a division known as the Tokkō-ka, or Spe-
cial Service. The purpose of the Special Service was to maintain surveil-
lance of the labor movement, farm ers' groups, student organizations, and
other radical bodies. The power of the Kempeitai was thus stretched far
beyond the field of purely military matters, and its role became increas-
ingly political. In the 1930s Kempeitai branches were established
throughout Japan proper, in its colonies such as Korea and Taiwan, and in
territories such as the Philippines and Borneo captured during the first
stages of the war. The original purpose for which the Kempeitai was cre-
ated— the maintenance of military discipline— gradually was displaced
by the more important task of political surveillance. Operatives' antisub-
versive actions became increasingly drastic and eventually included the
torture, murder, and detention without trial of suspected radicals or ene-
mies of the imperial government and armed forces. They were known as
the "devil's Kem peitai" and had few qualms about using the most ex-
treme forms of torture in the extraction of confessions and information.47
A branch of the Kempeitai was established in Sandakan soon after the
Japanese occupation of Borneo was completed. By the time of the San-
dakan incident, there were 15 Kempeitai operatives stationed at the city
under the command of Warrant Officer Murakami Seisaku.48 The Kem-
peitai had a number of different methods of torture, among them the no-
torious "w ater torture," in which the victim 's face would be covered with
a cloth mask and then doused repeatedly with water. The wet cloth over
The Sandakan POW Camp 27

the mouth and nose would make it impossible to breathe and force the
victim to inhale huge amounts of water. When the victim 's stomach was
full to bursting, a Kempeitai officer would jump on him from the top of a
chair. Another common torture was the "rice torture," in which the victim
would be starved for several days and then have a large amount of un-
cooked rice forced down his throat. A hose would then be put in the vic-
tim 's mouth and he would swallow a large amount of water, which
caused the rice to expand. This would cause excruciating pain as the
stomach stretched to its limit, and the pain would often continue for days
as the rice was digested. The resulting stress on the digestive tract would
also cause internal and rectal bleeding. Beatings were made more painful
and terrifying by the use of wet sand, which was smeared over the victim
and was pressed into the skin when he was beaten with a wooden sandal.
This abraded the skin and made the whole beaten area red, raw, and
bleeding. All these methods of torture were used on those interrogated in
the aftermath of the Sandakan incident.49
Why did Kempeitai members use such horrific and bizarre methods of
torture in their interrogations? In order to answer this question we must
look at the structure within which such violence occurs and the nature of
the power relations therein. Such an analysis may shed some light on the
causes of violence and brutality in the Japanese m ilitary as a whole as
well as in the Kempeitai in particular. It will also be valuable to examine
the political situation that existed in Borneo at the time.
One of the crucial events of this period is what is known as the "H aga
incident." In June 1942— one month before the Sandakan incident—oper-
atives of the Kempeitai raided the house of an Indonesian radio me-
chanic in Banjarmasin and discovered a radio transmitter that was being
operated from there. The Kempeitai claimed that the radio was being
used by the local resistance to communicate with the Allied forces. The
Kempeitai operatives also claimed that they found arms and ammunition
at another house in the Banjarmasin area. They then arrested Dr. B.J.
Haga, who had been the Dutch governor of East and West Kalimantan
provinces, and accused him of being a leader of the Indonesian anti-
Japanese resistance. During the next few months more than 257 people
were tortured and murdered in the course of this investigation, including
Haga and his wife. In September, while the investigation of the Sandakan
incident and the torture and interrogation of the Matthews group were
continuing, a groundless rumor spread that resistance fighters connected
with the Haga group were now operating a radio and planning an armed
overthrow at Pontianak, in southwest Borneo. At the time the Navy
rather than the Army was stationed at Pontianak, and the naval equiva-
lent of the Kempeitai— the Naval Special Police Force—began to arrest
suspects and torture them in an attempt to extract confessions. More than
28 The Sandakan POW Camp

1,500 civilians were arrested— Indonesians, Chinese, and Indians— and

the vast majority were eventually tortured and killed.50
There was, however, one real event that contributed to the belief among
Kempeitai members that they were facing a major uprising. In October
1943, as the investigation into the Sandakan incident was drawing to a
close, a large-scale uprising occurred in Api (known as Jesselton by the
British and now known as Kota Kinabalu). This uprising was led by a
young Chinese man named Guo Hengnan, who was trained in the south-
ern Philippines as a spy by U.S. intelligence officers. He was dropped
near Api by submarine and began organizing a resistance force there. On
October 10 he led about 100 locals in attacking Japanese trading company
offices, Kempeitai branch offices, police stations, military inns, and ware-
houses. About 60 Japanese and Taiwanese residents were killed. It took
the Japanese three months to crush this group and arrest Guo Hengnan
and the other ringleaders.51
Because of these events as well as the Sandakan incident, the Kempeitai
began to lose confidence in its ability to maintain security within occu-
pied Borneo. The war was beginning to go very badly for the Japanese,
and news of Allied victories began to circulate among the civilian popula-
tion. The Japanese setbacks and the possibility that the Allies might at-
tempt to recapture Borneo lowered morale among the Japanese forces. It
made both regular troops and the Kempeitai increasingly suspicious, ag-
gressive, and paranoid in their relations with the local population. Sur-
veillance, arrests, and torture increased. Yet in cases such as the Pontianak
and the Haga incidents, the real threat to Japanese security was either
small or nonexistent. Kempeitai members were projecting their fears onto
the local population and thus constantly "discovering" new conspiracies.
They were usually convinced of the guilt of those arrested before any in-
terrogation had taken place. The confessions they extracted after days,
weeks, or even months of torture were usually given by victims who
would confess to anything, even crimes punishable by death, in order to
end their ordeal. Those named in such confessions would also be arrested
and tortured, so the circle of false confession and torture would widen
and fuel the paranoia of Kempeitai operatives, who became increasingly
convinced that they had uncovered a comprehensive network of resis-
tance activity. This merging of fantasy and reality was doubtless a factor
in the investigation of the Sandakan incident. The Matthews group had
not intended to begin an armed uprising until such time as there was an
Allied invasion of Japanese-occupied Borneo. Yet Kempeitai officials were
convinced that such an uprising was imminent when the radio and
weapons had been discovered. Eventually they tortured out of the mem-
bers of the Matthews group the confessions they wanted to hear.
The Sandakan POW Camp 29

The torture of Allied POWs may also have given some psychological
satisfaction to the Kempeitai. The war was going badly, and the Allies
were rapidly regaining dominance over the region that the Japanese had
only recently wrested from them. Torture functioned as a sort of revenge
for this reversal of fortune and maintained the illusion of dominance over
the enemy. It may also have helped to relieve the fear felt by the security
officers facing an anticipated Allied invasion of Borneo. The worse the
news of Allied victories and Japanese defeats, the greater the need to de-
rive satisfaction from torture became. This "therapeutic" use of torture is
common to many armies experiencing setbacks or defeats; for instance,
members of the Australian Army used the water torture during the Viet-
nam War. This torture was used to extract information from suspected
Viet Cong sympathizers, but its use increased when units were sur-
rounded by enemy forces, thus making its psychological motivation
clear.52

The System and Purpose of Cunrňsu Kaigί

On October 2 5 , 1943, after more than three months of torture, the 20 or so
members of the Matthews group and some other POWs and more than 50
civilians who had assisted them were taken by boat to Kuching and held
in a military jail there while awaiting their trials. On arrival at Kuching
several of the POWs were discharged and relocated to Kuching prison
camp.53 The remainder were divided into three groups, and each group
was tried separately. All of the accused were found guilty. Dr. Taylor was
tried on February 3 , 1944, and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment, and
the rest of the ringleaders were tried on March 2 , 1944. Matthews, Ahbin,
Alex Funk, Joe Ming, and five others were sentenced to death by firing
squad and executed immediately after the trial. Wells was sentenced to
12 years' imprisonment. The remainder were sentenced to prison terms
ranging from 6 months to 15 years. Four of the civilians and three of the
POWs died in prison before the end of the war, their health broken by the
ordeals of torture and imprisonment.54
Colonel Suga, commandant of the Borneo POW camp system, was pres-
ent at the trial and made an open plea to the judges in the courtroom: He
asked them to give the accused prisoners and civilians a fair trial in accor-
dance with international law and to be merciful in their sentencing.55 This
would have been an uncommon act even in a court-martial of Japanese
soldiers; in a trial of enemy prisoners it was extremely unusual and coura-
geous. Clearly Suga was aware that the trial of POWs by a Japanese mili-
tary court was, to say the least, in potential conflict with the rules of inter-
national law.
30 The Sandakan POW Camp

Japanese military law provided for two different types of court-martial.

One, gumpō kaigi, is equivalent to a Western court-martial: the trial of
members of the armed forces according to a specific m ilitary law. The
other, gunriłsu kaigi, is the trial by a military court of civilians and POWs
charged with crimes in an occupied area subject to martial law. The gun -
ritsu kaigi is an application of the rules governing gumpō kaigi and espe-
cially of the rules governing the łokusełsu gumpō kaigi (special court-
martial), in which the defendant is not permitted legal representation and
has no right of appeal.56
There were five types of gumpō kaigi (court-martial hereafter). In de-
scending order of authority, these were the high, army, division, provost,
and field court-martials. The former three were permanent institutions
within the military structure; the latter two were temporary and inciden-
tal. There were seven army court-martial jurisdictions: four in Japan
proper and one each in Taiwan, Manchukuo, and Korea. Within each of
these jurisdictions there were a number of division court-martial jurisdic-
tions, and the court-martial at which a member of the armed forces
charged would be tried depended on rank, with the higher ranks tried at
an army court-martial. There was the right of appeal directly to the high
court-martial from either of the lesser permanent court-martials, and
there was provision for the trials of very high-ranking officers to go di-
rectly to a high court-martial. There was no right of appeal from a provost
or field court-martial.
A case presented to one of the three permanent court-martials would be
heard before five officers from fighting units acting as judges. At the high
court-martial, it was necessary for two of the five officers to be m ilitary
lawyers. At an army or division court-martial only one of the five was re-
quired to be a military lawyer. In principle it was necessary for the prose-
cutor at all such cases to be a m ilitary lawyer. The permanent court-
martials were apparently just and liberal in their manner of conduct, with
an open court, the right of the accused to be represented by a lawyer, and
the right of appeal. But in practice this was little more than a sham. The
judges had the right to hear a case in camera when the details of it in-
volved confidential military matters, and this power was often abused by
judges who wished to keep public knowledge of military matters to a
minimum. Defense representatives were invariably junior officers who
were often deterred from making real efforts for their clients by implicit
or explicit threats to their military careers. The judges had the right to ex-
clude anyone from the proceedings of the trial. This rule could even be
applied to a defendant's representative, who would thus have been effec-
tively fired by the judges. The defendant would have no choice but to
make the firing official and to request a new representative. Conse-
quently, defense lawyers would make efforts to avoid offending or antag-
The Sandakan POW Camp 31

onizing the judges, and this would often make it impossible for them to
defend clients effectively.
Because those judges with legal expertise were always in a minority in
any of these court-martials, an acquittal was all but impossible to obtain
on the grounds of technicalities or points of law, as the judges without a
legal background always constituted a de facto majority. Even those
judges who were legal specialists were unlikely to be sympathetic to a
fully legalistic interpretation of military law: Court-martial trial judges
were required to have had experience as either court-martial prosecutors
or as governors of military prisons and thus to have displayed a commit-
ment to the heavy discipline of Japanese military law.
The court-martial system was designed to protect officers— especially
those who were graduates of the military college— and to enforce the dis-
cipline of officers on enlisted men. The administering of justice was a
minor consideration in such a system. Prosecutors, who were frequently
junior officers, were given no dispensation from the general rule that they
were obliged to obey orders, and thus any investigation of senior officers
was all but impossible. Furthermore, senior officers could stonewall inves-
tigation of their junior officers if they so wished. Prosecutors could not di-
rect members of the Kempeitai to investigate officers, and this left them
without the opportunity to gather evidence and build a case. It was rare
indeed that an officer above the rank of major would ever appear before a
court-martial; when such cases did occur, the punishment was almost in-
variably minor. By contrast, the punishments for enlisted men were al-
ways severe, even for fairly minor offenses. One example shows a typical
pattern: A soldier in the Kwantung (Kantō) Army based in Manchuria,
when summoned by his officer, said to him, "W hat the hell are you talking
about?" He was court-martialed and given three months' imprisonment.57
The special court-martial was even more draconian in its process and
its judgments. It was designed to be applied in the field and in occupied
areas where iron discipline was believed to be particularly necessary. Be-
cause of the likelihood that such a trial would take place under battlefield
conditions, the process was simplified to an extreme degree. There were
only three judges, and only one was required to be a legal specialist. The
accused had no right to representation or appeal to a higher court, and
the trial was held in camera. In the standard court-martial the judgment
of the court was required to be authorized by the Minister of the Army. In
the special court-martial the field commander of the unit in question was
empowered to authorize the judgment. All of the conditions that ex-
cepted officers from the rule of the general court-martial were present in
the special court-martial.
The primary purpose of the special court-martial was to maintain disci-
pline on the front line and to stamp out acts of individual disobedience
32 The Sandakan POW Camp

and insubordination before they became more general acts of mutiny.

Obedience was mandatory, no matter how absurd or dangerous the or-
ders of an officer were, and the punishments for disobedience included
everything from long prison sentences to execution. There were many of-
ficers who murdered or summarily executed soldiers in the field without
the benefit of any sort of trial, and these officers were never prosecuted
for any offense. Soldiers who assaulted officers or even who merely dis-
obeyed an order were invariably heavily punished, no matter what miti-
gating circumstances there might have been.
The gunritsu kaigi (civilian court-martial) was the direct application of
the special court-martial to POWs and civilians. It was designed to en-
force discipline in occupied areas and to minimize the possibility and
spread of resistance activity and sabotage by the subjugated population
in those areas. The principles of natural justice were of no consideration
in its application. It was used to make an example of those civilians who
had engaged in anti-Japanese activity— or even those who were merely
suspected of having done so.58
After the war, Lieutenant Wells, who had been sentenced to twelve
years' imprisonment for his part in the Sandakan incident, made a report
of the trial to the Australian War Crimes Section. He argued that the trial
was clearly in breach of international law as the accused had had no in-
tention of starting a revolt in the prison. He claimed that the evidence had
been distorted by prosecutors, that the defendants had no opportunity for
legal representation, and that, as a result, nine people had been unjustly
executed.59 However, the War Crimes Section did not prosecute the one
surviving judge, Captain Tsutsui Yōichi (the other two had died during
the war). The prosecutor, Captain Watanabe Haruo, and the officer who
authorized the executions, Lieutenant General Yamawaki Masataka, were
tried but acquitted.60
Another civilian court-martial held in Kuching by the Borneo garrison
involved POWs who were tried and executed. Between February and
March 1944, several groups of Australian soldiers were landed in the
northeast of Borneo to gather information about Japanese troop move-
ments. A member of one of the intelligence parties, Sergeant William
Brandeis, became lost in the jungle and wandered for some time. He lost
most of his clothes and was nearly naked when he was captured by
Japanese soldiers. Brandeis surrendered immediately, handed his captors
his pistol, which he was wearing openly, and volunteered his name, rank,
and serial number. Two other soldiers from these parties— Lieutenant
Alfred Rudwick and Sergeant Donald McKenzie— were also captured by
the Japanese. They too were clearly identifiable as Australian soldiers
when they surrendered. The Geneva Convention provides that a man
who is captured in uniform and with unconcealed weapons should be
treated as a captured soldier and not as a spy, no matter in which region
The Sandakan POW Camp 33

the capture took place. Despite their insistence that they were entitled to
be regarded as soldier POWs in line with the Geneva Convention, the
three Australians were tried as spies and executed.61 In this case also, the
two surviving judges, the prosecutor, and Yamawaki were tried and ac-
quitted of war crimes charges. The judges who presided over these trials
also placed gag orders on the proceedings, forbidding the Australian
press from reporting on either their conduct or the verdicts 62
Article 61 of the Geneva Convention prohibits the judgment and sen-
tencing of POWs who are not given the opportunity to defend them-
selves, Article 62 gives POWs a right to representation, and Article 64
stipulates that the accused must have the right of appeal to a higher court.
Clearly the civilian court-martial flew in the face of the Geneva Conven-
tion, yet the Australian military forces, who in general were harsh to
Japanese war criminals, were inclined to be lenient in the case of those
who had participated in civilian court-martials that were in effect war
crimes. Furthermore, there is considerable evidence of situations in which
the Australian military authorities were prepared to regard Japanese
court-martials as legitimate.
In September 1945, less than one month after V-J Day, Japanese POWs
from the Bougainville garrison, detained on nearby Tauno Island, held a
court-martial of some of their own soldiers, who had allegedly either
disobeyed orders or deserted. Toward the end of the war, many of the
South Pacific islands had their supplies cut off by the higher command,
and the men stationed there were literally starving to death. Soldiers who
left the front line to hunt for food in the jungle were often rounded up by
the Kempeitai, charged with desertion, and summarily executed (as was
the standard Japanese Army punishment for that crime). Many others,
however, simply left the front line and hid in the jungle, emerging only
when the war concluded, and there were so many of these soldiers that
the Allied forces dropped pamphlets in the jungle announcing the end of
the war. These men, after surrendering, were interned in the same camps
as troops who were still at their posts when the war ended. Enlisted men
and officers were also imprisoned together, and some of the enlisted men
saw an opportunity to take revenge on officers they felt had treated them
badly. They presumed—wrongly— that the officers would no longer hold
legitimate authority or command obedience. The officers held a series of
special court-martials and punished the offending troops with either soli-
tary confinement or execution. Australian detention camp authorities not
only gave their tacit consent to the conduct of such trials but also, incredi-
bly, loaned weapons to the Japanese officers in order that the death sen-
tences might be carried out.63
These camp court-martials were ostensibly conducted in line with
Japanese military law as authorized by the Japanese constitution, but this
law granted no jurisdiction over the inmates of the detention camps.
34 The Sandakan POW Camp

According to international law, these camps and all their inhabitants were
under the jurisdiction of Australian m ilitary law. Nor could the camp be
in any way regarded as Japanese territory, in the manner of an embassy or
consulate. In many cases there was no commandant of a sufficient rank to
authorize an execution within a camp, yet executions took place never-
theless, so the whole process was illegal even under principles of Japa-
nese military law, which the officers were erroneously applying. Clearly,
the camp court-martials were illegal in every respect.64
Why, then, did the Australian m ilitary forces tacitly and actively sup-
port the conduct of these trials? Presumably, the Australian officers expe-
rienced a kind of solidarity with the Japanese officers and a shared com-
mitment to the maintenance of m ilitary discipline— a fellow feeling
directed against enlisted men of whatever nationality. The specific nature
of military law might differ from nation to nation, but maintenance of dis-
cipline within an army is universally seen as the primary function of mil-
itary law, with the administering of justice a secondary consideration.
This shared view would have been widely held among officers. It might
also help explain why those Japanese officers who had presided over spe-
cial court-martials and passed death sentences on Australian POWs and
"sp ies" were acquitted by the officers acting as judges in the B and C
Class trials.65

Mistreatment of POWs and the Formosan Guards

About one week after the POWs charged over the Sandakan incident
were transported to Kuching, 230 officers from the Sandakan camp also
were transferred to the Kuching POW camp. Only about a dozen officers,
most of them Australians, remained in Sandakan, and four of them were
military doctors. This move was undoubtedly an attempt to break the or-
ganized resistance of the POWs. The Japanese believed that enlisted men
would be more or less incapable of mounting any active resistance with-
out leadership.66 By November 1943, after these removals and the death
of 24 POWs from illness, the number of prisoners in Sandakan was re-
duced to about 2,470.67
After the Sandakan incident, the treatment of POWs by the Japanese
dramatically worsened. Wages were no longer paid, camp canteens were
closed down, and weekend leisure activity ceased. Incidents of physical
maltreatment increased and were crueler than they had been previously.
Physical maltreatment on the airfield construction site had been worsen-
ing even before the Sandakan incident, largely because the Japanese
guards gradually realized the prisoners were on a "go slow "—work was
proceeding at a śnaiľs pace and with a great deal of pretense, and there
was low-level sabotage.
The Sandakan POW Camp 35

When E Force arrived in Sandakan in April 1943, new guards came

with them to augment the total number of guards at the camp. Eight
guards were formed into a special squad whose main purpose was to ad-
minister punishment to disobedient prisoners at the airfield site. Each of
these guards was armed with an ax handle or a club, and with these they
would patrol the airfield site during working hours. If a prisoner was
judged to be working too slowly, the punishment unit would round up
the whole of his detail (a unit of about 40 or 50 men) and they would all
be severely beaten. Other punishments included being made to stand
with arms outstretched (sometimes holding a heavy log) and staring at
the sun for 20-30 minutes or to hold a push-up position for the same
amount of time. If the prisoner closed his eyes, dropped the log, or col-
lapsed, he would be beaten, and the punishment would continue. Each
day several groups of POWs would be punished in this fashion, and
many prisoners lost consciousness or suffered broken limbs. Prisoners
who attempted to stop the beating of a fellow POW were themselves
beaten. One prisoner was beaten with the stock of a gun and lost several
teeth. In another incident a prisoner was taken to the camp hospital after
being kicked in the testicles, and when the POW doctor complained to the
guard responsible, the guard kicked him in the testicles.68
As time passed many POWs became sick with tropical ulcers and
beriberi. These men were given lighter duties in the camp vegetable gar-
den, but the lack of shoes and the use of human excrement as fertilizer ag-
gravated their tropical ulcers, especially those around their feet and legs.
In order to ascertain whether a prisoner with bandaged legs was gen-
uinely sick or merely malingering, the guards would kick the infected
area, causing great pain. In September 1944 even these light duties were
abolished as the labor force at the airfield shrank because of the increas-
ingly high mortality rate, and sick prisoners were put back to work
there.69
The summary punishment for minor acts of disobedience and insubor-
dination also increased, with prisoners spending longer periods in the
punishment cage. The maximum punishment period was 30 days accord-
ing to camp regulations, which were based on the same regulations as ap-
plied to the punishment of Japanese soldiers under military law.70 The
Sandakan cage measured 1.8 by 1.5 by 1.2 meters. The floor and the roof
were made of wood. It was located outside the guardhouse and was to all
intents and purposes a large dog kennel. The cage was originally in-
tended for Japanese soldiers who had committed minor crimes, but it was
never used for that purpose. It was exclusively employed for punishing
POWs and became used so frequently that two additional cages had to be
built in June 1943 (of 2.7 by 2.1 by 1.5 meters) and October 1944 (4.5 by 2.7
by 2.7 meters) in order for all punishments to be carried out. The second
36 The Sandakan POW Camp

and third cages were larger because prisoners were by then being pun-
ished in groups.71
A typical example of a victim of the cages was a sapper (army engineer)
named Hinchcliffe, who was initially punished at the airfield construc-
tion site after he was caught trying to barter some personal effects with
the locals in exchange for food. (POWs had relied on contact with the lo-
cals in order to supplement their meager camp diet and acquire essential
medicine, since wages and canteen access had been discontinued in mid-
1943). Hinchcliffe was made to stand in a squatting position, with sharp-
edged lengths of wood jammed behind and under his knees, his arms
outstretched and facing into the sun for one hour. Every 10 minutes, the
punishment squad would come and beat him. He was then taken to the
punishment cage and confined for seven days without food.72
One POW, Keith Botterill, endured three separate periods of detention
in the punishment cage, the longest of which lasted 40 days, thus exceed-
ing the 30-day lim it prescribed by the Japanese military regulations. The
following is his testimony:

Forty days. The first seven days got no food. N o water for the first three
days. And then they forced you to drink until you were sick on the third
night------Every evening you w ould be—a bashing. Hit with sticks and fists
and kicking N o wash in that forty days—I was in forty days and never
had a w ash I was just in a G string, covered with lice, crabs, scabies___
The time I was in for 40 days, there [were] 17 of us in there N ot allowed
to talk, w e used to whisper. We had to kneel down all day, there wasn't
room to lay down of a night, w e'd all lay side by side, squashed up, and had
to sit up again at dawn and kneel up— kneel down.73

A number of other testimonies exist about time in the punishment cage,

but all are similar to Botterilľs. No food was provided in the first week,
and the water torture was usually conducted on the third or fourth day.
Prisoners were permitted to go to the toilet only twice a day, once in the
morning and once in the afternoon. At "exercise" time once a day, the
prisoner was severely beaten by the guards. The prisoners wore only loin-
cloths or shorts, and neither blankets nor mosquito nets were provided.
The constant exposure to mosquitos made sleep difficult and was also a
cause of malaria. Because the prisoners were suffering from malnutrition
and the effects of forced labor, they were in poor health, and their condi-
tion rapidly deteriorated while in the cage. The psychological states of
many of the men punished in the cage also deteriorated, as can easily be
understood. When Hoshijima was interrogated about these regimes, he
claimed that only one prisoner had died (of malaria) while in the cage.74
This was technically true because many succumbed to disease or malnu-
The Sandakan POW Camp 37

trition afterward in the hospital, but the severity of the punishments obvi-
ously contributed to the deaths of these men.
The majority of POWs confined in the cage were those who had stolen
food from the camp vegetable garden, although they had done this in
most cases from sheer hunger. The Geneva Convention mandates ade-
quate care of POWs, and thus responsibility for such crimes must lie with
the camp administration. The convention permits the punishment of
POWs for misbehavior; however, the prisoner being punished must be al-
lowed two hours exercise per day and given access to reading and writ-
ing materials and medical care.75 The punishment-cage regime violated
not only the Geneva Convention but also Japanese regulations governing
punishment of prisoners, including the provision limiting the maximum
confinement to 30 days. The regulations also required that proper food
and bedding be provided at least once every three days and that the bed-
ding be suited to the climate (such as extra blankets or mosquito net-
ting).76 Although Hoshijima was aware of the conditions and nature of
the punishment, he did not constantly supervise the situation. He was
more concerned with the progress of work on the airfield and left admin-
istration of punishment to his junior officers.
The breach of regulations by Japanese forces was compounded by the
extraordinary degree of wanton cruelty displayed by many of the For-
mosan guards and the toleration of and consent to such behavior by
many Japanese officers. For example, one Formosan guard commanded a
POW to wash the guard's loincloth in the pot used by the POWs for cook-
ing. When the POW refused, he was severely beaten.77 Another POW,
Captain Piccone, an army surgeon, had rigged up a high-strength light
using lights taken from POW barracks and bound together, in order to be
able to perform an operation. This makeshift light was discovered by
guards, and Piccone was severely beaten and forced to stand for two
hours.78 These two examples clearly illustrate that guards were not in fact
punishing POWs for infringements of regulations in such cases but
merely harassing and tormenting them to satisfy their sadistic impulses.
Such harassment worsened as the war continued.
In October 1942 there were 2 Japanese officers, 4 NCOs, and about 50
guards at the Sandakan POW camp. In April 1943, as new groups of
POWs arrived, more guards were added. Although the final figures are
unclear, available evidence indicates that there were around 100 guards at
Sandakan between April 1943 and the end of 1944. All of the guards were
Formosan, as was the case throughout the Borneo prison camp system.
Borneo was not the only garrison that used non-Japanese soldiers as
prison guards. The majority of guards in Japanese POW camps across the
occupied territories were young men drawn from places such as Korea
and Formosa (now Taiwan) who were press-ganged into service. On May
38 The Sandakan POW Camp

5, 1942, after the Japanese army had made the decision to employ For-
mosans and Koreans as POW camp guards, an instruction entitled "O ut-
line for Dealing With POW s" was sent to the chief of staff for the Japanese
forces occupying Formosa, Higuchi Keishichirō. The outline detailed two
principal reasons for the use of non-Japanese guards in prison camps.
One reason was to destroy the lingering sense of superiority attached to
white people by many Asian societies that had been colonized and conse-
quently to elevate the Japanese as "w hite substitutes." By having Koreans
and Formosans guard white prisoners under Japanese command, the
Japanese military hoped that the old "pecking order" would be re-
versed— that non-Japanese Asians would come to see whites as inferior,
subjugated people and the Japanese as the "natural" leaders of Asia. The
other, more mundane purpose was to free up more Japanese men to be
sent to the front line. On May 1 5 , 1 9 4 2 , 10 days after the outline had been
distributed, the recruitment of Korean and Formosan guards began.79
Unfortunately, no documents exist that detail the methods involved in
the training and indoctrination of Formosan guards. However, Utsumi
Aiko of Keisen University, Japan, conducted extensive research on Ko-
rean POW guards and found that more than 3,000 young Korean men
were "recruited" (that is, press-ganged or otherwise forced to "volun-
teer") for the prison guard corps. Many of these men feared they would
be shipped to Japan as indentured servants if they did not join the corps.
Others were perhaps attracted by the high pay rates offered—50 yen per
month, a large amount at the time. Those who served in the guard corps
were classified as civilian employees rather than members of the military,
and many hoped this status would prevent their transfer to the front line
and would allow them to be demobilized when their two-year contract
was concluded. However, on joining, the new recruits were issued with
uniforms, and their basic training was very much m ilitary in character, in-
cluding weapons training. Despite the difference between the promise
and the reality of the guard corps, few deserted, possibly because poten-
tial deserters were threatened with court-martial.80
There is no reason to presume that the situation would have been any
different in Formosa. On April 1 , 1942, military leaders had introduced a
special "volunteer" system designed to recruit soldiers who would be
sent to the front line after six months of training. Once again, the word
"volunteer" is a nominal one; local police were set a quota for such volun-
teers and obliged to fill it by any means necessary. Many young For-
mosans undoubtedly found service in the prison corps a more attractive
alternative than the front line. Conscription was introduced to Formosa in
September 1943, and by the end of the war more than 200,000 Formosans
had been pressed into service. More than 30,000 died. The majority were
The Sandakan POW Camp 39

sent to the Pacific rather than the Manchukuo theater of war on the
grounds that Formosans were better suited to the heat than the Japanese.81
The Koreans were trained in Japanese and forbidden to use their native
language. They were also given Japanese names instead of Korean ones.
They were instructed to treat POWs as animals as a way of ensuring their
fear and respect. They were trained primarily in the Japanese Field Ser-
vice Code, and they were frequently beaten by Japanese officers, for no
justifiable reason. The Geneva Convention was never mentioned. In other
words, they were trained as de facto Japanese, soldiers, yet their rank of
katishi-hei (guard) was lower than that of a private, and there was no pos-
sibility of promotion. Clearly the Korean guards (and the situation pre-
sumably was no different for Formosans) were treated as second-class
soldiers within the forces, bound by the same iron discipline yet enjoying
none of the prestige accorded to Japanese soldiers. Indeed, one of their
unstated functions within the forces was to give the Japanese soldiers
someone to look down on, thus strengthening a sense of ethnic solidarity
among the Japanese and minimizing the resentment felt by Japanese
troops toward their officers. The Koreans were "boundary-crossers," nei-
ther fully inside nor fully outside the military forces— inside insofar as
the rules to which they were subject, outside insofar as the treatment they
were accorded.82
The guards' duties were more than merely to prevent the escape of
prisoners. One of their most important tasks was to provide sufficient
POW workers each day for the airfield, no matter how many of the pris-
oners were too sick or unwilling to work. The guards were also responsi-
ble for maintaining a sufficiently high rate of work and for administering
punishment when work fell short of expectations. Contact between
Japanese and POWs was relatively uncommon, whereas the Formosan
guards were in daily contact with the POWs. Although the POWs contin-
ually complained to the guards about the lack of adequate food, shelter,
and medical supplies, the guards were unable to do anything about this
situation, subject as they were to Japanese military POW policy. The For-
mosans were in the unenviable position of being caught between the de-
mands of the POWs and the rule of the Japanese officers. However, they
were unlikely to take the demands of the POWs to the Japanese officers,
not only because such an act would be seen as softness and failing in their
duty but because they might themselves become liable for punishment.
When Hoshijima did venture out to inspect the progress on the airfield,
the guards' treatment of the prisoners was routinely worse. On one occa-
sion (according to evidence of one witness) a Corporal Peters was beaten
about the head with a baton and blinded in one eye in the presence of
Hoshijima.83 However, the POWs made little distinction between the
40 The Sandakan POW Camp

Formosan guards and their Japanese masters and had no sympathy for
the guards' plight.
Thus the frustration of the guards became more intense as the war went
on, and it was inevitable that they would turn that frustration on the
POWs, the only people over whom they had any power. This was fre-
quently expressed through the administering of beatings on POWs. Beat-
ing was a standard disciplinary and "character-building" tool of the
Japanese military, and the Formosan guards themselves had been rou-
tinely beaten as part of their training. The ethical seriousness of physical
assault had thus been greatly diminished in their minds, and they saw the
POWs as fair game. As the war turned against the Japanese, the officers
began to draw vicarious pleasure from watching the beatings of the
POWs by the guards and would also relieve their own frustrations by
m altreating the guards, who would then take those new frustrations out
on the POWs in a sadistic m ultiplier effect. It is therefore no coincidence
that both the Korean guards on the Burma-Thailand railway and the For-
mosan guards in Borneo were capable of great cruelty; it was an effect of
the power structure that operated within the prison camp system.
Despite the general effectiveness of such a system in encouraging
guards to transfer their rage and frustration to the POWs, a few For-
mosans evidently felt a greater solidarity with the POWs than with the
Japanese officers. One, about whom there is a record, was a guard who
was called "Toyoda Kōkichi" in Japanese. Toyoda was regularly in charge
of the wood-collecting detail, a group of 35-40 POWs who went into the
jungle every day to collect firewood with no officer supervising. Toyoda
would allow the POWs in this detail to take it easy and work at their own
pace. He would also cook chicken, fish, and rice meals for them with sup-
plies he had purchased from local villagers out of his own money. He be-
came particularly friendly with one or two POWs, giving them whisky
and, on one occasion, lending money to a prisoner who had lost heavily
at gambling.84 After the war, Toyoda was sentenced to 12 years' imprison-
ment at the War Crimes Tribunal for his part in the execution of sick and
injured POWs during the evacuation of the Sandakan camp. However,
one of the six survivors of Sandakan, Keith Botterill, made a submission
to the tribunal detailing Toyoda's generosity, and his sentence was conse-
quently commuted to two years. Botterill had been a member of the
wood-collecting party, and he testified that he had never seen Toyoda
beating POWs.85 Another guard, "N akam ura," took yet more extreme ac-
tions; after the death march from Sandakan (see Chapter 2), he shot and
killed a Japanese officer, wounded two more, then shot himself. Appar-
ently he found the maltreatment he was suffering at the hands of the offi-
cers intolerable. However, Toyoda and Nakamura were exceptions. The
majority of prison guards routinely maltreated POWs.
The Sandakan POW Camp 41

By September 1944 the Sandakan airfield had almost been completed.

More than 250 POWs had died from illness, maltreatment, or execution or
had been transferred in the 10-month construction period, and the num-
ber of POWs in the camp had fallen to 2,250. As the death toll indicates,
the treatment of POWs steadily worsened over this period, although this
was often in the form of indirect maltreatment, such as inadequate med-
ical supplies or poor rations.
When construction of the airfield commenced in August 1942, the pro-
vision of rations had been adequate if frugal. POWs engaged in heavy
labor were given 750 grams of rice and 600 grams of mixed vegetables per
day; those on light duties were given 550 grams of rice and 400 grams of
vegetables. Meat and fish were rarely supplied; however, as has been
mentioned, POWs could purchase goods such as turtle eggs and bananas
at the canteen with the wages they were paid for their work. With the
profits from these sales, the POWs who ran the canteen purchased and
slaughtered yak (a type of cattle) and distributed the meat to the POWs.
The canteen was closed in mid-1943, and in June 1944 rations were drasti-
cally reduced: POWs on heavy labor were henceforth given 400 grams of
rice per day, and those on light duties only 300 grams. Tapioca and sweet
potato were provided to supplement the meager rice ration.86
In July 1944 Saipan Island fell to U.S. forces, and Guam, Peleliu, and the
Morotai Islands fell in August. The Morotai garrison withdrew to Borneo,
and the commanders of the Borneo garrison began to worry that they had
insufficient troops to mount a proper defense. The Sandakan defense
force was increased in September 1944. The expanded troop numbers
placed a higher demand on local food supplies, and Sandakan POWs
were then denied permission to purchase food from the local villagers.87
Supplies of rice also became scarce because these were imported from
Sarawak and the advance of U.S. forces had made regular supply diffi-
cult. In response to this pressure, the Japanese began to stockpile rice,
making supplies to low-priority groups— such as POWs— even more
scarce. After the war, the Japanese claimed that working POWs were
given 300 grams of rice and sick POWs 200 grams. But surviving POWs
claimed they were given only 100 grams of rice per day plus a small
amount of tapioca, sweet potato, and other vegetables. Whichever
amount is correct, the POW s' rations were clearly inadequate. By the end
of 1944 all POWs were suffering from malnutrition and most from some
form of tropical disease as well. The weight of one POW who arrived in
August 1942 dropped from 70 kilograms to 40 kilograms by the end of
1944. His case is typical.88
On October 14, 1944, Sandakan was attacked by the U.S. Army Air
Force for the first time. Bombing attacks continued twice a day nearly
every day thereafter.89 Heavy damage to crops in the Sandakan area
42 The Sandakan POW Camp

contributed to the food supply problem. The POWs' vegetable garden

was also damaged by the bombing, and the bulk of the reduced supply of
vegetables was commandeered by the Japanese. According to the post-
war testimony of one Formosan guard, the Japanese officers and NCOs
had lived relatively,well before the commencement of the bombing, regu-
larly dining on fish, meat, tinned salmon, eggs, milk, pineapples, and ba-
nanas. The rice ration for Japanese officers and NCOs was one-third
higher than that for Formosan guards.90 Not surprisingly, many POWs
tried to steal food from the officers' supplies. Those caught were pun-
ished with a term in the punishment cage. For example, in December 1944
eight POWs broke into the camp store one night to steal food for sick
POWs. They were caught and sentenced to 28 days in the cage. All died
within a few days of the conclusion of their punishment.91
The decision to reduce the POW rations was made not by Hoshijima or
Suga but by the Kuching headquarters of the Borneo defense forces. The
purpose of this decision—aside from the obvious preference given to sup-
plying guards and troops with an adequate diet—was to keep the POWs
so weak that they would be unable to revolt when the Allied force landed.
The Sandakan POWs were regarded as especially dangerous, largely be-
cause of the Sandakan incident, and the reduction of their rations was
much more severe than the reduction of rations at Kuching. Other mea-
sures were taken to head off effective rebellion; for instance, all knives
and scissors were confiscated from POWs at the end of 1944. Airfield con-
struction continued throughout the bombing, and POWs were also put to
work on bomb disposal. By this time, however, half of them were too sick
to work.92
Medical supplies for POWs were always scarce, although at the begin-
ning they were given access to aspirin and quinine. Prior to the Sandakan
incident, the major supply came free from Dr. Taylor, and sick prisoners
were often treated in the Sandakan hospital. After the incident and the re-
moval of Taylor, the prisoners had to barter rings, watches, and other
valuables in order to gain necessary supplies, and the Kempeitai ordered
that all POWs be treated in camp. POWs made many written requests to
Hoshijima for medical supplies, and Hoshijima repeatedly claimed to be
"considering" these requests, although they never eventuated. In the lat-
ter half of 1944, William Stiepewiċh (one of the survivors of Sandakan)
was doing some carpentry work in the offices of the camp and saw For-
mosan guards opening a large number of Red Cross packages— about 30
in all. However, the POWs received only three of the packages, and these
contained little apart from gauze bandages.93
According to Japanese regulations, each POW camp was required to
have at least one doctor. But Sandakan camp was established as a branch
of the larger Kuching camp, and the camp doctor was permanently
The Sandakan POW Camp 43

located there.94 Two doctors visited Sandakan sometime in 1944, but they
brought no medical supplies with them and treated none of the sick
POWs. They merely made an inspection of conditions, then departed.95
The last consignment of medical supplies sent to Sandakan from Kuching
was in July 1944. The shipping route between Sandakan and Kuching was
closed in October 1944 because of continual bombing and submarine at-
tacks. The last doctor to visit Sandakan camp was a Dr. Yamamoto, who
made two visits by plane in October 1944 and February 1945. He brought
large amounts of quinine and atabrine (another antimalarial drug), but it
is not known whether the drugs were distributed to POWs.96
After the reduction of the food ration in June 1944, the mortality rate
jumped, largely as a result of malnutrition and disease. Until this time
POWs had been buried in coffins, but the increasingly high death rate
made it impossible to continue this practice. By the end of 1944, POW
numbers were down to 1,850; more than 400 prisoners had died in the
space of four months. Of the 1,850, only 700 were fit for work.97 Yet, de-
spite the supply difficulties created by Allied bombing and submarine ac-
tivity, there was no real shortage of food or medical supplies in the San-
dakan area. By March 1945 the Japanese had stockpiled huge quantities of
food and medical supplies in preparation for the expected Allied inva-
sion. Presumably these stockpiles were intended only for Japanese per-
sonnel. The storage room beneath Commandant Hoshijima's house con-
tained more than 90 metric tons of rice and 160,000 quinine tablets. After
the war, Allied forces found other stockpiles in the Sandakan area con-
taining more than 786,000 quinine tablets, 19,600 Vitamin A and D tablets,
large numbers of Vitamin B and C tablets, and a great deal of medical and
surgical equipment. Nothing from these stockpiles was supplied to
POWs, nor would the camp command have been permitted to do this
even had they wished to.98 Responsibility for the many POW deaths from
malnutrition and illness must lie in large part with the higher command
of the Borneo garrison and Lieutenant General Yamawaki Masataka and
Major General Manaki Takanobu in particular, who seem to have made
the decision deliberately to weaken POWs to death or close to it.
Whatever the deprivations experienced by the prisoners at the San-
dakan POW camp until this time, much worse was to come when, on two
occasions, they were marched from Sandakan to a place called Ranau,
some 260 kilometers away. The Sandakan death marches and the mas-
sacres of the remaining prisoners at Sandakan are discussed in the next
chapter. At the end of 1944, however, the POWs at Sandakan never imag-
ined that their malnutrition and disease were but the prelude to the real
tragedy of the following year.
2
The Sαndαkαn Death Marches and
the Elimination of POWs

The First Death March

Continuous bombing by Allied aircraft rendered Sandakan airfield unus-
able almost as soon as it was completed. At first the Japanese used the
POWs to repair the airfield after each attack, but on January 1 0 , 1945, they
discontinued this practice, and therefore POWs were no longer required
to perform physical labor. By this stage Palawan Island, to the northwest
of Borneo, had been taken by the Americans, and the Japanese feared the
Americans would use Palawan as a launching point for the attempted re-
capture of Borneo with a landing at Brunei. Consequently, commanders of
the 37th Army (the renamed Borneo Defense Force) decided upon a major
reorganization of the island's defenses. They ordered three of the five bat-
talions in Tawao to march to Brunei (transport by ship was now impossi-
ble) and two battalions from Tawi Tawi as well as two of the three battal-
ions from Sandakan to march to a place on the west coast near Api. At the
same time they decided to use 500 relatively healthy POWs as carriers on
the march and then to relocate them at a new prison camp at Tuaran, 35
kilometers north of Api.1
There was no proper road between Sandakan and Api, and throughout
the occupation of Borneo, the Japanese had relied heavily on shipping
routes around the northern cape of the island. Construction of a road
linking the east and west coasts had been commenced during the occupa-
tion, and a rudimentary path between Sandakan and Api had been com-
pleted by August 1944. The most difficult part of the path to construct
had been a 260-kilometer section between Sandakan and Ranau, an area
of dense jungle. Unsure of the terrain, the Japanese had sought advice on
the best route from a chief of the Dasan tribe named Kulang. However,
Kulang was strongly anti-Japanese, and he deliberately mapped out a
route that presented every conceivable obstacle to road construction, with
46 The Sandakan Death Marches

steep hills and valleys and swamps (Map 2.1). Unfortunately, his inge-
nious deception was to have tragic consequences.2
The first march from Sandakan began on January 29, 1945, under the
command of Captain Yamamoto Shōichi of the second battalion of the
25th Independent Mixed Regiment. The Yamamoto battalion had been
transferred to Borneo from Manchukuo in October 1944 and had been
engaged in construction of various defense emplacements around San-
dakan since that time.3 The 500 POWs were divided into a number of
smaller groups, each under the guard of a platoon from Yamamoto's bat-
talion, and it was intended that one group would depart each day. POWs
were to be given four days' rations on departure, which were to be re-
plenished at five rest points along the way. Yamamoto was required to en-
sure that all marching groups complete the trek to Ranau within 12 days,
at which point Captain Nagai would take over and march the groups
from Ranau to Api. Both commanders were instructed that all POWs
must complete the march, no matter how sick or exhausted they became.
Yamamoto realized it would be all but impossible to complete the march
within the allotted time, and he requested that a longer period be set. He
also requested an increase in the number of rest points along the way. Ya-
mamoto believed the march to Ranau would take at least three weeks, al-
though he did not mention this estimate to his superiors. In fact, three
weeks was the period his superiors had set for the entire 400-kilometer
march to Tuaran, and Yamamoto was informed that the urgency of the
transfer was such that no extra time could be allowed.4
Commandant Hoshijima was required by the authorities to hand over
500 prisoners to Yamamoto for the march, but he provided only 470 (of
which 370 were Australians and 100 British). The reasons for the shortfall
are not recorded, although it is possible that Hoshijima was unwilling to
hand over prisoners too sick to survive the march. The airfield had been
abandoned and Hoshijima was no longer responsible for its construction
or maintenance; he was possibly quite prepared to take a more lenient at-
titude to the POWs. W hether this stemmed from humanitarian motives or
concern about his future should Japan lose the war (as by then must have
seemed certain) is an interesting matter for speculation. Prior to the com-
mencement of the march, Hoshijima gave the 470 POWs who were to be
transferred a horse to be slaughtered and eaten.5 They were given no de-
tails of their destination but were told merely that they were being trans-
ferred somewhere with good food and medicine, from where they would
eventually be repatriated. They were also told that sick POWs would be
transported to the same place at a later stage. Many POWs believed these
assurances, and some sick POWs even volunteered to join the march, des-
perately clinging to the hope offered by Hoshijima's. promise that they
would be delivered from their terrible conditions at Sandakan.6
The reason for relatively short distances between the supply points located along the path from Boto to R anau
(indicated by •) was probably the rough mountain terrain that took longer to traverse.
47

Map 2.1 Sandakan-to-Ranau route.

48 The Sandakan Death Marches

Yamamoto wished to delay the commencement of the march for as long

as possible. Quartermaster corps soldiers had gone ahead to establish the
rest points and food drops, and they needed time to reach their destina-
tions. Yamamoto also wanted to wait out the rainy season, which was due
to conclude in February. In late January he was probably skeptical about
assurances by the command that all rest points had been established and
that there were sufficient supplies for all prisoners and guards. Neverthe-
less he was ordered to begin the march. He divided the POWs into 9
groups of around 50, each accompanied by a platoon of about 40 Japanese
soldiers, 1 officer, and 1 or 2 NCOs. Immediately prior to the commence-
ment of the march, Yamamoto summoned all platoon commanders
(except of the ninth group, which would leave last) and passed on the
order from the higher command stipulating that no POWs were to be left
behind along the way, for whatever reason.7 The gist of this order was
presumably that all POWs too ill or exhausted to continue marching were
to be killed. Yamamoto then saw the platoon commander of the ninth
group, Lieutenant Abe Kazuo, separately and made explicit this order:
All POWs that groups one through eight had left behind were to be "d is-
posed of," and he, Yamamoto, would take all responsibility.8
Group one of the Ranau march, comprising 55 Australian POWs and 40
Japanese soldiers, left Sandakan at 6:00 a . m . on January 29, 1945, under
the command of Lieutenant lino Shigeru with Yamamato accompanying.
After this, one group departed each day, with the final group leaving San-
dakan on February 6. The system of rest and supply points broke down
almost immediately. There were insufficient supplies for group one at the
fifth and most distant supply point at Paginatan, 220 kilometers from
Sandakan, where lino was obliged to barter two pigs from local villagers
in order to feed the party. Medical supplies were available only at the first
supply point, Muanad, 78 kilometers from Sandakan. Because the rainy
season had not yet concluded, conditions were extremely difficult, and
the marchers encountered heavy mud at the 50-kilometer point. By the
time group one had reached Muanad, 1 POW and 1 Japanese soldier had
died. By Paginatan the death toll was 11 POWs and 4 Japanese soldiers,
and by the time they reached Ranau at 4:00 p . m . on February 1 2 , 15 POWs
had died, the vast majority succumbing to malaria or beriberi. It took 15
days to march the 260 kilometers, an average of 18.6 kilometers a day
(with one day lost due to heavy rain), with each prisoner carrying 30 kilo-
grams of equipment and Japanese ammunition.9
There was sufficient food at all supply points for group one but not for
any of the groups that followed. The supply system was chaotic from the
start, with the supply units taking insufficient food to the supply points
along the road. On January 29, the day group one left Sandakan, the sup-
ply units realized they did not have sufficient food for the nine groups.
The Sandakan Death Marches 49

They must have communicated this to officers at headquarters, who in-

structed the Yamamoto units in Sandakan to stretch their four-day ration
to last eight days. However, this order was not communicated to the sec-
ond and third groups (the first group had already departed before the
order arrived), and they consumed their rations within the allotted time,
fully expecting to be replenished at the prearranged supply points. When
group two reached Muanad there was no food for them, and the group
commander, Lieutenant Hirano Yukihiko, instructed the supply point sol-
diers to share their rations with the group. When the men reached Boto,
the second supply point, all that could be provided was 300 grams of rice
and a smaller amount of vegetables for the several days' travel to the next
point. Another planned supply point along the route was not there at all;
there were no traces of quartermaster soldiers and certainly no food.
Group two started the march with 50 POWs and 49 soldiers. After 17
days, 15 POWs had died, 5 had escaped (and presumably died in the jun-
gle, as they were never traced), and 10 soldiers had died.10
N ot surprisingly, each new group found the food situation a little
worse than the one that had preceded it. The commander of the third
group, Lieutenant Toyohara, sent his NCO, Corporal Gotanda, several
days ahead of the main group to reconnoiter the food situation and sup-
plement any lack of army supplies with livestock bartered from the sur-
rounding villages using blankets and personal belongings confiscated
from POWs. But by the time the final groups began their march, even the
local villages were running out of food available for barter. The situation
became so desperate that Japanese soldiers resorted to stealing rations
from POWs. After the war Japanese officers and NCOs testified to the
War Crimes Tribunal that rations had been shared equally between Japar
nese soldiers and POWs. However, Keith Botterill testified that POWs
had received only a third of the rations allotted to the Japanese. The true
state of affairs has never been resolved.11
Lack of food was not the only problem. Yamamoto had been right
about the effects of the rainy season. One officer testified that his group
had to walk through a path 20 centimeters deep in mud for two days.12
Very few POWs had shoes of any description. The Japanese provided the
POWs with light rubber footwear halfway between sneakers and thick
socks, known as jikałabi, but these were usually much too small for the
feet of the POWs and too slippery for jungle conditions. Many of the
POWs suffered from tropical ulcers, a condition considerably worsened
by the march. There were also a number of dangerous reptiles and in-
sects—cobras, crocodiles, and huge brown leeches. The. leeches were a
particular problem because there were so many of them and because they
were so difficult to remove once they attached themselves. The loss of
blood from leech bites further weakened the POWs; because of the long
50 The Sandakan Death Marches

period of poor nutrition they had suffered, their blood often failed to clot.
Very few POWs had blankets, and they could do nothing to protect them-
selves against the night rains except cover themselves with leaves. Much
of the march was through mountainous terrain, and the POWs carried
not only their own equipment but also that of the Japanese officers. In one
case, the officer of group eight had several boxes of equipment that were
carried by a group of POWs acting as bearers. In light of these conditions,
it is hardly surprising that many succumbed to malaria so swiftly.13
POWs who were already weak or ill had little chance of surviving the
march. Each group would march for a stretch lasting between 40 minutes
and an hour and then take a break to allow stragglers to catch up to the
main body of the group. However, the group would set off again as soon
as the last stragglers reached the rest spot. The result was that those who
were already weak were denied rest and weakened further. Each morning
there were a number of POWs who were too exhausted or ill to get up.
Those still fit to walk were marched off, and a small detail of Japanese
guards was left with the exhausted, who were never seen again. After the
war the officers of groups one through eight claimed that they had never
ordered their soldiers to shoot sick or exhausted POWs, that these POWs
had been carried either by other POWs or by Japanese soldiers, and that
all POWs who died were properly buried. However, Keith Botterilľs tes-
timony gives a very different story:

There were men about one or two left behind every second or third day. Of a
morning those who were too sick to move would tell our Australian officer
in charge that they could not move with the party and the Japanese sergeant
or officer would count us and move us off, and we would get along the road
about a half mile and we would hear shots. The Japanese officer would tell
our officers that they had to shoot the men who were left behind. At times
when we were marching along the road, and the men were too weak to keep
up and they dropped behind the Japanese would shoot them— I can re-
member going up a big mountain at Boto and we lost five men. They were
shot and I myself saw a Japanese corporal shoot two of them.14

Dick Moxham, another survivor who was in the seventh group, gave
similar testimony. He also saw many dead bodies along the road— many
of whom were mere skin and bone— as well as one POW who was still
alive and in agony.15 It is possible that only some of the POWs were shot
and that others were left behind to die. Captain Yamamoto never gave an
explicit order that POWs were to be shot; it was unnecessary. His officers
understood, as well as he had, the im plicit meaning of the order from
headquarters in Kuching that "no prisoners were to be left behind." Fur-
thermore, in each group between three and 10 Japanese soldiers died of
The Sandakan Death Marches 51

malaria and other tropical diseases; they were clearly at the point of ex-
haustion themselves. It would have been all but impossible for the sol-
diers to carry sick POWs along the Ranau páth. In a few cases sick POWs
asked soldiers to shoot them. In one case a Japanese officer found himself
incapable of shooting a sick POW and loaned his gun to an English officer
to do the job.16
Group nine of the first march left Sandakan on February 6 and reached
Paginatan on February 21. By this point, out of a group of 50 POWs and
about the same number of Japanese soldiers, 18 POWs and 7 Japanese sol-
diers had died.17 It is not clear how many of the 18 were shot and how
many were merely left to die. The following is testimony by a Private
Endō, who was one of two privates (the other was a Private Satō) ordered
to shoot POWs by Lieutenant Abe. He ordered the two to walk at the end
of the group and shoot those POWs who could not go on. He also as-
signed a Sergeant Major Satō to ensure that these orders were carried out.
According to Endō:

Those of them that were too ill to travel at all we were instructed by Lieu-
tenant Abe to kill. This order was given directly to Satō and myself by Lieu-
tenant A be. . . when we reached Boto S/M Satō of my unit was waiting for
us. He had apparently received the same orders from Lieutenant Abe as we
had. Shortly after leaving Boto another one of the POWs became too ill to
continue the march. Private Satō and myself under the orders of S/M Satō
then took the POW into the jungle at the side of the track and shot him. Be-
tween Boto and Paginatan a further nine POWs died. The first four were left
with Private Satō and then later I was left with a party of five. These five
men were very sick and suffering a great deal. Although my orders from
Lieutenant Abe were to kill them I did not have the heart to do such a thing,
and so left them behind, without food and water, to die. I believe that Pri-
vate Satō did the same thing. On these occasions there were no officers or
NCOs present to see that we carried out the orders. Looking back now and
remembering how ill the POWs were I feel it might have been more humane
to have killed them and buried them before going on.18

From all this evidence one can safely assume that the combination of
shooting POWs and leaving them to die was common to all groups on the
march.
Because of the total lack of food from the beginning, the last four
groups on the march were forced to eat anything they could forage, in-
cluding frogs, snails, and fern leaves. By the time they reached Paginatan,
both POWs and guards were so weak that they were ordered to stay there
and rest for a month. These four groups arrived at Paginatan between
February 17 and 21. Forty of the two hundred POWs had died. Those
52 The Sandakan Death Marches

who had survived were so sick that they continued to die at the rate of
four or five a day while at Paginatan, despite the fact that their diet had
improved with a supply of rice from Ranau. By the time they left Pagi-
natan for Ranau, another 100 had died.19
Groups one through five reached Ranau between February 12 and 19.
More than 70 out of a total of 270 of these POWs died. All of these POWs
were extremely weakened, and most were suffering from either beriberi
or malaria. It was impossible to continue the march to Api. The Kuching
headquarters, realizing that the POWs would be unable to transport
equipment, ordered that they be kept at Ranau under the guard of a unit
based there while Yamamoto's unit continued on to Api. Thus the POWs
were handed over to Major Watanabe Yoshio. The POWs were given two
weeks' rest, but the food supply was as bad as at Sandakan, and no med-
ical supplies were made available. After two weeks they were put to work
on a number of day-to-day tasks— thatching huts, carrying water and
equipment, gathering wood, and so forth. Those who had been seriously
weakened by the march were killed off by the demands that such work
made on their bodies. Within one month, more than half of the 200 or so
POWs at Ranau had died.20
Despite the discontinuation of the march to Api, POWs continued to
die. The task of rice carrying contributed to the mortality rate. The Ranau
POWs were required to transport rice to the POWs and soldiers at Pagi-
natan, and 60 of the fittest (least exhausted) POWs were chosen for this
task. Each rice carrier took a 20-kilogram rice bag the 45 kilometers to
Paginatan. The round-trip took five days, three days there and two days
back, and those few POWs who had the physical strength for the task
were used more than once. Keith Botterill made the journey five times.
Those who fell and could not get up again were either bayoneted or shot,
their bodies left in the jungle and their load of rice transferred to other
POWs. Botterill described one trip in which 20 POWs started out on a rice
run to Paginatan and only 5 returned. Presumably, the bulk of the rice
went to Japanese soldiers and relatively little to POWs. The POWs at
Paginatan were moved to Ranau at the end of March. However, of the 60
who had survived to that time, only 30 were able to march. The remain-
der probably were shot or left to die. When all surviving POWs from the
first march were assembled at Ranau in early April, there were about 150.
By the end of June, 6 were still alive.21

The Second Death March

In Sandakan, meanwhile, the bombing had continued throughout Febru-
ary while the first march was on the path to Ranau. Hoshijima ordered
that a "PO W " sign be made in the camp compound, with each letter 10
The Sandakan Death Marches 53

meters high and wide. However, there were other m ilitary targets around
Sandakan, and the camp was frequently hit by accident. By the end of
April 1945, 30 POWs had been killed or seriously injured by American
bombs. At that time commanders in Kuching ordered Hoshijima to
remove the sign, and Hoshijima—whose personal quarters were very
near to the camp— reluctantly complied.22 Another time one of the wood-
gathering parties was attacked by U.S. planes whose pilots presumably
mistook the men for a group of Japanese soldiers. Twenty POWs and a
number of guards were killed. At the beginning of April, in the middle of
all of this, the camp was overrun by rats, whose previous food supplies
had been disrupted by the bombing. The rats were particularly concen-
trated in the camp hospital, where the 400 seriously ill POWs were too
weak to fight them off.23 By March the drastic reductions in the rice ra-
tion, which had occurred in January, were beginning to take their toll, and
each day 10 to 12 POWs were dying of exhaustion or disease. The supply
of rice and water to POWs ceased completely at the beginning of April,
and they had to survive on rice they had saved from previous rations,
such wild vegetables as they could gather, and swamp water that they
boiled. By this stage, the Japanese were no longer trying merely to
weaken the POWs to prevent them from revolting; they were prepared to
leave the POWs to die through starvation and thirst. WThen the first march
left Sandakan in early February, 1,300 POWs remained in Sandakan. By
the end of May their numbers had been reduced to less than 830.24
On May 20, 1945, Hoshijima was transferred from Sandakan and re-
placed by Captain Takakuwa Takuo, whose primary task was to remove
the remaining prisoners from the camp.25 The reasons for Hoshijim a's
transfer are not recorded. It is probable that 37th Army Headquarters
deemed Takakuwa, who was a field officer, more suitable for the task
than Hoshijima, who was originally commanding officer of the Engineer-
ing Battalion. This time there was no limit on the duration of the march,
although the order was to complete it as soon as possible.26 Takakuwa
thought it was impossible to remove all POWs, most of whom were ex-
tremely weak. He therefore sent a telegram to headquarters seeking per-
mission to select only relatively healthy POWs for the march. Lieutenant
Colonel Iwahashi Manabu testified to the War Crimes Tribunal that he
replied to Takakuwa's request on May 26, granting the request. However,
Takakuwa did not receive this telegram.27 On May 27 Sandakan was bom-
barded by Allied warships for the first time, in addition to the ongoing air
raids. The Japanese defense force moved five kilometers inland from the
Sandakan camp, presuming that the Allies would land in the very near
future. The withdrawal left as few as 1,500 defenders at Sandakan.
Takakuwa became very concerned about the vulnerability of the camp
and decided to take all POWs who could walk to Ranau. Of 824 POWs
54 The Sandakan Death Marches

held at Sandakan at the time, Takakuwa believed 439 Australian and 97

British POWs (536 in total) were fit to walk.28
Just after 9:00 a . m . on May 29, the buildings of the second and third
POW camps were burned down. These buildings had not been used since
the first march left Sandakan. The ammunition depots were also ex-
ploded, and five pigs were given to the remaining POWs. The POWs, see-
ing such unusual behavior, thought the Japanese were providing the food
because they knew the landing of the Allied forces was imminent. Thus
the POW s' hopes for rescue were raised.29 At 11:00 a . m . Takakuwa came
to see the POWs in the first camp and ordered them to remove all sick
POWs to outside the camp buildings and to set fire to those buildings. At
6:00 p . m . the 536 POWs who could walk were gathered in the parade
ground and divided into 11 groups. Each group consisted of around 50
POWs, as with the first march, and each was guarded by about 12 sol-
diers. There were 147 guards in all. Not all of them were Formosan. There
were also Japanese soldiers sent from the Okuyama battalion to assist
Takakuwa. However, unlike for the first march, there were very few
Japanese officers or NCOs to command them. Therefore these 11 groups
were combined into three parties. The first party was led by Second Lieu-
tenant Suzuki from the Okuyama battalion, the second by Lieutenant
Watanabe Genzō, and the last by Staff Sergeant Tsuji.30
As with the first march, the prisoners were told that they were being re-
moved to a nearby place where there would be plenty of food. The pris-
oners, who expected the landing of the Allied forces to occur very soon,
complained about the transfer, although they had no choice but to obey
the order. Thus the second march to Ranau began at 7.0 0 p . m . on May 29 31
One probable reason Takakuwa began the march at nightfall was his be-
lief that the Allied landing was imminent. He might well have wanted to
get as far from Sandakan as possible by the time he expected the Allies to
arrive. Another possible reason is that he might have been afraid of detec-
tion by U.S. aircraft if the march commenced in daylight hours.
As soon as the prisoners left the camp, all but a few buildings used by
the camp staff were burned down. At 11:00 that night, after the marchers
were 20 kilometers from the town of Sandakan, each group was provided
with two 45-kilogram bags of rice. This amounted to 1.8 kilograms per'
prisoner for the first 10 days of the march before the first supply point at
Muanad was reached. In fact, there were 50 metric tons of rice hidden at
this 20-kilom eter point, but it was intended for the use of the Japanese
forces after the Allied landing. There were many other food caches in the
area around Sandakan. However, none of this food was intended for
POWs. The march continued throughout the night, with only a two-hour
rest in the morning, and lasted until 3:00 p . m . on May 30.32
The Sandakan Death Marches 55

Most of the POWs were sick and very weak by this time, so there were
many who were unable to continue the march even a few kilometers after
it began. For example, group seven, which had Warrant Officer William
Stiepewich as POW leader, lost six men in the first seven kilometers. The
guards kicked and beat the POWs with sticks and rifle butts if they fell by
the wayside, forcing them to continue marching. As a consequence, a long
distance opened between those at the front and the stragglers at the rear.
Although the first and second parties reached the resting point at 3:00 p . m .
on May 30, the third party did not reach it until sometime that night.33 As
would be expected, many of the prisoners who were beaten by the guards
for straggling became yet weaker and unable to walk. These men were
driven into the jungle by the guards and beaten to death or shot. Unlike
on the first march, there were orders given by Takakuwa to the Japanese
soldiers and Formosan guards at the beginning of the march to kill any
POWs who either attempted to escape or could not continue to march.
During the evening of May 30, one of the Japanese soldiers in charge of
the third party, Corporal Katayama, together with two camp guards,
drove seven prisoners into the jungle by kicking and beating them, then
shot them.34 There was little chance of survival for prisoners who at-
tempted escape; they were barely strong enough to continue walking.
Running off into the jungle and hiding there, avoiding recapture, would
require more strength than virtually any of them could muster, although
two men did manage to escape and survive until they were rescued
months later. Escape became ever more difficult as the march progressed;
the more time passed and the more the POW numbers decreased, the eas-
ier the guards' task became.
On the third day after leaving Sandakan, Takakuwa ordered that the
departure times of the parties be altered, presumably to give the first
party an extra hour's rest. The departure times set were 6 :3 0 , 7:00 and 7:30
a . m . and thereafter were rotated daily. The first party to leave each day

was always led by Second Lieutenant Suzuki. The second party was led
by Takakuwa himself. Tsuji always brought up the rear. Takakuwa
formed two small groups of guards, one led by Watanabe and the other
led by Tsuji, with the task of "disposing" of those POWs who could not
continue marching. Every morning at 9:00 (one and a half hours after the
last POW group left the resting point) Watanabe's group departed the
resting point and attempted to force any POWs they came across to con-
tinue marching. If these men could not be made to continue, they were
left under guard until Tsuji's group (which followed one hour behind
Watanabe's) came along. Tsuji's group then shot those POWs. In this way,
the prisoners who could not continue were eliminated. As was the case
for all POW guards at Sandakan, the groups led by Tsuji and Watanabe
56 The Sandakan Death Marches

consisted entirely of Formosan guards. The personnel in these groups

were constantly rotated.35 According to testimony two of these guards
gave Australian military authorities at the end of the war, none of the
killings were carried out by Japanese:

[I] was detailed to Tsuji's party three times. On the first occasion I do not
know how many were killed and the second time I killed one out of a total
of one but none on the first occasion. This killing was done on the orders of
Tsuji. I have never seen Tsuji kill a POW nor has Fukushima killed any to
my knowledge, as the latter simply took down the names. I have never seen
Takakuwa and Watanabe kill any, but with the exception of a few sick
[men], every Formosan guard had to take his turn.36

On the way over from Sandakan to Ranau I had to take my turn in Tsuji's
party once or twice only and the first day 2 or 3 were shot, and about the
same next time. I had to shoot one of them the first time. Capt Takakuwa
was present and said "Shoot that man." We then went on leaving the bodies
behind. Tsuji and Fukushima took the names of the men. I do not think they
were buried. There were a few of the Formosans who did not kill POWs on
the way over but very few. Takakuwa forced us all to kill.37

As is clear from the testimony, Takakuwa often joined Tsuji's party, pre-
sumably to make sure his orders were being obeyed.
As with the first march, after the day's march had commenced and all
prisoners who could continue had left, those who could no longer move
were taken into the jungle by Tsuji's group and shot. The following is tes-
timony given by a guard who participated in the killings:

I was in the early morning killing party once and fired once. I remember the
day when the rest of the POWs in the 1101/2 mile camp were killed. We
took the POWs about 400 metres along the Tambunan road, stopped and the
POWs were allowed to smoke; we all had our rifles loaded. After resting
S/M Tsuji told us the POWs were to be killed that day. He went away to se-
lect a position where we were told to bring one POW escorted by two
guards. This place was 20 or 30 metres away. I took one POW with me to
S/M Tsuji who was waiting and on his orders I was ordered to shoot.38

Thus the reason Tsuji's group stayed at the resting point for two hours
after the others had departed was not only to follow those marchers who
straggled and to drive them on but also to kill those who were unable to
begin marching at all each day. At the War Crimes Tribunal, the Aus-
tralian prosecutor claimed that by rotating the membership of Tsuji's
party, the Japanese officers made sure that all of the bloodthirsty For-
The Sandakan Death Marches 57

mosan guards had an opportunity to kill POWs.39 This seems a sensa-

tional claim. The most likely reason Takakuwa created such a system was
to put equal pressure and equal responsibility on all of the guards.
The prisoners who left their comrades behind heard the sound of
shooting after they had marched around two kilometers each morning. In
this way, every prisoner soon became aware of his fate should he be un-
able to continue. The POWs also saw the decomposed remains of men
who had been killed or otherwise perished during the first march and
thus became aware of the fate of many of those who had left Sandakan
five months previously. When a prisoner fell by the wayside during the
day's march, his comrades would silently shake hands with him before
moving on. After the war, the Australian forces collected the remains of
about 280 men along the first 160 kilometers of the track, most of whom
had been killed in the jungle about 15 to 20 m eters from the path. The
skulls of 80 percent of these showed severe damage, presumably from ei-
ther gunshots or beatings.40
Although the rainy season should have been over, it rained very hard
during the first few days of the march, and the mud added to the prison-
ers' ordeals. As on the first march, very few had any footwear. The march
began on a tarred road but soon moved onto a rough jungle path, the first
45 kilometers of which was swampy and difficult to traverse even with
good footwear. The swampy terrain then gave way to 60 kilometers of
mountainous country with steep rises. Although the prisoners were not
forced to carry ammunition, as they had been on the first march, their
physical condition was much worse than that of those on the first march.
It is scarcely surprising that so many men were unable to continue the
march, even knowing they would be shot.41
Although it was planned that there would be five food supply points,
the prisoners were given only 85 grams of rice each day, and that meager
ration ran out before the march was completed. They were forced to
gather anything that was possibly edible from the jungle, such as frogs
and fern fronds. Takakuwa was clearly aware that there would be very
little food at the five supply points, so he sent his junior, Ichikawa, two
days' march ahead to get food from the local people by bartering.42 How-
ever, the amount of food gained in this way was negligible and com-
pletely insufficient for the needs of the already malnourished prisoners.
In contrast with the prisoners, the Japanese officers and the Formosan
guards had more than enough food, unlike during the first march when
the officers and guards also had inadequate rations. To add insult to in-
jury, many of the prisoners were forced to carry the rations of the Japa-
nese officers. Owen Campbell, a survivor of the second march, testified
that the rations bag he was forced to carry included dried fish and soya
bean powder. The officers and guards also had medical supplies, but
58 The Sandakan Death Marches

those for the POWs were negligible.43 When the march finally reached
Ranau on June 25, there were only 183 surviving POWs out of the 536
who began. At most, one of the Japanese or Formosans died during the
march from malaria.44
Evidence from the proceedings of the War Crimes Tribunal supports
the following conclusions regarding the second march. Takakuwa knew
how difficult the march would be, as he knew exactly what problems Ya-
mamoto had faced on the first march. He was particularly aware of the
food supply problems during the first march and therefore made sure
that the POWs carried enough food and medicine for the soldiers and
guards. Sending an NCO ahead to gather food for the POWs had also oc-
curred with most groups of the first march. However, successfully obtain-
ing food for the POWs and keeping them alive while transferring them to
Ranau were, for Takakuwa, secondary to the task of getting there as
quickly as possible. He knew that many Japanese soldiers died during the
first march and believed that the danger to the Japanese and Formosan
men in his charge would be minimized if the march were as brief as pos-
sible. The physical condition of the POWs in the second march was worse
than that of those who undertook the first march; therefore (all else being
equal) the second march would be slower than the first. Knowing this,
Takakuwa was w illing to take drastic measures in order to ensure the
safety of the Japanese and Formosans under his command. Minimizing
the duration of the march became Takakuwa's overriding concern, even
though the orders he was given did not specify a time limit.
Furthermore, although Takakuwa took the same measures as Yama-
moto in killing prisoners who were unable to continue marching, he went
a step further in systematic planning. In the case of the first march, it was
probably tacitly understood by the officers responsible for each group
that prisoners who could not continue marching would be killed, and in
the first stages, the killings seemed more random than systematic. As the
first march progressed, however, a pattern emerged, and the killings
clearly became more systematic. Moreover, in the earlier stages of the first
march, some POWs were left to die rather than being shot; in the second
march, all POWs who could not continue marching were killed by the
guards. At the War Crimes Tribunal, Takakuwa's plans for killing prison-
ers thus became the major issue in the hearings concerning the second
Sandakan death march.
The 37th Army commanders at Kuching did not give a direct order to
kill POWs, either before the first march or the second one. The specific
order before the first march was that no POWs should be left behind
along the route of the march. The specific order before the second march
was that all POWs had to be removed from Sandakan and taken to
Ranau. However, in mid-April 1945, Lieutenant Colonel Takayama Hiko-
The Sandakan Death Marches 59

ichi of the 37th Army command had visited Sandakan to investigate the
physical condition of the POWs.45 From his report, 37th Army comman-
ders must have known that the orders were impossible to comply with
unless prisoners were killed. They also knew, of course, how many pris-
oners and soldiers had died during the first march. Therefore, final re-
sponsibility for what happened during the second march must lie with
those 37th Army officers who gave the orders. Both Takakuwa and Ya-
mamoto clearly understood the real intention of the orders, and both (but
Takakuwa especially) showed by their actions that they were willing to
carry them out. In January 1945, the intention of the 37th Army comman-
ders was to remove healthy POWs to the west coast of Borneo and to ex-
ploit their labor for carrying ammunition and equipment. As we have
seen, this plan met with complete failure. However, by April 1945 the
plans changed completely. As can be seen from the fact that food supplies
to Sandakan were cut off completely, the commanders had evidently de-
cided to eliminate POWs rather than attempt to use them for the war ef-
fort. To force malnourished and sick POWs to walk 260 kilometers in
harsh terrain fits well with a secret plan to eliminate them.

The Elimination and Crucifixion of POWs

After the second march left Sandakan, there were 288 prisoners remain-
ing at Sandakan, most of them too weak to have undertaken the march, as
well as a few relatively healthy men who had stayed to tend to the sick.
Because the camp buildings had been burned down, the prisoners were
forced to improvise huts from whatever materials were at hand. These
huts were without walls, and the roofs, made of leaves and blankets, of-
fered little protection from the often heavy rains. At this time, apart from
the prisoners, there remained one Japanese soldier, Staff Sergeant Muro-
zumi Hisao, 16 Formosan guards, a few Javanese laborers, and five Chi-
nese kitchen staff. The remaining POWs had not been supplied with any
food or medicine since sometime before the march departed and had
been subsisting mainly on wild cabbages they gathered from the swamp
and, occasionally, on scraps the guards threw out.46
On the first of June, three days after the second march left Sandakan,
Lieutenant Moritake returned to Sandakan from a 10-day trip to the town
of Kimanshi. There is no record available to clarify why Moritake went
there, but it is probable that Takakuwa sent him to explain to Takakuwa's
superiors why it would be impossible to carry out the orders he had been
given. (At this time it was no longer possible to make radio contact
between Sandakan and the headquarters at Kuching.) Moritake seems
to have returned with the orders to remove all POWs. On June 9, Mori-
take selected 75 POWs and gave them to Second Lieutenant Iwashita
60 The Sandakan Death Marches

of Okuyama Battalion.47 Iwashita, along with 37 Japanese soldiers, de-

parted for Ranau with these men. It was, from the beginning, an impossi-
ble task for these POWs to complete the 260-kilometer march to Ranau.
All of the POWs and all but one Japanese soldier perished in the jungle.
No details of their fate are known; the survivor may have been interro-
gated but there are no available records. All that is known is that all of the
POWs died or were killed within the first 50 kilometers of the march.48
From what is known about the first two marches, we can guess how these
men met their deaths.
After these 75 POWs were taken away, there were 185 POWs remaining
at Sandakan. By July 12 the number had dwindled to 50.49 Probably Mori-
take was waiting for all of them to die of disease and starvation; the jour-
ney to Ranau would then be easier for the remaining soldiers and guards.
A few days before July 12, Moritake received an order from Takakuwa to
leave for Ranau as soon as possible and to dispose of the POWs along the
way.50 Takakuwa was concerned for the safety of his men because most of
the Japanese fighting forces had left the Sandakan area by that time.
M oritake selected 23 POWs he considered relatively healthy. He believed
the deaths of the other 27 were imminent. Rather than take these 23
POWs on the march, Moritake decided to execute them immediately.
At this time Moritake was suffering from malaria so passed the task of
executing the POWs to Staff Sergeant Murozumi Hisao. Moritake ordered
Murozumi to take the men to an air-raid shelter trench near the airfield
and to shoot them. On July 13, at around 6:00 p . m ., 12 Formosan guards
took the 23 men to the airfield, where they were lined up beside the
trench and shot. Many of the Formosan guards objected to Murozumi's
order, but he threatened to shoot them too if they disobeyed. Murozumi
even had a pistol aimed at the Formosan guards while they shot the pris-
oners. After all of the prisoners were shot, their bodies were thrown into
the trench and buried.51
Moritake died of malaria on July 17, and Murozumi took charge at San-
dakan. However, some of the 27 men Moritake had expected to die sur-
vived him. Murozumi testified at the War Crimes Tribunal that the last
two of these men died on August 14 or 15.52 Murozumi's testimony is,
however, questionable, as will become apparent later.
Meanwhile in Ranau at the end of June there were 189 POWs who had
survived the marches from Sandakan, 6 from the first march and 183 from
the second. Just before the 6 survivors of the first march joined the sur-
vivors of the second, another 10 survivors of the first march had been
shot.53 By this time every surviving POW was suffering from severe mal-
nutrition and tropical disease. Another 19 men who had survived the sec-
ond march died within a few days of arriving in Ranau.54 Food supplies
in Ranau were meager; prisoners had 70-75 grams of rice per day and
The Sandakan Death Marches 61

almost no meat or vegetables. The POWs were given no rest after arriving
in Ranau in order to recover. They were immediately put to work build-
ing thatched huts for the Japanese officers as well as for themselves.
Takakuwa decided to set up a "POW cam p" in the jungle 10 kilometers
from Ranau, as Ranau had also been bombed by the Allies. The POWs
were again used as labor for this task and for carrying provisions from
the camp at Ranau to the new camp in the jungle. Carrying 20-kilogram
food bags through the jungle, often several times over, took its toll on the
POWs, and yet more of them died as a consequence. Other POWs were
given the task of carrying water from a stream in the valley below the jun-
gle camp. Those who fell while climbing the hill or spilled water were
beaten by the guards, and many died as a result.55
At around 5:00 p . m . on July 4 a Formosan guard called "Nakam ura"
suddenly entered the hut in which four Japanese officers, including
Takakuwa, were housed. He fired shots at them and threw a hand
grenade before turning his gun on himself. The hand grenade did not ex-
plode, but one of the officers, Second Lieutenant Suzuki, died, and
Takakuwa and an unnamed NCO were injured. Nakamura evidently
could no longer bear the ill-treatment dealt out to the Formosan guards
by the Japanese officers. A few days before, he had been severely beaten
by Takakuwa for not cleaning his gun. On the following day, Second
Lieutenant Watanabe, on Takakuwa's orders, assembled all of the For-
mosan guards and berated them for over 40 minutes. The brutality of the
guards toward the POWs increased as a result.56
A few days before Nakamura attacked the officers and then committed
suicide, he told William Stiepewich that Takakuwa was planning to kill
all of the POWs in the near future. About the same time, Keith Botterill
was informed by other guards of Takakuwa's plans and told by them to
run away as soon as possible. Stiepewich did not decide to run away at
this stage, but Botterill, Moxham, Short, and Anderson escaped from the
camp on July 7. Anderson died while they were on the run in the jungle;
the other three made contact with an Australian soldier, a member of a re-
connaissance party, with the help of local people on August 1. Because of
their poor physical condition, the men were unable to join the reconnais-
sance party and march to the Australian front line at Merinsau, north of
Ranau. They were forced to remain in hiding in the jungle in a hut some
of the local people built for them. Before they were finally rescued in mid-
August, they had a number of close shaves with the Japanese.57
On July 7 when the Botterill group escaped, there were about 100 other
POWs still alive. The building of the jungle camp was completed on July
18, and the 72 surviving POWs, who until then had been camped in the
open air, were moved into a single hut, 9 meters long and 5 meters wide,
with a thatched roof and raised floor but no walls. The POWs suffering
62 The Sandakan Death Marches

from dysentery had to sleep on the ground underneath the floor of this
hut. There were 38 POWs housed on the floor and 34 below it. Even those
not suffering from dysentery were very weak, so nobody was able to give
a proper burial to those who died each day. Even the strongest of the men
could do no more than drag the bodies of the dead to the graveyard and
cover them in dirt. On July 20 the POWs officially ceased work, although
by this stage none of them would have been capable of working anyway.58
Thus the new Ranau POW camp was in reality little more than a hiding
place for Takakuwa and his men. It seems that Takakuwa exploited the
POW s' labor to set up a hiding place for him self and his men with the full
intention of killing the prisoners as soon as the work was completed. On
July 26 William Stiepewich was told by a guard about a plan to dispose of
all POWs, and he then decided it was time to make his escape. On the fol-
lowing day the number of guards around the POWs' hut was doubled.
Stiepewich discussed his plan to escape with others, but few were physi-
cally capable by this time. On the night of July 28, Stiepewich and another
man, Reither, managed to escape into the jungle. They met up with local
people who hid them away, but Reither died on August 1. Stiepewich was
rescued by the Australian forces in mid-August.59
These four survivors of the two escapes from the jungle camp near
Ranau account for most of the survivors of the Sandakan camp. There
were two others, Campbell and Braithwaite, who on separate occasions
ran into the jungle during the second march to Ranau and managed to
survive. They were later rescued by U.S. forces, again with the help of
local people.
There were 38 POWs remaining in the camp after Stiepewich and Rei-
ther escaped. Of these, 12 could just walk, but the others were incapable
of moving and 8 of them were comatose.60 On the morning of August 1,
Takakuwa decided to kill all of the remaining POWs. There were 33 pris-
oners still alive then. Takakuwa gathered all the NCOs and ordered them
to kill all the prisoners, giving instructions as to how the prisoners should
be killed in each case. He divided the 33 POWs into three groups. The
task of disposing of the 17 POWs who were most ill was given to Lieu-
tenant Watanabe Genzō and Sergeant Okada. Nine guards were assigned
to shoot these POWs at the graveyard. Two of these 17 men could walk;
the others were made to crawl or were carried by the guards on stretch-
ers. Two large holes had been dug at the graveyard, and the prisoners
were laid down at the edge of them, then shot all at once and their bodies
thrown in. Sergeant Tsuji was given the task of disposing of 11 POWs
who could still walk. He, together with 12 guards, took these POWs
about 500 meters into the jungle and told them they were about to be
shot. They were each given a cigarette, then taken away one at a time and
shot. Their bodies were dumped in a single large hole. The remaining
The Sandakan Death Marches 63

5 POWs were 2 officers and 3 m ilitary doctors. Sergeant Beppu and

8 guards were given the task of killing them. They were taken into the
jungle and shot, then buried in two holes. All of this occurred between
10:00 a . m . and 1:00 p . m . on August I .61
The events described so far in this chapter have been reconstructed
from documents prepared by Australian m ilitary authorities for the War
Crimes Tribunal and from the proceedings of the tribunal. The tribunal
completed its hearings concerning the Sandakan death marches by May
1946, by which time the entire picture seemed clear. However, almost a
year later, in April 1947, a new witness appeared. He was a Chinese boy
named Wong Hiong, who was a cook for the Japanese and Taiwanese
staff at Sandakan between October 1944 and August 1945. At the time he
gave evidence, Hiong was only 19 years old. Hiong had been unable to
tell his story for so long because the events he had witnessed were so hor-
rific. It is not precisely clear when the events recounted by Hiong hap-
pened, but it is likely that they occurred sometime between early June
1945, when the second march left Sandakan, and early July, when Mori-
take died.
According to Hiong's testimony, early one morning, while walking
back from the latrines, he saw a prisoner being dragged away by two
guards, "H inata" and "Fukuta." An officer Hiong called "M oditake" fol-
lowed them, carrying a hammer in his hand. There was no guard called
Hinata at Sandakan at this time. A guard called Hinata had been at San-
dakan previously but had left. Hiong probably confused Hinata with a
guard called Hirota, who was at Sandakan at the time. Presumably, the
man Hiong called Fukuta was a guard called Fukuda Nobuo, and the
man he called Moditake was Moritake. Hiong followed behind secretly
and hid under an unused hut that had not been burned down. He saw the
POW dragged over to a large timber cross about 80 meters away from
where he was hiding. The following is Hiong's testimony:

The prisoner was made to stand with his back to the cross and was sup-
ported in this position by Hinata. I then heard the Jap officer give a shout,
whereupon a Jap soldier by name Nishikawa emerged from the administra-
tion office carrying a stool and a knife with a blade about 8" long. Nishikawa
took the stool and knife to the Jap officer who was standing near the cross
with the prisoner. Nishikawa then returned to the office.
The Jap officer then stood on the stool with the hammer in his right hand.
He then raised the prisoner's left arm and driving a nail through the palm of
the left hand fixed it to the left arm of the cross which was the height of the
prisoner's shoulders. When the officer commenced to pierce the palm of the
prisoner's left hand with a nail the prisoner tried to wriggle and scream,
whereupon Hinata held the body of the prisoner against the upright post of
64 The Sandakan Death Marches

the cross and put a piece of cloth into the prisoner's mouth. The Jap officer
then placed the stool towards the prisoner's right and nailed the prisoner's
right hand to the cross in the same manner by standing on the stool. He then
put the stool aside and nailed both of the feet of the prisoner with two nails
to a horizontal wooden board on which the prisoner was standing. There-
after the Jap officer again stood on the stool and fixed the prisoner's head to
the cross by driving a large sized nail through the prisoner's forehead. The
Jap officer then took the knife and first cut a piece of flesh from the left side
of the prisoner's stomach and placed the flesh on a wooden board nearby.
He then cut another piece of flesh from the right side of the prisoner's stom-
ach and also placed it on the board. He then put a rubber glove on his right
hand and pulled out the intestines of the prisoner which were also placed on
the board. Taking the knife again, the officer then proceeded to cut bits of
flesh from the prisoner's left and right thighs, both arms and neck, all of
which were placed on the same wooden board.62

About half an hour later, Nishikawa brought two more prisoners to this
place. Moritake ordered them to carry back to the camp the board on
which the remains of the crucified prisoner had been placed. The prison-
ers were lined up in the parade ground, and Moritake told them some-
thing (which Hiong was unable to hear from his hiding place) while ges-
turing to the remains on the wooden board. The body of the POW who
had been crucified was left to rot on the cross until just before the remain-
ing staff left for Ranau, at which time they burned down the cross.63
Why did such a brutal murder happen? Hiong testified about another
incident that seems to be closely linked with this murder. According to
Hiong's testimony, the staff had many pigs at the time, intended for their
own consumption. One day Nishikawa realized that one of the pigs was
missing. He looked for the missing pig without success, but eventually
found pork in the bowls of some of the prisoners. One of the prisoners
confessed under interrogation that he had stolen the pig and cooked it.
This incident happened sometime soon before the crucifixion occurred.64
It is known that there was very little food left for the prisoners remaining
in the camp after the second march departed, so taking the pig would
have been a desperate measure by this man to keep himself and his com-
rades fed. Moritake, who was informed by Nishikawa of the theft of the
pig, evidently decided to execute the POW as an example to the others.
Moritake most probably told the assembled prisoners after the crucifixion
that if they stole pigs to eat, they too would end up as meat.
How could Moritake have done such a thing? As has been explained
previously, Moritake traveled to Kimanshi to explain how difficult it
would be to transfer all prisoners to Ranau. It is probable that he returned
to Sandakan with strict orders to remove all prisoners to Ranau. On the
The Sandakan Death Marches 65

way back to Sandakan, Moritake lost his junior, a prison guard, to

malaria. Moritake himself was suffering from malaria at the time he re-
turned and was in a state of exhaustion. In addition, there were virtually
no Japanese forces remaining in the Sandakan area, and Moritake must
have felt an overwhelming fear about his impending death. His psycho-
logical state at the time almost certainly contributed to his inhumane
conduct.
Moritake's probable psychological condition was by no means peculiar
to him. Toward the end of the war, at both Sandakan and Ranau, Japanese
officers and Formosan guards viciously beat prisoners daily for the most
trivial of offenses. For ordinary people in ordinary situations, it is ex-
tremely difficult to comprehend such behavior as beating sick and starv-
ing prisoners. The guards and officers, however, were not in an ordinary
situation: They had been ordered to fight until the end, even though most
of the Japanese armed forces had been routed by this time and the situa-
tion seemed hopeless. Therefore these men were doubtless experiencing
such intense frustration that they had no means other than violence to re-
lease it. This violence was directed toward a concrete "enemy," the pris-
oners, seen by the Japanese and Formosans as the real cause of their frus-
trations. In this situation, no matter how weak and ill the prisoners were,
they were bound to be treated as threatening enemies. It seems that the
Japanese and Formosans were able to gain some release from fear of their
own deaths by killing others. Therefore, the deeper the fear they were ex-
periencing, the more brutally they would act toward others. M oritake's
extraordinarily brutal act was thus that of a man who was in an extraordi-
nary situation and had been for a long time.
The POW who was crucified was probably a British marine officer,
given H iong's description. However, by the time this incident came to the
attention of the authorities, Moritake was already dead and Hirota and
Fukuda had both returned to Taiwan, as they were not known to have
been involved in any other crimes against POWs and had not been put on
trial. Nishikawa was in prison at that time, serving a 12-year sentence for
his involvement in the massacre of POWs at Sandakan airfield. He was
interrogated but denied that the incident had ever happened. Other
prison guards who were known to have been at Sandakan at the time of
the crucifixion and were subsequently imprisoned for war crimes were
interrogated and also denied that such an event had ever happened.
However, in August 1947 the graveyard unit of the Australian forces
dug up the spot where Hiong claimed the cross had been. They found
human remains, some wire, four nails 15 centimeters long, and four 7.5
centimeters long. The human remains were too decomposed to provide
any evidence of crucifixion, so only the existence of the nails provides
substantial verification of Hiong's testimony.65
66 The Sandakan Death Marches

Hiong also claimed that there was another murder of a POW that had
not previously been brought to the attention of the tribunal. This was the
murder of the last remaining prisoner at Sandakan, who was killed on
either August 14 or 1 5 , 1945. At the Labuan War Crimes Tribunal in Janu-
ary 1946, Murozumi testified that the 27 POWs who had not been massa-
cred on July 13 all died, one after another, of illness and starvation be-
tween then and August 15. Hiong's testimony, however, differs from
Murozumi's:

[After the second march departed] the PW camp was then burned down by
the Japs. There were only 28 PW alive after the 23 were shot. Twenty-seven
of them died through sickness, starvation and exposure. The PW slept under
a shelter of blankets on sticks in the open. The one surviving PW came from
No 3 Camp (Aust). His legs were covered in ulcers. He was a tall dark man
with a long face and was naked except for a loin cloth.
One morning at 7 am I saw him taken to a place where there was a trench
like a drain. I climbed up a rubber tree and saw what happened. Mirojumi
was with the man and fifteen Japs with spades were already at the spot.
Mirojumi made the man kneel down and tied a black cloth over his eyes. He
did not say anything or make any protest. He was so weak that his hands
were not tied. Mirojumi cut his head off with one sword stroke. Mirojumi
pushed the body into the drain with his feet. The head dropped into the
drain. The other Japs threw in some dirt, covered the remains and returned
to the camp. The Japs went away the next day and that was the finish of my
job.66

The man Hiong called Mirojumi was doubtless Murozumi. Whereas

Murozumi testified that there were 27 remaining POWs after the mas-
sacre at the airfield, Hiong testified that there were 28. It is possible that
Murozumi testified there were 27 in an attempt to hide the fact that he
had murdered the last remaining POW. The Australian graveyard unit
also dug up the site where Hiong claimed that this POW was murdered
and found a body with the skull situated between the thigh and shin
bones.67 This strongly suggests that the head had been cut off before the
body was buried. Murozumi was already serving a life sentence at
Rabaul. He was interrogated about the incident but denied that it had
happened. Some prison guards who were serving sentences at that time
were also interrogated. They also denied that the murder alleged by
Hiong had taken place.68
Hiong was thus the only witness who testified to the two murders.
Other local people had been employed at the Sandakan camp, but all of
them had been told not to go anywhere near the POWs and were threat-
ened with being shot if they disobeyed. Therefore none of them ventured
The Sandakan Death Marches 67

near POWs unless they were specifically instructed to do so.69 About 130
pages of documents were prepared by the War Crimes Section of the Aus-
tralian military concerning these two incidents, but there is no evidence
of any prosecutions as a result of the preliminary investigations. It is pre-
sumed that the Australians decided not to prosecute any Japanese or Tai-
wanese for these crimes because, in the first case, Moritake was already
dead and, in the second case, Murozumi was already serving a life sen-
tence. With only one witness and relatively little forensic evidence, the
cases might well have been considered too weak to make successful pros-
ecution a likely outcome.

Responsibility for Maltreatment and Massacre of POWs

At the B and C Class war crimes tribunal, Captain Hoshijima Susumu,
who was commandant at Sandakan until May 1945, was sentenced to
death by hanging. He was found guilty of ordering the ill-treatment of
POWs, thus causing their deaths, as well as forcing sick POWs to work at
the airfield and failing to provide sufficient food and medicine for them.
Captain Yamamoto Shōichi, the officer in charge of the first march, was
sentenced to death by hanging because he had ordered the murder of
POWs. All nine officers responsible for each group in the first march were
sentenced to death. In the end, only Lieutenant Abe, who was responsible
for the rear group of the first march, was executed by firing squad. The
other eight had their sentences commuted to terms of imprisonment.
Captain Takakuwa Takuo, who was in charge of the second march and or-
dered the shooting of POWs, and his immediate junior, Lieutenant
Watanabe Genzō, were both sentenced to death, Takakuwa by hanging
and Watanabe by firing squad. Staff Sergeant Murozumi Hisao was sen-
tenced to life imprisonment for carrying out the execution of 23 POWs at
Sandakan airfield under the orders of Lieutenant Moritake. Most For-
mosan prison guards received sentences of between 12 and 15 years for
their roles in the ill-treatment and execution of prisoners; only four of
them received death sentences.70
Colonel Suga Tatsuji, who was the chief commandant of all Borneo
POW camps, never went to trial. He committed suicide on September 16,
1945, at the Labuan POW camp, where the Allies were holding Japanese
POWs. Colonel Suga was apparently a good-natured man, who evidently
showed more respect for the rights of POWs than did his junior officers.
However, Suga's indirect role in the ill-treatment of POWs in Borneo
would probably have earned him a death sentence. Suga gave orders to
Hoshijima and Takakuwa to put prisoners to work on the airfield, to re-
duce their rations, and to remove them from Sandakan to Ranau. How-
ever, these orders would have originated with 37th Army commanders,
68 The Sandakan Death Marches

so Suga was conveying these orders rather than formulating them.

Nonetheless, even in conveying these orders, Suga was culpable and
must bear a share of the responsibility for the war crimes against POWs
that occurred in Borneo. The responsibility of Suga and others for war
crimes must, however, be understood in the context of the Japanese mili-
tary system, which required absolute obedience to those higher in the
chain of command.
The Australian War Crimes Section found that the orders to commit
criminal acts originated from the 37th Army command, then were con-
veyed through POW headquarters at Kuching to Sandakan. Thus the War
Crimes Section concurred that responsibility for war crimes principally
lay at the highest levels of the chain of command. Lieutenant General
Baba Masarō, who was commanding officer at 37th Army headquarters
when the war ended, was sentenced to death by hanging for giving the
orders for the Sandakan death marches.71 Baba's role in ordering the sec-
ond march was regarded by the tribunal as his most serious crime be-
cause he knew of the deaths that occurred in the first march and thus the
likely fate of the second one. In addition, in mid-April 1945, Baba had
sent Colonel Takayama Hikoichi to Sandakan to investigate the physical
condition of the POWs.72 Unless Takayama made a false report, which is
unlikely, Baba should have known that the prisoners were in even poorer
condition than those who had undertaken the first march and that it
would be all but impossible for them to undertake the 260-kilometer
march. As soon as he realized that Takakuwa had not taken all prisoners
from Sandakan, Baba ordered that the remaining POWs be removed. Be-
cause 75 prisoners were made to march following this order and all of
them died or were shot within a few days, Baba clearly bore considerable
responsibility for the deaths of these men. All evidence shows that the
37th Army commanders were committed to removing all prisoners from
Sandakan, regardless of how this was achieved. What was the real inten-
tion of those at the top of the chain of command?
The 37th Army commanders seem to have been attempting to remove
all evidence of the existence of the Sandakan camp in order to prevent the
Allies from learning about the atrocities that occurred there. This would
explain why they were so persistent in giving orders to remove all POWs
from the camp and also in ordering that no POWs be allowed to fall be-
hind in the marches. Knowing that many of the POWs could not possibly
survive the march from Sandakan to Ranau, the officers must have in-
tended to dispose of all the POWs, although one would expect such plans
to remain secret. The marches were a pretext for carrying out these plans.
The cutting of rations and the order to remove the POW sign from the
Sandakan parade ground are also consistent with such plans. It is possi-
ble that the plans to dispose of all POWs existed, at least in a vague form,
The Sandakan Death Marches 69

as far back as late 1944 when Allied air raids on Sandakan began. As time
passed and the war turned further against the Japanese, the plans proba-
bly became more clearly formulated.
Indeed, according to Yamada Masaharu, a former staff officer at Ku-
ching headquarters who conveyed the orders to Yamamoto and Taka-
kuwa to remove the POWs from Sandakan, the officers at headquarters
were aware that considerable numbers of POWs would die and some of
them would have to be disposed of. But they expected that the officers
and soldiers who were given the task of removing the POWs would dis-
pose of them even though there were no such instructions from head-
quarters.73
In an interview, Yamada also claimed that the order to move Japanese
forces and POWs from the east coast to the west coast of North Borneo
did not originate from 37th Army commanders but from Imperial Head-
quarters in Tokyo, in October 1944. He was critical that this decision was
made by young staff officers at Imperial Headquarters who were familiar
only with the geographical conditions of Manchukuo and knew nothing
about the situation in North Borneo. He also argued that the officers in
Kuching, including Commander Yamawaki and the chief of staff, Manaki,
were strongly against such a plan.74 However, it is doubtful the Kuching
officers understood how difficult it was for their own soldiers and POWs
to march through dense jungle and steep mountains with extremely mea-
ger provisions and within a limited period of time.
The officers' strict and insistent orders to eight of the 10 battalions and
POWs to undertake the east-west march caused a tragedy not only for the
POWs but also for the Japanese forces. During this march, about 8,500
Japanese soldiers perished in the jungle of North Borneo. Deaths were
particularly high among the Okumura Battalion, which was forced to
make an 800-kilometer return trip from Api to Sandakan because of mis-
management of the operational plans by staff in Kuching, and the Iemura
Battalion, which was forced to walk 600 kilometers from Tawao to Api.
The Okumura battalion lost 889 out of 1,025 members, and the Iemura
Battalion lost 1,226 of its 2,150-strong force. The fact that only half of the
soldiers who reached the west coast still had the strength to carry their
own rifles clearly indicates the degree of the difficulty of this march.75
Thus it is unfair to place responsibility for the war crimes at Sandakan
as well as for a large number of deaths of the Japanese soldiers entirely on
the shoulders of Lieutenant General Baba Masarō, the commander of the
37th Army at the end of the war. Baba was posted to this position in De-
cember 1944. A new chief of staff, Major General Kuroda Shigeru, was
also posted at this time. Prior to being sent to Kuching, Baba was com-
mander of the Fourth Division of the Japanese Army. He did not arrive
in Kuching until January 21, 1945. Until that time Lieutenant General
70 The Sandakan Death Marches

Yamawaki Masataka was in command at Kuching, and Major General

Manaki Takanobu was chief of staff of the 37th Army.76 These men, not
Baba, decided to transfer most Japanese troops from the east coast of
North Borneo to the west coast and to use POW labor for that purpose.
Indeed, Yamawaki was in command when the order for the first march
was given. It was also the decision of Yamawaki and Manaki to remove
the POW sign from Sandakan and to reduce POWs' rations dramatically
in June 1944.
Lieutenant Colonel Douglas MacBain of the Australian War Crimes
Section was clearly aware that Yamawaki and Manaki, rather than Baba
and Kuroda, had issued these orders. MacBain therefore recommended
that Colonel Takayama Hikoichi and Lieutenant Colonel Iwahashi Ma-
nabu be interrogated to determine the role of Yamawaki and Manaki in
the Sandakan war crim es.77 However, there is no evidence that Takayama
and Iwahashi were actually interrogated or that Yamawaki was tried for
the Sandakan death marches. It is not clear why Yamawaki was not tried
for these crimes. Similarly, it is unclear why the War Crimes Tribunal
found him not guilty of illegally executing prisoners following the San-
dakan incident. As has been mentioned previously, the tribunal proceed-
ings concerning the Sandakan incident were permanently suppressed (al-
though Freedom of Information legislation enacted in 1977 in Australia
subsequently made them available to the public). It may well be that
there is a connection between decisions made about Yamawaki's role in
the Sandakan incident and his role in later war crimes. If Yamawaki was
to be tried for these later crimes, doubt might be cast on the tribunal's
findings concerning the Sandakan incident. Thus, Yamawaki, who ar-
guably had the most personal responsibility for the Sandakan war crimes,
was tried only for the Sandakan incident; his juniors who carried out his
orders, Hoshijima, Yamamoto, and Takakuwa, were all tried and later
executed.

Japanese POW Policy

Responsibility for these crimes cannot be seen solely in individual terms.
Individuals were always acting within the context of Japanese POW pol-
icy, which was not in accord with the Geneva Convention. Therefore it is
necessary to examine the POW policies of the Japanese military. Accord-
ing to the proceedings of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, there were
132,134 Allied POWs held by the Japanese during World War II. Of these,
35,756 died, a death rate of 27 percent. By way of contrast, the German
and Italian forces held 235,473 Allied POWs and 9,348 of them died, a
death rate of 4 percent.78 Clearly the death rate of POWs held by the
The Sandakan Death Marches 71

Japanese was extremely high. According to Australian figures, of 22,376

Australian POWs held by the Japanese, 8,031 died, a death rate of 36 per-
cent.79 That more than a third of the Australians in Japanese hands died
shows how badly the Japanese treated POWs. Therefore it is not surpris-
ing that 73 percent of Japanese POWs who were tried by the B and C
Class war crimes tribunals were tried concerning crimes committed
against POWs (for murder, ill-treatment, and theft of POW s' personal ef-
fects).80 As was mentioned in the previous chapter, at the outbreak of hos-
tilities, Japanese forces informed Allied nations that they would apply the
Geneva Convention, even though they had not ratified it. Within a year,
however, they implemented plans to exploit POWs for military labor,
even though this contravened the convention. The Japanese forces effec-
tively treated POWs as equivalent to m ilitary supplies, in much the same
way as they treated the "com fort wom en." The crimes committed against
the Sandakan POWs were thus by no means peculiar to the 37th Army.
They are but one example of systematic ill-treatment of POWs by the
Japanese military.
Immediately after Japan surrendered to the Allies, the Japanese Min-
istry for the Army instructed those in charge of POW camps to destroy all
documents. The ministry destroyed all important documents it held as
well as those held by the POW Information Bureau (which was set up, in
accordance with the Geneva Convention, for the purpose of information
exchange with the Allies).81 The documents concerning the comfort
women were also destroyed at this time. The ministry must have been
acutely aware of its responsibility for the treatment of POWs and comfort
women. The leaders of the m ilitary forces attempted to cover up their re-
sponsibility by destroying documents and also tried to put the blame on
Korean and Formosan guards whenever possible. For example, about a
month after surrender, on September 1 7 , 1945, the minister for the army,
Shimomura Sadashi, conveyed a message to all relevant battalions to in-
struct their men to tell interrogators that ill-treatment of POWs happened
because of language and cultural problems as well as the structural prob-
lem created by using Koreans and Formosans as prison camp guards.82
Thus the exploitation of Koreans and Formosans by the Japanese contin-
ued even after their defeat.
In some cases the Japanese may have planned to massacre prison
guards as well as POWs. According to the memoirs of a Korean prison
guard, Hon Jun-Muk, from the No. 4 POW camp on the Burma-Thailand
railway, all 800 Korean guards in the region were gathered at a place
called Songraburi in the mountains under the pretense of assembling a
suicide force for a last-ditch battle against the Allies. In fact, according
to Hon Jun-Muk, the Japanese were intending to execute these men. The
72 The Sandakan Death Marches

Koreans were to be gathered in a dugout and explosives thrown into it.

At the last moment an order came from headquarters preventing the
massacre.83
At this point I briefly consider the broader context of military policy on
prisoners of war and the changes that occurred in policy in the period
leading up to the Asia-Pacific War. I then examine the psychology of cru-
elty and how individual acts of cruelty toward prisoners of war took
place within a context of military policy that did much to encourage
them.
The most important historical lesson to learn is that the Japanese armed
forces have not always acted toward their prisoners in a brutal manner.
Their attitude was much harsher during the Asia-Pacific War than it had
been at previous times.
The first war waged by the m odem Japanese state was the Sino-Japanese
War of August 1894 to April 1895. The Imperial Proclamation of War
clearly stated that Japanese soldiers should make every effort to win the
war without violating international law. Indeed, the Japanese forces im-
m ediately released all 1,790 Chinese prisoners after demanding they sign
an agreement not to take up arms against the Japanese state again. Upon
signing this agreement, the prisoners were released on the battlefield
without first being held in detention camps. At the time, the Brussels
Declaration, which was signed by 12 European nations, was the only
international agreement governing humane treatment of POWs. Japan
was not a signatory, but it did make an effort to abide by the declaration.84
In the Russo-Japanese War, which was waged between September 1904
and February 1905, Japanese POW policy was based on the Regulation
Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (a precursor of the
Hague Convention). The Japanese government this time made an even
greater effort to comply with international law than it had during the
Sino-Japanese War. At Imperial Headquarters, law scholars and diplo-
mats advised the military in the application of international law. At each
army command office, a law scholar specializing in international law was
employed as an adviser. Immediately after the outbreak of the war, the
army produced regulations concerning the treatment of POWs. Article
two of these regulations clearly stated that POWs must be treated altruis-
tically and should not be despised or ill-treated. The Japanese military
wisely assumed that there would be language and cultural problems with
Russian prisoners and therefore produced an information pamphlet in
Russian. During the war 79,367 Russians were taken prisoner. They were
detained in 29 POW camps throughout Japan and were well treated.
Russian officers at the Kanazawa camp were even taken to an inn for en-
tertainment. The Hague Convention was later to stipulate that POWs
should be paid a salary equivalent to that of soldiers of the same rank in
The Sandakan Death Marches 73

the forces of the country that was holding them. During the Russo-
Japanese War, the Russian prisoners were paid double the amount paid to
Japanese soldiers. After the war ended, all of the POWs were safely
returned to Russia.85
In World War I, Japan maintained its policy of humane treatment of
POWs. Japan declared war against Germany in accordance with the
Anglo-Japanese alliance and sent 50,000 soldiers to Tsingtao, which then
was a German colony. The Japanese captured 4,600 German soldiers, who
were taken to Japan and held there from 1919 until 1920. These prisoners
were also well treated and even developed friendships with the local peo-
ple, in particular through their musical activities. These POWs formed an
orchestra with some local Japanese amateur musicians in Bandō, Shikoku
Island, where the camp was set up. The favorite music played by this or-
chestra was Beethoven's Symphony no. 9, which later became one of the
most popular pieces of classical music in Japan and now is played
throughout the country toward the end of each year. Another legacy left
by these German POWs was bread making and beer brewing, traditions
that were also adopted by the locals in Shikoku.86
However, over the next decade or so, the attitude of the Japanese gov-
ernment toward international law changed dramatically. In July 1929
Japan signed the Geneva Convention, but when the ratification period
elapsed in 1934, military leaders were strongly against ratification, pri-
marily because they did not expect Japanese forces to surrender and be-
come POWs of foreign forces.87 For the Japanese forces, to be taken pris-
oner was shameful, and it was expected that soldiers would commit
suicide rather than surrender. This creed was first formulated by Lieu-
tenant General Yamagata Aritomo during the 1894-1895 Sino-Japànese
War.88 As the Japanese military leaders saw it in 1934, ratification of the
Geneva Convention would place obligations on Japan but bring nothing
in return to members of its forces, as they should never become prisoners
of war. However, there must have been more to the thinking of Japanese
military leaders at this time. Although the Japanese military forces treated
their own men very harshly and the creed that being taken prisoner was
shameful was a long-standing one, Japan had clearly treated POWs very
well in the wars it fought prior to the 1920s. Further, Japan had ratified
the Hague Convention in 1912.
In 1937, in order to cover up the fact that it had unlawfully invaded
China, the Japanese military referred to the invasion as the "China In-
cident" (a somewhat similar situation to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam
War in that the United States never officially declared war on North
Vietnam). The Japanese argued that because they were not waging a war,
they did not need to obey international law in their treatment of Chinese
prisoners.89 In the Imperial Proclamation of the Pacific War, issued on
74 The Sandakan Death Marches

December 8 , 1941 (December 7 in the United States), Japan did not refer to
international law in any respect, unlike during the Sino-Japanese War and
the Russo-Japanese War when it was clearly stated that Japan would
abide by international law.
This background is needed in order to interpret individual acts of cru-
elty toward prisoners of war. I shall now turn to the psychology of cruelty
and how the broader social setting helped make individual acts of cruelty
possible.

The Psychology of Cruelty

The ill-treatment and massacres of POWs at Sandakan and the Sandakan
death marches were made possible in large part by the new Japanese mil-
itary ideology and the training procedures that arose from it. Men were
trained to follow orders habitually and unquestioningly, and the training
evidently worked. Captain Yamamoto Shōichi and Captain Takakuwa
Takuo apparently never questioned the orders they were given by their
superiors. Their primary concern was how they could carry out their or-
ders, and this thinking led them to commit war crimes. It is insufficient to
attribute responsibility to these individuals, however, without placing
their behavior within the context of Japanese military ideology.
I am not suggesting we should place the cause of Japanese war crimes
with Japanese military ideology alone. According to research conducted
by John Dower, during the course of the Pacific War, the Allied forces be-
came increasingly less likely to take Japanese soldiers prisoner. Eventu-
ally, the Japanese effectively had no choice but to fight to the death. Soon
after the outbreak of the war, the unofficial principles of the Allies were
no mercy, no surrender, and no POWs. The military ideology of the Allies
thus also reflected brutalization. There was doubtless an element of re-
venge against the increasing brutality of the Allies in the ill-treatment of
POWs by the Japanese. In the early stages of the Pacific War, the Allied
forces had humiliating experiences with mass surrenders of their troops,
especially in the Philippines and Singapore. However, after these initial
mass surrenders, there were very few voluntary surrenders of either Al-
lied or Japanese troops. As Dower put it, the Pacific War rapidly became a
war in which one could either kill or be killed. Therefore the decision to
surrender and live or to fight on and die rapidly became a meaningless
one.90
It should be noted too that routine obedience to orders is hardly unique
to the Japanese military during World War II. Obedience to orders has
been a primary principle of virtually all armed forces at all times. There-
fore the attitudes of blindly obeying superiors and despising prisoners do
not seem sufficient in themselves to explain why the Japanese committed
The Sandakan Death Marches 75

such horrific war crimes against POWs. The Nazis made very similar de-
mands for obedience from their men, who readily committed mass mur-
ders against Jews, Gypsies, and other groups they despised. The Nazis
rarely, however, massacred POWs, although there is no doubt that they
treated them harshly. It should also be noted that the Allies were not im-
mune from ill-treating POWs. According to research, the Allied occupa-
tion forces treated German POWs more harshly in the period immedi-
ately after the Allied victory than the Germans had treated Allied POWs
during the war. For instance, at the Remargen POW camp in the Rhine
valley, around 150,000 German POWs were held in the open air, without
sufficient food and water, for a long period. As a result of their harsh
treatment, 1,200 of these men died from disease and malnutrition within
the first few months. It has been claimed that 50,000 POWs died through-
out Germany from malnutrition and disease.91
There have also been numerous reports of Australian m ilitary forces
m istreating Japanese POWs. At Torokina on Bougainville Island, in the
Southwest Pacific, 4,500 Japanese soldiers were held for a few months
prior to repatriation. According to some sources, they were given inade-
quate rations and no medicine during this period, and as a result, 1,000 of
them died, mostly of malaria. Suspected war criminals among the prison-
ers were given 40 percent lower rations than the other men and were
made to do heavy labor, often into the night.92 Violence against Japanese
prisoners was common everywhere. Another source revealed that a
group of Japanese soldiers at Torokina were marched at bayonet point for
three and a half hours in the midday sun— a revenge act for the Sandakan
death marches. Three of these men died as a result, and a large number
received bayonet wounds.93 At Labuan in Borneo, Murozumi Hisao (who
was at the time being interrogated about the execution of the last remain-
ing POWs at Sandakan—a crime for which he was later given a life sen-
tence) was constantly bashed and kicked by his captors and was made to
sleep without a blanket or mosquito net. He became critically ill as a re-
sult.94 Many other Japanese POWs have made similar claims, especially
those who were held by Soviet forces in Siberia.95
There have been more recent examples of ill-treatment of POWs. In the
1990 Gulf War, the Iraqis coerced Allied POWs into appearing on televi-
sion denouncing the conduct of the Allied nations. In the Balkans conflict,
prisoners have been held in appalling conditions that match anything
meted out during World War II; indeed, certain militias have even openly
claimed that they do not take prisoners and that they kill all captured
enemies instead. These examples show that ill-treatment of POWs occurs
in many different societies. To explain Japanese ill-treatment of POWs by
focusing only on what was peculiar to Japanese society during World War
II is not only to exaggerate that peculiarity but also to ignore important
76 The Sandakan Death Marches

causes that cross national and cultural boundaries. The focus instead
should be on universal questions about why any soldiers could be capa-
ble of ill-treating and massacring POWs.
Why do soldiers ill-treat POWs who obviously have little or no means
to fight back against their captors? Why do ordinary men with ordinary
lives, including loved ones they care for, become capable of such brutality
when they become soldiers? In ordinary life these men would be inca-
pable of killing animals let alone other people. Everything changes, how-
ever, when certain other people become enemies. John Dower cast some
light on how this happens:

The dehumanisation of the Other contributed immensely to the psychologi-

cal distancing that facilitates killing, not only on the battlefield but also in
the plans adopted by strategists far removed from the actual scene of com-
bat. Such dehumanisation, for example, surely facilitated the decisions to
make civilian populations the targets of concentrated attack, whether by
conventional or nuclear weapons. In countless ways, war words and race
words came together in a manner which did not just reflect the savagery of
the war, but contributed to it by reinforcing the impression of a truly
Manichaean struggle between completely incompatible antagonists. The nat-
ural response to such a vision was an obsession with extermination on both
sides—a war without mercy.96

War is inevitably accompanied by ideologies that thoroughly dehu-

manize the enemy. Those on the battlefield are usually in situations
where they must kill or be killed. The enemy is seen as brutal in order to
be capable of posing such a threat. For those on both sides, it is all but im-
possible to see the enemy as anything other than brutal and inhuman.
Thus, what Dower called the struggle between completely incompatible
antagonists develops very quickly. Because of this dichotomy, hatred to-
ward the enemy results in brutal actions toward the enemy, with the con-
sequent retaliation serving to further that hatred in a vicious circle. This
explains how brutality on both sides usually escalates rapidly after war
breaks out. A striking example of this process can be seen in the Balkans
conflict, in which Serbs, Croats, and Moslems, who had for many years
coexisted peacefully in the same villages, suddenly became capable of un-
bridled cruelty to each other.
Once both sides become trapped in this vicious circle of dehumaniza-
tion, even those who pose no real threat, such as POWs, are a target for
hatred because they are identifiable as the enemy and thus as a "psy-
chological" threat. Dehumanization involves a psychological distancing
process whereby it becomes possible to act aggressively toward a weaker
The Sandakan Death Marches 77

person without feeling the remorse that would occur in more normal cir-
cumstances. Unless soldiers have a real commitment to a moral code that
demands respect for one's opponents, such as bushidō (which I shall dis-
cuss in the Conclusion) or chivalry, or have strong religious beliefs that
make the same demand, they are all too easily trapped into dehumaniz-
ing their enemies and acting brutally toward them.
When dehumanization of the enemy reaches its extremes, normally un-
thinkable acts such as the massacre of POWs become possible. In the situ-
ation at Sandakan, the Japanese believed they were under such threat
from an Allied invasion that there was no hope for them; they were des-
tined to dehumanize prisoners and act brutally toward them.
Robert Lifton noted that U.S. forces in Vietnam also fell prey to the feel-
ing that the situation was hopeless. This led them to what Lifton called a
"m alignant obsession" with the numbers of Viet Cong killed and even to
falsify figures in a vain attempt to hold on to the illusion of a "noble bat-
tle."97 At Sandakan the enemy bodies that could be counted were those of
dead prisoners rather than enemy combatants, but the officers at San-
dakan shared the same malignant obsession with counting the dead. The
Japanese, partly out of the overwhelming anxiety that they were about to
meet their own deaths, felt driven to kill prisoners and then, perversely,
were able to use the numbers of dead to reduce their anxiety.
Extreme violence can provide an instant and apparently total solution
to the psychological pressure of fear. As war situations become yet more
complicated, soldiers become ever more reliant on violence as a way of
coping. This response can be clearly seen in the testimony of a U.S. Viet-
nam veteran:

As anyone who has fired a bazooka or an M60 machine gun knows, there is
something to that power in your finger, the soft, seductive touch of the trig-
ger. It's like the magic sword, a grunt's Excalibur: all you do is move that
finger so imperceptibly, just a wish flashing across your mind like a shadow,
not even a full brain synapse, and poof! in a blast of sound and energy and
light a truck or a house or even people disappear, everything flying and set-
tling back into dust.98

In short, there is no need to think at all; a violent response is so simple.

What needs to be examined here as a fundamental problem is the
specifically male propensity to violence. As Virginia Woolf put it, "To
fight has always been the m an's habit, not w om an's."99 It seems that
many men love to fight, and war provides them with both opportunities
and justifications. The same Vietnam veteran noted that hatred of war co-
exists with love of it:
78 The Sandakan Death Marches

War is ugly, horrible, evil, and it is reasonable for men to hate all that. But I
believe that most men who have been to war would have to admit, if they
are honest, that somewhere inside themselves they loved it too, loved it as
much as anything that has happened to them before or since. And how do
you explain that to your wife, your children, your parents, or your
friends?100

The ill-treatment and massacres of POWs at Sandakan cannot be ex-

plained completely in terms of a specific group of men who had been
brainwashed by Japanese military ideology. The propensity to violence is
already widespread among ordinary men; brainwashing might make vio-
lence more likely, but there is no need to invoke brainwashing to explain
how it can occur at all. Soldiers are almost always ordinary men, perhaps
with wives and children, but through their extraordinary experiences
they find they love war as much as they hate it. More light can be cast on
this paradox by approaching male violence from another angle. In the
next chapter I focus on women's experience of male violence during
wartime.
3
Rape and War:
The Japanese Experience

Rape and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal

Until very recently in Japan, the term "w ar crim es" conjured up images of
the inhumane treatment or murder of enemy soldiers, especially prison-
ers of war. By describing and perceiving women during war as civilians
who held the "hom e front" during the war, commentators seem to have
perpetuated the belief that women were not the direct victims of war.
However, the eruption of the "com fort-wom en" issue has created an
awareness throughout Japan that such an idea is both discriminatory and
unrealistic. Despite the existence of many books and articles document-
ing the ordeal of the comfort women, only in the 1990s has the matter be-
come a subject of nationwide debate. It is now necessary for the Japanese
people as a whole to question not only why and how these crimes were
committed but also why it took so long for knowledge of the crimes to be-
come public.
Two important ideological structures that are fundamental to the Japa-
nese nationalist mentality underlie the comfort-women issue. The first of
these is xenophobia, which is closely related to the Japanese emperor
ideology. The second is the contempt with which women are held in
Japanese society and the exploitation of their sexuality by Japanese men.
The comfort-women issue did not initially gain the attention of the Japa-
nese public because the Japanese tend to avoid confronting these two na-
tionwide discriminatory attitudes. The recent change in awareness may
be related to the fact not only that the women's movement in Japan is
gaining strength, but also that the whole society, through its increased in-
ternationalization, is becoming less insular and more aware of the impact
Japanese actions have on other cultures.
However, to see the comfort-women affair as a crime committed
uniquely by the Japanese is to risk dismissing such acts as aberrations
80 Rape and War

and not recognizing their full significance as part of a larger pattern of

how war makes women victims. By analyzing how all wars affect
women, the Japanese people can provide some scholarly and intellectual
foundations for the study of war and thereby contribute to the establish-
ment and maintenance of peace.
The necessary materials for such an exercise can be found among the
large number of testimonies and evidence presented at the Tokyo War
Crimes Tribunal held immediately after the Asia-Pacific War. The m ost sig-
nificant case among these was the rape and massacre of Chinese women
by the Japanese 10th Army and 16th Division in Nanjing in December
1937. Although in Japan this incident is known as the "Nanjing Massacre,"
it is often referred to by non-Japanese as the "rape of Nanjing," a more ac-
curate description of the rape and massacre of numerous Chinese women.
The event was described by American missionary James McCallum in his
diary, which was presented in evidence at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal:

Never have I heard or read of such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate
at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance. . . there is
a bayonet stab or bullet. We could write up hundreds of cases a day.1

Other evidence presented to the tribunal was a report prepared by a

British resident in Nanjing, Iver Mackay, which contains the following
information:

On the night of December 15 a number of Japanese soldiers entered the Uni-

versity of Nanking buildings at Tao Yuen and raped 30 women on the spot,
some by six men___ At 4 p . m . on December 16 Japanese soldiers entered the
residence at 11 Mokan Road and raped the women there. On December 17
Japanese soldiers went into Lo Kia Lu No. 5, raped four women and took
one bicycle, bedding and other things On December 17 near Judicial
Yuan a young girl after being raped was stabbed by a bayonet in her ab-
domen. On December 17 at Sian Fu Wua a woman of 40 was taken away and
raped. On December 17 in the neighbourhood of Kyih San Yuin Lu two girls
were raped by a number of soldiers. From a primary school at Wu Tai Shan
many women were taken away and raped for the whole night and released
the next morning, December 17.2

Numerous concrete examples of horrific rape and massacre in Nanjing

were recorded in the proceedings of the tribunal. Evidence that Filipinas
and Dutch women presented at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal is also
valuable documentation.3
However, the incidents of rape and massacre of civilian women by
Japanese soldiers, especially in the Nanjing case, have been substantially
Rape and War 81

investigated in numerous books and articles, and a clear general picture

of the event has emerged.4 The purpose of this chapter is to focus upon a
number of events that have hitherto been neglected, such as the fate of the
m ilitary nurses. By comparing the experience of m ilitary nurses in war
with the experience of civilian women in war, we can gain a clearer pic-
ture of the effect of war upon women in general. A few instances in which
the nurses of the Allied forces became victims of war crimes committed
by the Japanese forces were presented at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
The most significant case among them seems to have been the massacre
of Australian military nurses at Banka Island, the only survivor of
which—Vivian Bullwinkel— testified at the tribunal. The record of the
proceedings of this case runs to more than 23 pages.5 In addition, over 200
pages of records of investigations and interrogations by the Australian
military forces are now available. To examine this incident, I have used
these documents as well as a number of Japanese secondary sources.

The Massacre of Nurses at Banka Island

The most important strategic objective of the Japanese in the Pacific War
was to secure natural resources in Asia, especially the oil in the then
Dutch colony of Indonesia. In order to secure Indonesia, it was vital to
seize Singapore, which was not only the base of the British eastern naval
fleet but also the key to Britain's commercial and financial dominance of
the region. At 2:15 on the morning of December 8 , 1941, advance troops of
the 25th Army, led by General Yamashita Hirofumi, landed at Kota Bharu
(on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula) for the purpose of seizing Sin-
gapore. This landing was an hour and 20 minutes before the attack on
Pearl Harbor (and so, strictly speaking, marks the beginning of the Pacific
War). At an unknown time on the same day, the main force of the 25th
Army advanced to Singora in Thailand, in the northern part of the Malay
Peninsula. Another group of troops started advancing from Patani in
Thailand, in the middle of the Malay Peninsula, toward Singapore. The
Japanese forces had a plan to attack Singapore on three flanks and by tra-
versing 1,100 kilometers down the British colony of the Malay Peninsula.
This enabled them to approach Singapore from the north and well away
from the British large-bore artillery defending Singapore from attack via
the Straits of Malacca.6
The Japanese troops numbered 20,000; the defending troops consisted
of 88,000 British, Australian, and Indian soldiers and Malay volunteers.
Despite the fact that the British forces had a far greater advantage in num-
bers, Singapore fell relatively quickly. The British underestimated the
ability of the Japanese forces, were insufficiently trained in jungle war-
fare, and lacked adequate communication among their different forces.
82 Rape and War

The British lost one battle after another. The Jitra fortress, near the Thai
border, which they had anticipated they could maintain for three months,
fell to Japanese forces in one day. On January 3 1 , 1942, 55 days after the
landing on the Malay Peninsula, Japanese forces occupied British Malaya
and reached Johore Bahru— the southernmost point of the Malay Penin-
sula—which faces Singapore over the Johore Strait. On the morning of
February 8, the Japanese began shelling Singapore from Johore Bahru,
and 4,000 Japanese troops landed on the northwest coast of Singapore. In
the following two weeks, the battle raged fiercely, day and night, all over
Singapore. On the evening of February 15, Lieutenant General A.E. Perci-
val of the Commonwealth forces offered the unconditional surrender of
Singapore.7
When the Japanese forces invaded the Malay Peninsula in December
194 1, 15,000 Australian soldiers of the 8th Division of the Australian m ili-
tary forces were stationed there, mainly in the role of defending the
southwest coastal area between Johore Bahru and Malacca. At the same
time, there were 140 Australian military nurses in this region who were
divided into three groups working for the 2/10th Australian General
Hospital in Malacca, the 2/4th Casualty Clearing Section in Kluang, and
the 2/13th Australian General Hospital in Tamping. Because of the rapid
advance of the Japanese forces, all nurses, together with hospital m ateri-
als and patients, were evacuated to Singapore on January 1 0 , 1942, and
divided into two groups. One group was moved into St. Patrick's School
on the southeast coast of Singapore; the other was moved to Oldham
Hall, a school in the northern suburbs of Singapore city. The two schools
were converted into hospitals as an emergency measure. Six hundred
beds were brought into St Patrick's and 1,200 to Oldham. The nurses were
divided between these two emergency hospitals. Between December 8,
when the Japanese invasion began, and February 15, the day Singapore
fell, 1,789 Australian soldiers died on the battlefield and 1,306 were non-
fatally injured. As a result, the nurses were fully occupied.8
At the end of 1941 the Australian nurses in Singapore had received
grave news regarding their British colleagues in Hong Kong. On the night
of December 25, Japanese soldiers from the main invasion force of Hong
Kong had forced their way into the emergency hospital set up at Stanley
College, killed two doctors, and raped British nurses.9 A report of this in-
cident was prepared by the British forces after the war and presented to
Allied Forces GHQ.10 According to this report, Dr. Black, the British direc-
tor of the hospital (which was at the time flying a Red Cross flag), tried to
explain to Japanese soldiers that the building was a hospital. He was shot
at the entrance. The Japanese then threw grenades into the hospital,
killing injured soldiers. Those patients still alive were bayoneted. The
Japanese then forced British and Chinese nurses as well as Chinese volun-
Rape and War 83

teers into one room and gang-raped them throughout the night. Two
women among them were later killed by decapitation on the tennis court
of the school. The rape and murder of these women continued even after
7:00 p . m . on December 25 (now known as Black Christmas) when the gov-
ernor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Young, and the commander of the British
forces, Maltby, officially offered surrender. Australian nurses must have
been shocked by the news that Allied forces had been massacred and fel-
low Commonwealth nurses raped. One British officer stationed in Singa-
pore at that time advised the Australian nurses that if they faced a similar
situation, it would be better to be shot by friendly soldiers than to become
the victims of Japanese soldiers.11
When the New Year came, the nurses were in the dangerous situation
of having to tend injured soldiers throughout daily air raids. Therefore,
on January 20, the senior Australian medical officer, Colonel Alfred
Durham, requested that the Australian forces withdraw all military
nurses from Singapore. However, probably because of the large number
of injured soldiers, the order for all nurses to evacuate Singapore was not
issued until just before the city fell. On February 11, four days before the
fall, the first group of Australian nurses left Singapore for Australia on the
Empire Star. The following day, the remaining 65 nurses departed on a
small ship of 1,669 tons, the Vyner Brooke. The Empire Star managed to
evade the Japanese air attack and reached Australia via Batavia.12
The Vyner Brooke, however, departed too late because the nurses had to
take shelter frequently from air attacks on their way to the wharf and
were late in arriving. When they reached the wharf, they were put aboard
the small ship (which already held 300 civilian passengers). The over-
crowding meant that many women and children were forced to camp on
the deck. Because it was dangerous to travel in daylight, the ship de-
parted Singapore at 8 o'clock at night and sailed throughout the night, an-
choring early each morning near a small island and thus avoiding detec-
tion. However, even during the night, progress was impeded by the need
to avoid Japanese naval searchlights. On the morning of February 14,
while the ship was anchored near tiny Tojon Island, Japanese planes flew
within sight several times. Assuming the ship had been detected, the cap-
tain of the Vyner Brooke decided it would be wise to sail at full speed to-
ward Banka Island rather than wait to be attacked.
The ship departed Tojon Island at 10:00 a . m . but was bombed by nine
Japanese planes just after 1:00 p . m . and sank at about 1:40. There were six
lifeboats on board with a combined capacity for 140 people, but only two
were serviceable. The rest had been destroyed by the bombing. Thus most
of the passengers were forced to take to the water and save themselves by
whatever means they could. The ship went down between Sumatra and
Banka Island at a spot relatively near Banka Island (approximately 16
 84 Rape and War

kilometers away) but in the treacherous northern opening to the Banka

Strait.13 As a result, many people drowned, including 12 of the 65 Aus-
tralian nurses. One group of women floated all day on the sea and were
eventually rescued by a Japanese landing boat. But most of the passen-
gers had to swim to shore, and some floated for three or four days until
they reached Banka.14
On the night of February 14, the two lifeboats landed on Radjik beach
(Map 3.1). Aboard were 22 Australian nurses and about 30 civilian pas-
sengers (most of them women and children), some of whom were injured.
A group of the nurses went to a village nearby and asked for help, but the
villagers, afraid of punishment by the Japanese forces, refused. Because
the whole island was occupied by the Japanese, the villagers suggested
the women should surrender.
That night, the women observed ships being attacked by the Japanese
in Banka Strait and built a signal fire to help survivors find their way to
shore. Approximately two hours later about 20 British soldiers landed in
a lifeboat and joined the group. Some of these soldiers were injured, and
it was necessary to treat them as soon as possible. Early the following
morning (February 16) they considered their situation and concluded that
because it was virtually impossible to escape from the island because of
the number of children and injured, they should surrender. To this end,
one of the crew of the Vyner Brooke set out to walk to Muntock, the is-
land's center, and inform the Japanese forces of their intention. Not long
after the sailor left for Muntock, Matron Drummond suggested that the
civilian women and children start walking toward Muntock while the
nurses stayed with the injured soldiers. So a group of civilians, led by a
Chinese doctor, departed, leaving behind the British soldiers, 10 of whom
were on stretchers, and the Australian nurses. At about 10:00 a . m . the
crew member who had walked to Muntock returned with a troop of
15 Japanese soldiers led by an officer. The nurses and the British soldiers
were no doubt relieved to see them, as they anticipated that medical treat-
ment, food, and water would be provided.15
The details of what followed have been gathered from the account given
*by Vivian Bullwinkel (the sole survivor of the 22 nurses) and documents
produced by the Australian military after the war.16 It is clear that the Japa-
nese soldiers separated men from women and able from disabled and fur-
ther divided the able men into two groups. The crew member who had
brought the Japanese soldiers from Muntock complained to the Japanese
officer that they should be treated fairly as prisoners of war, but he was
ignored completely. One group of British soldiers was taken behind the
cliff—about 100 meters away from the beach and out of sight of the re-
maining prisoners. They were apparently bayoneted. About 10 minutes
later these Japanese soldiers returned and took another group of men to the
 85

M ap 3.1 Location o f Banka Island.

86 Rape and War

same place. This time, the nurses heard a few gunshots that were the result
of two British soldiers' attempts to escape. After the second group was bay-
oneted, the Japanese returned to the nurses. Vivian Bullwinkel gave the fol-
lowing account:

They came back and w e knew what had happened . . . they came back w ip-
ing their bayonets. We realised what was going to happen. I can remember
one of the girls saying, "Two things that I hate most, the sea and the Japs,
and I've got them both." We were all sitting down and w e were ordered up,
and then told to march into the sea. Which w e did. As we got to about waist
level they started machine-gunning from behind. I was hit just at the side of
the back. The bullet came through, but I wasn't aware of it at the time. I
thought that once you were shot you'd had it. What with the force of the
bullet and the waves I was knocked over into the water. And in doing so, I
swallowed a lot of water. I became violently ill, and as I stood I realised I
was very much alive. Next thing I thought, they will see me heaving. So I
tried to stop and I just lay there. I wouldn't know how long. When I did ven-
ture to sit up, there was nothing. All my colleagues had been swept away
and there were no Japs on the beach. There was nothing. Just me. I got up,
crossed the beach, and went into the jungle.17

Bullwinkel was the only nurse to survive this massacre. Afterward, the
injured British on the stretchers were also bayoneted. One soldier, Private
Kingsley, miraculously survived, although he was severely wounded; as
Bullwinkel made her way up the beach, she failed to notice he was still
alive. A few days later, the two, both hiding in the jungle, eventually met
up. Bullwinkel collected abandoned water canteens from the beach, made
a bed for Kingsley from life jackets also left there, and bound his original
wound and that made by the bayonet with coconut fibers. Her own
wound was less serious and healed as time passed. Bullwinkel and
Kingsley hid in the jungle for about 10 days but realized they could not
stay hidden indefinitely. They decided to contact the Japanese forces
again, hoping they would not be killed. They went out to the road and
were picked up by a Japanese naval officer and a soldier in a car, and this
time they were safely taken to the detention camp in Muntock. Bull-
winkel hid her injury with canteens and Kingsley wore a less damaged
shirt taken from a dead comrade so they would not be suspected of hav-
ing survived the massacre on the beach. Both Bullwinkel and Kingsley
were very careful not to talk about the incident, even to fellow prisoners
in the detention camp, because they believed they would be in danger if
the Japanese discovered they had witnessed the massacre. Therefore, very
few people among the POWs knew of this incident during the war.18
Rape and War 87

Bullw inkeľs account also makes the following clear. At the time of the
massacre all nurses were in the uniform of the Australian M ilitary Nurs-
ing Service and wearing Red Cross armbands. When they reached the
Radjik beach, they also raised the Red Cross flag, thus clearly indicating
they were noncombatants.19 There were about 20 British soldiers among
this group, but the fact that one of the men went to the Japanese forces to
indicate their desire to surrender makes it clear that they had no intention
of fighting against the Japanese forces. The Japanese clearly saw that
there were injured soldiers among these men, and it was obvious the
British showed no indication of challenging them when they were forced
to walk behind the cliff. Despite all this, Japanese soldiers massacred both
the British soldiers and the nurses. O f particular note is that men and
women were separated and that m en's bodies were left on the beach after
they were bayoneted individually, whereas the nurses were driven into
the sea and machine-gunned as a group. It seems the Japanese made sure
that evidence of the women's bodies would not be left behind. W hat does
this different method of killing signify?
There are two possible answers. The first is that the officer of this
Japanese group was clearly aware that assault and murder of POWs and
nurses violated the Geneva Convention and thus he took steps to destroy
any evidence by disposing of the nurses' bodies in the sea. Why then did
Japanese soldiers kill the nurses in spite of knowing this international
law? Possibly they were bewildered by the unfamiliar sight of more than
20 women in m ilitary uniform; traditional male ideology holds that war is
absolutely and exclusively a male activity. In this front line of the war, a
group of women in military-style uniform suddenly appeared in front of
these Japanese men, who murdered the women perhaps as a spontaneous
reaction to this bewildering incongruity. It could be said that the massacre
of the nurses at Radjik beach was a typical example of the massacre of
women by soldiers in war. In contrast, the fact that the Japanese soldiers
bayoneted the British soldiers was possibly a result of a male ideology
that war is the exclusive realm of men fighting men and therefore even
POWs who have "lo st" in war deserve to be killed. Furthermore, there
lies in this ideology the belief that a man must fight another man and kill
him individually to demonstrate his personal power.
The second possible answer is that the Japanese soldiers separated men
and women because from the beginning they intended to rape and kill
the women after they had massacred the men. Is it too unrealistic to as-
sume that Bullwinkel tried to save her dead colleagues from the disgrace
of being known as victims of rape? It seems that such an interpretation is
not impossible from the various documents of the investigation of this in-
cident. Immediately after the war, the Australian military tried to find the
88 Rape and War

perpetrators through a thorough investigation of Japanese activities on

Banka Island at that time. Although there were attempts by the Japanese
to create a cover-up, the investigators eventually found that this crime
was probably committed by some soldiers of O Battalion under the com-
mand of Lieutenant O.M., who was attached to the 229th Regiment.20 So
that they could interrogate O.M., the Australian military requested that
the war crimes committee of the Allied forces in Tokyo locate this officer.
It was discovered that he had been in Manchuria when the war ended
and had become a POW of the Soviet Union and was still in a Siberian
prison camp.21 Quite separately, the British forces were investigating the
massacre of nurses in Hong Kong by Japanese soldiers and found that the
same battalion, under the command of Lieutenant O.M., had participated
in the invasion of Hong Kong before heading to Banka Island. British
forces were also trying to locate him, believing he was one of the perpe-
trators of the atrocity.22
Lieutenant O.M. was released and returned to Japan in June 1948, but
he was arrested by the representative of the Australian forces in Tokyo
and detained in Sugamo prison. However, on September 13, before the in-
terrogation had begun, he committed suicide by slashing a blood vessel
in his neck with a glass-cutting tool he had smuggled into his cell from
the prisoners' workshop.23 Because of his death and because most of the
soldiers of O Battalion died during the war, the Australian forces were
unable to build a sufficient case around the incident and did not prose-
cute anyone over it. However, the documents of both the British and Aus-
tralian investigations raise the distinct possibility that the soldiers who
massacred the Australian nurses on Banka Island were the same soldiers
who had raped and murdered the British nurses in Hong Kong two
months before.
The crucial issue is not whether the Australian nurses were raped but
rather that they were massacred as a group and killed in a very different
manner from the British soldiers at the same place. Therefore, it seems
clear that the Japanese intended to eliminate these women from the
battlefield. Because of this, the soldiers' (male) ideology of the need to
eliminate women should be critically examined in relation to the rape of
women by men in war. This point is taken up later in this chapter.

The Threat of Prostitution

The women massacred on Radjik beach were not the only nurses to sur-
vive the sinking of the Vyner Brooke. A number of passengers on the ship
eventually reached Banka Island at different times and in different places,
though many drowned. Of the original 65 nurses, 12 drowned and 21
were massacred, but 32 survived. Within a few days of the ship's going
Rape and War 89

down, not only the Vyner Brooke passengers but also the many civilians
and military personnel from about 70 Allied vessels, which were attacked
by the Japanese forces, were arrested and detained in camps in Muntock,
on Banka Island. Altogether, more than 600 people were detained in the
camps. Those suffering severe injuries were tended by the nurses.
The detention camp on Banka had once been the living quarters of Chi-
nese coolie laborers, and therefore facilities were limited. The nurses had
to sleep on the concrete without bedding or blankets. There was s single
water tap for drinking, and meals were provided only twice a day: at
lunchtime and at four o'clock in the afternoon. At lunchtime they re-
ceived a small quantity of cooked rice; the afternoon meal was cooked
rice and a small quantity of vegetable or potato. As a result they were al-
ways near starvation. At night the Japanese guards wandered around the
camp and prevented sleep by bashing the women's legs with their
torches. The most degrading experience for the women was using the toi-
let facilities, which consisted of nothing but a concrete pit in the open
around which Japanese guards would suddenly appear and stare and
laugh at the women. Already, early in their detention, they were being
treated as sexual objects.24
At 3:00 a . m . on March 2, 1942, they were suddenly wakened and or-
dered to prepare for a trip. The nurses, together with civilians, were trans-
ferred to the former Dutch settlement of Bukit Besar, a suburb of Pa-
lembang in southern Sumatra. The arduous trip took two days. In the
settlement men and women were separated, and the 32 nurses were ac-
commodated in two houses that had once been used by Dutch colonial-
ists. Some comfortable furniture and foodstuffs had been left behind in
the houses, and for a time the nurses ate well and lived in relative com-
fort. The first week passed without incident. In the second week Japanese
officers intruded frequently in the houses without warning, on the pretext
of making an inspection. On some occasions they even came into the
bathroom while nurses were showering.25
On the weekend of the second week, the women were ordered to va-
cate the houses because they were to be used for the purpose of leisure.
The nurses became suspicious and asked the Japanese authorities to allo-
cate them two houses at the other end of the street as new living quarters.
This request was rejected, and they were ordered to move into the two
houses immediately next to the original two. They were also ordered to
clean the houses they vacated and arrange new furniture that the Japa-
nese forces brought in. They were informed that these two houses would
be used as an officers' club. The other female civilians who had been
housed in six houses not far away were also ordered to vacate so that the
premises could be used as "com fort houses" (military brothels). Natu-
rally, the nurses feared they would be used as prostitutes for the Japanese
90 Rape and War

officers. At first the Japanese adopted a policy of persuasion by using a

British woman to recruit the Australian nurses for comfort-women duties.
She told the women of all the advantages they would receive if they com-
plied, but the nurses refused.26
When this attempt at persuasion failed, the Japanese officers issued an
order to the Australian nurses to attend the opening night of the officers'
club. That afternoon the nurses discussed strategy to avoid becoming
prostitutes. They left behind the most physically attractive nurse with the
excuse that she had to look after three sick nurses. The remainder of the
nurses did attend, but they endeavored to make themselves as unattrac-
tive as possible. They wore their khaki uniforms with football or army
boots. At the officers' club they pretended not to understand the English
spoken by the Japanese officers, and when they had to respond they
spoke as quickly as possible so that the Japanese could not understand
them. As agreed among themselves, they refused any alcohol, in spite of
the Japanese insistence. One of the officers asked, "W hat do Australian
women drink then?" The nurse responded, "We do not drink anything
but m ilk," hoping they would be offered milk, rich in the vitamins they
had lacked for a long time. Unfortunately no milk was offered. However,
their strategy was successful, and most of the nurses were released a few
hours later. Four were ordered to stay on at the club and were subject to
continuous demands by the Japanese officers that they become prosti-
tutes. They were threatened with starvation if they did not comply, but all
refused, saying they would prefer starvation to life as comfort women.27
The attempt to threaten the four women as a group failed, and the next
day the Japanese officers tried a new strategy. They summoned four other
nurses and put each in a different room. In each room there were three
Japanese officers who repeatedly demanded that the nurses become com-
fort women. They were also asked to choose between starvation and
prostitution. One of the women was given a document written in English
and ordered to read it. The document said the Japanese military required
women for the purpose of comforting soldiers and these women must
work for this purpose. Again, all four refused and said they would choose
starvation. On the following day the nurses complained through a Dutch
doctor to the Japanese governor of Palembang, who had final responsibil-
ity for management of the detention camp. It is unknown whether the
governor sent any instructions to the officers, but their requests ceased.
However, immediately after this incident the amount of food provided
was considerably reduced, and the nurses had to face chronic starvation
for the rest of their internment. Soon after this, they were transferred to a
different camp that had been a slum area in Palembang, and their living
conditions became worse still28
From this evidence it seems that the Japanese m ilitary forces in Palem-
bang had a meticulous plan to exploit the Australian nurses as prosti-
Rape and War 91

tutes. First, they demoralized the women with appalling living conditions
and deprived them of sleep and food. In the next stage, they provided the
nurses with relatively comfortable housing and sufficient food. They
used a British woman as an intermediary to try to persuade the nurses
that there would be considerable improvement in their conditions if they
complied. When this persuasion did not work, the officers employed the
threat of starvation. Even this tactic failed, and the poor conditions were
reimposed.
Even after these refusals the Japanese officers did not give up. In late
1942 they used deception. They claimed that British and Dutch POWs
working at the Pladjoe oil field required attention from Western nurses
and asked the Australian nurses to go. However, the nurses became sus-
picious and decided not to comply with the request until it was thor-
oughly investigated. The nurses suggested to the Japanese that two Allied
doctors and one Australian officer be allowed to visit the oil field on their
behalf and investigate the situation. There was no reply from the Japanese
side, and the request was not repeated. Immediately after the war the
nurses met Dutch POWs who had been working at the oil field and found
they had not made any such request; it had indeed been a ruse to lure
them into prostitution.29
Nurses from other Allied countries also faced such risks. An Australian
nurse described an indicative event in her autobiography. Four British
nurses and the wife of a Dutch doctor detained at the same camp were
taken out to Palembang under the pretense of attending the sick. When
they returned to the detention camp in February 1944 after more than one
and a half years' absence, the disturbed appearance of these women
made it obvious that they had been severely affected by their ordeal. For
reasons that are not clear, these five women had been placed in solitary
confinement for almost six months, were forced to sit on a concrete floor
day after day, and were not allowed to read or write. In the last few weeks
they were placed in two small cells and had to live in extremely cramped
quarters.30 It is probable the women had to undergo these conditions be-
cause they refused to become prostitutes.
Fortunately, the Japanese officers did not rape the Australian nurses.
There are a number of possible reasons for this. One could be the strong
solidarity among the nurses, which afforded them protection and gave
them the courage to refuse requests and threats. It would have been psy-
chologically difficult for the Japanese officers to rape these women and so
break the bond among them. This situation— quite different from that of
civilian women detained at the camp— worked to the nurses' advantage.
Second, among the civilian women who were in more vulnerable posi-
tions, there were some who started cooperating with the Japanese in re-
turn for food and the safety of their children and themselves. The exis-
tence of these other women made it unnecessary to force the nurses to
92 Rape and War

become prostitutes by raping them. In their testimonies and autobiogra-

phies, nurses often disparagingly used the phrase "Japs' free girlfriends"
in describing women who collaborated.31 But these civilian women seem
to have become "girlfriends" because of the pressures brought to bear on
them; it is unlikely that they complied with any willingness. In other
words, the "Japs' free girlfriends" can also be seen as victims of rape, and
this too should be seen as a war crime. Nurses despised these "girl-
friends" yet were often protected directly by them; there were occasions
when these women intervened on the nurses' behalf to stop the Japanese
guards from inflicting corporal punishment upon them.32 Thus, in some
cases the nurses owed their safety to these civilian women.

The Establishment of Comfort Houses

The detention camp near Palembang, where Australian nurses were de-
tained, also held a number of Dutch civilian women, but there are no doc-
uments detailing how these women were treated or whether they were
forced to become prostitutes. However, in Java, which lies close to Suma-
tra, some Dutch civilian women became the victims of Japanese forces. In
July 1992 the newspaper Asahi Shimbun published portions of Dutch
wartime documents from the Dutch national archives that described how
Dutch women at Semarang detention camp were taken to the military
brothel in the city and forced to work there.
According to this source, in late February 1944 Japanese military forces
took 35 Dutch women ages 16 to 26 from five women's detention camps
and put them into four brothels (the Officers' Club, the Semarang Club,
the Hinomaru Club, and the Seiun-sō). In order to avoid legal problems,
the military forced these women to sign an agreement. But here, too, the
Japanese forces used various tactics, ranging from deception to threat, to
force women into prostitution. Some of these women were told that they
would work as waitresses in the coffee shop in the Officers' Club, but
when they arrived they were ordered to work as prostitutes. When they
refused they were threatened with torture and death for themselves and
their families. One girl tried to commit suicide but was revived. Testi-
mony also revealed that Indonesian, Korean, and Vietnamese women
were working at different brothels nearby. The four brothels were closed
two months later under the instruction of military headquarters in Tokyo.
Presumably, the Japanese authorities were afraid of international criti-
cism if reports of the exploitation of civilian women, including minors,
became public. However, according to the proceedings of the war crimes
court at Batavia in Indonesia, even after the closure of the brothels, 17
Dutch women were taken to the brothels on Flores Island where the
Japanese airfield was under construction. They were detained there until
Rape and War 93

the end of the war. This court report also revealed that each woman was
given a daily quota: 20 enlisted men in the morning, two NCOs in the af-
ternoon, and the senior officers at night.33
One Dutch woman who was forced to work in Semarang was Jeanne
Ruff-O Ή eam e, who moved to Adelaide, Australia, after the war. She was
initially detained at Ambarawa camp together with her mother and her
two younger sisters and was taken to the brothel with nine other girls in
February 1944. What follows is her testimony:

We were forced into the trucks. We huddled together like frightened ani-
mals and drove through the hillside suburb of Semarang. The truck stopped
in front of a large house. Seven girls were told to get out. I was one of them.
We were made to understand that w e were here for the sexual pleasure of
the Japanese. In other words w e found ourselves in a brothel. We were to
obey at all times; w e were not allowed to leave the house. In fact, the house
was guarded and trying to escape was useless. We were in this house for
only one purpose: for the Japanese to have sex with us. We were enslaved
into enforced prostitution.
We protested loudly that w e would never allow this to happen to us, that
it was against all human rights, that w e would rather die. The Japanese
stood there laughing, saying that they were our captors and they could do
with us as they liked, and if w e did not obey our families would suffer.
Opening night arrived. We were all terrified and w e huddled together in
the dining room. We were all virgins and none of us knew anything about
sex. We were all so innocent and w e tried to find out from each other what
to expect and what was going to happen to us.
I knew that the only thing that could help us now was prayer. I opened
my prayer book and led the girls in prayer. As w e were praying w e could
hear the arrival of more and more military to the house, the crude laughter
and boots treading the floor.
We were ordered to each go to our rooms, but w e refused, clinging to
each other for safety. My whole body was burning up with fear. It is a feel-
ing I can't possibly describe, a feeling I shall never forget and never lose.
Even after almost 50 years I still experience this feeling of total fear going
through my body and limbs, burning me up. It comes to me at the oddest
moments; I wake up with it in nightmares and still feel it just lying in bed at
night.
I hid under the dining room table. Eventually I was found and dragged
out. A large Japanese officer stood in front of me, looking down at me, grin-
ning at me. I kicked him in the shins. He just stood there laughing. My fight-
ing, kicking, crying and protesting made no difference.
He had paid a lot of money for opening night, and he became extremely
angry. He took his sword out of its scabbard and pointed it at me, threaten-
94 Rape and War

ing me with it. He was getting impatient by now and he threw me on the
bed. He tore at my clothes and ripped them off. He threw himself on top of
me, pinning me down under his heavy body.
I tried to fight him off, I kicked him, I scratched him, but he was too
strong. The tears were streaming down my face as he raped me. I can find no
words to describe this most inhuman and brutal rape. To me it was worse
than dying.
Each evening I tried to hide in a different place, but I was always found,
then dragged into my room after severe beatings. Every time the Japanese
raped me I tried to fight them off. Never once did any Japanese rape me
without a violent struggle and fight. Often they threatened to kill me, often
they severely beat me.
I can't remember exactly how long w e were kept in the Semarang brothel,
but it was at least three months. I don'ť think I could have carried on any
longer. During that time the Japanese had abused me and humiliated me.
They had ruined my young life. They had stripped me of everything, my
self-esteem, my dignity, my freedom, my possessions, my family.34

Javanese women from this area were also forced into prostitution. For
example, Doug Davey, a member of the Australian 9th Regiment, which
acted as the British-Bom eo Civil Affairs Unit, was in Borneo in August
1945 and found some Indonesian women who had been transported there
by the Japanese. They were living in the ruins of the Japanese brothels at
Beaufort on the Padas River in the northwest. The Australian forces took
them to a small island off the Borneo coast for the purposes of medical
treatment and rehabilitation with the intention of sending them back to
Indonesia. But the women were afraid of going home because of the
shame associated with their experience; one committed suicide.35 It is
very difficult to gain a picture of activities of the Japanese military broth-
els in the Pacific region because most of the relevant documents were
burned soon after the war. However, it can be presumed that a large num-
ber of Asian women, such as these Javanese, were sent far away from
their homes and into prostitution.
The comfort houses were first established in Shanghai before World
War II, possibly as early as 1932. During the Shanghai incident in January
1932, Japanese soldiers raped many Chinese women, and the deputy
chief of the general staff in Shanghai, Okamura Teiji, set up a brothel in
order to prevent further rape.36 In 1938, after the Nanjing massacre, the
Japanese forces adopted the general policy of setting up military brothels
in various places in occupied China and "recruiting" comfort women to
staff them, not because of their concern for the Chinese victims of rape by
Japanese soldiers but because of their fear of creating antagonism among
the Chinese civilians. Thus many so-called military leisure houses were
Rape and War 95

established where Japanese forces were stationed.37 The word "recruit" is,
of course, an official euphemism; in reality many women were forcibly
pressed into prostitution. It is now widely known from various testi-
monies that the Japanese m ilitary forces were directly involved in procur-
ing large numbers of women for prostitution. One man, Yoshida Seiji,
confessed that he was one of the officers responsible for this action.38
Many Korean women were also exploited in this way and later spoke of
their ordeals. It is also clear from the autobiography of Nogi Harumichi,
the captain of the Ambon naval police force, that military police, who
were supposed to prevent such military crimes, collaborated to procure
women for prostitution.39
There were three different types of comfort houses: those run directly
by the Japanese Army; those ostensibly privately owned and run but in
reality under tight control of the Army and only for the use of military
personnel; and those privately owned and frequented by civilians but op-
erating under an agreement with the Army to provide "special services"
for military personnel. The second type was the most common, and these
houses were usually located next to military supply bases or in the center
of towns in which soldiers were stationed. Units located in more remote
places usually had comfort houses directly attached to the barracks. If the
unit moved, its comfort house would move with it. Smaller units, which
did not have comfort houses, would often have comfort women sent to
them for short periods from the larger comfort houses in the towns. The
buildings for the comfort houses were provided by the Army, which also
took charge of such matters as hygienic measures, hourly rates for "ser-
vices," and designation of days on which members of particular units
were permitted to visit.40
There seem to be four major reasons the Japanese military decided that
comfort houses were necessary. As I have mentioned previously, Japanese
m ilitary leaders were very concerned about the rape of civilians by mem-
bers of the Japanese armed forces but not out of concern for those civil-
ians. For good strategic reasons, they believed that the antagonism of
civilians in occupied territories toward their conquerors was exacerbated
by such behavior. They also believed that a ready supply of women for
the armed forces would help to reduce the incidence of rape of civilians.41
What the m ilitary leaders apparently did not consider was the possibility
that the highly oppressive culture of their armed forces might be con-
tributing to the problem and that at least part of the solution would thus
be to reform the military structure.
The military leaders also believed that the provision of comfort women
was a good means of providing their men with some kind of leisure. Un-
like Allied soldiers, the rank and file of the Japanese armed forces did not
have designated leave periods or limited tours of duty. The military lead-
96 Rape and War

ers had been advised by senior staff that they should make greater provi-
sion for both the health and well-being of their men, including such mea-
sures as extended leave back home. However, most of those suggested
measures were never implemented. The notable exception was the provi-
sion of comfort women.42
Another concern the leaders had was the incidence of venereal disease
among the armed forces. They believed that venereal disease threatened
to undermine the strength of their men (and hence their fighting ability)
and that it could also potentially create massive public health problems
back in Japan once the war was over.43 The leaders believed that a regu-
lated system, such as the comfort houses, would enable them to take ef-
fective preventive health measures. It must be said that the measures they
employed were thorough even if not completely effective. Those "re-
cruited" were mostly young, unmarried women because it was believed
they were the least likely to be carrying venereal diseases. Army doctors
regularly checked the health of the comfort women to ensure that they
had not contracted a venereal disease and also provided condoms for the
men to use. According to the Centre for Research and Documentation on
Japan's War Responsibility, during the war the Army Accounts Depart-
ment and the Supply Headquarters were responsible for sending con-
doms to forces stationed overseas, and officials ensured a ready supply. In
1942, for example, 32.1 million condoms were sent to units stationed out-
side Japan.44 Records suggest a similar thoroughness with medical exami-
nations of comfort women; most of them were examined for venereal dis-
ease every 10 days. However, such measures could not prevent venereal
disease, even if they went some way toward reducing its incidence. For
instance, according to a report by medical officers of the 15th Division
in northern China in 1942 and 1943, 15 to 20 percent of comfort women
were found to be suffering from venereal disease each month. Evidence
from former comfort women suggests the figure could have been much
higher.45
The fourth concern the leaders had was security. They believed that
private brothels could be infiltrated by spies easily. Alternatively, it was
thought that the prostitutes working in them could easily be recruited as
spies by the Allies. Kempeitai members were frequent visitors to comfort
houses and kept close tabs on the women to ensure that no spies were
among them.46
Why were most comfort women almost invariably from Korea, Taiwan,
China, or various places in Southeast Asia? This might seem odd at first,
given that the Japanese were notoriously racially prejudiced against the
peoples of these countries. However, racial prejudice provides part of the
answer to the question because that very racism helped make these
women suitable for the role of comfort women.
Rape and War 97

There were Japanese prostitutes during the war, but most were in a dif-
ferent position from the comfort women. The Japanese prostitutes mainly
worked in brothels that served high-ranking officers, and they experi-
enced much better conditions than the comfort women. The Japanese mil-
itary forces did not believe Japanese women should be in that role be-
cause they were supposed to be bearing good Japanese children who
would grow up to be loyal subjects of the emperor rather than being the
means for men to satisfy their sexual urges. The Japanese military gov-
ernment took its lead from Nazi eugenic ideology and policy in these
matters. In 1940 the National Eugenic Law was proclaimed. The purposes
of the law were to prevent miscegenation and the reproduction of the
"unfit," such as those with mental illnesses that were believed to be
inherited.47
Another reason non-Japanese were used as comfort women can be
found in international law. In 1910 the law suppressing trade in women
for the purposes of prostitution was proclaimed in Paris following an
agreement by a number of European nations. Japan later became a signa-
tory. In 1921 a similar international law banned trade in women and chil-
dren. Once again, Japan became a signatory. In February 1938 the Japa-
nese Ministry of Home Affairs issued orders to the governors of each
prefecture to ensure that only prostitutes over age 21 were issued with
authorizations to ply their trade. However, officials believed these laws
were not applicable to Japan's colonies, and this, combined with the belief
in the superiority of Japanese women and the suitability of women of
other races for prostitution, cemented the decision to use women from
colonies and occupied territories as comfort women. Young unmarried
women in the colonies and occupied territories were thus treated by the
Japanese as a resource for that purpose.48
It is impossible to deny that the Japanese m ilitary was directly involved
in organizing comfort houses and recruiting women to work in them. Re-
cently discovered documents and the recent testimony of former comfort
women, who only now feel able to speak freely about their ordeals, have
added details about what happened. However, the Japanese government
is still withholding pertinent documents that could give a clearer picture,
especially about who should bear individual responsibility in the lines of
command.
However, it appears from the available evidence that orders to recruit
women for comfort houses directly controlled by the military army came
from the headquarters of each dispatched army— that is, from the chiefs
of staff of each army. Those orders would then have been conveyed to
staff officers in various divisions and carried out by the Kempeitai. The
Kempeitai usually operated by forcing the elders of villages in the occu-
pied territories to round up all of the young women.49
98 Rape and War

As for the putatively private brothels, the owners were assisted by the
Kempeitai in the task of recruiting local women. Most of these women
were forcibly taken to the brothels from their villages. Some women,
however, were led to believe that they were going to do some other kind
of job, such as working in a factory, only to find out too late that they had
been deceived.50
In January 1942 the minister for foreign affairs, Tōgō Shigenori, in-
structed his staff that comfort women should be issued with m ilitary
travel documents. After that time, comfort women did not require a pass-
port for overseas travel.51 This indicates that involvement in decision-
making about comfort women went all the way to the top levels of gov-
ernment. Other documents reveal a similar picture about high-level
involvement. In March 1942 the headquarters of the. South Area Army
made plans to set up comfort houses throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
One recovered document shows that orders were issued to Taiwan head-
quarters to recruit 70 comfort women and send them to Borneo. The com-
mander in Taiwan, Lieutenant General Andō Rikichi, and the chief of
staff, Major General Higuchi Keishichirō, instructed the Kempeitai to se-
lect three brothel owners to assist them in the task of gathering the com-
fort women. Seventy women were in fact sent to Borneo from Taiwan; all
carried m ilitary travel documents with the seal of the head of general af-
fairs of the M inistry for the Army, Tanaka Ryūkichi, and his junior, Ka-
wara Naoichi. Because the minister of the army at this time was Prime
Minister Tōjō Hideki, he therefore bore final responsibility for the ordeals
of the comfort women.52
Comfort women were transported to the front lines in Army ships or
on Army railways or trucks. On a few occasions comfort women were
even flown by Army planes to the front lines. The head of Army supplies
was responsible for controlling transport and must have been ultimately
responsible for decisions made about transport of the women.53
Less evidence is available about the role of the Navy in the exploitation
of "com fort w om en" than about the role of the Army. However, according
to documents written by Rear Admiral Nagaoka Takasumi, head of gen-
eral affairs of the M inistry for the Navy, on May 3 0 , 1942, the Navy was to
dispatch comfort women to various naval bases throughout Southeast
Asia. For instance, 45 women were to be dispatched to the Celebes, 40 to
Balikpapan in Borneo, 50 to Penan, and 30 to Surabaya. This was the sec-
ond dispatch of comfort women to these bases. These documents were
sent to Rear Admiral Nakamura Toshihisa, chief of staff of the Southwest
Area Fleet. As with the Army, Navy involvement went to the very top
ranks. Admiral Shimada Shigetarō, the minister for the Navy, can there-
fore also be held responsible for the ordeals of the comfort women.54
The available evidence thus gives a clear picture that the very top ranks
of both the Army and the Navy were directly involved in decisionmaking
Rape and War 99

concerning the comfort women and that other arms of government, such
as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, collaborated with them, also with high-
level involvement. The comfort-women case could well be historically
unprecedented as an instance of state-controlled criminal activity involv-
ing the sexual exploitation of women. The history of "cam p followers"
(military prostitutes) in European wars provides a strong contrast be-
cause evidence suggests that the relevant decisions were made by those
on the ground and not back in the metropolitan corridors of power. We
Japanese thus have a special responsibility to acknowledge the crimes of
our forebears in subjecting the comfort women to their ordeals and, espe-
cially, a responsibility to demand that our government gives adequate
compensation to the survivors.
The comfort women were treated as "m ilitary supplies," but relevant
documents were either hidden or destroyed at the end of the war. There-
fore it is impossible to know how many women were exploited; the best
estimates range from 80,000 to 100,000. According to the Japanese mili-
tary plan devised in July 1941, 20,000 comfort women were required for
every 700,000 Japanese soldiers,55 or 1 woman for every 35 soldiers. There
were 3.5 million Japanese soldiers sent to China and Southeast Asia, and
therefore an estimated 100,000 women were mobilized. Eighty percent of
these women are believed to have been Koreans, but newly available evi-
dence shows that many from Taiwan, China, and the Philippines were
also used. Recent testimony by Malaysians indicates that the Japanese
forces set up brothels in which local Malaysian women were housed.56
Thus, it is clear that the Japanese forces exploited large numbers of Asian
women as well as women from Allied nations under the excuse of pre-
venting rape. Although this was the official justification for the program,
it should not be forgotten that these estimated 100,000 women were them-
selves victims of rape. The following testimony by a former Korean com-
fort woman drives home the point:

I was nearly killed several times during my time as a "comfort woman."

There were some military men who were drunk and were brandishing
swords at me while making demands for perverted sex. They drove their
swords into the tatami, then demanded sex from me Afterwards the
tatami was full of holes from them driving their swords into it The threat
they were making was obvious—if I didn't co-operate they would stab me.57

Was the exploitation of women in m ilitary brothels effective in prevent-

ing widespread random sexual violence by Japanese soldiers? General
Okamura, the initiator of the Japanese military brothel, him self said of the
Japanese invasion of Wuhan in 1938 that random sexual violence oc-
curred despite the fact that the Japanese forces had groups of comfort
women attached to them, and he admitted his scheme was a failure.58 In
100 Rape and War

June 1939, Hayao Takeo, then a lieutenant in the Japanese military as well
as a professor at the Kanazawa medical college, submitted to the authori-
ties a secret report about particular battlefield problems and control mea-
sures. In one chapter he analyzed the cases of rape by Japanese soldiers
and expressed the same opinion as General Okamura: that it was impos-
sible to prevent rape by setting up m ilitary brothels and that many Chi-
nese civilians, whenever they saw Japanese soldiers, feared being raped
by them.59 He also stated that the Japanese soldiers who did not rape
women in Japan suddenly became very violent and considered them-
selves free to rape Chinese women. In addition, he said that commanding
officers often turned a blind eye to rape, believing that rape was neces-
sary to enhance soldiers' fighting spirits.60 Thus Dr. Hayao clearly recog-
nized the two essential issues regarding rape in war. First, on the battle-
field in a foreign country, where soldiers are outside the jurisdiction of
their own laws of rape, it is extremely difficult to prevent rape, regardless
of the availability of prostitutes at m ilitary brothels. Second, many offi-
cers deem it necessary for their soldiers to rape women in order to stimu-
late aggression. This was also clear from the testimonies of former Japa-
nese soldiers who said they were given condoms before embarkation,
despite officers' instructions not to rape women.61
Dr. Hayao recognized the importance of these two factors. Yet after
observing the Japanese soldiers' activities in China, he puzzled over why
these soldiers had no control over their sexual desires and could not
maintain their decency.62 But was this behavior peculiar to soldiers of
the Japanese forces? It is necessary to examine the actions of the mili-
tary forces of other countries to analyze the universal effects of war on
women.63

The Universoliły of Rope in War

The most well-documented report on rape in World War II is that of the
rape of Jewish women by German soldiers. From the day the Germans
entered Poland in September 1939, mass rape— of Jewish women in par-
ticular—was an everyday occurrence. Such incidents had commenced be-
fore the war; many Jewish women were raped during Kristallnacht, the
night in November 1938 when a new wave of violent attacks on Jewish
people and property began.64 This pattern—the looting and destruction
of property, the rape and, in many cases, subsequent murder of women—
was to be repeated throughout the war and was particularly directed
against the Jews.
There are many reports of young Jewish women being taken from the
ghettos and abused and raped. In Warsaw those women deemed the most
beautiful were given work in factories packing mirrors; they would usu-
Rape and War 101

ally be raped at the completion of their shift.65 In one incident 40 women

were taken from the ghetto and forced to join a party at the quarters of
some officers in a Warsaw mansion. They were made to drink, strip, and
dance with the officers, after which they were raped and released at three
o'clock in the morning.66
At the end of 1939 a plan was developed to establish a number of
brothels in Warsaw to be staffed by Jewish women, with separate brothels
for officers and enlisted men. The plan was never implemented, probably
because of pressure from higher echelons.67 It of course contravened Nazi
ideology about race mixing, in particular the 1935 Nuremburg race laws
that prohibited sexual intercourse between "A ryans" and Jews. The inci-
dental rape of Jewish women was also in contravention of this law but
was a widespread practice. In concentration camps many young Jewish
women— especially virgins—were raped by guards. In Auschwitz a
brothel was established and staffed by non-Jewish women prisoners.68
Not only Jewish women were the victims of rape by German soldiers.
An interim report prepared in January 1942 and submitted to the govern-
ments of the Allied nations by Soviet foreign minister Molotov refers to
the fact that many Russian women were raped by German soldiers. This
report—the "M olotov note"—was later presented to the postwar Nurem-
burg War Crimes Tribunal as evidence.69 It contains reports of hundreds
of cases in which Russian women were raped and murdered, sometimes
in front of their relatives. In Smolensk, for example, hundreds of Russian
women were taken from their homes and sequestered in a hotel that had
been turned into a brothel. Other evidence given to the Nuremburg tri-
bunal included the case of French women raped by Germans, especially
those who were members of or collaborators with the Resistance.70
There were also many cases of rape and murder by Allied soldiers in
World War II, but these of course did not come before the Nuremburg tri-
bunal. During the fall of Berlin, Red Army soldiers looted and raped
through the whole of the city. Cornelius Ryan, a historian, collected a
great deal of evidence in the 1960s,71 which included interviews with
many German women who were civilians during the fall of Berlin. Not
only was rape found to be a common experience, but there were many re-
ports of particularly atrocious and grotesque acts of rape, including the
rape of pregnant women in maternity wards and women who had just
given birth.72 One woman who had been raped when caught hiding in an
air-raid shelter said the rapist told her he and his fellow soldiers were tak-
ing revenge for what German soldiers had done to Russian women.73
Yet such a claim is at best only half true. When Russian forces invaded
Manchukuo in 1945, they raped a large number of Japanese women de-
spite the fact that Japanese soldiers had raped no Russian women, if only
because they had not had the opportunity—Japan and Russia had not
102 Rape and War

been at war until this time. The details of such acts and the numbers of
victims are unknown because there was never a systematic investigation
of these events. However, there are a number of isolated accounts, such as
this one given by an orphan refugee, Yoshida Reiko:

We were told by senior Japanese officers that w e had lost the war, and that
now we had to get together and act as a group. We went into the aeroplane
hangars at Beian airport. There were about a thousand people there—the
families of ManchukuQ rail workers, and civilians who worked for the
Japanese forces. From then on it was hell. Russian soldiers came, and told
our leaders that they had to provide women to the Russian troops, as the
spoils of victory. We didn't go outside—w e spread our straw mat on the
floor, and slept there. Our food was very limited—w e had some dried bread
and rice. We had no drinking water, so w e collected rainwater, and drank
that. Everyday Russian soldiers would come in and take about ten girls. The
women came back in the morning. Some women committed suicide, usually
by hanging themselves—they said it was better to die, than to be taken away
by the Russian soldiers.. . . The bodies of these women were buried in the
field. The building was surrounded by logs, and the Russian soldiers told us
that if no wom en came out, the w hole hangar w ould be burnt to the ground,
with all of us inside. So some women—mostly single women—stood up and
went. At that time I didn't understand what was happening to these women,
but I clearly remember that women with children (who remained) offered
prayers for the women who did go out, in thanks for their sacrifice. Some
women w ent out of the hangar, and never returned.74

Some of the Japanese military nurses who were working at the front
line in northern Manchukuo were also raped by Russian soldiers. There
were 75 nurses at the Sunwu military hospital at the time of surrender.
Every day Russian soldiers would come and rape a group of them. Japa-
nese officers made many official complaints to the Soviet military head-
quarters about these incidents but to no effect. In fact, the Soviet forces re-
sponded to these complaints by asking the Japanese officers to provide a
number of nurses as prostitutes, as they believed this would minimize the
number of rapes by Soviet soldiers.75 A doctor at Beian was also ordered
to provide nurses and women office workers to the Soviet headquarters
for this purpose. He refused and was beaten. Eventually a few young
nurses and a typist volunteered under duress to become prostitutes at the
headquarters; in fact, the "typist" was a prostitute the Japanese officers
had kept on the staff for their own pleasure during the war. For these
comfort women, the end of the war did not mean the end of their suffer-
ing. For them, there were neither friendly nor unfriendly soldiers— all
men were their enemies.76
Rape and War 103

There is no documentary evidence of mass rape by British, Common-

wealth, or American soldiers during World War II. However, British
forces established brothels in Tripoli during the North African campaigns,
with different brothels set up for the different races and for officers and
enlisted men. Among the prostitutes staffing these brothels were four Ital-
ian women. It appears these women were prostitutes brought to North
Africa by Italian forces and then abandoned. They were subsequently
pressed into service and exploited by the British forces in these brothels.77
The British also established brothels for officers in Delhi, but these were
later closed on orders from London.78 At the time of America's entry into
the war, General George Patterson had contemplated establishing official
m ilitary brothels for the U.S. Army. In the end, however, he decided that
the outcry from the American public would be too great and abandoned
the plan. U.S. soldiers used the brothels established by the French govern-
ment soon after the D-Day landing in June 1944, but these were closed
after no more than three days because of pressure from Washington. Of
course, U.S. soldiers made full use of the civilian brothels, which re-
mained open.79
Although it is possible that some incidents have been censored or re-
moved from the record of Allied conduct in World War II, it is clear that
the conduct of British, American, and Commonwealth soldiers was rela-
tively restrained during the war years.80 This was not the case in the occu-
pation of Japan in 1945. From the day they landed, U.S. soldiers engaged
in the mass rape of Japanese women. The first reported case was at 1:00
p . m . on August 3 0 , 1945. Two marines went into a civilian house in Yoko-

suka and raped a mother and daughter at gunpoint. The marines had
landed three and a half hours earlier. There were four reported cases that
day in Yokosuka alone.81 On September 1 there were 11 rapes reported in
Yokosuka and Yokohama. In one of these cases a woman was gang-raped
by 27 U.S. soldiers and nearly died. After that the incidence of rape spi-
raled upward throughout the period of the occupation, and the standard
atrocities began to occur: young girls raped in front of their parents, preg-
nant women raped in maternity wards, and so on. Over a period of 10
days (August 30-Septem ber 10) there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of
Japanese women by U.S. soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture (where Yoko-
suka and Yokohama are situated) alone. If these figures are extrapolated
to cover the whole of Japan— and if it is assumed that many rapes went
unreported— then it is clear that the scale of rape by U.S. forces was com-
parable to that by any other force during the war. Yet according to an offi-
cial U.S. report, only 247 U.S. soldiers were prosecuted for rape in the lat-
ter half of 1945, and these figures include prosecutions for rape in
occupied Europe.82 Clearly there were many soldier-rapists at large in the
occupied areas who were not prosecuted.
104 Rape and War

U.S. forces occupied the bulk of Japan, but some areas such as Hiro-
shima were occupied by British Commonwealth occupation forces (BCOF)
composed of Australian, New Zealand, and Indian soldiers under the com-
mand of British officers. These forces also participated in the rape of civil-
ians. A Japanese prostitute made the following comment about Australian
soldiers who landed at Kure (the port of Hiroshima) in November 1945:

Most of the people in Kure stayed inside their houses, and pretended they
knew nothing about the rape by occupation forces. The Australian soldiers
were the worst. They dragged young women into their jeeps, took them to
the mountain, and then raped them. I heard them screaming for help nearly
every night. A policeman from the Hiroshima police station came to me, and
asked me to work as a prostitute for the Australians—he wanted me and
other prostitutes to act as a sort of "firebreak," so that young women
wouldn't get raped. We agreed to do this, and contributed greatly.83

An Australian member of the BCOF, Allan Clifton, also claimed in his

memoirs that crimes such as rape were committed by Australian mem-
bers of BCOF and that black marketeering was particularly common.84
Clifton described one of the women victims in Hiroshima who was raped
by Australian soldiers:

I stood beside a bed in a hospital. On it lay a girl, unconscious, her long,

black hair in a wild tumult on the pillow. A doctor and two nurses were
working to revive her. An hour before she had been raped by twenty sol-
diers. We found her where they had left her, on a piece of waste land.85

The Japanese government had discussed ways of dealing with the an-
ticipated problem of mass rape by occupation forces in the week follow-
ing surrender and before their arrival. On August 21, 1945, Prime Min-
ister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko called a meeting of several of his
ministers to discuss the issue; attendees included the health, internal af-
fairs, and foreign ministers and the attorney-general. This was dubbed
the "comfort-women m eeting." They decided to set up a Recreation and
Amusement Association (RAA) for the occupation forces. A special gov-
ernment fund of 30 million yen was allocated to the project, and the head
of the Japanese police force was ordered to take all measures necessary to
assist such an organization.86 In fact, the government had already taken
the first steps toward establishing such an organization four days earlier.
Governors and police chiefs of all prefectures had been instructed to pro-
cure women from geisha houses, brothels, and nightclubs in sufficient
numbers to staff a nationwide organization of brothels. In Tokyo the chief
of police summoned all owners of brothels and nightclubs and requested
their cooperation in such a project.87 The Japanese politicians who had
Rape and War 105

procured tens of thousands of non-Japanese comfort women during the

war now turned to the procurement of their own women for the benefit of
soldiers who had recently been their enemies.
The RAA was disbanded on March 2 7 , 1946, primarily in order to halt
the rapid spread of venereal disease among the U.S. forces but also be-
cause it was contrary to the principles of the 'n ew dem ocracy" that Gen-
eral MacArthur was trying to establish in the Japanese polity. Of course,
prostitution on a large scale continued but as a private business activity.
More than 20,000 Japanese women were mobilized into the RAA by the
end of 1945, according to an internal report. At its peak more than 70,000
women worked for the organization. As the demand for women to staff
the organization outstripped the supply of professional prostitutes, gei-
shas, and the like, other groups of women were drafted, including high
school students (who had been put to work in munitions factories toward
the end of the war) from Saitama, Hiroshima, and Kawasaki. These
young women were not allowed to return home after the surrender and
were forced to work in the brothels of the RAA.88 The case of the girls
from Hiroshima was particularly sad: They had been put to work in Kure
and had thus survived the bombing of Hiroshima, in which their families
had perished and their homes had been destroyed. They had nowhere to
return to and were offered no alternative to service in the RAA. These
young women were also victims of rape.
The first brothel the RAA established, named Komachien (which loosely
translates as "The Babe Garden"), was in Ōmori, a suburb of Tokyo, and it
opened on August 2 7 , 1945. Hundreds were established soon after all over
Japan. One of these brothels was managed by the mistress of General Ishii
Shirō, who headed the notorious Unit 731, a Manchukuo unit that had de-
veloped biological weapons and tested them on more than 3,000 Chinese
prisoners. The establishment of comfort-women brothels did little to mini-
mize the incidence of mass rape by Japanese forces during the war; the
same could be said of the RAA project during the occupation.
It is a harsh irony that while the accounts of mass rape and rape in the
form of enforced prostitution committed by Japanese forces during the
war were being heard in the Tokyo trials— and judgment and sentence
being passed on the perpetrators— the same practice was continuing
throughout occupied Japan with the active participation of Allied forces
and the approval of the high command of the occupying forces.

War, Rape, and Patriarchy

It is clear from the preceding accounts that mass rape and rape by en-
forced prostitution were practiced by forces of many nations and were
not unique to the Japanese forces of the Asia-Pacific War. Although it is
necessary for Japanese to examine critically the conduct of the Japanese
106 Rape and War

m ilitary during World War II— especially given the huge scale of the
comfort-women operation and the massive number of women who suf-
fered from it—it is also necessary to examine the widespread occurrence
of rape in wartime and the general features of such a phenomenon.
Why do soldiers rape? Further, why does mass rape routinely occur in
large-scale military campaigns? Serious analysis of the phenomenon of
military mass rape is rare, yet there is ample documentary evidence of it,
both from World War II and from conflicts that have occurred since. In the
early stages of the Vietnam War, while the Algerians were battling for in-
dependence, the French Army brought Algerian women into the battle
zone and forced them to work as prostitutes.89 U.S. forces in Vietnam also
established military brothels inside a number of their camps.90 Yet this
did not prevent the rape of large numbers of Vietnamese women, most
hideously in incidents such as the My Lai massacre.91 In the Balkans con-
flict in 1993, Serbian soldiers used mass rape as a terror tactic in their
campaign of "ethnic cleansing." It is estimated that between 30,000 and
50,000 Muslim women have been raped and many of them subsequently
murdered in this war.92
It is perfectly understandable that soldiers should want to have sex, if
only as a temporary escape from the horrors they encounter daily. That
such a respite is positive is reflected in the following comment by a Viet-
nam veteran:

A man and a woman holding each other tight for one moment, finding in
sex some escape from the terrible reality of the war. The intensity that war
brings to sex, the "let us love now because there may be no tomorrow," is
based on death. No matter what our weapons on the battlefield, love is fi-
nally our only weapon against death. Sex is the weapon of life, the shooting
sperms sent like an army of guerrillas to penetrate the egg's defences—the
only victory that really matters. Sex is a grappling hook that pulls you out,
ends your isolation, makes you one with life again.93

However, it must be remembered that consensual sex and rape are dra-
m atically different undertakings (even if the boundary gets blurred in
some people's accounts of their actions), and it would be very wide of the
mark to account for an act of rape as a distorted outlet for an individual's
sex drive. Wartime rape is a collective act on a number of levels. As an-
other returned soldier from Vietnam put it: "They only do it when there
are a lot of guys around. You know, it makes them feel good. They show
each other what they can do— 'I can do it,' you know. They w on't do it by
them selves."94
Indeed, the majority of rapes in war are gang rapes. They serve as a
sharing of the "spoils" of war and a strengthening of the exclusively male
Rape and War 107

bonds among soldiers. Fierce combat forms strong and intimate links
among soldiers, and gang rape is both a by-product of this and a means
by which such bonds are maintained in noncombat situations. There is
also strong psychological pressure on soldiers to be brave and prepared
for immediate physical combat, and this is especially so in the presence of
other soldiers. The need to dominate the "other," the enemy, is imperative
in battle with other men. In a noncombat situation women readily be-
come the "other" and the target of the desire for domination by groups of
tightly bonded men. The violation of the bodies of women becomes the
means by which such a sense of domination is affirmed and reaffirmed.
In an extreme situation such as war, in which the killing of the enemy is
regarded as an act worthy of praise, the moral basis for the condemnation
of crimes such as rape falls away, and the moral codes adhered to by sol-
diers in peacetime lose their validity.95
The internal power relations of armies work on a strict class system,
and enlisted soldiers are always subject to the orders of officers. This cre-
ates a contradiction whereby soldiers whose principal task is to dominate
and subjugate the enemy must subordinate themselves to the unques-
tionable authority of their officers. This contradiction is intensified in the
battlefield, where the imperative to dominate the enemy is literally a mat-
ter of life or death for the individual soldier, and the need for the officer
class to dominate and have unquestioned authority over groups of sol-
diers becomes strategically imperative. Such a contradiction creates both
a high degree of tension and a context in which violence is the standard
mode for the release of tension. Consequently the rape of women per-
ceived as being the "enem y" or "belonging to the enem y" becomes a fre-
quently used form of release— a reprehensible behavior, escaping the dis-
ciplinary matrix, that is really the underbelly of the disciplinary system.
Incidents in which women are raped in front of their families— especially
in front of their fathers, husbands, or brothers— are common because the
violence enacted on the women also serves to humiliate enemy men and
to reinforce their subjection to the occupying force. The more absolute the
relation of domination between officers and enlisted men within an army,
the more heightened is the contradiction between their relations to the
subjugated enemy and their situation within their own force. Conse-
quently their behavior toward the enemy—soldiers, male civilians, and
women—becomes more violent. This is one explanation for the compara-
tively large number of rapes committed by the Japanese and German
armies in World War II.
Rape in war has a number of different effects. During periods of heavy
fighting, it serves to perpetuate and intensify the aggressiveness of sol-
diers. After victory or in noncombat periods, it serves to maintain the
sense of dominance and victory and is often viewed by soldiers as the
108 Rape and War

legitimate spoils of war. The Japanese army is not the only force to have
used or condoned rape as a device for maintaining the group aggressive-
ness of soldiers. In the Falklands War of 1982, British soldiers being trans-
ported to the war zone by ship were shown violent pornographic films as
a way of stimulating their aggressiveness prior to battle. As seen in the
Bosnian conflict, rape can be employed on the front line as one of a range
of strategies. War and rape are fundamentally related. It is foolish to
imagine that the provision of large numbers of involuntary prostitutes
(which is itself a form of rape) could prevent the mass or gang rape that is
a general feature of m odem war.
Moreover, soldiers in battle cannot avoid a further— and irresolvable—
contradiction. War is usually presented as an exclusively male activity, a
masculine bonding ritual, an activity in which women have no place.96
Yet this is a fantasy of war. The reality is that war and battles frequently
occur in areas occupied by civilians and that women are usually present
as civilians near the front line. War is presented as an activity that de-
mands physical strength and toughness and is seen as an occasion for the
exclusive celebration of these attributes as exclusively masculine virtues.
Therefore the very existence of m ilitary forces is regarded as a living sym-
bol of masculine dominance over the "w eaker" sex. In such a patriarchal
ideology, it is strongly believed that a wom an's place is on the home front
and not in battle. This ideology demands that women be absent from bat-
tle, but its maintenance also requires that such dominance be repeatedly
reinforced, especially when women are in fact present in the male domain
of the battlefield, either as implicated civilians or as military nurses. Thus
women must be both present and absent at the same time. War as a mas-
culine activity is a continuing attempt to resolve such a contradiction, and
yet its very existence is founded on this contradiction. The final recourse
in the face of such a contradiction is to eliminate women altogether—
hence the frequency with which women are massacred after rape.
Historically, military nurses have been major victims of such violence,
not only because they are in close proximity to the front line but also be-
cause their military status— signified most graphically by their presence
in uniform— marks them as "boundary-crossers": women who are par-
tially but not fully integrated into a male activity. This contradiction be-
comes particularly apparent and acute in noncombat periods or in peri-
ods after a military victory. This may explain the massacre of the nurses
on Banka Island: It can be seen as an attempt by Japanese soldiers to re-
solve the contradiction of being brought face to face with women in uni-
form. It may also be the case that nurses were regarded by the victors as
spoils of war much more so than would be the case with civilian women.
Nurses may have been regarded as women who had belonged to the
army of their nationality but who now belonged to the victors— hence the
Rape and War 109

assumption on the part of the Japanese officers that such women would
be easily persuaded to become prostitutes. This can also explain the atti-
tude of the British officer in Singapore who' expressed the view that
nurses would be better off being shot by soldiers of their own nationality
if the only alternative was to fall into the hands of the Japanese.
Nowadays nurses are not the only women in uniform. The m ilitaries of
many countries recruit women into all branches of the military and claim
they are the equals of their male comrades. One might think that this de-
velopment would be undermining the kind of male society I have de-
scribed and consequently be working against those social forces that pro-
duce wartime rapists. That might indeed be the case. However, strongly
in evidence is a backlash from many military men against what they
perceive as an invasion of their domain by women. Many men want to
maintain all-male workplaces, and they often respond to the "threat" of
women being present by sexual harassment of those women. This seems
to be a particularly common phenomenon in the military, and the kinds of
sexual harassment that occur seem to be more extreme than in other
workplaces. There have been many rape cases reported in the armed
forces of a number of countries in recent times.97
War is an inherently patriarchal activity, and rape is the most extreme
expression of the patriarchal drive toward dominance of the "other." In
peacetime such tendencies are held in check by the rule of law and inter-
nalized moral codes. In war the rule of law is often absent, internalized
moral codes disintegrate, and these normal checks on such activities are
largely replaced by incentives. Rape is unique to human beings; it does
not form part of animal behavior. Despite the fact that it is often charac-
terized as an "anim al" activity, rape is profoundly cultural and patriar-
chal. As Virginia Woolf indicated in Three Guineas (1938), war is not just a
military problem but is a problem created by a male-dominated society,
and therefore war is closely related to other traditionally male activities
such as law and organized religion.98 To prevent war requires first de-
stroying the male-dominated culture that creates war and then creating a
new culture that ensures real equality between men and women. The
same could be said of rape in war.
The 11 (male) judges at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal who heard the
cases of mass rapes by Japanese soldiers probably never thought that the
crimes they were investigating were closely related to their own status in
the preeminently patriarchal world of the law. Just as Freud failed to see
male sexuality as a weapon against women,99 the judges of the tribunal
failed to see these crimes committed by Japanese forces as a general char-
acteristic of patriarchy.
Φ Photographs Φ
An Australian POW in transit to a labor camp from Changi POW camp in
Singapore. The drawing is by Murray Griffin, an Australian official war artist
who became a POW in Singapore in 1942. From the Australian War Memorial
collection; used by permission.
Improvised kitchen utensils used by POWs at Sandakan POW camp, found after
the war in the remains of the burnt POW camp. From the Australian War
Memorial collection; used by permission.
Australian soldiers walking through the mud on the Kokoda trail in New Guinea
in 1942, showing typical jungle conditions. An abandoned Japanese bicycle can
be seen in the mud. From the Australian War Memorial collection; used by
permission.
Captain Hoshijima (back to camera), chief of staff of the 37th Army; Major
General Manaki Takanobu (second from right, wearing glasses and holding
sword); and other officers shown inspecting site for an airfield in Sandakan, May
1942. From the private collections of Mr. Yamada Masaharu, a former staff officer
of the 37th Army; used by permission.
British and Australian officers inspect a Japanese POW camp in Kuching soon
after the war. The short man with military boots is the camp commander,
Colonel Suga Tatsuji. From the Australian War Memorial collection; used by
permission.
Captain Lionel Matthews, a leader of the intelligence-gathering group at
Sandakan POW camp. Matthews was executed in March 1944. Australian War
Memorial photo 593584; used by permission.
Kulang, a chief of the Dasan tribe, who pretended to assist the Japanese forces in
constructing a path between Sandakan and Ranau and who concealed his strong
anti-Japanese sentiment. From the Australian War Memorial collection; used by
permission.
Lieutenant General Yamawaki Masataka, commander of the 37th Army between
October 1942 and December 1944. From the private collections of Mr. Yamada
Masaharu, a former staff officer of the 37th Army; used by permission.
Part of destroyed Camp No. 1 of Sandakan POW camp. The photo was taken
on January 18,1947. From the Australian War Memorial collection; used by
permission.
Members of the Australian Army inspect the graves of Allied POWs at Sandakan
POW camp on October 23,1945. A Japanese look-alike onlooker seems to be one
of the POW guards. From the Australian War Memorial collection; used by
permission.
Wong Hiong testifies to an Australian officer about the execution of the last
POW at Sandakan camp. Wong Hiong is standing where the body was buried.
The date of the photo is unknown. Australian Archives (Vic): MP375/14;
Dec 1945-Aug 1949; used by permission.
Russian officers, POWs of the Japanese, are shown wearing Japanese kimonos
and enjoying meals and sake at a Japanese inn in 1905. Published by permission
of Mainichi Shimbun.
An orchestra formed by German POWs detained in Bando, Shikoku Island,
during World War I. Published by permission of Mainichi Shimbun.
Australian soldiers observe Japanese POWs engaged in hard labor on New
Ireland after Japan's surrender. Australian War Memorial photo 98507; used by
permission.
Australian military nurses newly arrived in Singapore in February 1941. From
the Australian War Memorial collection; used by permission.
Mrs. Vivian Bullwinkel, the sole survivor of the Banka Island Massacre, standing
in front of her own portrait at the Australian War Memorial in June 1992. From
the Australian War Memorial collection; used by permission.
A group of Korean "comfort women" captured by the American forces in
Okinawa in 1945. U.S. National Archives collection photo 127-YW600.
Sir William Webb, president of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, shown with his
staff in his Tokyo office. Date of the photo is unknown. Australian Archives
(ACT): A1066/l; H 45/580/6/3; used by permission.
Indian POWs of the Japanese being treated by Australian soldiers in Rabaul after
Japan's surrender. Australian War Memorial photo 096492; used by permission.
The port of Rabaul and Simpson Bay not long after the war. Australian War
Memorial photo 98016; used by permission.
The entrance to a cave in Tunnel Hill near Rabaul, New Britain. Allied POWs
were detained in caves like this one. Australian War Memorial photo 96485; used
by permission.
A Japanese hideout in Tunnel Hill. The Japanese made extensive use of tunnel
systems in the Rabaul area after aboveground installations were destroyed by
Allied bombing. Australian War Memorial photos 97494 (left) and 97493 (right);
used by permission.
The graves of Allied POWs whom the Japanese claimed died as a result of illness.
Australian War Memorial photo 96511; used by permission.
Rear Admiral Tamura Ryūkichi (right) being interrogated by an Australian
officer through an interpreter at Kavieng, New Ireland, after the Japanese
surrender. Australian War Memorial photo 98442; used by permission.
Bombs bursting at the main Japanese base at Kavieng in March 1944. A
floatplane is ablaze in the water beyond the town. Australian War Memorial
photo 127664; used by permission.
A large camouflaged house in Kavieng that was used as Japanese officers'
quarters. The photo was taken in March 1944. The house was destroyed by
planes from the 5th U.S. Army Air Force. Australian War Memorial photo
127665; used by permission.
Kavieng wharf after it was destroyed by Allied bombing. Australian War
Memorial photo 98451; used by permission.
Captain Sanagi Tsuyoshi, staff officer of the Southeast Fleet (second from left),
being questioned by Allied officers on an Allied ship in Rabaul after the
surrender. Australian War Memorial photo 95708; used by permission.
An Australian POW.

Improvised kitchen utensils

used by POWs.

Australian
soldiers on
Kokoda
trail.
Captain Hoshijima.

British and Australian officers inspect POW camp.

Captain Lionel Matthews.

Kulang, chief of Dasan tribe.

Lieutenant General
Yamawaki Masataka.
Part of destroyed Cam p No. 1 of Sandakan POW camp.

Members of the
Australian Army
inspect graves.

Wong Hiong.
Russian officers, POWs of the Japanese in 1905.

Orchestra formed by German POW s during World War I.

Australian soldiers observing Japanese POWs.

Australian military nurses in Singapore in 1941.

Mrs. Vivian Bullwinkel.
Korean "comfort w om en" in Okinawa, 1945.

Sir William W ebb with his staff in Tokyo.

Indian POWs.

Port of Rabaul and Simpson Bay.

Entrance to cave in Tunnel Hill near Rabaul.

Japanese hideout in Tunnel Hill.

Graves of Allied
POWs.

Rear Admiral
Tamura Ryũkichi.

Bombs bursting at
Kavieng in March
1944.
Camouflaged
house in Kavieng,
March 1944.

Kavieng wharf
destroyed by
Allied bombing.

Captain
Sanagi Tsuyoshi.
A
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

The Tokyo Tribunal and Cannibalism

On December 6 , 1946, H.V. Evatt, Australia's m inister for foreign affairs,
sent a telegram to Judge William F. Webb, who was then in Tokyo for the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East.1 The telegram asked
Webb to advise Evatt as to whether Australia should adopt the recent
British decision regarding the B and C Class trials. Britain wanted to
bring to these trials only those suspects who were charged with crimes
punishable by either death or more than seven years' imprisonment. It
was a matter of some importance for the Australian government to come
to a decision on this matter. If the British and Australian governments
adopted different policies for bringing suspected war criminals to trial,
there would be the potential for a major political problem. The Australian
government at this time was concentrating on the prosecution of major
war crimes and was not actively prosecuting war crimes punishable by
less than twelve months' imprisonment. Evatt wanted Webb to give his
opinion as to whether Australia should also cease to prosecute "interm e-
diate" war crimes for which prison sentences ranged between one and
seven years.
Webb cabled his opinion to Evatt on December 10, 1946: "Your 388.
Consider test of probable sentence unsatisfactory. Suggest all deliberate
act or omissions causing, or likely to cause, death or grievous bodily
harm. Also, cannibalism and torturing."2 [Emphasis added.] It is clear
from this cable that Webb was of the opinion that all those accused of war
crimes in the B and C Class involving murder, grievous bodily harm, can-
nibalism, or torture should be taken to trial and that there should be no
compromise. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Webb had ac-
tually brought the issue of cannibalism to the attention of the A Class tri-
bunal, of which he was president.
During the war, as the chairman of the War Crimes Committee, Webb
had viewed substantial numbers of documents and reports prepared by
112 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

the Australian Army on the issue of cannibalism. In some cases he had

personally interrogated witnesses to such crimes. Australia was the only
member of the Allied nations to recognize cannibalism and mutilation of
the dead as specific war crimes,3 and this was probably because of the de-
tailed investigations and reports gathered by Webb in the three reports on
Japanese war crimes trials over which he had presided in the years 1944
to 1946. Nevertheless, it appears that Webb had no intention of revealing
his knowledge of such crimes while participating in the A Class tribunals.
Theoretically it was not possible for Webb, as a judge at these tribunals, to
select which war crimes would come to trial. However, in practice Webb
maintained close contact with the Australian prosecutors and was a close
friend of the chief Australian prosecutor, A.J. Mansfield. It seems highly
unlikely that they would not have discussed the issue of cannibalism at
some stage of the proceedings. Australia brought the most representative
cases of murder, grievous bodily harm, and torture to the A Class tribunal
but not those of cannibalism. Why did Webb neglect to have this issue
brought to the attention of the tribunal? Before this question is answered,
it is necessary to analyze the actual occurrences of cannibalism commit-
ted by Japanese forces.

Evidence of Japanese Cannibalism

There is a certain amount of Japanese writing suggesting that Japanese
forces committed acts of cannibalism in the Philippines and New Guinea
during the Asia-Pacific War (Map 4.1). A typical example is found in the
novel Fires on the Plane by Ōoka Shōhei.4 The 1987 Japanese documentary
film Yuki Yuki te Shingun (Onward Holy Army) contains interviews with
Japanese war veterans who confessed to engaging in cannibalism during
the New Guinea campaign.5 Several autobiographies by Japanese veter-
ans of that campaign also make explicit references to cannibalism. For ex-
ample, Ogawa Shōji mentioned incidents that occurred between Decem-
ber 1943 and March 1944 when Japanese forces were retreating through
the Finisterre Mountains in north-central New Guinea.

Here I saw something genuinely horrible. There was the body of a soldier
lying on the track, and a large part of his thigh had been hacked off Later
I was walking along a track with Y when we were called by a group of four
or five soldiers who were not in our troop. They had just finished a meal,
and there were mess-tins nearby. They said that they had a large cut of
snake meat and invited us to join them. But we didn't like the way they were
smiling as they said it. We felt that they were not telling us something. It
was as if they wanted us to be "partners in crime." There was something un-
usual about the way they were staring at us, as if they were waiting to see
 113

Map 4.1 New Guinea.

114 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

our reaction. Y felt the same way about the situation and said "no thanks;
maybe some other time." The situation was very tense. We left hurriedly,
but cautiously, scared that they might try to shoot us. After we had walked a
while, Y said to me "It's very strange. What do you think they were doing?
If that had been snake meat they would never have given any to us. Don't
you think they were trying to drag us into the crime they had committed?"
. . . In fact we saw many bodies which had had their thighs hacked off.6

In a book published in 1992, Ogawa reported that toward the end of the
war he was witness to horrific conversations among Japanese soldiers in
New Guinea along the lines of "so-and-so has died, let's go and get his
body."7 In another case a friend of his found human flesh in the mess tin
of an officer who had become ill and died.8 The impression left is that the
victims of cannibalism were Japanese soldiers who had been killed in bat-
tle or who had died of various illnesses.
In his memoirs Nogi Harumichi, the chief of the Japanese naval police
force in Ambon, mentioned incidents that occurred in the Philippines and
that were reported to him by a Japanese army lieutenant immediately
after the war.

Most of the Japanese forces who were retreating from mountain to mountain
were looters. This is a terrible thing to remember. There was absolutely
nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost would be
killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him.
He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women.
But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were re-
garded as the object of our hunger. We had no sexual appetite. To commit
rape would have cost us too much energy, and we never wanted to. All we
dreamt about was food. I met some soldiers in the mountains who were car-
rying baked human arms and legs. It was not guerillas but our own soldiers
who we were frightened of. It was such a terrible condition.9

The Japanese sources give the impression that in most cases Japanese
soldiers themselves were the victims of the acts of cannibalism that oc-
curred in New Guinea and the Philippines toward the end of the war
when their supplies had been completely cut off. However, incidents also
occurred in which Allied soldiers and members of the local populations
became victims. For example, Ogawa Shōji noted that toward the end of
the war, Japanese soldiers referred to the Allies as "w hite pigs" and the
local population as "black p igs."10 But such honesty is rare, and so infor-
mation about the widespread practice of cannibalism during the latter
part of the war has long been confined to rumor. The only information on
the practice available from the Japanese side has come from autobiogra-
phies and memoirs such as Ogawa's.
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 115

My recent discovery of extensive reports of the Australian War Crimes

Section and records of war crime trials by the Australian m ilitary has
made it possible to undertake a more comprehensive analysis of the prac-
tice of cannibalism committed by the Japanese in New Guinea. I also ob-
tained U.S. National Archives documents that refer to Japanese cannibal-
ism in New Guinea. However, the number of U.S. documents on this
subject is very small, which is understandable because at the time the ma-
jority of Allied forces operating in this region were Australians.
The victims of cannibalism in the war can be divided into four groups:
(1) Allied soldiers, the majority of whom were Australians; (2) Asian
POWs who were brought to New Guinea as laborers; (3) the local popula-
tion of New Guinea; (4) other Japanese soldiers. Not surprisingly, the
Australian reports concentrate on incidents in which Australian soldiers
were victims of cannibalism and refer only rarely or incidentally to inci-
dents involving Japanese victims, although there is no evidence to sug-
gest that Japanese were victims less frequently than other groups. Indeed,
there is the evidence from a number of interviews I conducted with for-
mer Australian soldiers who gave eyewitness accounts of many muti-
lated bodies of Japanese soldiers. U.S. reports contain a number of cases
in which Japanese soldiers were victims along with Australians and
Americans, despite the overall small number of reports on this issue.
In the transcripts of the Australian War Crimes Section reports and the
war crimes trials, the Australian National Archives and the Australian
War Memorial have removed all references to the names of Australian
victims of cannibalism, the places where the incidents occurred, and the
dates of such incidents. This has not been done for incidents in which
Asian POWs or members of the New Guinea population were victims.
The names of the Japanese soldiers accused of the practice have also been
retained in the reports. The U.S. documents contain all the names of the
victims as well as suspected perpetrators. However, throughout this
chapter, I will use only the initials of the accused, as the purpose of this
analysis is to give a more systematic view of the practice of cannibalism
and to move away from a focus on particular perpetrators. I do not dis-
close victim s' names that appear in the U.S. documents for the sake of pri-
vacy of the victims and their relatives.

Allied Victims of Cannibalism

Among the various reports on cannibalism prepared by the Australian
military forces, the most detailed description of the condition of the bodies
can be found in cases in which the victims were Australian soldiers. This is
probably because the majority of eyewitnesses of such incidents were
members of the same squad as the deceased, and they usually reported the
incidents immediately after they occurred, when the details were still
116 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

vivid in their memory. In some cases the bodies were inspected by army
doctors, and these reports also contribute to the detailed description of
such incidents. In cases in which the victims were Asian POWs or indige-
nous locals, the incidents were frequently reported by witnesses who did
not speak English, and thus many of these reports are more perfunctory
and contain much less detail than those of Australian victims.
The following is a typical example of a report on an Australian victim
recorded on May 2 0 , 1945:11

SX8064 WO II HUGO C o f Bn, being duly sworn, states:

On the morning of the----------at 0900 hours, NX 79420 Cpl GRIFFIN, J, the

late Sjt Sewell, and myself recovered the body o f who had been killed
by enemy action on the--------- . We found the body in the following condi-
tion:
(a) all clothing had been removed
(b) both arms had been cut off at the shoulder
(c) the stomach had been cut out, and the heart, liver and other entrails had
been removed
(d) all fleshy parts of the body had been cut away, leaving the bones bare
(e) the arms, heart, liver and entrails could not be found
(f) the only parts of the body not touched were the head and feet.
A Japanese mess tin which appeared to contain human flesh was lying four
to five yards from 's body between two dead Japanese soldiers.

(signed) C. HUGO WO II
SX 8064

The content of the U.S. reports is quite similar to that of the Australian
documents. The following is an example from the U.S. files:12

1. On January 2 4 , 1943, Pfc. E.H. was killed in action in an attempt to cap-

ture a group of Japanese. The next day the body was recovered by Lieut.
William C. Benson, Co. "G," 163rd Infantry Regiment, who certified that it
was found in the following condition.
"The abdomen had been opened by two criss-cross slashes. Flesh had
been removed from the thighs and buttocks."
The body was examined by Captain Henry C. Smith, M.C., 2nd Battalion
Surgeon, 163rd Infantry Regiment, who certified to the following evidence
of mutilation.
"A mid-line abdominal incision from the lower rib cage to the pubis. This
incision was straight and clear with smooth edges. No examination was
made of the abdominal content. A clean strip of skin tissue and muscle ap-
proximately 4 x 12 x 2 was removed from the lateral portion of the thigh."
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 117

2. Pvt. M.W., 163rd Infantry Regiment, was killed in action 24 January 1943,
in an attempt to capture a group of Japanese. On 25 January 1943, the body
was recovered by Lieut. William C. Benson, Co. "G," 163rd Infantry Regi-
ment, who certified that flesh had been removed from both thighs.

3. Sgt. H.B. reported missing in action on 19 January 1943 was found in a

mutilated condition on 23 January 1943. The body was identified and exam-
ined by Pfc. Other [sic] E. Dickson who swore that the body was found in
the following condition.
"The flesh part of the thigh and each leg had been cut away. The abdomi-
nal cavity had been opened by cutting away the skin and flesh under each
lower rib. The face had not been mutilated, thus making identification possi-
ble."
Pvt. Dickson further stated that a stew pot in a nearby Japanese bunker
contained the heart and liver of approximate size of that [of a] human.
The above statement was also sworn by Cpl. Clinne C. Lamb, 36679399, Co.
"F," 163rd Infantry Regiment, who was also a member of the searching party.

Many other cases refer to the fact that Japanese cannibalism extended
to the entrails and the genitals of the victims; in some cases the brains
were taken out, and therefore in such a case it was difficult to identify the
soldier, as the face was disfigured beyond recognition. That intestines
were cooked is confirmed by a report dated May 2 2 , 1945, from which the
following is an excerpt.13 This report is about four separate incidents in-
volving a total of six Australian victims. Each incident had between two
and four witnesses.

NX14764 Lieut A B Carson being duly sworn states:

, --------- , and , were killed in an attack on enemy positions on

the afternoon o f . My section was sent in to endeavour to extricate the
bodies that same afternoon, but accurate sniper's fire forced us to withdraw
before reaching the spot where they were reported to have been killed.
Enemy resistance made it impossible to get the bodies out before , on
which day I was again sent out on patrol for this purpose. We found three
sets of Aust web equipt, two pairs of boots, two sets of clothing and other
odd items which were recognised as belonging to the victims.
Further search revealed scalp which was easily recognised as that of
, by the . Entrails were strewn across a log and pieces of flesh
which had been partially burnt were nearby whilst in one of our own basic
pouches were pieces of what appeared to be liver. Evidence such [as] blood-
stains and pieces of flesh which had definitely been cut with a sharp instru-
ment, proved beyond doubt that bodies had been butchered, gutted and
scalped.
118 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

Outside a hut 300 yards further along from this position were found the
fresh bones of a burnt foot. Inside this hut we also found fragments of a right
thigh bone which had obviously been cooked and broken for the marrow.
The size of this bone indicated that it came from a body feet in height
presumably .
Outside another hut 100 yards away more leg, thigh and shoulder bone
were found together with human flesh w ith on it.
Outside yet another hut the head o f was recognised, and the body
consisting only of a head which had been scalped and a spinal column lay
on the ground. Besides these remains lay a wrist and hand which were
charred and burned.
AAB 83 and atebring [sic] roll book were found inside the first
mentioned hut.
In all cases the condition of the remains was such that there can be no
doubt that the bodies had been dismembered and portions of flesh cooked.
The injuries sustained by these men were not due to high explosive from
our arty [artillery] but by rifle fire. The MO of my Sqn examined certain of
the above-mentioned remains and concurs fully with my statement. I am
quite certain that the remains found w ere , --------- ,and----------and
the following witnesses will bear out this evidence, themselves assisting in
the burial of the remains.

Signed. A.B. Carson

Signed before me. Signed. Nisbet Major.

The condition of the scalps indicates that the Japanese soldiers tried to
remove the brains of the victims but were interrupted by the advance of
the Australian forces. In the cases mentioned here there was neither time
nor opportunity for the Japanese soldiers to hide the evidence of canni-
balism. In fact, the vast majority of incidents in which Australian soldiers
were victims had a similar pattern in that the Japanese soldiers had no
time to dispose of the mutilated and cooked remains. The following U.S.
report also seems to support such an interpretation:14

1st Lieut. H.F. was killed in action 8 January 1943. Statement made by Sgt.
Roy G. Mikalson, 20929231, Co. "C " , 163rd Infantry Regiment, and S/Sgt.
Gordon F. Meager, 20220220, Co. "C " , 163rd Infantry Regiment, state that
they were within ten and two yards respectively of Lieut. F when he was
killed by a Japanese bullet. These witnesses further stated that when the pla-
toon withdrew, Lieut. F's body was not mutilated in any way. At that time it
could not be removed as the enemy fire was too intense.
On 11 January 1943, the body was recovered. The left arm had been cut
away and was not found with the body. Slices of flesh had been cut from the
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 119

calves of the legs and the body had been disembowelled, the heart and liver
being also missing.
Later, on 11 January, the bones of the left forearm were found in a Japa-
nese perimeter 400 yards north east of the US perimeter Musket.

It seems clear that Japanese soldiers removed the bodies of Allied sol-
diers from the area in which fierce combat was occurring and carried
them to a safe area to be cooked and consumed, while others held back
the Allied forces in order to prevent them from recovering the bodies.
This indicates that these incidents were not isolated or sporadic acts but
part of an organized process.15
There also appears to have been incidents in which Australian POWs
were victims of cannibalism, although there are no Australian eyewitness
accounts of mutilated or cooked bodies. Australian m ilitary officials in-
terrogated a number of Japanese soldiers after the war, but all denied
any knowledge of or participation in the practice of cannibalism, and
therefore it became very difficult to establish a reliable account of such
incidents.
In November 1944 a Dutch POW, P.W. Wildemar, escaped from the
POW camp in Wewak and lived in the jungle nearby. At some time in
early 1945 he met a Japanese deserter, Corporal M.T., in this area, and
they stayed together for some time. At this time M.T. told Wildemar that
he had witnessed the murder and consumption of an Australian pilot
POW by Japanese soldiers in January or February of 1945. Wildemar was
rescued by the Australian forces, but M.T. stayed in the jungle. M.T. was a
member of C Battalion. Toward the end of January 1945 two planes went
down in this region, a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Kittyhawk
piloted by Warrant Officer R.K. and another RAAF plane piloted by a
Corporal F.M. Both pilots were reported missing. Either (or both) of these
men could have been the victim of this act.16
After the war, the Australian military followed up W ildemar's story
and located M.T. in Japan. He was interrogated on June 2 , 1947, but de-
nied that he had witnessed the murder of the Australian pilot and
claimed he had merely heard about the events secondhand. Australian of-
ficials also interrogated members of the Kempeitai stationed in this region
and discovered that the Kempeitai had interrogated both of these pilots
about troop movements and the like. The pilots had no useful informa-
tion and were murdered by the police. However, the police denied that
they had taken part in acts of cannibalism.17
Major H.S. Williams, who investigated this case in Tokyo, sent a letter
to the headquarters of the Australian military stating that "as M.T. has
been proved to be untruthful, it is proposed to re-open this investigation
as soon as any additional leads can be obtained."18 There is no further
120 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

information about this case in archive files; presumably it proved impos-

sible to establish a case for prosecution.
What is significant about this alleged incident is that, if true, it is an ex-
ample of deliberate murder for the purpose of cannibalism rather than
the cannibalism of soldiers or civilians who had died in battle or of ill-
ness. There are reports of other incidents of a similar nature in the files,
but no prosecutions were launched.

Cannibalism of Asian POWs

It is well known that many Allied POWs were forced to work in various
parts of Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia during the war, m ainly on
large-scale construction projects such as the Burma-Thailand railway,
where more than 60,000 Allied POWs and 270,000 Asian laborers were ex-
ploited.19 A large number of Indian, Chinese, and Malaysian POWs and
civilians were sent to New Guinea and neighboring small islands. Docu-
ments in the Australian War Crimes Section report suggest that many
such forced laborers became victims of Japanese cannibalism. One of the
most shocking cases is that concerning a number of Indian Muslims.
The Indian POWs working in New Guinea were divided into two types
of work groups: construction companies and special transport companies
in both the Army and the Navy. They were of various sizes; one men-
tioned in an interrogation consisted of 546 Indian POWs. There were 30 of
these companies stationed in the New Guinea region.20 Given that there
were 5,570 Indian POW forced laborers on Rabaul and New Ireland at the
end of the war, it can be estimated that there were between 8,000 and
10,000 in New Guinea proper.21
Most of these Indians were probably in the Indo-Pakistan forces that
formed part of the larger Commonwealth forces and were taken prisoner
when Singapore fell in February 1942. The following testimony was given
by Hatam Ali, a Pakistani soldier taken prisoner on February 15. His com-
pany was mobilized into forced labor in various places in Malaysia, and
attempts were made to recruit members of the company into the Indian
National Army, a pro-Japanese force that had been established to benefit
from Indian anti-British sentiment. Ali refused to join and was put into a
laboring party of about 1,000 prisoners who were sent to Manokwari in
New Guinea toward the end of 1943. Soon after they arrived, they were
put to work on the construction of an airfield, and in April 1944, 206 pris-
oners were sent to a new site 300 miles from Manokwari under the super-
vision of S Unit, one of the construction units.22 Ali was one of these.

I was included in this number. We were taken to a place about 300 miles
away, we were employed for 12 hours daily on hard fatigues and were given
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 121

very little to eat. There was no medical treatment and all prisoners who fell
ill were immediately killed by the Japanese. Later, due to Allied attacks and
activity, the Japs also ran out of rations. We prisoners were made to eat grass
and leaves and due to starvation we even ate snakes, frogs and other insects.
At this stage the Japanese started selecting prisoners and everyday 1 pris-
oner was taken out and killed and eaten by the Japanese. I personally saw
this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japa-
nese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot about 50 miles [away]
where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place the Japanese again started
selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where flesh
was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were then thrown
into a ditch alive where they later died. When flesh was being cut from those
selected terrible cries and shrieks came from them and also from the ditch
where they were later thrown. These cries used to gradually dim down
when the unfortunate individuals were dying. We were not allowed to
go near this ditch, no earth was thrown on the bodies and the smell was
terrible.23

Eventually A li's turn came. He was escorted by two soldiers toward

this hut, but he ran away. He was chased by a Japanese soldier and was
injured in the left ankle, but he finally escaped. He spent the next 15 days
wandering the jungle and was rescued by Australian forces. Investigators
located no other witnesses to corroborate his story, but if true it raises cer-
tain questions. Why did the Japanese soldiers find it necessary to cut flesh
from the POWs while they were still living?
In the first stage of cannibalism, the soldiers were killing prisoners and
then consuming their flesh. But by the time they moved camp, the situa-
tion had become desperate. Prisoner numbers were down to less than
100, and there was no likelihood of a conventional food supply being
reestablished. It is possible that the Japanese soldiers— faced with the
problem of the rapid rate of putrefaction in the Tropics— cut the flesh
from living prisoners as a way of ensuring that they would survive for a
period and that their internal organs would then be available for later
consumption. Hence the ditch in which these prisoners were dumped
was not covered with earth. There seems to be no other explanation for
the adoption of such hideously cruel methods, unless of course the whole
business of systematic cannibalism had brutalized the Japanese soldiers
to such an extent that an increasing degree of sadism became incorpo-
rated into the process.
This case is a horrifying example of a situation in which POWs were
kept alive as a food source for the Japanese guards. However, such cases
were comparatively rare. It was far more typical for soldiers to kill and
consume POWs who had become ill. Such prisoners were usually shot;
122 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

however, there are cases in which army doctors would administer lethal
injections to the sick prisoners. For example, on April 5 , 1943, a Japanese
army doctor T.T. administered lethal injections to two Indian army POWs
and subsequently cut flesh from their thighs and removed their livers. He
ordered another Indian POW— a cook, Rabi Lohar— to prepare the flesh
and livers for consumption. But Lohar refused to do this, even after being
beaten. Eventually, a Japanese soldier, N.Y., cooked the body parts.24 In
May 1943 another Indian POW was killed by the same method and for
the same purpose. T.T. was tried and executed on May 3 , 1946, and three
Japanese soldiers who participated in the consumption of the Indian
POWs were sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.25
It is known that a large number of Formosan laborers were also mobi-
lized by the Japanese forces for the construction of military-related facili-
ties in various places in the Pacific region. How many Formosans were
sent to New Guinea is unknown, but at least two reports prepared by the
U.S. forces clearly indicate that some Formosans also became victims of
Japanese cannibalism in this region. One report refers to incidents on Biak
Island in the northwest of New Guinea, the other to incidents on Manus
Island in the Bismarck Sea, northeast of New Guinea. The following sum-
maries of interrogations conducted on Formosan POWs appear in the
Biak report:26

PW, JA(USA) 149583, SON.KeiZun. a FORMOSAN civilian employee of 2

Co, 107 Airfield Survey and Construction Unit, surrendered to US troops at
BQROKI BIAK I, 28 Aug. '44.
Cannibalism 28 Aug. '44, while PW was foraging for food on BIAK I, he
heard a rifle shot approx 100 meters away. From concealment he saw two
JAP soldiers approach a dead FORMOSAN whom he thought was from 108
Fid Airfield Survey and Construction Unit. JAPS stripped body and used
bayonet to hack off a leg. PW became frightened and immediately related in-
cident to other FORMOSANS in his unit. Believing their lives were in jeop-
ardy, they fled to US troops.

PW, JA(USA) 149579, SHU. Kon Tsu. a FORMOSAN civilian employee of

107 Airfield Survey and Construction Unit, surrendered to US troops at
BOROKI, 28 Aug. '44.
Cannibalism BIAK I, Jul '44, PW heard from C.Z.R. that he saw JAPS col-
lecting dead Formosans for their meat. 4 Aug '44, PW heard C was mur-
dered by JAPS near WARDO for the same purpose.
14-15 Aug '44, approx six hours march from WARDO toward SORIDO,
PW saw the remains of his hometown friend R.H.K. and two others at South
agricultural field. Only the head and bones remained but PW noticed each
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 123

victim had been slashed across the throat. He heard of 15 other FORMOSAN
corpses having been stripped of the flesh.

JAP troops and FORMOSANS prepared their meals individually. JAPS al-
ways seemed to have meat but FORMOSANS had only the vegetables they
grew and the little rice that was allotted them. FORMOSANS often traded
with natives but could get meat only from JAPS. JAPS always claimed meat
was dog meat but PW suspected it was human flesh, therefore, never
bartered. He thought it impossible that there should be a daily supply of dog
meat specially when he had rarely seen a dog on BIAK I.
Meat seen by PW had little skin or hair but he knew dog meat to have
thick layer of skin and thick stubble of hair. He heard human flesh was too
salty to eat if fried, and therefore had to be broiled.

PW, JA(USA) 149826, CHO. Seki Ju. a FORMOSAN civilian employee of 108
Fid Airfield Survey and Construction Unit, surrendered to US troops after
reading ALLIED leaflet at WARDO, BIAK I, 7 Sep '44.
Cannibalism Jun '44, on BIAK I, PW and 13 other FORMOSANS decided
to surrender to ALLIES after having read an ALLIED propaganda leaflet. En
route, group was intercepted by approx 100 u /i JAP troops. Eight of the
FORMOSANS were killed and PW felled by a bayonet. While feigning
death, PW saw a JAP soldier take the intestines from a dead FORMOSAN
and place it in his mess kit. PW did not see more as JAPS left.

Another interrogation summary of a Formosan POW refers to a scene

similar to that described in Hatam A li's testimony about flesh being
hacked from live bodies:27

Prisoner of War RI, Shin Te (JA(USA) 149444); Formosan civilian employee

of the 107 Airfield Survey and Construction Unit has established the proba-
bility of the following acts of cannibalism:
"During August 1944, prisoner of war saw many corpses lying around
Biak with portions of flesh removed by knife, but did not witness such
butchery. On 15 August 1944, prisoners of war came across three Formosan
bodies that were not dead over few hours. They were lying in a pool of
blood approximately 15 feet from a jungle path. Each was bayoneted
through the chest and flesh was removed from thighs."

From these interrogation summaries it is almost certain that many For-

mosans, who were regarded as racially inferior to Japanese despite the
fact that they were mobilized as "Japanese Army employees," also be-
came the victims of murder and cannibalism.
124 judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

Cannibalism of the Indigenous Population

It seem s that victim s of cannibalism num bered as m any am ong the
indigenous population of New Guinea as am ong A ustralian or Com m on-
w ealth soldiers. Reports of such incidents based on the testim ony of
m em bers of the local population w ere m ade to A ustralian m ilitary
officials. In the m ajority of cases the victim s w ere villagers w ho were
known to be hostile to the Japanese forces and to have actively cooper-
ated w ith the Australian forces. The following is a typical exam ple of such
an incident.
On April 1 2 , 1945, a group of Japanese soldiers attacked a New Guinea
village "T ," ransacked the houses, and stole yam s, copra, and other foods
as well as cooking utensils. M ost of the villagers hid in the jungle, but two
failed to escape and were abducted by the soldiers. In order to rescue
these tw o men, three villagers followed the Japanese soldiers. But when
they reached the place where the Japanese soldiers had regrouped, "X ,"
they w ere attacked by Japanese with submachine guns. The villagers de-
fended them selves with hand grenades (which had been provided by
A ustralian forces) and retreated. H ow ever, one w as killed and another
who w as seriously injured later died in the jungle. The tw o villagers who
had been captured m ade an escape; one was killed by subm achine-gun
fire. The Japanese rem ained at "X " for three days and then m oved on. A ,
party of villagers, including the tw o survivors of the earlier incident, re-
turned to "X " som e days later.28 They found two m utilated bodies. One of
the three villagers who had followed the Japanese soldiers after the raid
gave the following testim ony on M ay 1 0 , 1945:

I found "W 's" body. Flesh had been cut from the chest, thighs, calves, but-
tocks and back. His shoulders had been cut through and both forearms were
missing. The viscera were intact. The top of the head had been cut off, and
the brain removed. The flesh had been cut with some sharp instrument. The
body of "S" had cuts on it but no flesh was missing. Near a small fire which
the Japanese had used for cooking I found the bone from a man's forearm. It
had been in a fire and shreds of cooked flesh were still adhering to it. There
were scrapings of taro and yam around the same fire.29

The A ustralian forces took two other testim onies; one of the witnesses
w as the wife of victim "W ." Because of the close-knit nature of New
Guinean village society, it w as com m on that the w itnesses to such crim es
w ere the close kin of the victim .
The second testim ony w as given by a Lieutenant F.M., w ho w as inter-
rogated on June 1 7 , 1947, by the Australian War Crim es Section in Tokyo.
F.M. had been the com m ander of a squad of 41 Japanese soldiers w ho sur-
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 125

rendered to an Australian force in an area close to village "T " on May 3,

1945. F.M. claimed that the murder and consumption of the villagers had
been committed by members of his squad, but he had not been aware of
the incident at the time. He claimed he was informed only at a later stage
and that he had then punished three soldiers involved by assigning them
dangerous forward scouting and reconnaissance duties. These three sol-
diers died in the fighting that occurred prior to the surrender of the
squad. F.M. also claimed that he could not remember the names of other
soldiers who had taken part in the consumption of the villagers. The offi-
cer interrogating F.M. commented on his file "I know him to be the origi-
nal 'Sm art Alec' and constitutionally unable to speak the truth."30 F.M.'s
version of the cannibalism incident is, of course, false. A report by Cap-
tain David Feinberg, the Australian officer who captured this squad,
stated that "these t[roo]ps were by no means starving and their discipline
was excellent. It may be presumed that any atrocities were carried out
with the consent and under the orders of the officers of the party."31 An-
other report states that "the Japanese captured in 'W ' area May 3 , 1945,
were found to be in good physical condition. This particularly applies to
the officers The discipline maintained within the PW personnel was
of the highest order. The officers had excellent control of men under their
com m and."32
One category of crimes not covered in the report of the Australian War
Crimes Section involved cannibalism inflicted upon soldiers of Papuan
infantry battalions and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd New Guinean Infantry bat-
talions. These were units made up of members of the Papuan and New
Guinean populations under Australian Army command. From July 1942
until the end of the war, more than 4,000 of these soldiers fought the
Japanese on the mainland of Papua New Guinea and in New Britain and
Bougainville under the command of 500 Australian officers and NCOs.
They waged a guerrilla war against the occupying forces, and their famil-
iarity with the jungle made it easy for them to conduct ambushes and
lightning raids on enemy soldiers. The Japanese called them "Ryokuin"
(green shadows), a nickname subsequently taken up by the Australian
soldiers.33
According to one of the former officers of these battalions, Dick Collins,
there were some instances in which the bodies of such soldiers killed in
fighting could not be subsequently located. Squads who returned to the
scenes of battles in these areas sometimes found human remains in Japa-
nese mess tins.34 However, there are no reports of such incidents in the
testimony to the Australian War Crimes Section. It may be that they were
not reported by the Australian officers in command of these troops or that
such incidents were reported but not followed up by the War Crimes
Section. Collins also noted the high level of discipline among Japanese
126 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

soldiers who had been captured or who had surrendered, even when
they were starving.35

Starvation and Group Psychosis

It is clear from these reports that the widespread practice of cannibalism
by Japanese soldiers in the Asia-Pacific War was something more than
merely random incidents perpetrated by individuals or small groups sub-
ject to extreme conditions. The testimonies indicate that cannibalism was
a systematic and organized m ilitary strategy, committed by whole squads
or by specific soldiers working within the context of a larger squad. This
is particularly so in the case of the Indian POWs and Formosan workers,
who had outlived their usefulness as laborers and were now regarded by
their captors as human cattle, as a food supply. The moral and psycholog-
ical bearings of the Japanese soldiers and guards were transformed to
such a degree that the act of cannibalism and even the murder of prison-
ers for the purpose of cannibalism became a normal occurrence rather
than an extreme and grotesque activity. The fact that such activities were
committed by whole groups, working within the normal m ilitary struc-
tures, resulted in a situation in which the act of cannibalism ceased to be
horrific and became instead a part of everyday life. As was noted in the
account of the cannibalistic consumption of Australian and American sol-
diers killed in battle, the gaining of bodies for this purpose was often
carried out in the midst of battle, with one section of the Japanese squad
continuing the fighting while another section removed the bodies from
the battlefield to a safe area where they could be prepared for consump-
tion. Sometimes such behavior more closely resembled that of animals on
the hunt: The bodies were captured, mutilated, and consumed, and the
cannibals then moved on.
Such "hunting parties" came to regard any corpse in an edible condi-
tion as "fair gam e," and the nationality or circumstances of death ceased
to be of importance. Cannibalism is traditionally divided into two types:
"exo-cannibalism ," in which a group inflicts cannibalism on people out-
side the group, and "endo-cannibalism ," in which members of the group
become victims of the group's cannibalistic practices, usually as part of a
religious or ritual ceremony.36 In the cases described here, however, the
cannibalism is neither exo- nor endo- but merely a sort of general "group-
survival cannibalism ," a practice driven by starvation and without the
cultural meanings of the other types. As Ogawa Shōji remarked, "We took
a deep breath and struggled to remain human, to not become wild
anim als."37
In such situations the distinction between the bodies of allies and ene-
mies disappears. All become nothing more than a source of food— a situa-
tion well documented by the many reports to the Australian War Crimes
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 127

Section of discoveries of mutilated and partially consumed bodies of

Japanese soldiers.38 In some of these cases, those consumed were soldiers
who had become ill and died, but other cases were similar to the incidents
involving New Guinea villagers39—Japanese soldiers would kill other
Japanese soldiers and consume them in a manner similar to that re-
counted in Nogi Harumichi's testimony excerpted earlier in the chapter.
Indeed, one of the U.S. reports contains affidavits made by several U.S.
soldiers who saw the mutilated body of a Japanese soldier, the condition
of which clearly indicated that he was murdered by his comrades for the
purpose of cannibalism. The following is one of those affidavits, pre-
sented by Felix Espinoza Jr., a member of Troop F 8th Cavalry:40

As a member of the patrol from Troop F 8th Cavalry, under the leadership of
Sgt Aiello, I was a witness to the discovery of the butchered Jap. Our patrol
was ordered by Captain Hickman to investigate a shot heard the previous
night. Our patrol proceeded about 300 yards SE of Bohu Ai on Manus Is-
land. We crossed a small creek and entered a clearing in which we counted
several "lean to" and one shack. There was smoke rising from the Jap occu-
pied shack. We knew there were Japs in the shack from their voices. We ob-
served a Jap walking from a brush pile just outside the shack. We shot him
and three others inside the shack. The former had blood on his hands which
we found had come from a corpse lying under the brush pile. We lifted the
brush and found a corpse of a Jap and it was crudely butchered. The flesh
was cut from the legs from the knee to the hips. The calves of both legs were
cut clear to the bone. The Jap had his hands tied and a rope around his
waist. We checked the inside of the shack and found bloody mess gear and
a bloody knife, the crude instrument used in the butchering. We reported
back to camp. A small patrol was sent back under the control of Lt Miller to
investigate further. [Emphasis added.]

Such instances have become models for the standard account of canni-
balism by Japanese soldiers in World War II: an account in which canni-
balism is held to be an extreme and unusual occurrence, a product of the
chaos, disorganization, and starvation that occurred among the Japanese
forces toward the end of the war. However, the reports of the Australian
War Crimes Section clearly demonstrate that acts of cannibalism were not
always the product of a collapse in morale and organization of Japanese
forces. To the contrary, cannibalism was often a systematic activity con-
ducted by whole squads and under the command of officers. Throughout
periods of starvation and cannibalism, discipline was maintained to an
astonishing degree.
There are repeated references in the testimony to the Australian War
Crimes Section of the high level of discipline of captured squads of Japa-
nese soldiers. The reports of Captain Feinberg to the War Crimes Section
128 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

and of Dick Collins are two examples of this observation. Both reinforce
the judgm ent that cannibalism occurred within a context in which disci-
pline had been maintained rather than one in which discipline had col-
lapsed. Thus there could be some cases in which Japanese soldiers who
refused to participate in the group cannibalism committed by their squad
or company became victims of this crime themselves because they were
seen as potential traitors to the group's solidarity and discipline. In fact,
the existence of such cases was implied in the film Yuki Yuki te Shingun.
It is undeniable that one of the principal reasons for the widespread oc-
currence of cannibalism in the Japanese-occupied areas was starvation
caused by the lack of a food supply. M ost incidents of cannibalism re-
ferred to in the War Crimes Section report occurred from mid-1944 to
m id-1945, indicating that cannibalism was a desperate measure by Japa-
nese soldiers whose supplies had been cut off. Yet many incidents cannot
be explained in this way—for example, the incidence of cannibalism in
the Kokoda campaign in the latter half of 1942.41 The first victims of such
incidents were Australian soldiers, but incidents in which the bodies of
Japanese soldiers were mutilated in a cannibalistic fashion appear as
early as February 1943.42 How is it possible that such extreme behavior
manifested itself at such an early stage, especially when the supply of ra-
tions to the Japanese soldiers was adequate, if not plentiful? Many Aus-
tralian veterans of this campaign reported finding portions of rice and
dried fish among the personal belongings of Japanese soldiers who were
captured or killed in the same region that the acts of cannibalism oc-
curred. These are clearly not cases of cannibalism brought on by starva-
tion. Another explanation for such incidents must be found.
It is possible that the particular character of jungle warfare—in which the
enemy is frequently invisible but at close range—created a degree of stress
that rapidly became intolerable, and that such stress hastened the develop-
ment of a sort of group madness in which acts of cannibalism and savagery
took on a ritual dimension. It could be argued that gratuitous cannibalism
took on different ritual meanings, depending on whether it was exogenous
or endogenous. In cases of exogenous cannibalism (in which Japanese sol-
diers consumed Australian soldiers), the act of eating a slain enemy had a
heroic aspect to it, the spoils of victory. In fact, one Japanese soldier who
was tried after the war for cannibalism of an Australian soldier testified
that he ate the human flesh because he hated Australian enemies.43 En-
dogenous cannibalism (in which Japanese soldiers consumed their fallen
comrades) probably served to reaffirm group solidarity, to create a bond be-
tween the living and the dead within the group.
W hatever the reasons for cannibalism, it was expressly forbidden
within the Japanese Imperial Army, as was the act of murder for the pur-
pose of cannibalism—whether of one's own troops or of enemy troops.
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 129

Both were regarded as the most serious war crimes. Despite this official
position, high-level army officers were well aware that cannibalism was a
frequent occurrence in the field of battle in the Southwest Pacific, but be-
cause it was so widespread, they had little choice but to turn a blind eye
to its occurrence. Indeed, documents exist demonstrating that the Japa-
nese command took steps to accommodate the practice of cannibalism.
For example, a captured Japanese soldier interrogated by the Australian
military forces in December 1944 stated that orders had been given mak-
ing it a crime punishable by death to eat the flesh of other Japanese sol-
diers but permitting consumption of flesh of the enemy.44 On December
3 1, 1944, Australian forces captured a secret order form that clearly sup-
ported the soldier's statement. The order, issued by Major General Aozu
on November 18,1944, stated that Japanese soldiers who knowingly con-
sumed human flesh would be guilty of a crime punishable by execution;
however, it was stated in parentheses that the consumption of enemy
flesh was excepted.45 In this order Major General Aozu stated that he had
issued many similar orders but that such incidents continued to occur. It
appears, then, that orders permitting cannibalism were given by troop
leaders in order to accommodate practices they knew to be unpre-
ventable, in direct contravention of the blanket ban on all acts of cannibal-
ism issued by the high command.

Responsibility and Reaction

The principal responsibility for the geographically widespread occur-
rence of cannibalism in the Southwest Pacific does not rest with individ-
ual troop commanders but with Japanese Imperial Headquarters and the
strategies it employed in the prosecution of the war. Neither the Army
nor the Navy undertook any serious studies of the geography, climate, or
environment of New Guinea or the Pacific isles46 and were consequently
unprepared for the rigorous conditions their soldiers would face in these
areas. The campaign to take Port Moresby (May-December 1942), for ex-
ample, was planned purely "off the map" and took no account of particu-
lar local conditions and hazards. Consequently it was a disaster, with the
entire Japanese contingent being forced back to Buna and Gona on the
northeast coast of New Guinea. There were 18,000 soldiers committed to
the campaign; 6,000 survived.47 At this stage Imperial Headquarters
ought to have reviewed its entire Pacific strategy. Indeed, several mem-
bers of the general staff argued that the New Guinea campaign was un-
winnable and that all Japanese forces should be withdrawn.48 However,
they were in a minority and their advice was not heeded. Headquarters
continued with its haphazard and ad-hoc strategies, and the Japanese
forces in New Guinea were driven further into the quagmire.
130 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

After the failure of the Port Moresby strategy in February 1943, Impe-
rial Headquarters sent the 20th and 41st Divisions to Wewak on the north
coast of New Guinea. In March the 51st Division was sent to Salaţnoa.
The 20th Division came from Korea, the 41st from northern China, and
the 51st from southern China. These divisions had no experience of jungle
warfare and were given no training in such. The 20th.and the 41st Divi-
sions came from a harsh northern winter into a tropical climate and had
no experience in dealing with tropical heat and disease.49 By March 1943,
the 51st Division's transport ships were completely destroyed, and it be-
came extremely difficult to transport food and other supplies to Lae, the
principal port in eastern New Guinea. In August Imperial Headquarters
implemented a "self-sustaining policy" for eastern New Guinea.50 This
"self-sustaining policy" was fiction, of course: Imperial Headquarters—
faced with the impossible task of maintaining supply lines with a seri-
ously diminished transport fleet—had decided to abandon all Japanese
forces in New Guinea. A total of 157,646 Japanese troops were sent to
eastern New Guinea; only 10,072 survived to the end of the war, a mortal-
ity rate of 94 percent.51 The majority of these deaths were from starvation
and tropical disease. The widespread occurrence of cannibalism was by
Japanese soldiers who had been abandoned by their commanders. Re-
sponsibility for these crimes must rest principally with Imperial Head-
quarters and its ill-considered and ad-hoc Southwest Pacific strategy.
Yet despite the fact that Australian m ilitary officials collected a vast
body of evidence to link the actions of Japanese Imperial Headquarters to
the occurrence of cannibalism, and despite the fact that Judge Webb and
others involved in the War Crimes Tribunal were aware of such evidence,
no attempt was made to lay charges for these crimes in the A Class war
crimes trials. During the war, information about cannibalism in the
Southwest Pacific was heavily censored within the military, and no infor-
mation was released to the public about such incidents. When the Mel-
bourne newspaper The Argus ran a report April 24, 1945, from a U.S.
newspaper that gave details of the incidence of cannibalism in New
Guinea— and of the fact that it extended to Japanese as well as Australian
soldiers— the subject became a topic of intense interest throughout the
city.52 There was debate between the government and the military as to
whether stricter censorship of civilian material should be enforced. E.G.
Bonney, chief publicity censor of the Department of Information, was in
favor of restricting the circulation of such "horror stories." He argued that
"I would ban all horror stories affecting Australian troops on the grounds
that the effect on relatives and on younger soldiers might be bad, and
their publication would not, in my opinion, add an ounce to the war ef-
fort."53 The commander in chief, General Thomas Blarney, on the other
hand, was in favor of allowing such stories to be published, countering
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 131

that "the effect on Australian troops generally of such occurrences is not

one of demoralisation, but induces in them an even greater determination
in the discharge of their duties."54
The debate was somewhat academic at least in relation to its effect on
the soldiers. They were already well aware that cannibalism was occur-
ring in New Guinea, and in reaction to this a tacit agreement of sorts had
developed that they would take no prisoners. Although there is no ex-
plicit reference to this in official documents, certain expressions and turns
of phrase indicate that the Australian high command was very likely
aware that the no-prisoners unofficial rule was in place. Yet its members
seem to have been relatively unconcerned with the effect that reports of
cannibalism might have on the relatives of dead or missing Australian
soldiers. Instead they took a narrow, purely professional approach and fo-
cused instead on the uses to which such information could be put, espe-
cially in the effort to maintain a fighting spirit among the soldiers in the
latter part of the war.

Aftermath of the Tribunal

Judge Webb was involved in three separate investigations of war crimes
throughout the latter stages of the war. In the first, two (March 1944 and
October 1944) he acted alone, and in the last (1945-1946) he was one of
three judges, participating until 1946 when he went to Tokyo as the presi-
dent of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.55 Each investigation report con-
tains many references to incidents of cannibalism, and there can be no
doubt Webb was well aware that the phenomenon existed. It was proba-
bly because of his influence that this information was not released, de-
spite the fact that the high command wanted to release it for propaganda
purposes. Both in the latter stages of the war and at the Tokyo tribunal, it
is probable that he wished to preserve the privacy of the victims and to
avoid the undesirable psychological effects upon the relatives of the dead.
Furthermore, the Tokyo tribunal of 1946 received an enormous amount of
worldwide press attention, and he may well have wished to avoid the in-
evitable sensationalism that would accompany reports of such testimony
as well as the upheaval that would occur in Australia when the news was
reported. Thus there was no mention of cannibalism in the A Class war
crimes tribunals, the high-profile trials that were receiving the majority of
press attention.
In contrast, the B and C Class trials received scant media attention, ex-
cept in the case of trials of top-level officers. The bulk of media attention
on B and C Class trials was Australian, and it was probably easier to
arrange a form of self-censorship in these situations. Thus Judge Webb
took a different approach to these lower-level tribunals. However, the
132 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

prosecution of many of these cases was difficult because the majority of

those testifying had not witnessed actual murders or acts of cannibal-
ism— they had merely seen the results, the mutilated or partially con-
sumed bodies. In the majority of cases it was difficult even to locate the
alleged perpetrators of the crimes. According to one Japanese source,
there were only three cases of murder and cannibalism, one case of dese-
cration of corpses and cannibalism, and one case of only cannibalism in
the B and C Class trials. Of 15 Japanese soldiers prosecuted in total for
these crimes, 2 were convicted and 13 were acquitted.56
Webb's effort to win convictions for cannibalism and associated
crimes— at least in the B and C Class— failed. The real responsibility of
the civilian and military leaders of Japanese Imperial Headquarters was
never pursued. It was clearly a difficult decision for Webb to make, and
there is little point in debating whether it was the correct decision. How-
ever, his course of action created at least two serious problems, especially
for the Japanese.
The first problem is that this information was never made available to
the public, and so the civilian public never became informed of the exis-
tence and degree of Japanese cannibalism. Yet many Australian soldiers
had seen the evidence of cannibalism in the form of mutilated bodies,
mess tins containing human flesh, and so on, and the existence of the
practice was discussed throughout the armed forces. Inevitably this issue
continued to be discussed after the war, and reports of it filtered back to
the civilian population by word of mouth. However, people were not in-
formed of the reasons cannibalism had occurred or of the responsibility of
the Japanese high command for the abandonment of the New Guinea
garrison. As a result, the Australian public fell easily into a belief that the
Japanese people were animals devoid of a sense of normal morality and
that all acts of cannibalism by Japanese forces had been gratuitous and
sadistic.
The reports of cannibalism dovetailed easily with the picture of the
Japanese developed in Australian propaganda during the war: that the
Japanese were a Jekyll and H yde-type people, capable in a stroke of
switching from refined and civilized activity to savagery and barbarity.57
In fact, such a wartime image of the Japanese is illustrated by a comment
made by General Blarney:

Our enemy is a curious race cross between the human being and the ape.
And like the ape, when he is cornered he knows how to die Fighting
Japs is not like fighting normal human beings. The Jap is a little barbar-
ian We are not dealing with humans as we know them. We are dealing
with something primitive. Our troops have the right view of the Japs. They
regard them as vermin.58
Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism 133

This view has carried over into the Australian image of the Japanese
that has developed in response to the Japanese "econom ic m iracle" in
the postwar period. On the surface, Japan is seen as a society to emulate
and to learn from, especially in its development of a highly successful
business- and technology-oriented society with a consensus-based ap-
proach to industrial relations. Yet underneath there persists a belief that
the Japanese are somehow "different" from other cultures and that they
would have been easily capable of purely gratuitous cannibalism. In this
sense there is little difference between the Jekyll-and-Hyde image of the
war period and the more superficially positive image of the Japanese de-
veloped in the postwar period.
Therefore, it is necessary to dispel this widely held view of the Japanese
and to show other examples of extreme situations in which people have
resorted to or fallen into acts such as cannibalism. One example occurred
in Cambodia in 1974 in Kompong Seila, a small town only 1 kilometer
long and 500 meters wide located 115 kilometers southwest of Phnom
Penh. In May 1974 it was completely surrounded by the Khmer Rouge. At
that time the population of the town included 9,000 locals and 1,000 sol-
diers of the Lon Nol government stationed there. At first, attempts were
made to airlift supplies into the town, but the target area was small and
they frequently fell into enemy hands, so the government curtailed the
airlifts and the town was cut off completely. In the next four months the
10,000 people in the village consumed all available sources of food, in-
cluding dogs, cats, rats, lizards, and birds. By September they were starv-
ing and were suffering from severe protein deficiency. Several hunting
teams of between four and 20 men were formed; these teams went out
nearly every night. Their prey was the Khmer Rouge soldiers laying siege
to the town. They would kill the Khmer Rouge out in the fields and bring
the bodies back to the town for consumption. The body count varied; on
one night they killed more than 30 of the enemy. All parts of the body
were cooked and consumed—flesh, organs, limbs, and brains. The fa-
vored recipe was a soup, as this proved easy to distribute evenly among
the villagers. In this manner they managed to survive for the next five
months.59 Other instances of survival cannibalism in Asia have been doc-
umented by Key Rey Chong in Cannibalism in China, in which he pro-
vided a convincing case that cannibalism has been a widespread practice
in China during times of war or following natural disasters.60
The second problem that Judge Webb's actions created was that the
Japanese people were never informed of the abandonment of the New
Guinea garrison by Imperial Headquarters and the consequent death by
starvation of more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers. Thus there was no op-
portunity at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal to explore the degree to
which Imperial Headquarters was responsible both for these deaths and
134 Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism

for the murder or mutilation of victims of cannibalism. In turn, the inci-

dence of cannibalism was never revealed to the Japanese public as a
whole but instead circulated as a series of rumors, anecdotes, and discon-
nected facts.
The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal is often known as the "tribunal of the
victors." At no stage did it even consider prosecuting Japanese war lead-
ers for war crimes against their own people; indeed, there was no cate-
gory for such charges. In this sense the tribunal was seriously flawed; the
omission of any attempt to follow up the full responsibility for the acts of
cannibalism was one of its greatest failings. Nor was there any structure
within the Japanese legal-military framework that would have made such
prosecution possible. The Japanese court-martial system was directed al-
most exclusively to the prosecution of enlisted men. Although it was for-
mally possible for officers to be court-martialed, this very rarely occurred,
especially if they were career officers who had graduated from the mili-
tary college.61 Thus the Japanese people had neither the evidence nor the
structures within which prosecutions for the responsibility for the starva-
tion of the New Guinea garrison soldiers and their acts of cannibalism
would be feasible.
Those who are guilty of war crimes are often the victims of war crimes
themselves. The case of cannibalism in the South Pacific clearly demon-
strates that some Japanese soldiers were perpetrators of war crimes in
their murder, mutilation, and cannibalism of enemy soldiers, POWs, and
local civilians, but they also were victims of a war crime in that they were
abandoned and starved by their high command. The same might be said
of those Australian soldiers who decided to take revenge for such acts by
instituting a no-prisoners rule. War creates situations in which the moral
framework of peacetime ceases to be of any practical use. In looking at
the acts of individuals caught up in such extreme situations, it is impera-
tive to remember that guilt and innocence, the status of the perpetrator
and that of the victim, are often indissolubly intertwined.
5
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans
and Experiments on POWs

Unit 731 and Biological Warfare Plans

Unit 731 was the secret biological warfare unit set up in the northeast of
China following the Japanese invasion; the headquarters were on the out-
skirts of Harbin in Manchukuo. Unit 731 researched, developed, pro-
duced, and tested biological weapons. As part of its research program, it
experimented on humans and animals. The details of Unit 7 3 ľ s activities
remained largely unknown until the mid-1980s, when a number of docu-
ments concerning its activities came to light. Many of these documents
were produced by U.S. military organizations, such as G-2 (Intelligence)
in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff and the Office of the Judge Ad-
vocate General. Substantial parts of these records were information
seized by the U.S. occupation forces directly from former members of
Unit 731 after the war, but these were never disclosed to the public, for
reasons explained later in this chapter. Japanese historians also discov-
ered some vital original documents prepared by members of Unit 731 that
contained details of types of medical experiments that were conducted.1
In this chapter I analyze Japanese biological warfare plans for the Pa-
cific region and the experiments conducted on Allied POWs who were
held prisoner in the Pacific region. First I will outline the historical back-
ground of Unit 731.
In 1931 Japanese forces invaded the northeast of China, claiming that
Chinese forces had destroyed the railway at Lake Liu near Mukden in
southern Manchuria, although this had actually been done by the Japanese
themselves to provide a pretext for the invasion. This marked the begin-
ning of the so-called Manchurian incident. In 1932 the Japanese govern-
ment annexed the northeast of China and set up the Manchukuo puppet
state. In reality, Manchukuo was a Japanese colony and was governed by
the Kwantung (Kantō) Army, the most powerful of the Japanese forces.
136 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

Ishii Shirō, a prominent physician and a graduate of Kyoto University,

traveled to Europe in 1928 to investigate the situation concerning biologi-
cal weapons. When Ishii returned to Japan in spring 1930, he urged the
military leaders to provide a means for researching biological warfare
and developing the capability to wage it. At that time, various Western
nations were actively involved in research on biological weapons, al-
though the United States had not yet started it. In 1932 Ishii set up the
Epidemic Prevention Laboratory within the m ilitary medical school in
Tokyo with the full support of the military. At the same time, Ishii set up
in Manchukuo a small and secret subgroup, the Tōgō Unit, in the village
of Bei-inho, 100 kilometers southeast of Harbin. Remote Manchukuo was
chosen primarily because researchers wanted to conduct medical experi-
ments on human beings, which were difficult to carry out in Japan. Ex-
periments on humans using Chinese prisoners began as soon as the Tōgō
Unit was established. Thus, research on defensive methods against bio-
logical weapons was conducted mainly in Tokyo, and research on offen-
sive use and actual production of such weapons was carried out in
Manchukuo.2
In 1925 the Geneva Convention prohibited the use of chemical and bac-
teriological weapons. Ishii obviously knew that his plans contravened the
convention, but he also knew how effective biological weapons could be.
The Ishii group sought out all bacteria and viruses that could prove use-
ful as weapons and for which vaccines could be developed so as to pro-
tect the Japanese forces using them.
In 1936 the Tōgō Unit was reorganized and expanded into the Epi-
demic Prevention Department of the Kwantung Army (the Ishii Unit). A
smaller section (the Wakamatsu Unit) concerned with combating animal
diseases was set up by the Kwantung Army at Xinjing. Both units were
set up with the approval of Japanese Imperial Headquarters. In 1938 a
special military zone was declared at Pingfan, 25 kilometers southeast of
Harbin, and the local residents were all evicted. Construction of a huge
facility for the production of biological weapons began. On August 1,
1940, the Ishii Unit was renamed the Epidemic Prevention and Water Pu-
rification Department of the Kwantung Army (a description the very op-
posite of its real aims), although after 1941 it was more commonly re-
ferred to as Manchukuo Unit 731. Unit 731 was composed of four
sections: research, experiments, antiepidemic, and water purification and
production.3
After Unit 731 was set up in Pingfan, many faculty members of the mil-
itary m edical school were sent to Manchukuo and became involved in ex-
perimenting on humans to develop biological weapons. In fact, Ishii
started recruiting young elite medical specialists from various Japanese
universities a few years before the establishment of Unit 731 in 1936. Pro-
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 137

fessors in the medical school of Kyoto University in particular assisted

Ishii with this recruitment. Branch units were set up in Beijing, Nanjing,
Guangdong, and Singapore; these units conducted experiments on weap-
ons developed by Unit 731 and made plans for waging biological warfare
w ithin those regions. At this time Colonel Ishii had 3,000 staff in Unit 731
and as many as 20,000 staff under his command if all members from the
branch units were totaled.4
Various methods were developed for dispersal of biological weapons.
One was to introduce the pathogen to a local water supply or food sup-
ply. Another was to use airborne means, and Unit 731 developed a bomb
specifically designed for dispersing pathogens from aircraft. In 1939,
when Japanese and Russian forces clashed in the battle of Nomohan on
the Mongolian-Manchurian border, Unit 731 introduced the typhoid-
fever pathogen into rivers in the area. In 1940 and 1941 the unit used air-
craft to spread cotton and rice husks contaminated with the black plague
at Changde and Ningbo, in central China. About 100 people died from
the black plague in Ningbo as a result. From the viewpoint of the Japa-
nese, the casualties at Ningbo were insufficient, so they developed a
bomb enabling more efficient dispersal from greater heights (thus making
the process less hazardous for air crews, who would be subject to antiair-
craft fire if required to fly low over an area in order to deliver their pay-
load.) This bomb was not widely used, however, as it was not perfected
until close to the end of the war.5
Unit 731 regarded fleas as the most useful vector for pathogens, espe-
cially the plague. The unit bred massive numbers of fleas and rats for pro-
ducing the plague bacillus and tested whether fleas could survive being
released from bombs dropped from aircraft. The unit also developed
anthrax-bacillus bombs, which proved successful because the bacillus is
heat resistant. Shrapnel from the bombs carrying the bacillus was highly
efficient at infecting those hit b y it. The anthrax bomb was tested many
times on humans at Anta, 146 kilometers from Pingfan.6
The biological weapons developed by Unit 731 were widely used on
the battlefield after September 1940, although they were used to a limited
extent as early as 1939. In Zhejiang province, biological weapons were
used six times between September 18 and October 7 , 1940. A member of
Unit 731, Tamura Yoshio, gave evidence after the war that he was en-
gaged in the mass production of cholera, typhoid, and paratyphoid bacilli
between early July and early November in 1940. He also reported that
about 10 kilograms of typhoid bacillus were transported to Nanjing by
plane in early September 1940. Around the same time 270 kilograms of ty-
phoid, paratyphoid, cholera, and plague bacteria were sent to Nanjing
and central China for use by Japanese battalions on the battlefield. Evi-
dence from Tamura and other sources indicates that typhoid and cholera
138 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

were the major biological weapons used by the Japanese in the period
around 1940. As for the effects, reports suggest that casualties ranged
from several dozen to several hundred on each occasion the weapons
were used.7
After the outbreak of World War II, the Japanese continued to use bio-
logical weapons against the Chinese. They sprayed cholera, typhoid,
plague, and dysentery pathogens in the Jinhua area of Zhejiang province
in June and July 1942. This was done in retaliation for the first U.S. air
raids on mainland Japan, in which Tokyo and Nagoya were bombed.
After these raids, the Allied aircraft landed at airfields in China, and the
Japanese took this as Chinese collaboration with the Allies. In the Jinhua
pathogen attack, however, the Japanese also fell victim to the diseases,
and large numbers of Japanese casualties occurred. According to one
source, over 1,700 Japanese soldiers died.8
It is well known that Unit 731 used large numbers of Chinese people
for experiments. Many Chinese who rebelled against the Japanese occu-
pation were arrested and sent to Pingfan where they became guinea pigs
for Unit 731; there is evidence that some Russian prisoners were also vic-
tims. The prisoners subjected to experiments were called "m aruta" (liter-
ally "logs") by the Japanese. Every year the military police and the
Manchukuo civilian police rounded up approximately 600 maruta to
send to Pingfan. When they were being experimented on, the maruta
were transferred from the main prison to individual cells where they
were infected with particular pathogens by such means as injections or
being given contaminated food or water. They would then be observed
and their symptoms meticulously recorded, including the taking of blood
and tissue samples. After succumbing to the disease, the prisoners were
usually dissected, and their bodies were then cremated within the com-
pound.9
Unit 731 also conducted frostbite experiments on the maruta. Frostbite
was a severe problem for the Japanese forces in Manchukuo, where the
winters are extremely cold. The prisoners were tied up outdoors in tem-
peratures as cold as - 2 0 degrees Celsius and parts of their bodies were
sprayed with salt water in order to induce frostbite. Their arms were hit
with hammers to determine whether they were frostbitten. They were
then immersed in hot water of ranging temperatures in order to determine
how recovery from frostbite could best be facilitated. In extreme cases, the
prisoners' skin and muscles sloughed off in response to this treatment and
the victims died immediately. As a result of the experiments, it was found
that immersing frostbitten limbs in body-temperature water best facili-
tated recovery. It is said that General Ishii and his colleagues were particu-
larly proud of this discovery.10
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 139

Maruta also were subjected to poisonous gas experiments. In one ex-

periment conducted September 7 - 1 0 , 1 9 4 0 , 16 Chinese prisoners were ex-
posed to mustard gas in a simulated battle situation that employed a
macabre form of experimental manipulation. The prisoners were posi-
tioned in various places, such as under a machine-gun cover or inside a
building, and mustard gas shells were fired toward them. Some of the
prisoners had gas masks and others did not, and they were also dressed
in different types of clothes. Every few hours after the firings the condi-
tion of the prisoners was monitored. In another experiment, five prison-
ers were forced to drink a liquid form of mustard gas and their condition
was then monitored for a five-day period.11

Biological Warfare Plans in the Southwest Pacific

It is well known that the Japanese conducted biological and chemical
warfare experiments on Chinese prisoners and used these weapons on
the battlefield in China. What was not well known until the early 1990s is
that the Japanese were also planning to use biological weapons against
Allied forces in the Pacific War. Documents discovered in November 1993
revealed the plans of the chiefs of staff to use biological weapons on vari-
ous occasions.12 The earliest use planned for the Pacific theater was in
March 1942. The plan was to attack U.S. and Philippine forces on Bataan
Peninsula by releasing 1,000 kilograms of plague-infected fleas on each of
10 separate occasions. However, while the weapons were being prepared,
the battle ended in early April with Japanese victory. The plans were
therefore abandoned.13
Plans to use biological weapons against Allied forces continued, how-
ever. In April 1942 six regions were listed as possible targets for biological
weapons: Kunming in the southwest of China; five cities in central and
southern China (Lishui, Yushan, Quxian, Guilin, Nanning); Samoa (in the
event of a Japanese withdrawal); Dutch Harbor, Alaska; major points in
Australia; and Calcutta. It seems these plans were carried out only in cer-
tain cities in China. In November 1943 another plan was formulated to
spread pathogens over Burma, India, Australia, New Guinea, and various
islands throughout the Pacific. It was planned that 27 aircraft would be
mobilized and that every two months 12 aircraft would conduct sorties.14
Although the head of the strategic section of the chiefs of staff, General
Hattori Takushirō, was keen to carry out this plan, there is no concrete ev-
idence that any sorties were ever conducted.
During the battle of Saipan Island between June and July 1944, Japanese
forces planned to attack U.S. forces with biological weapons. The chiefs
of staff had already sent a ship carrying a biological warfare battalion to
140 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

Saipan in April 1944. Part of this battalion stayed on Saipan; the rest of
the battalion was ordered to move on to Truk. However, the Japanese
forces on Saipan were routed by the U.S. forces, and the Japanese were
probably unable to carry out plans for biological warfare there. The other
troops who had left Saipan were lost when their ship was sunk by a
U.S. submarine on the way to Truk.15 It is possible that these troops, had
they reached Truk safely, would have been transferred to submarines
and taken to Midway or Australia in order to conduct biological warfare
operations.
The Allied forces had some knowledge about Japanese plans to use bio-
logical weapons in the Southwest Pacific. The British Bacteriological War-
fare Intelligence Committee periodically conveyed its intelligence on both
Japanese and German biological warfare planning and capability to the
Australian military command.16 One committee report dated September
7 , 1944, contained a summary report on a Japanese bacteriological bomb
based on information taken from captured Japanese documents:17

The reference in two recently captured documents to a Bacillus bomb is of

considerable interest. The bomb is described as the Special Bomb, Mark 7,
one report indicating a weight of 50-70 kg. (?)[sic].

The colour markings given are:

Green (or blue?) nose

Purple body or a band on body near nose
Grey body or tail struts
Purple tail or tail struts

Subsequent information indicates that the bomb is possibly the:

Special Bomb Mark 7, Experimental Type 13, 1 kg.

The probable letter markings being:

An Arsenal (KUSHO) type 13, Experimental, 1 kg. Mark 7.

Comment. The importance of the information lies not so much in the detail
given, but in the fact that the Japanese have, apparently, designed a bomb for
B.W. purposes. If the reports are reliable, and there is no reason to doubt the
Japanese authors had some grounds for writing them, they represent the first
definite indication of the point to which Japanese research on this subject has
proceeded.

This report did not refer to where the Japanese documents were cap-
tured. However, another report issued by the Allied Translator and Inter-
preter Section, Southwest Pacific Area (ATIS-SPA), on July 24, 1944,
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 141

referred to the same Japanese documents and noted that they were cap-
tured on Kwajalein.18 The importance of these documents, as is made
clear in the "com m ent," is that they showed Japan had a fully developed
biological warfare capability It is clear that the British intelligence com-
mittee was deeply concerned about Japan's capability and willingness to
use it. An appendix to the report detailed Japanese biological warfare op-
erations in China in November 1941 in which the plague was used as a
weapon to devastating effect. This was a warning to the Australian com-
mand that it was facing a very serious threat.
In June 1945 another report by the British Bacteriological Warfare Intel-
ligence Committee contained a 12-page summary of Japan's involvement
in biological warfare. At this stage the committee had detailed knowledge
about General Ishii and Unit 731 and their activities in China. This report
also referred to captured documents relating to bacteriological warfare in
the Philippines and the Southwest Pacific:19

(b) Captured and other documents relating to B.W. Offence

Document No. 14798 captured in Hollandis on 25.4.44 is a handwritten note-

book concerning intelligence and fifth column activities in total war, un-
dated, writer and unit not stated. The contents are presumably copied from
a manual.

The collection of intelligence is considered an integral part of fifth column

activities, which are defined. A suitable organization is described and general
rules for súbversive duties outlined. Actual methods for use against the per-
son and against property are listed, and these include the use of pathogenic
bacteria, harmful insects and poisons. (AΉS Enemy Pub. No. 271, 7.1.45)

"Manual on Raiding," Army Engineer School, dated April 1944, is presumed

to have been captured on Saipan. The copy belonged to Kaminari 3200 Butai.
Under "Execution of an Attack, Section I—Infiltration Manoeuvres" occurs
"Reservoirs—Destroy the dam (sluice). Water pipes—try to destroy them at
several places and at points where the damage will not easily be discovered.
Another plan is to release bacteria." (CINCPAC-CINCPOA Trans. No. 15,
17.1.45)

Another document captured in Hollandis on 25.4.44 consists of 27 pages of

handwritten notes, undated, owner and unit unknown, concerning demoli-
tions and sabotage, from which it appears that the Japanese are teaching and
are prepared to use sabotage methods which include bacterial agents.

Thus bacteria are noted for destroying food. Also:

"2. Note: It is important that the enemy does not find out your scheme.

(a) Arson: Wind, light. Spontaneous combustion scheme.

142 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

(b) Bacteria: In fish and vegetable markets and kitchens use a contagious
disease which has been prevalent.

Warehouses:
2. Contaminate food with bacteria.

Destruction of watersheds:
2. Spread bacteria around the watershed.

Cutting off water supply:

2. Bacteria is futile because of chlorine disinfection."
(ATIS Rep. N o.249,20.12.44)

A bound mimeographed file entitled "NI Raiding Diversionary Tactics"

classified "secret" was captured at Morotai on 24.9.44. It was issued by E
33rd Force, dated 1944, and belonged to 2nd Lt. Horiuchi, NI Force. This
document gives details of the organization, functions and equipment of the
"Raiding Diversionary Unit." It contains the following: "Great results can be
obtained by contaminating their food and drink in kitchen by bacterial strat-
egy." (AG 381, 6.10.44)

Document concerning the organization, equipment and duties of a "Five

Man Raiding Party," captured in the Lungling region probably in early Sep-
tember 1944. The equipment listed appears to be normal until one arrives at
that separately listed under Infiltration Equipment, the commander of the
party being responsible for carrying the following:
"Luminous compass
Flashlight (with coloured lenses)
Watch
Climbing irons
Handflags
Special sword-stick
Luminous paint
Rope—30 metres
Bacteria—if necessary"
(JICA SN 9502,21.11.44)

A photostat of the original document has been checked and the words "if
necessary bacteria" are unquestionably present.

"Extract of KAKI Operation Order. . . containing information collecting plan

for Northern Leyte Defence Unit. . . thirteen pages (fully translated by XXΓV
CAE, Translation IIAE 194, Item 134)." "Special characteristics of terrain
from the standpoint of bacillus tactics. Field sanitation, and sanitation in
regard to animals used by the Army." (AG 38 5, 12.12.44)
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 143

These two groups of words are not sentences and have no meaning unless
they are assumed to be headings of sections. In the latter event the details of
the sections should make clear the meaning of the headings, but they are not
given.

27 loose handwritten sheets containing notes on counter-intelligence,

espionage and fifth column activity, undated, owner and unit not stated.
Captured at Mongado, Luzon. The following occurs in the document:

"C Mass Fifth Column Work

1. Poison—Community wells, springs.

2. Bacteria:
a. Transport of uncultured bacteria.
b. Culture of bacteria.
c. Dissemination by airplane.
d. Will be disseminated by avoiding sunlight—powdered form.
e. Wells, rivers, springs, market goods.
f. Prevent their theft.
g. Prevent transport of uncultured bacteria.
h. If not kept in the house during daylight, they are ineffective and they
should be inspected from this standpoint."
(AΉS-SWPA Trans. No. 7 5 , 27.2.45)

For details of captured documents relating to the Mark 7 Bacillus Bomb see
below under 3 (a). Other captured documents containing accusations against
the Allies of the use of B.W. are considered below under 4 (b).

Comment: These documents indicate that the Japanese are teaching and
organizing sabotage by B.W. methods. Emphasis is laid on individual
dissemination of bacteria for contaminating foodstuffs etc.

This document did not contain specifics about the process of making
culture media, but another document captured in Butibum village on De-
cember 3, 1943, described the process in minute detail. This document
was translated by ATIS and appeared in its report in March 1944.20 Ac-
cording to this report, the document was prepared by Sasaki Section of
Ko Force in June 1941. Unit 1855 of Ko Force was known as the Ήantan
Central Epidemic Prevention Institute and was located in Beijing.21 Sasaki
Section was most probably Unit 1855 of Ko Force. The document gave de-
tails of how to culture cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and other pathogens
used in biological warfare. The fact that it was in the possession of Japa-
nese forces in the Southwest Pacific suggests that they were at least pre-
pared to use biological weapons.
144 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

The documents compiled by British intelligence do not provide con-

crete evidence that the Japanese actually used biological weapons in the
Pacific but do clearly show that Japanese forces there had received train-
ing in the use of these weapons. It is also important to note that docu-
ments concerning biological warfare were captured throughout the vast
area of the Pacific theater.
Another interesting document providing evidence of Japanese biologi-
cal warfare plans is the memoirs of Misaki Yōichi.22 Major Misaki was
commander of the Field Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification De-
partment of the 8th Division. According to his resume, he graduated from
the medical school of Osaka Imperial University in 1934. In August 1936
he began a year at the military medical school, where he trained as a mili-
tary surgeon. Between 1937 and 1940 he served in China and Korea. He re-
turned to the military medical school in August 1940 and became involved
in research on black fever in the Epidemic Prevention Laboratory under
the command of Ishii. The next August Misaki went to Harbin where he
worked directly under Ishii learning the tactics of biological warfare.
Misaki did not provide any details in his memoirs about the tactics he
learned from Ishii and only touched on them in his resumé. The memoirs
begin with the landing of his division on Luzon in the Philippines in Sep-
tember 1944. His major task there, he claimed, was the prevention of
malaria among the Japanese forces, but he briefly mentioned that he was
involved in what he called the "cholera strategy" late in 1944. The pro-
posal was to contaminate with cholera one of the islands immediately be-
fore Japanese withdrawal in the event of defeat in the Philippines. There
is no evidence that the strategy was ever implemented.
However, the Allies were certainly aware of the plan. Documents cap-
tured on Luzon in March 1945 concerning the cholera strategy were trans-
lated and circulated as "ATIS Enemy Publication No. 381." The following
is an excerpt:23

b. Methods of attack
(1) Spraying bacterial solutions by airplane
(2) Spraying powdered bacteria
(3) Dropping ampoules containing bacteria
(4) Dropping infected insects, animals, animal tissues
(5) Dropping bombs filled with bacteria
(6) Firing shells and bullets containing pathogenic organisms
(7) Leaving pathogenic organisms behind when retreating
(8) Spreading bacteria by agents

It is probable that there were medical men like Misaki, trained in bio-
logical warfare by Ishii, stationed throughout the Pacific (see Map 5.1).
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 145

Like Misaki, they may well have been involved in the detailed planning
of specific biological warfare operations. A number of Japanese doctors
became prisoners of the Allies and admitted under interrogation the
existence of Unit 731 and the role of the medical schools of Japanese uni-
versities in collaborating with it.24

POWs in Rαbαul and Medical Experiments

There is strong evidence that medical experiments were also carried out
on prisoners of war in the Southwest Pacific. The United States began in-
vestigating this possibility in April 1947, initially targeting the Japanese
naval hospitals of the 4th Fleet on Truk and the 8th Fleet on Rabaul.25 In
the course of the investigation it was found that U.S., Australian, and
New Zealand POWs were subjected to experiments by Captain Hirano
Einosuke, head of the Malaria Prevention Section of the 24th Field Epi-
demic Prevention and Water Purification Department stationed on Ra-
baul. The documents arising from this investigation, which began in
April 1948, are now available, as are the memoirs of a number of sur-
vivors of H irano's experiments. Before I discuss the experiments, I sketch
briefly some wartime events in Rabaul to explain how Allied troops fell
into Japanese hands.
Rabaul had two airfields and a well-located port (see Map 5.2). At the
outbreak of the war it was defended by 500 Australian troops in the city
itself and another 1,000 troops stationed in the vicinity. The Japanese at-
tack on Rabaul began on January 4, 1942, with air raids. On January 22
ground forces landed at Simpson Bay near Rabaul without facing a major
counterattack and the next day captured the city and the nearby airfield.
Of the 1,500 Australian troops, 400 retreated immediately along both the
east and west coasts of New Britain to New Guinea. Most of the remain-
ing 1,100 were captured by the Japanese. On June 22, 1,050 Australian
POWs, most of them members of the Australian 2/22 Battalion, were
loaded onto the Montevideo Maru together with 200 civilians, mostly Aus-
tralians. On July 1 while sailing northward, perhaps to Japan or Hainan,
the Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine; there were no
survivors. Also in early July, 60 Australian officers, 6 Australian military
nurses, and 13 Australian women civilians were transported to Japan by a
freighter, the Naruto Maru. No POWs remained in Rabaul by early July
1942.26
However, Rabaul steadily gained a sizable population of POWs, as all
Allied men captured either on New Britain or in eastern New Guinea
were sent to Rabaul for interrogation and incarceration. M ost of the
POWs were pilots whose planes had been shot down. They were held ei-
ther by the 6th Field Kempeitai (military police force) of the 8th Army or
 146

Map 5.1 Distribution o f the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department (or Water
Purification Unit—W.P.U.). Source: Sketch map contained in report prepared by Lieutenant
Colonel Muπay Sanders, U.S. Army Science and Technical Advisory Section; U.S. National
Archives Collection, RG112/2/330.
147
 148 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

M ap 5.2 Loca tio n o f T u n n e l H i l l P O W cflm p. Source: Sketch map co ntained in in te rro g a tio n o f
M a jo r M a ts u d a S e iji ; A u s tra lia n N a tio n a l A rc h iv e s C o lle ctio n : M P 7 4 2 / l/3 3 6 /1 /1 955.

the 81st Naval Garrison Unit of the 8th Fleet. Around 20 POWs were held
by the 81st, but, for reasons that will be explained, none of them survived
to the end of the war.
There were 69 POWs held by the Kempeitai, 10 of whom were trans-
ported to Japan at various points in time.27 The 59 POWs who remained
in the hands of the Kempeitai in Rabaul were never used as forced labor,
unlike those at Sandakan or on the Burma-Thailand railway, and, after
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 149

their initial interrogations at least, were not subjected to the brutality ex-
perienced by many POWs held in other Japanese POW camps. However,
all were definitely neglected, and many died from lack of proper food or
medical treatment. Others died not merely from neglect but from the ex-
periments carried out on them by Hirano. Only 8 of the 59 survived until
the end of the war.
Here it is appropriate to examine the testimony of the 8 survivors. The
following is an extract from the testimony of an American pilot, Second
Lieutenant Jose Holquin, who was captured by the Japanese in July
1943.28

On the 2nd of March 1944, the Japanese guards loaded us into a truck and
we departed from the area of 6th Field Kempeitai Headquarters Prisoner of
War Camp, Rabaul, New Britain. The truck arrived at Tunnel Hill Prisoner
of War Camp Cave, Rabaul New Britain, about 19:15 hours on the 2nd of
March 1944. We unloaded, the blind-folds were removed and we were
marched to the Tunnel Hill Prisoner of War Camp Cave, about a distance of
two hundred yards, where we answered roll call and were then ordered into
the Tunnel Hill Cave while still handcuffed. We remained in this confine-
ment for approximately two weeks. We were first fed after arrival about
09:30 hours on the 3rd of March 1944. We were each provided with a ball of
rice about the size of a tennis ball and a can of water which was shared by
three men. The dimensions of the cave prison were about eight feet high,
thirty feet long and five and one-half feet wide. The conditions under which
we were confined would best be described as like being packed like sardines
in a tin can.

According to another American POW, First Lieutenant James McMur-

ria, about 60 POWs were confined in the cave, which was barred with a
lattice of planks. Because there was insufficient space for all of the men to
lie down at once, they had to take turns to sleep. According to McMurria,
the prisoners were not given food and water for three days.29 This con-
flicts with Holquin's account, but whatever the details, there is no doubt
that the prisoners were badly treated. They were relocated from the
prison in Rabaul to the cave at a time when Rabaul was subject to heavy
aerial bombardment; under interrogation after the war, Kempeitai mem-
bers claimed the prisoners were confined in the cave to protect them from
the air raids. (In fact, the Japanese moved their headquarters at that time,
the Army and Kempeitai to Tunnel Hill and the 8th Fleet to Mount
Matupi.) They also claimed that the buildings to which the POWs were
later relocated were under construction at the time.30
On March 3 , 1944, at 8:00 p . m ., several Kempeitai guards arrived at the
cave and called out about 20 POWs. These POWs were handcuffed and
150 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

blindfolded, then taken away. On the following day another 20 POWs

were taken away in the same manner. Holquin gave the following testi-
mony:31

I do not know as to where these two groups of prisoners were bound nor do
I know as to what became of them. However, shortly after each group was
removed from the Tunnel Hill Prisoner of War Cave, I heard several shots
and, to the best of my knowledge, the shots sounded like or [were] best de-
scribed as rifle fire. The reason for this is unknown to me. Each group was
handcuffed and blindfolded when they departed I never saw any of the
prisoners who departed again.

Holquin's testimony and reports by other survivors suggest that these

40 men were massacred by the Kempeitai. Major Kikuchi Satoru, com-
mander of the 6th Field Kempeitai, Lieutenant Matsuda Saiji, who had di-
rect charge of the POWs, and many other Kempeitai members were inter-
rogated after the war and gave a very different account of the fate of these
40 men. Their accounts will be discussed later.

The Diet Experiment on POWs

About 20 men were left in the cave until March 15, when they were trans-
ferred to a hut not far from the cave. Because of malnutrition and disease,
only 13 were alive by early October.32 Not long after, the Japanese com-
menced a diet experiment on the POWs. The experiment seems to have
been a collaborative effort conducted by Lieutenant Fushida of the Kem-
peitai but with some involvement from Captain Hirano of the Epidemic
Prevention and Water Purification Department. According to an Aus-
tralian POW, John Murphy:33

In September 1944, or the beginning of October of that year the Japanese

began to feed us on a diet of boiled cassava root— The medical officer with
the detachment guarding us at that time was Lieutenant (later Captain)
Fushita (HQ 6th M.F.P.U.). At the time in question he came to our prison
with weight scales and two medical orderlies. Each Allied prisoner was
weighed naked and his weight recorded in a book---- The doctor then told
us he was going to feed us entirely on cassava root—660 grams peeled per
meal. He said it would be better for our health as we were not used to rice.
We received this ration for 30 days—the only addition being about 1 /4
pint of thin, bodiless soup or vegetable water and 1 /2 pint of water per
meal. There were no other items such as meat, fish, salt, vegetables or fruit.
At the end of thirty days, two had died and the rest were weighed again
and their weights recorded. A new ration scale was commenced—660 grams
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 151

weight unpeeled. This was continued for 30 days under the same conditions
and we were again weighed At the conclusion of the cassava course our
rations resumed the old starvation standard—less than 1 /2 lb cooked rice
per day with a pint of soup; or, for some days, 1 small sweet potato or 1 /2
coconut per meal: Nine survivors.

In mid-1944 the Japanese forces in Rabaul were suffering from an acute

shortage of supplies because of the Allied bombings, and the Japanese
high command introduced a policy of "self-sustainment." The POWs
were evidently used to investigate the likely effects on the Japanese
troops of having to adopt such a diet. Of course, the POWs were in poor
shape at this time because of long-term malnutrition and lack of medical
care, so it is scarcely surprising that four of them died during the experi-
ment. According to the testimony of other surviving POWs, Hirano was
disappointed to find that the POWs did not gain any weight during the
cassava experiment.34
Murphy also mentioned another experiment. One day, for no apparent
reason, the prisoners were given what they were told was a turtle liver.
This came at a time when the prisoners had not received meat rations for
a long time. Murphy wondered whether the liver came not from a turtle
but from one of the Indian laborers, who were virtually prisoners of the
Japanese.35 In Rabaul, as in New Guinea, many Indians were enslaved by
the Japanese forces.

The Malaria Immunization Experiment

The nine remaining POWs faced another experiment in July 1945. Around
April 15, 1945, Dr. Hirano went to the Tunnel Hill camp and took blood
samples from them. He returned in July to conduct an experiment on
malaria. The following is an extract of Jose Holquin's testimony concern-
ing this experiment:36

On or about 19 July 1945, he came back with a Japanese Sergeant that spoke
some English. One of the guards came and told five of us that we were to re-
port to a hill across the road from that particular prison (Tunnel Hill Road).
We were escorted one by one to this hill where there were shacks similar to
those constructed by the natives of Rabaul. These buildings were permanent
for that particular area and Doctor HIRANO used these particular buildings
for his experimental injections. Ensign ATKISS and Gunners Mate LANI-
GAN; Lieutenant MASON and Lieutenant McMURRIA, each said later that
they were given some kind of an injection by HIRANO which they protested
and to the best of my knowledge was without their consent. Of the five men
who reported to Doctor HIRANO, I was the last to see him. Doctor HIRANO
152 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

stated that when he had made a previous visit in April 1945, that the prison-
ers of war were all tested for malaria and that he had found that five of the
prisoners of war did not have malaria in their blood, and contended that
there was such a thing as immunity against malaria contrary to the findings
of the French [sic] Biologist Koch. HIRANO said that before he could prove
that there is such a thing as immunity against malaria, he would have to ex-
pose me as well as the forenamed who were subjected to the malaria experi-
ment. He said that he had five Japanese soldiers who were accompanying
him and said to have had malaria in advance degrees of severity and that he
was going to inject some of their blood into me to see what would happen. I
told him that I had been interned as a prisoner of war for about two years
and had never had malaria, and I protested to such an experiment. The
Sergeant who was assisting Captain HIRANO then tied my arm and Captain
HIRANO used a needle containing approximately ten cc's of blood which
was obtained from one of the Japanese soldiers. Two days went by and on or
about 21 July 1945, the five men who had been subjected to this experiment
began to feel painful headaches and severe shivers, although not too severe
at first. Lieutenant McMURRIA and I did not have the same type of case as
the other three men. They suffered day after day with each day aggravating
the attacks. Lieutenant McMURRIA's attacks of malaria and mine would last
for approximately six hours and then we would get over it. The other three
men had constant fever and they had no appetite. The men kept getting
weaker and they got worse. During this time the Sergeant who had assisted
Captain HIRANO would take temperatures, pulses and samples of blood
readings which he recorded in a book. Nothing was done towards treating
the men who were subjected to the tests and it was apparent that more
interest was in the outcome or in the final results of the test. At about 10:00
o'clock on the night of 29 July 1945, Gunners Mate LANIGAN died and
about 3:00 o'clock in the morning on 30 July 1945, Ensign ATKISS died. No
medical assistance or aid was provided by the Japanese authorities to pre-
vent the death of these two men. Lieutenant MASON suffered considerably
and almost died during this period.

Not long after this experiment, Hirano commenced another one using
two POWs he had identified through blood tests as malaria carriers. The
two men were Captain John Murphy and First Class Airman Palmer
of the U.S. Army Air Force. The following is an extract from Murphy's
testimony:37

Next Palmer and I were taken up on two occasions each. Each occasion was
separated by a week's interval and on each occasion we were injected in the
gluteal muscles with 10 c.c's of a pale amber fluid taken from a bottle. Dr.
HIRANO told us that we had Malaria and the serum he injected into us was
an attempt to purge it from our blood and make us immune. Dr. HIRANO
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 153

left then but the medical orderly remained still taking pulse rates, tempera-
tures and blood slides.

Hirano reported under interrogation that he made serum from the blood
of local people who were apparently immune from malaria.38 Luckily,
neither Murphy nor Palmer developed any illness as a result of being in-
jected with the serum.
Corporal Nishikawa Masao, the man the prisoners referred to as Hi-
rano's orderly, was also interrogated. Here is his account of the earlier
experiment:39

He did not give me any specific instructions before he left, except to inspect
daily the health of the prisoners of war. About 2 days later the 5 or 6 Ameri-
can prisoners of war began to show signs of having contracted malaria. By
the following day 2 of them had become particularly sick from malaria they
had contracted. I recall that one of them was an officer by the name of Lani-
gan and the other was a non-commissioned officer whose name I now can-
not remember. It was on this particular day that Captain HIRANO arrived at
the Military Police detachment; however, he did not go and inspect any of
the prisoners of war. As soon as he arrived I reported to him the fact that
some of the prisoners of war were suffering from malaria, and that 2 of them
were suffering from a more serious attack than the others. Captain HIRANO
replied by saying that I was on no account to give any of the prisoners suf-
fering from malaria any medical treatment. As this was an order I simply
said "Is that so." Captain HIRANO gave no specific instructions about the 2
aforementioned prisoners of war, and after he had checked my records he
immediately returned by truck to 67 Line of Communications Hospital.

Two days later the condition of the two ill POWs worsened. Nishikawa
went to the hospital to receive Hirano's instructions. Hirano was absent
at the time, so Nishikawa left a message with one of Hirano's staff that
two of the POWs were seriously ill. No instructions came from Hirano,
who finally turned up at the camp only after the two POWs had died. Hi-
rano also showed no interest in the surviving POWs apart from the data
obtained from them.40
For both the Japanese and the Allies, malaria was a severe problem in
the South Pacific battle zones. In January 1947, AΉS published a research
report that included an analysis of the problems the Japanese faced with
malaria. According to this report, the number of Japanese casualties from
malaria in the Buna campaign (in eastern New Guinea) was estimated to
be 16 times the casualties from combat. In Lae 80 percent of the 51st Divi-
sion were suffering from a tropical disease, in most cases malaria. In the
Admiralty Islands 82 percent of the sick soldiers were suffering from
malaria, and a similar figure obtained in western New Britain. In the
154 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

Philippines an estimated 50-60 percent of all Japanese troops were suffer-

ing from malaria.41
The situation was probably similar in Rabaul. The malaria prevention
unit in Rabaul was under the command of the 8th Army; Hirano was in
charge of the unit. After the end of 1943, when Allied bombing cut off
supplies to Rabaul, the stocks of antimalarial medicine gradually dimin-
ished. By early 1945 there was an urgent need for an alternative to anti-
malarial drugs, and thus in March the 8th Army set up the Malaria Im-
munization and Treatment Research Squad and appointed Hirano as its
head. Dr. Fushida of the 6th Field Kempeitai also joined the squad. Ac-
cording to Hirano, Japanese patients at the 67th Communications Hospi-
tal were used for the squad's research.42
From Hirano's interrogation the following facts are clear concerning
what he called the "treatment" of POWs. Hirano noticed that the natives,
called Kanaka, had a very low incidence of malaria, despite the fact that
the region was infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes. He presumed
these people were immune to the disease. He selected 15 Kanaka individ-
uals who had never had malaria and made serum from their blood. This
serum was injected into Japanese malaria patients at the 67th Communi-
cations Hospital. The effect of the serum, if any, was very weak, so Hirano
was forced to rely on the ever diminishing stocks of antimalarial drugs to
treat these patients.43 Hirano probably remained interested in the possible
value of serum from immune local people as a treatment and, perhaps in
consultation with Fushida, decided to experiment on the prisoners.
Murphy and Palmer were probably selected for this particular purpose
because they were already malaria carriers. In the case of the other five,
who were injected with whole blood from five infected Japanese soldiers
who had received the serum treatment, Hirano was evidently interested
in whether the serum had any impact on the infectiousness of the
pathogen. Hirano instructed Nishikawa not to give any of the prisoners
antimalarial drugs in order to avoid any confounding variables in the
experiments.
Murphy testified that Hirano had told him the serum was made from
sheep blood and was safe to use.44 Hirano denied this during interroga-
tion, although he claimed he indeed had sheep for experimental use at
department headquarters. Incidentally, Hirano himself became ill with
malaria; however, he treated himself with conventional antimalarial
drugs rather than the immunization he claimed to have developed.45

Suspected Massacre of POWs and Experiments with Poison

In this section I discuss the fate of the 40 POWs who were removed from
the cave in early March 1944. As indicated previously, the accounts of sur-
vivors suggest that these 40 men were massacred. The War Crimes Sec-
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 155

tion of the Australian military thoroughly and repeatedly interrogated

members of the Kempeitai who may have been responsible, but all de-
nied that any such massacre had taken place.
The men interrogated claimed that 31, not 40, POWs were removed
from Tunnel Hill and that they were removed to alleviate the extremely
crowded conditions in the cave. The 8th Army had supposedly decided to
transport the men to Watom Island, not far from Tunnel Hill, which the
Allies would be unlikely to bomb. According to the accounts of Kem-
peitai members, the POWs were held in a hut on the Tanoura coast to
await the arrival of a boat to ferry them across to Watom. The Kempeitai
explained that between 8 and 9 o'clock on the morning of March 5, they
heard an air-raid siren from the east and consequently put all of the pris-
oners in an air-raid shelter and hid themselves in another air-raid shelter
some 30 meters away. The Kempeitai claimed that the prisoners' shelter
was directly hit by two bombs and completely destroyed and that all but
five POWs were killed, whereas their own was damaged but there were
no casualties. It was claimed that the five POWs, who were all seriously
injured, were returned to Tunnel Hill and treated by Fushida in one of the
air-raid shelters but that all five died within 24 hours. Supposedly, all of
the dead were cremated and their ashes were buried under a tree by the
coast. After the Japanese surrender, the Australian forces were presented
with six boxes of ashes, which the Japanese claimed were the remains of
these men.46
The War Crimes Section of the Australian military found the Kempeitai
accounts to be suspect. All of them bore a marked similarity, which sug-
gested they had been rehearsed. The officer in charge at Watom Island de-
nied that he had received any orders concerning the transportation of
PÖWs and also claimed he heard nothing about POWs being killed by Al-
lied bombing. Most suspect, however, was the claim about cremating the
POWs and handing over the ashes after surrender. According to the War
Crimes Section, the Japanese did not normally bother to recover the bod-
ies of POWs; had the POWs been killed by direct hits to their air-raid shel-
ter, the Japanese would most likely have disposed of their remains simply
by filling it in.47
The commander of the 6th Field Kempeitai, Kikuchi Satoru, went to 8th
Army Headquarters before the alleged bombing and discussed the trans-
fer of the POWs with Lieutenant General Katō Rimpei. At the interroga-
tion after the war, Kikuchi claimed that he had received an order to
remove all POWs to Watom Island and had conveyed this order to his ju-
nior, Wakabayashi Zenichi, to carry out the transfer. However, the com-
mander of the 8th Army, General Imamura Hitoshi, testified that al-
though a plan to remove POWs from Rabaul to Watom Island was
proposed, he did not issue the order because of the lack of shipping.48
156 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

Strangely, according to the accounts of the surviving POWs, the healthiest

POWs were left in the cave and the 40 men who were removed were all
sick and weak. It was also odd that the POWs should have been removed
in two groups and at night rather than in daylight hours.
In order to sort out the conflicting accounts and to confirm the probable
falsehood of the suspect ones, the War Crimes Section resorted to using a
lie detector. However, the apparatus had no effect on the stories of the
Kempeitai members; they stuck resolutely to their previous accounts.49 It
is now too late to find out the truth; however, the Kempeitai members,
being well versed in the methods of interrogation and torture themselves,
might be expected to stand up fairly well under interrogation and be able
to persist with a false story.
In the course of the investigation, the War Crimes Section came across a
local resident, Toniuea, who claimed to have witnessed the massacre of
POWs at a place called Matupi, southeast of Rabaul. Toniuea claimed that
40 men were anesthetized, then buried alive at Matupi.50 Initially it was
thought that this account might provide the answer to the fate of some or
all of the POWs who had been removed from Tunnel Hill. The remains of
24 men were dug up at the site where the massacre was alleged to have
occurred. It was determined that the Matupi area had been guarded by
the 81st Naval Garrison Unit and not by the 8th Army or Kempeitai. The
War Crimes Section interrogated the former commander of the unit, Cap-
tain Kiyama Tatsuo, as well as other junior members of it. According to
their statements, there had been at least three executions of POWs during
the war: in the latter half of 1942, in June 1943, and at the end of 1943.
There had also been executions of Australian, Swiss, and Finnish civilians
in April 1944. After this time there were no longer any Allied men or civil-
ians in the hands of the Navy in Rabaul. Kiyama admitted that he had
ordered these executions. He claimed the executed men were either bayo-
neted or decapitated. Kiyama initially claimed that the orders for the exe-
cutions had come from the intelligence officer of Southeast Fleet Head-
quarters. The Australian War Crimes Section determined that this claim
was a lie and that the orders had in fact come from Kiyama himself with-
out any communications with his superiors. When this came to light,
Kiyama committed suicide.51
Although Toniuea's testimony that 40 men were executed proved in-
correct, his claim that POWs were anesthetized and buried did have some
basis in fact. The War Crimes Section obtained information from Kiya-
ma's juniors in the 81st Naval Garrison Unit. According to Kubo Saichirō,
at the end of 1943, some men were ordered to dig two large holes. About
10 POWs were brought to the place by truck and divided into two
groups. POWs in one group were decapitated by an officer, and the others
were given lethal injections.52 The following is the testimony of another of
Kiyama's juniors, Hosaka Katsumi:53
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 157

The executions were carried out by bringing one prisoner at a time to the
front of the hole, making him lie flat on his back, opening his shirt and giv-
ing him an injection in the arm.
As I remember, there were three or four medical officers present at the ex-
ecutions. One would apply the injection while another observed the pris-
oner's reaction with watch in hand.
I am not familiar with medical matters, but I think most of them took
about 15 minutes to die. I remember that one survived as long as 25 minutes.
When one PW was dead, he was dropped into the hole and the next man
was given an injection. This process was repeated until the executions were
completed. By the time the executions by injection were completed, the de-
capitations had already been finished.
I do not know anything about the nationalities, ranks or names of the pris-
oners/ nor do I know the names of the medical officers, who, I think, were
lieutenant commanders, or thereabouts.

It seems that these POWs were injected with various poisons in order
to test their effectiveness. Neither Kubo nor Hosaka knew who the doc-
tors were or where they had come from. If the doctors had been from the
8th Fleet Naval Hospital, Kubo and Hosaka should have recognized
them. The War Crimes Section interrogated hospital staff but was unable
to obtain any information concerning these executions. Thus, it seems a
strong possibility that the doctors were from the 24th Field Epidemic Pre-
vention and Water Purification Department and that they had arranged
with Kiyama to use POWs for experiments. Kiyama was not interrogated
about the matter before he committed suicide, and, strangely, the War
Crimes Section apparently did not investigate further.

Australian Responses to Experiments on POWs

Australian POWs were used for another set of medical experiments, the
scale of which seems to have been much larger than was the case at
Rabaul. These experiments were carried out on a group of POWs at
Ambon camp on Ambon Island in the Banda Sea, to the west of what is
now Irian Jaya. Lieutenant John van Nooten of the Australian forces gave
evidence about these experiments in his testimony to the Tokyo War
Crimes Tribunal.
According to van Nooten, the experiment began in April 1945. Sixty pa-
tients from approximately 70 in the POW hospital were selected for the
experiment. Between 30 and 40 other relatively healthy POWs were also
selected. The men were divided into nine groups, with all members of
each group being in similar physical condition (for instance, all members
of one group were suffering from beriberi). The men were periodically
given injections of an unknown substance over the course of a month.
158 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

Initially the Japanese told van Nooten that the injections were of vitamin
B1and casein. However, van Nooten was familiar with the smell of vita-
min B1 and was sure that the injections were something else. A few days
later van Nooten was told that the injections were inoculation against ty-
phoid and paratyphoid.54
During this period a diet experiment was also conducted. Some groups
were given 150 grams of sweet potato each day in addition to their nor-
mal rations, and some were given 200 grams of sago. Most of the POWs
who were being used in the experiment and were not in the camp hospi-
tal continued to do hard labor, such as road work and trench digging. In
the course of the one-month experiment, 50 POWs succumbed to malnu-
trition and tropical disease.55 The 50 were not direct casualties of the ex-
periment because casualties were also high before and after it, but two
survivors, George Williamson and Jack Pannaotie, said they felt much
weaker after being given these injections and sometimes were unable to
walk.56 This suggests that the experiments would have made a significant
contribution to the deaths of the 50 men who died during its course.
Presumably this experiment was intended to provide information rele-
vant to protecting the lives of Japanese troops on the battlefield when food
supplies were cut off and they were dependent on local supplies. Both the
Rabaul and Ambon experiments were conducted in 1945 when the Japan-
ese were facing imminent defeat and must have known it. Why conduct
these experiments, which clearly contravened the Geneva Convention, in
such circumstances? Perhaps, though, that very desperation led the Japan-
ese to take such action, in the belief that it could help them to survive and
delay defeat. In order to help their own men, the Japanese military doctors
did not hesitate to end the lives of the POWs they experimented on.
Although the Ambon experiment came to light at the Tokyo War
Crimes Tribunal, the Rabaul experiments did not. Even in the Ambon
case, however, there does not seem to have been a thorough investigation
by the War Crimes Section of the Australian military in order to deter-
mine what happened and who was responsible.
The largest-scale experiment on POWs was carried out on 1,485 U.S.,
British, Australian, and New Zealand POWs in Mukden, Manchuria. Ac-
cording to the diary of a British officer, Robert Peaty, which he secretly
kept in the prison camp, between January 1943 and March 1945, the
prisoners were given a series of injections, which they were told were
typhoid-paratyphoid, cholera, and dysentery inoculations. The men were
periodically visited by groups of doctors who checked their health. To-
ward the end of the war the number of injections the prisoners were
given increased.57
According to one former member of Unit 731, the prisoners were made
to drink liquids infected with various pathogens. Autopsies were later
carried out on those men who succumbed to disease. The same man
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 159

claimed that there was a balloon-bomb factory in Mukden that used

cholera and typhoid.58 There seems little doubt that the POWs at Mukden
were used by Unit 731 to test the virulence of pathogens for use in biolog-
ical weapons.
An Australian doctor who was held at Mukden, B.J. Brennan, claimed
that at one stage 150 American POWs were suddenly removed from the
camp, never to return. He was unable to find out any information about
their fate but suspected these men were used for experiments conducted
by Unit 731.59 Once again, there apparently was no detailed investigation
of the Mukden experiments.
After Japan surrendered, MacArthur sent the first occupation forces to
Yokohama one week before he arrived. The first contingent included a
number of intelligence officers, among them Murray Sanders, who was as-
signed the task of finding out as much as possible about the activities of
Unit 731. Sanders used Lieutenant Colonel Naitō Ryōichi, a hematology
specialist who had been close to Ishii, as an informant. Sanders asked
Naitō whether any POWs had been used by Unit 731 for experiments;
Naitō insisted that had never occurred. Ishii and other senior staff of Unit
731 approached Sanders through Naitō and proposed that they would
share all of their knowledge of biological warfare in return for immunity
from prosecution for war crimes. Sanders conveyed the proposed arrange-
ment to MacArthur, who instantly agreed to it. Soon after that deal was
made, Sanders was told by an unknown Japanese informant that Unit 731
had definitely used POWs in human experiments on bacteriological
bombs. Sanders conveyed this information to MacArthur, who did not re-
pudiate the deal with Ishii and his co-workers but instead ordered that
there should be no investigations into experiments carried out on POWs.60
The Soviet Union was also aware of the activities of Unit 731 and was
able to obtain information from Japanese POWs captured by the Red
Army in Manchuria. Soviet authorities approached the U.S. War Crimes
Section and proposed a joint investigation into Unit 731. U.S. authorities
rejected the request, claiming it was unnecessary, and also rejected Soviet
requests to prosecute Ishii and members of his staff at the Tokyo War
Crimes Tribunal. Soviet officials reported to the United States in January
1947 that many Japanese POWs they had interrogated admitted that Al-
lied and Chinese POWs were used as guinea pigs in experiments on bio-
logical weapons. It must have become apparent at this time that the scale
of these experiments was much greater than U.S. investigators had previ-
ously supposed. Consequently, Ishii and many of his colleagues were in-
terrogated again but without resulting prosecutions. The United States
apparently made further demands for information on biological warfare.
None of this information was ever divulged to the other Allied powers;
instead the U.S. government maintained a monopoly over the knowledge
it had obtained.61
160 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

In April 1947 the United States suddenly began an investigation into

experiments on POWs in the South Pacific. This was doubtless prompted
by the information obtained from the Soviet Union about experiments in
Manchuria. It is very odd that the War Crimes Section of the Australian
military made no attempt to apprehend those responsible for experi-
ments on POWs, with the notable exception of Hirano, despite having
ample evidence of the gravity of the crimes committed in Rabaul and
Ambon. Ultimately no one was prosecuted. It is surprising that even Hi-
rano was not charged.62 One might speculate on the possible connections
between the lack of action of the Australian authorities and the deals that
had been made between U.S. authorities and those responsible for biolog-
ical warfare in Japan during the war.63

The Ethics of Japanese Military Doctors and "Doubling"

The Allies paid some attention to Japanese medical ethics during the war.
AΊΊS-SPA published a report in January 1945 entitled Infringement of the
Laws of War and Ethics by the Japanese Medical Corps. Two sections dealing
with the killing of patients and atrocities by Japanese doctors are repre-
sentative of the Allied view of their ethics. AΉS documented evidence
from interrogations of Japanese POWs that, it claimed, revealed the
Japanese doctors to be totally lacking in the ethical principles that West-
erners take for granted as necessary for practicing medicine. The report
gave the impression that the lack of ethical treatment of POWs by Japa-
nese doctors stemmed from Japanese military ideology, in which capture
or surrender was shameful and prisoners could legitimately be treated as
disposable. The AΉS report referred to such grisly events as the vivisec-
tion of conscious prisoners.64 The report listed 12 conclusions, more than
half of which dealt with the ethics of Japanese military doctors:65

1. The JAPANESE arm their medical corps men. Such arming is not only for
self-protection or self-destruction, but if the occasion arises they use them as
combat troops.
2. Even JAPANESE medical personnel have little regard for human life. Many
incapacitated soldiers, with a good chance of recovery, have been disposed of
on the grounds that they are useless to the Emperor.
3. A 17 Division Order commands medical officers to dispose of any sick and
wounded who become a liability.
4. The term "euthanasia" cannot be applied to these killings.
5. A prisoner of war states that JAPANESE medical officers give instructions
to healthy troops on methods of committing suicide should capture be
imminent.
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 161

6. While Western medical equipment has been ably copied by JAPANESE they
have retained their native ethical standards.
7. JAPANESE medical personnel are as guilty of atrocities as other branches of
the Army.
8. JAPANESE hospitals in forward areas are usually camouflaged and rarely
have Red Cross markings. These hospitals are rarely distinguishable from the
air as non-operational installations.
9. The JAPANESE have often used insignia similar to standard Red Cross mark-
ing, apparently seeking immunity from Allied attacks.
10. Hospital ships have been used to transport armed medical personnel and
combat personnel as well as non-medical department supplies.
11. The JAPANESE have not always conformed to standard markings for hospi-
tal ships.
12. It is claimed that an unarmed ambulance plane has shot down two Allied
fighters in self-defense.

Items 8 through 12, which deal with such matters as the failure of
Japanese hospitals in forward areas to carry Red Cross insignia and the
use of hospital ships to transport ammunition, perhaps are an attempt to
exculpate the Allies for acts such as the bombing of Japanese hospitals.
However, the validity of the claims in items 1 through 6 seems beyond
question. There is no doubt that medical doctors were commonly in-
volved in the execution of injured and sick prisoners who were deemed a
burden on the Japanese war effort.66 The treatment of POWs as dispos-
able was not, however, peculiar to the Japanese military doctors. The atti-
tude held throughout the Japanese military, but the Japanese war leaders
also had much the same attitude toward their own men, treating them as
readily replaceable cannon fodder.
For the moment, though, we should set aside the issue of Japanese mil-
itary ideology and ask how it is possible that any doctor could become in-
volved in taking lives rather than saving them. It should be noted that
here I am talking about taking lives that could be saved or the lives of per-
fectly healthy people and not about euthanasia of terminally ill patients,
which is a separate ethical issue. The doctors in Unit 731 can be used for
dealing with this question.
For most of us it is nearly impossible to understand how the doctors in
Unit 731 could have done things that would be unthinkable in most
circumstances. Should we conclude that these doctors, most of whom
were eminent in their fields, were insane? In a 1992 interview, Yamaguchi
Toshiaki, editor of the journal Japan's War Responsibility, asked Koshi
Sadao, a member of the transport section of Unit 731, whether mem-
bers of Unit 731 became mad as a result of their activities. Koshi
responded:67
162 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

No, there were no such persons. Among the members of Unit 731, no one be-
came mad or wild. We believed that the "maruta" who were brought by the
Kempeitai would be executed anyway and that it would be better to use
them for research which would save our people. At that time there was no
feeling that we were doing the wrong thing, although, looking back now, it
was horrific.

It is clear from Koshi's testimony that the members of Unit 731 went
about their work in an orderly way and were apparently unaffected by psy-
chological problems. From this and much other testimony, it is also clear
that the members of Unit 731 had little or no sympathy toward their vic-
tims. This lack of feeling is clear in the testimony of another member of
Unit 731, Ueda Yatarō, who was directly involved in experiments with the
plague: "What was important for me was not the deaths of 'maruta' but the
fresh blood taken from them. To get even 10 cc of blood was my pleasure
and calling. The pain of the 'maruta' was not worth paying attention to."68
This comment gives a hint of the psychological processes that enabled
the doctors to rid themselves of any feelings of guilt or pain they might
have initially experienced. They were able to create a logic of sorts that
justified their actions. Once this logic was created, men like Ueda were
able to deal with maruta dispassionately. Maruta were no longer human
beings but a means to the end of gaining knowledge. That knowledge
was supposed to help save the lives of Japanese people. In sum, there was
the conviction that valuable lives saved outweighed any concern that
worthless lives might be lost—a conviction that made the process seem
thoroughly justifiable. This, of course, means that the willingness to dis-
pose of certain lives did, in fact, coexist with the desire to save the lives of
others. This coexistence of conflicting desires is what Robert Jay Lifton
called "doubling."69 For those working in Unit 731 there was nothing ex-
traordinary about this; their extraordinary tasks and organization helped
to make this possible. The organization of Unit 731 created a coherent
group with a shared view that left no space in which individuals could
question the morality of their actions.
Similar doubling was also characteristic of the Nazi doctors, who were
involved in all kinds of medical experiments on prisoners, in particular
Jewish ones at Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. By creating what
Lifton called an "Auschwitz self," doctors were able to experiment on
and eventually kill prisoners without experiencing guilt. Outside their
work in the concentration camps, these doctors remained humane in their
conduct toward others. They did not seem to feel any conflict between
their conduct when they were at work experimenting on prisoners and
their humane conduct the rest of the time. Josef Mengele is the most fa-
mous example of a Nazi doctor whose "Auschwitz self" doubled with his
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 163

"normal self." This doubling even occurred within his workplace. Men-
gele was very kind most of the time to the twins on whom he occasionally
conducted grotesque and sadistic experiments. Neither Mengele nor
other Nazi doctors showed any signs of suffering from major psychologi-
cal disorders.70
The same was true of the doctors in Unit 731. They were able to go
about their work in an orderly way, then at the end of each day return to
their comfortable living quarters without experiencing any discomfort
from what they were doing. There was evidently a "Unit 731 self" that
was in all significant respects the same as the "Auschwitz self."
The doctors of Unit 731 must have begun their medical studies with the
aim of saving lives rather than taking them. That they were able to take
lives without remorse does not mean that they lost all conscience, how-
ever. They clearly maintained a conscience but were concerned with their
moral responsibilities to others, not to thë people they experimented on.
Doubling enabled them to see experimenting on prisoners as consistent
with the high moral causes of saving Japanese lives and demonstrating
their loyalty to the emperor. The criteria of good and bad became depen-
dent on the "Unit 731 self" and not the previous self, so the guilt that
might be expected never arose. Without the burden of guilt they were
able to conduct themselves as if they were normal doctors doing normal
work and did not appear to be suffering from any major psychological
disorders.
Other ways in which the doctors of Unit 731 were able to numb them-
selves psychologically included calling the prisoners "maruta" and refer-
ring to them by numbers instead of their names. In this way the prisoners
were dehumanized in the eyes of their captors. The psychological dis-
tance thus created prevented the doctors from empathizing with their
victims.
The Nazi doctors also used words in unusual ways to create psycho-
logical distance between themselves and their victims or to deny what
they were really doing. Sometimes they would use military terminology,
describing human experiments as "warning shots" (Rampendienst), or
would combine medical and military terminology, like "medical warning
shots" (artzlicher Rampendienst). On other occasions they used language
that made the situation seem benign and attributed agency to the prison-
ers, such as by saying that a particular prisoner should come for a
medical checkup (Arztvorstellem) when that prisoner had been chosen to
be experimented on. Most notorious of all was the description of the
Holocaust as "the final solution to the Jewish question" (Endlosung der
Judenfrage).71
There are other interesting parallels between the German and Japanese
doctors. Both groups had an external figure—the emperor and the führer—
164 Japanese Biological Warfare Plans

to help them deal with whatever feelings of conflict might arise. Their
work was an expression of their loyalty to the emperor or the führer, god-
like figures who could solve any problems. Ultimately, any internal con-
flicts could be resolved by understanding that they were doing what the
emperor or the führer would want. The Japanese doctors also had a com-
mitment to purity of the Yamato race that paralleled the German doctors'
commitment to the German Volk. Like the Germans, the Japanese were
concerned that alien races might contaminate their own. Although this
never led Japan on a course of genocidal efforts to annihilate an entire
people, it had the capacity to legitimate otherwise unthinkable actions in
the service of nation or the emperor.
I have mainly referred to the doctors of Unit 731 in this section, but I
am sure that similar conclusions would apply to the doctors at Ambon
and Rabaul. It should also be noted that the doubling phenomenon is not
limited to wartime. The plutonium experiments that occurred in the
United States in the Cold War period are surely an example of this. In
these experiments approximately 1,000 civilians were given radiation
doses of various kinds for experimental rather than therapeutic purposes.
In Nashville, Tennessee, 750 pregnant women were given pills that were
30 times more radioactive than background. In Oregon, the genitals of 131
prisoners were exposed to large doses of X rays. In Boston, Massachu-
setts, 49 intellectually disabled children living in an institution were fed
radioactive breakfast cereal for 10 years. In Memphis, Tennessee, 7 new-
born babies were injected with radioactive iodine. In San Francisco, Cali-
fornia, 18 terminally ill patients, including children, were injected with
plutonium.72 Most of those who were experimented on were black or
working-class whites—the kind of people whose lives some wealthy
white doctors (many of them graduates of the most prestigious medical
schools) might not value very highly. In the context of the Cold War, these
doctors might have thought it legitimate to risk lives they did not value in
order possibly to save the lives of those they did. It would not be surpris-
ing to find that these doctors experienced few if any psychological disor-
ders as a result of their actions.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal produced an International Code
on Human Experiments. This code stipulated that regardless of the na-
ture of the experiment, the informed agreement of any volunteers must
be obtained following an explanation of the nature and consequences of
the experiment. The code also stipulated that every possible protection
should be implemented to minimize the chances of injury, disability, or
death. The United States, which contributed to the formulation of this
code, clearly ignored it to the extent that its government had knowledge
of the plutonium experiments.
Japanese Biological Warfare Plans 165

It must be concluded that any doctor has the potential for doubling, in
much the same way that any man who is made a soldier has the potential
to commit atrocities. Doctors are also capable of dehumanizing their ene-
mies or prisoners. Perhaps doctors have even more potential; in the very
process of learning medicine one tends to become more callous. Students
dissecting corpses and vivisecting animals become accustomed to death.
They also learn to separate the body of a patient from the person who in-
habits it. The "doctor's self" that arises is a benign form of doubling. The
narrow social networks of medical students might contribute to a lack of
awareness of these changes in their sense of self. Good doctors are able to
control the doctor's self and maintain their empathy. Perhaps, then, the
issue of wartime medical experiments provides important serious lessons
for how medicine should be taught today in Japan, in the West, and
throughout the world.
6
Massacre of Civilians at Kavieng

The Japanese Invasion of Kavieng

On December 8 , 1941 (December 7 in the United States), Japan attacked
Pearl Harbor. On the same day, 20,000 Japanese soldiers landed on the
Malay Peninsula and began moving south to capture Singapore, a vital
British naval port. In mid-December Japanese forces invaded Borneo and
occupied the west coast towns of Seria and Miri, securing their oil fields
and establishing military headquarters at Kuching. Around the same
time, Japanese military forces also landed on Luzon Island in the Philip-
pines and began advancing toward Manila. In addition, a combined
Japanese naval and army force attacked Guam in the South Pacific, occu-
pying it on December 10. Soon after this, the same force occupied Tarawa
and Makin Islands and on December 23 invaded Wake Island.
The leaders of the Japanese forces, seizing on the opportunity provided
by their overwhelming success, brought forward the implementation of
special plan "R Invasion Operation." This plan was specifically aimed at
attacking the Bismarck Islands, now part of New Guinea (New Ireland,
New Britain, Bougainville, and other smaller islands in the region). The
Japanese South Sea Army and the naval R Operation unit were responsi-
ble for this maneuver and began bombing Rabaul on New Britain on Jan-
uary 4 , 1942. Japanese forces landed at midnight on January 22, occupy-
ing the town and airfield by midday the following day. In addition, 52
Japanese planes attacked Kavieng on New Ireland on January 21, de-
stroying its airfield and Australian military facilities. At midnight on the
next day, approximately 1,000 Japanese soldiers arrived in Kavieng port
and began landing a few hours later. However, when they entered the
town, they discovered few enemy soldiers or civilians.1
When the Japanese started bombing Kavieng, 160 Australian soldiers
of the First Independent Company of the Australian Army, whose com-
manding officer was J. Wilson, were stationed there. A few hours later the
company saw the low-flying search plane scouring the bay for mines (of
168 Massacre of Civilians

which there were none), and Wilson realized that a Japanese landing was
imminent. He ordered about 20 soldiers to stay and destroy the military
facilities while he escaped south with the rest of the company.2 On Janu-
ary 28 Japanese forces landed in the middle of New Ireland at Uluptur
and subsequently moved into Namatani, only to find that the Australian
forces had moved farther south and eventually escaped.3
Few Australian soldiers were captured by the Japanese on New Ire-
land, and these POWs were soon sent to Rabaul to join up with POWs
captured in New Britain. However, there were roughly 200 Allied civil-
ians spread over New Ireland just before the Japanese invasion. Most of
these were Australians, either coconut plantation owners or agricultural
workers.4 At that time, New Ireland was an Australian territory and sup-
ported many large-scale coconut plantations. Soon after the Kavieng
bombing, most of these civilians also escaped south, except for those
whose plantations were so isolated that they failed to hear the news in
time.
The previous August the Australian government, concerned about the
possibility of a war in the Pacific, had surveyed New Ireland to assess de-
fense facilities, fuel storage, road conditions, and the resident Australian
population.5 The purpose was to determine how many Australian civil-
ians were left on the island and how many were captured by Japanese
forces. The survey established that approximately 40 Australian civilians
and at least 10 German missionaries were living on the island at the time.6
However, when Australian forces returned to New Ireland immediately
after the war, none of these individuals could be found. There were ru-
mors among the locals that the Japanese had killed them, but no evidence
or witnesses could be located.
At the end of the war, the 14th Naval Base Force, consisting of 4,699
Japanese soldiers commanded by Rear Admiral Tamura Ryūkichi, was in
the Kavieng area.7 This force consisted of the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit
and 89th Naval Garrison Unit (see Chart 6.1). The 83rd was headquar-
tered in Kavieng and headed by Tamura. The 89th had its headquarters in
Namatani, about 200 kilometers south of Kavieng. The Australian mili-
tary forces who came to Kavieng questioned Tamura about the location of
the missing 40 civilians. The following is an extract from the interview:8

Q. At what date did you assume command of all naval units in New
Ireland?
A. On the departure of Rear-Admiral Ōta, I assumed command on 10th Feb-
ruary, 1944-----

Q. How many Europeans, Internees or prisoners were in Kavieng prison on

11th February, 1944?
Chart 6.1 The 83rd Naval Garrison Unit (as of March 1944)
169

Source: A u s tra lia n N a tio n a l Archives C o lle ctio n , CRS B 4175, Box 2 -A 6 (1 4 ).
170 Massacre of Civilians

A. There were European Internees in Kavieng. There were 23 prisoners.

They were housed in two houses in the bush near Chinatown, Kavieng. One
house was for neutral civilians and the other for Allied civilians.

Q. Are you sure that there were 23 internees, or could there have been more?
A. There were 23 Allied civilians and 9 civilians from neutral countries. I am
sure there were 32.

Q. Where are those 32 civilians now?

A. The bombing became so severe that on February 16th 1944, after consult-
ing the Supreme Commander in Rabaul, I sent the 32 civilians to Rabaul.
They were sent by barge to Ðoi Island, about 60 miles from Kavieng, where
the Japanese ships in convoy on their way from Japan to Rabaul were shel-
tering from aerial bombardment. The 32 civilians were put safely aboard. I
cannot definitely name the ships in the convoy, there were two and their
names were something like "Kowa Maru" and/or "Koa Maru." My signal-
man was listening in on the radio and he by accident heard from Rabaul that
the ship named above arrived safely. This would be two or three days after
the 32 prisoners had embarked.

Q. Did you receive a receipt for the 32 prisoners?

A. No, I did not receive a receipt for the 32 prisoners because communica-
tions were cut off between Rabaul and Kavieng by sea and air___

Q. Don't you think this was of sufficient importance to warrant some com-
ment or acknowledgement from Rabaul?
A. It is a very important matter because of the safety of their lives. I did not
make any further enquiries because my signalman had heard of the ship's
safe arrival.

As I explained, Australian authorities had information that Allied civil-

ians detained at Kavieng numbered approximately 40, not 32 as claimed
by Tamura. The Australian military forces had also obtained information
from local people that a group of Allied civilians had been taken by the
Japanese to a small island off Kavieng called Nago and executed and
buried there. The Australians dug up the island and found 13 corpses,
which were identified as European. It was later determined that the bod-
ies were of victims of two executions conducted by Japanese naval forces
between September 1942 and April 1943.9 However, the location of the
rest of the civilians was still a mystery.
But Tamura was not commander of the 14th Garrison Force at that
time; in fact, he did not arrive at Kavieng until October 2, 1943. Thus
he could not be held responsible for these executions. It is probable that
the 13 were executed because they were conducting some sort of anti-
Japanese activities. The person in charge of the Kavieng detention camp,
Massacre of Civilians 171

Chief Petty Officer Funayama, had died during the war, so the Aus-
tralians could not assign responsibility.

Discovery of the Ak¡kaze Massacre

In order to discover whether the 32 Allied civilians had in fact been sent
to Rabaul, the Australian War Crimes Section investigated the movement
of all ships between Rabaul and Kavieng during the war (Map 6.1). It also
asked U.S. forces to provide information about Japanese ships sunk by
them during this time. As a result, investigators determined that a ship
called Kowa Maru , as Tamura claimed, had left Rabaul for Japan but had
been sunk by an American plane 30 miles west of Hanover Island on Feb-
ruary 21, 1944. U.S. information indicated there were no survivors. If the
Kowa Maru sailed near Kavieng before it went to Rabaul, Tamura's claim
regarding the time the civilians were sent to Rabaul seems to be correct.
Captain Sanagi Tsuyoshi, staff officer at Southeast Area Fleet Headquar-
ters in Rabaul, also claimed that he gave Tamura permission to place
these civilians on the Kowa Maru and send them to Japan via Rabaul. The
Australians released Tamura because there was no concrete evidence to
contradict his claim, and he left Rabaul for Japan on November 6 , 1946,
on the Japanese destroyer Hanazuki.10
Tamura's attitude during his interview, however, seems to have
aroused the suspicions of the Australian authorities. They speculated that
the civilians might have been taken away by a different ship, so they con-
tinued to investigate shipping movements between Rabaul and Kavieng.
After interviewing former crew members of the destroyer Akikazè in De-
cember 1946, they found that a group of Europeans had been executed on
board that ship en route to Rabaul from Kavieng sometime in March
1943. The variance in dates between the testimonies of the Akikaze crew
and Tamura was considerable, but the Australian authorities still had sus-
picions that it was the same group of civilians and continued to investi-
gate. They located additional Akikaze crew members who had already re-
turned to Japan and interrogated them between January and April 1947.11
As a result of these interrogations, they established the following infor-
mation and course of events.
The northeast region of New Guinea was a German colony until 1918,
when it became an Australian territory at the end of World War I, so there
were many German clergymen still working there with a strong influence
among the local people. Because the clergymen were German civilians,
soon after the occupation of Wewak in mid-January 1943, the Japanese
moved them to Kairiru, although they were free to move around the
island. However, Allied pilots whose planes had been shot down when
attacking Wewak were hiding in the jungle of this region and had
 172

Map 6.1 Courses taken by the ships Akikaze (solid line) and Kowa Maru (dashed line). Source: A u s tr a lia n
N a tio n a l A rchives C o lle c tio n : M P 7 4 2 /1 /3 3 6 /1 /1 4 4 4 .
Massacre of Civilians 173

attempted to make contact with the German civilians through local peo-
ple who harbored an anti-Japanese sentiment, to acquire food and medi-
cine.12 Although the German clergy were citizens of a nation allied to
Japan, the pilots may have reasoned that they would be at least neutral,
perhaps even sympathetic, not only because of their religious background
but because they too were Westerners. They may have also reasoned that
the Germans were far from their homeland and therefore not under
heavy Nazi influence.
The Japanese forces also regarded these German clergymen in the area
of New Guinea and the Bismarck Islands as neutral. For example, Rear
Admiral Tamura referred to Germans in Kavieng as "neutral civilians";
other Japanese also called them "citizens of the third country" or "neutral
civilians" but never used the expression "Allied civilians." Moreover, the
Germans shared a close relationship with the local people and were fa-
miliar with local geography. Presumably the Japanese failed to secure any
cooperation from the Germans and conversely feared their collaboration
with those local people who were actively anti-Japanese.13
The 2nd Special Naval Base Force was stationed at Wewak in New
Guinea during the war. In March 1943 the Akikaze visited Wewak in order
to supply food and medicine. It then sailed to Kairiru, a small island off
Wewak. Around 11:00 a .m . on May 17, about 40 civilians were delivered
to the Akikaze by a Japanese officer and five soldiers on a landing boat.
Most of the civilians seem to have been German clergymen and nuns, but
there were also Chinese civilians who acted as their servants. Two Chi-
nese infants, probably orphans, were also carried on board by the nuns.
These people were moved from Kairiru because of repeated requests to
8th Fleet Headquarters by the 2nd Special Naval Base Force, which per-
ceived that they posed a threat to the Japanese forces.14
The Akikaze left Kairiru about noon and sailed toward Manus Island,
located roughly halfway between Kairiru and New Ireland. The 40 pas-
sengers were initially treated very well, and the ship's captain, Lieutenant
Commander Sabe Tsurukichi, even ejected his crew from the rear cabin so
that the civilians could be accommodated there and protected from attack
by enemy planes. The passengers were also provided with tea, water, and
bread, and those who suffered from seasicknesses were treated by the
ship's doctor. It is clear that these people were treated as neutral civilians,
not as enemy POWs.15
At that time, a small Japanese naval force consisting of 20 soldiers was
stationed at Lorengau in the northeast of Manus Island, and the com-
mander of this group was Chief Petty Officer Ichinose Harukichi. There
were approximately 20 neutral civilians on the island, German clergymen
for the most part but also one Hungarian missionary and a few Chinese.
Six were women. They were free to move around and lived at various
174 Massacre of Civilians

locations. Ichinose was sent to Manus on April 19,1942, and probably be-
cause at this stage the island was far from the battle zone, he established a
close relationship with the local clergymen and women. He often gave
them food and invited some of them to his house, where he provided
Japanese sake and dinner.16
In March 1943 Ichinose received a joint order from the chief of staff of
the 8th Fleet and the headquarters of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit to pre-
pare for the removal of the neutral civilians to Rabaul in the immediate
future. Unlike the officers of the 2nd Special Naval Base Force, Ichinose
had never regarded the presence of the civilians as a threat or requested
their removal, so initially he did not treat the order with much urgency.
However, two or three days after the original order, he received another
telegram from Rabaul informing him that the Akikaze was due to arrive at
Manus in two days to pick up the civilians. Ichinose used a local as a mes-
senger boy and sent him to various places across the island in order to call
the 20 civilians to Lorengau to await the arrival of the Akikaze.17
Around five in the evening of March 17, 1943, the Akikaze anchored
about six or seven kilometers from Lorengau, and Ichinose took the civil-
ians on a boat to meet it. He handed a list of their names to the ship's cap-
tain, Lieutenant Commander Sabe Tsurukichi, and asked him in which
part of the ship these people would be accommodated. Sabe told Ichinose
that they would be put in the same cabin as the German clergymen from
Kairiru. Ichinose found the cabin hot and crowded and estimated that it
would be very unpleasant if an extra 20 people were added to those al-
ready there. He asked the captain to provide an alternative cabin for these
20, so one of the front cabins was designated for their use. One of the Ger-
mans in this group had a fever, so Ichinose asked the ship's doctor to look
after him. As soon as Ichinose left the ship, the Akikaze sailed from
Manus.18
Throughout the night, the Akikaze traveled toward Kavieng. Because the
civilians had taken over their cabin, crew members were forced to sleep on
the deck. The ship's doctor continued to treat those civilians suffering from
sickness. At 11:00 a .m . the following day, the Akikaze anchored just out of
Kavieng port, but curiously no one disembarked or boarded the ship. A
small boat, however, did approach the ship, and a message was delivered
to the captain. Shortly after, the Akikaze sailed toward Rabaul.19
It seems unlikely that the Akikaze traveled all the way to Kavieng from
Manus just to receive this message. It is possible that it sailed to Kavieng
to pick up the civilians detained there, but for some reason the plan was
canceled. This may be why the ship left the island without receiving any
personnel or cargo.
Not long after the Akikaze left Kavieng, Lieutenant Commander Sabe
assembled all officer-class crew, along with Sublieutenant Kai Yajirō from
Massacre of Civilians 175

the 2nd Special Naval Base Force, who had boarded the ship at Wewak
and was acting as an interpreter. Looking pale and worried, Sabe told
them that he had received an order from 8th Fleet Headquarters to dis-
pose of all neutral civilians on board. He said that the order was re-
grettable but was an order nonetheless and had to be carried out. The
order gave no explanation as to why the defenseless civilians should be
executed.20
Sabe instructed the officers to prepare for the executions immediately
(Figure 6.1). Sublieutenant Kai was instructed to move all the civilians
stationed in the rear cabin to the front cabin on the pretense of cleaning
the rear cabin.21 A plank was placed on the rear deck with matting on top
of it, and a wooden structure was erected whereby each victim could be
hung by the wrists from a rope and pulley and shot while the ship was
sailing at a high speed. In this way, the force of the wind and the bullets
would push the victim overboard, a procedure that would easily dispose
of the body and minimize bloodstains on the ship's surface. The matting
also served the purpose of soaking up any blood. A white sheet was hung
across the breadth of ship to shield the executions from the eyes of the
other civilians. All these preparations were completed in less than an
hour.22
The civilians were led out of the cabin one by one and taken to the
bridge. Each was asked his or her name, age, nationality, and other details
by the interpreter, possibly to give the impression that this was a routine
survey. Two soldiers then escorted the civilian to the middle of the ship
where he or she was blindfolded. The civilian was then taken to the plank
and strung up by the rope and pulley and shot by four soldiers using ri-
fles and a machine gun under the command of Sublieutenant Terada
Takeo, who was standing above them on the gun battery (Figure 6.2). As
each execution got under way, the next civilian would be led out and un-
dergo the same procedure. Just before the executions began, the ship's
speed was raised to maximum (third battle speed), approximately 24
knots per hour. After the war, a crew member interrogated about the inci-
dent claimed that because of the loud noise of the engine, wind, and
waves created by the ship's speed, the civilians at the front of the boat
would have been unable to hear the shooting at the rear and so did not
suffer unduly psychologically.23
The civilian men were executed first, then the women. The two Chinese
children were taken from the arms of the nuns and thrown overboard. It
took three hours to execute all 60 civilians and dispose of their bodies.
After cleaning the blood from the deck, the officers conducted a funeral
ceremony for the deceased. At the ceremony, Lieutenant Commander
Sabe instructed all his officers not to mention the executions to anybody.
The Akikaze returned to Rabaul at about 10:00 p .m . on March 18.24
176
Figure 6.1 Layo u t of the Akikaze and sketch of execution m ethod. Source: A u stra lia n N a tio n a l Archives C o lle c tio n : M P 7 4 2 /1 /3 3 6 /1 /1 4 4 4 ,
" R eport on In te rro g a tio n : Takahashi M a n r o k u ."
177
178

Figure 6.2 D e tailed sketch o f the e xecution: side v ie w (to p ); f r o n t v ie w (bottom ). Source:
A u s tra lia n N a tio n a l A rc h iv e s C o lle ctio n : M P 7 4 2 /1 /3 3 6 /1 /1 4 4 4 , "R e p o rt on In te rro g a tio n :
Takahashi M a n ro k u . "
Massacre of Civilians 179

Responsibility Under the Australian War Crimes Act

Staff members of the Australian War Crimes Section who investigated the
massacre on the Akikaze tried to discover who issued the order for the ex-
ecutions, which was clearly against the Geneva Convention, and who
was ultimately responsible. According to Sublieutenant Kai, who acted as
interpreter, he and Sabe had visited Lieutenant Kami Shigetoku, a staff of-
ficer at 8th Fleet Headquarters in Rabaul, and had reported to him that
the order had been carried out. Kami had told the men to keep the execu-
tion of the civilians a secret and asked Sabe to secretly dispose of all their
belongings.25 The Australian War Crimes Section realized that this order
could not have been issued by a single and relatively low-rank staff offi-
cer and believed the source was several senior staff of 8th Fleet Head-
quarters. They interrogated Rear Admiral Ōnishi Shinzō, who was at that
time chief of staff at 8th Fleet Headquarters, as well as Vice Admiral
Mikawa Gunichi, then the commander in chief of the 8th Fleet.
Ōnishi initially tried to avoid any responsibility by claiming that the
Akikaze did not belong to the 8th Fleet but rather the 11th Fleet. However,
in the course of the investigation, Ōnishi realized that the Australian War
Crimes Section had already obtained substantial knowledge about the
Akikaze and admitted that it belonged to the 8th Fleet, but he said the
order for the disposal of the civilians had come from Kami without any
approval. Ōnishi claimed that Lieutenant Kami orally reported to him
and Vice Admiral Mikawa that a "small number of German missionaries"
had been executed on a destroyer at the end of March 1943 and that this
was the first and last time he had heard about this execution 26
Vice Admiral Mikawa, who was commander in chief of the 8th Fleet be-
tween the end of July 1942 and the end of March 1943, claimed that he
had never seen or even heard of the Akikaze and that it had never been
under his command. Yet he also claimed that Kami had come to see him
and Ōnishi and reported the execution of some civilians on a destroyer on
March 26, 1943.27 If, as Ōnishi and Mikawa claimed, the Akikaze did not
belong to the 8th Fleet, then it was impossible that Kami could issue the
order for the executions, even without approval. In any case, Mikawa also
said he did not issue the order to move the civilians in the first place, let
alone to execute them, and denied any responsibility for the incident. He
claimed he had been shocked when he had heard of the executions from
Kami but was unable to investigate because he was soon sent back to
Tokyo to take up a new position.28
In the course of the interrogation by the Australian War Crimes Section,
Mikawa put forward the following explanation as to why Kami might
have issued the order without proper approval: From the end of 1942 to
the beginning of 1943, the military situation on Guadalcanal worsened for
180 Massacre of Civilians

the Japanese, and the Allies knew the movement of the 8th Fleet's ships
exactly and could often accurately target them. Some members of the 8th
Fleet believed that local people and neutral ςivilians living in the Bis-
marck Islands and northeast parts of New Guinea harbored anti-Japanese
sentiments and were secretly sending information about movement to the
Allied forces, using radio equipment and transmitting either from the
jungle or the coast. Mikawa received many requests from local comman-
ders to take some sort of action to suppress these activities, but he lacked
manpower to do so and dissatisfaction spread among his staff. Mikawa
believed that Lieutenant Kami issued the order to dispose of the civilians
without getting his or Ōnishi's approval because of Kami's overreaction
to complaints by those members who held such suspicions. Mikawa also
indicated that another staff officer in charge of civilian affairs, Commander
Andō Norisaka, might have collaborated with Kami to issue the order.29
This is Mikawa's version of events. However, it is important to set
against it an examination of the procedures for issuing orders in the
Japanese Navy. In relation to ship movements and other secret matters,
any order form was required to have the signature of the staff officer, if he
originated the order, as well as the signatures of both the chief of staff and
commander in chief. The order form containing these three signatures
was then delivered via the staff officer in charge of signals to the staff ci-
pher officer. The order was then encoded and sent to each ship's captain,
the commander of the naval base force, and the naval garrison unit.30
Therefore, if Mikawa's claim is correct and the order issued by Kami and
Andō to move the civilians from Kairiru and Manus and execute them on
the Akikaze was given to the staff officer in charge of signals, then Kami
could not have passed it on to the staff cipher officer because he did not
have the signatures of the chief of staff and the commander in chief. If, for
some reason, the staff officer in charge of signals had handed over the
order to the staff cipher officer, knowing that the form was missing the
two signatures, then in turn the cipher officer could not—or should not—
have been able to encode the order.
The Australian War Crimes Section could not ensure that the testi-
monies of Mikawa and Ōnishi were true because Kami, Andō, the staff
officer in charge of signals (Commander Mori Torao), and the staff cipher
officer (Sublieutenant Maeda Minoru)—in short, anyone who could ver-
ify the claims—were all dead.31 There is a strong possibility that Mikawa
and Ōnishi collaborated and blamed their subordinates in order to avoid
prosecution. In the opinion of Captain Albert Klestadt, a Japanese-
speaking member of the Australian War Crimes Section who was investi-
gating the case, even if their claims were true, they had to accept respon-
sibility as senior officials for being unable to prevent the war crimes
committed by their subordinates.32
Massacre of Civilians 181

However, the Australian authorities did not prosecute anyone, despite

the fact that they investigated the case thoroughly. One reason for this
may be that the Akikaze's captain, Lieutenant Commander Sabe, and Sub-
lieutenant Terada both died in action during the war. But more important,
in terms of the failure to proceed against Mikawa and Õnishi, there were
no Australian civilians among the victims of the massacre. Because most
victims were Germans—civilians of a nation allied to Japan—this case
was not considered top priority for the Australian authorities, who were
attempting to determine the fate of the Australian citizens in Kavieng.
A "victim of war crimes" is defined in the Australian War Crimes Act of
1945 in the following manner:

The provisions of this Act shall apply in relation to war crimes committed, in
any place whatsoever, whether within or beyond Australia, against British
subjects or citizens of any Power allied or associated with His Majesty in any
war, in like manner as they apply in relation to war crimes committed
against persons who were at any time resident in Australia.33

Because of this definition, the Australian War Crimes Section did not fo-
cus on prosecuting Japanese soldiers who had committed crimes against
German citizens, even though these citizens had been living on Austra-
lian territory.
Họwever, this interpretation of the law did not hinder the Australian
government from making exceptions where expedient. For instance, it
took the illogical step of prosecuting Japanese soldiers who had commit-
ted war crimes against the Indian National Army (a puppet army under
Japanese control) during the war, despite the fact that these Indian sol-
diers were fighting against the British and Australian soldiers. However,
at the time of the war crimes trials, India's independence movement was
gathering momentum, and it was important that the Australian govern-
ment be seen to be "evenhanded" so as to avoid any propaganda value
the Indian nationalists might make out of apparent colonialist indiffer-
ence. But in the case of the Akikaze massacre, the Australian government
stood to gain nothing by prosecuting the Japanese. Therefore, the deci-
sion not to prosecute stemmed not only from the definition of the law but
also from political reasons.
Although the massacre on the Akikaze did not fit the legal definition of
"war crime," Albert Klestadťs personal opinion was that it was a case of
first-degree murder and a serious crime against humanity. The German
civilians had been living in an Australian territory for a long period and
had established friendly relations with Australian missionaries working
there. Although the Germans were legally citizens of an enemy nation,
they had far better relations with Australia than did the soldiers in the
182 Massacre of Civilians

Indian National Army. However, because of political considerations, the

Akikaze massacre was officially disregarded.

A Clue to the Discovery of the Kavieng Massacre

The investigation into the massacre on the Akikaze confirmed that no Aus-
tralian civilians were murdered in that incident, and Australian authori-
ties had to begin their investigations into the Kavieng massacre from
scratch. Fortuitously, they had established through the interrogation of a
man called Ōtsu Yoshio, the sole survivor of the Kowa Maru, that no Euro-
peans were on board that vessel when it sailed from Kavieng.34 Õtsu's
testimony, combined with information provided by Ōse Toshio, the cap-
tain of the Kokai Maru, which was sunk in the same attack by U.S. planes,
enabled the Australians to build a detailed picture of the events preceding
the sinking of the Kowa Maru.
On February 12,1944, the Kowa Maru, a 1,106-metric-ton transport ship,
was part of a convoy from Truk Island that included the Kokai Maru, an-
other transport weighing 3,000 metric tons, the Sumiyoshi Maru, two escort
destroyers, one patrol boat, and a submarine chaser. The purpose of the
convoy was to supply Japanese forces in Rabaul with food and ammuni-
tion. After only one day out of Truk they were attacked by Allied forces
but escaped. On February 15 they were followed by American planes all
day and bombed that night but again managed to escape. At approxi-
mately 8:00 a .m . on February 16, just off New Hanover Island, the
Sumiyoshi Maru, the patrol boat, and the submarine chaser left the convoy
in order to assist another ship nearby that had also been attacked by Allied
forces. The Kowa Maru, the Kokai Maru, and the two destroyers continued
on toward Rabaul but were again followed by American aircraft. After
sunset they returned to New Hanover Island to deceive the Americans
and stayed there for several hours. Fortunately for the Japanese, there was
heavy rain that night, making it difficult for them to be seen. Ōtsu stated
that he could not even see the Kokai Maru, which was anchored very close
to the Kowa Maru. At around 2:00 a . m . on February 17, the ships got under
way again and arrived safely in Rabaul in the evening.35
If any Australian civilians were on the Kowa Maru, they would have
had to board during the few hours the ship was anchored off New
Hanover. However, as Ōtsu claimed, there was heavy rainfall that night,
and it would have been extremely difficult to transport any civilians in a
small boat from Kavieng to New Hanover.36 Indeed, Ōtsu testified that
there was no such activity: "When the ship was anchored near New
Hanover Island, I was on deck for night watch duty, but I never saw any
boat arrive at the ship, nor did we receive any communication regarding
any passengers."37
Massacre of Civilians 183

At 2:00 p . m . on February 20, a convoy of five ships—Kowa Maru, Kokai

Maru, Nagaura, a special destroyer, and a submarine chaser—left Rabaul
for Japan via Truk. The Kowa Maru and the Kokai Maru were carrying 400
Japanese soldiers (of the 751st Air Force Unit) and civilian workers, but
there were no POWs or civilian detainees among the passengers. Just be-
fore the convoy left Rabaul, Õtsu was put in charge of passenger cabin
allocation, and he found no foreigners' names on the lists. The ship was
extremely crowded and all available space was used, so there was no pos-
sibility that any foreign passengers could have been accommodated with-
out Ōtsu's knowledge.38 Captain Ōse of the Kokai Maru also stated that at
the captains' meeting before leaving Rabaul, there had been no discussion
regarding POWs or civilian detainees. If POWs or civilian detainees were
on board ship, it was usual to receive instructions as to their treatment
and accommodation.39
At 5:00 a . m . on February 21 the convoy was spotted by an enemy search
aircraft, and just after midday a formation of 12 B-25s began bombing.
The Kowa Maru was seriously damaged and many passengers and crew
were killed or injured. About an hour later, the 50 surviving Japanese
abandoned ship and were rescued by the Nagaura, which had also been
seriously damaged but was still operational. The Kokai Maru was also
heavily attacked and had caught fire but managed to sail on for a few
hours. However, that evening the surviving passengers and crew aban-
doned ship. These survivors, including Captain Ōse, scrambled into a
lifeboat, some clinging to the sides, and managed to reach New Hanover
the evening of the following day. Eventually they were rescued by a
group of Japanese soldiers who had come to New Hanover from Kavieng.
But at 8:00 p .m . on February 22, on the way to Palao, the Nagaura was sunk
by American warships. Therefore, of the combined passengers and crew
from the Kowa Maru and the Kokai Maru, only 50 survived, the only sur-
vivor from the Kowa Maru being Ōtsu. During this whole ordeal, no one
actually sighted any foreigners.40
The Australian War Crimes Section was convinced that there were no
Australian civilians from Kavieng on the Kowa Maru and started the rein-
terrogation of former members of the 14th Naval Base Force and the 83rd
Naval Garrison Unit who had returned to Japan. In January 1947 they
were called to the Tokyo offices of the Australian War Crimes Section, but
the Australians knew it would be difficult to elicit a confession from
them, as they would have almost certainly conspired to fabricate a false
account of the incidents. For this reason, the Australian War Crimes Sec-
tion placed Captain Albert Klestadt in charge of interrogation because of
his knowledge of the Japanese language.
Captain Klestadt was one of the few staff members who could speak
fluent Japanese. He had lived in Japan for six years (1935-1941) working
184 Massacre of Civilians

in the trading business in Kobe and had acquired Japanese as a second

language. He entered the Australian military forces in 1943 and because
of his Japanese-language knowledge was recruited to work in intelli-
gence. After the war he was transferred to the War Crimes Section, where
he was highly valued because he could interrogate Japanese without an
interpreter as well as pick up on any inconsistencies or subtleties in their
testimonies.41
Captain Klestadt chose 70 former members of the 14th Naval Base
Force and the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit and reinterrogated them one by
one over the next few months. However, every testimony was the same as
Rear Admiral Tamura's testimony—that 23 Australian civilians and 9
German missionaries were safely sent in two boats to the Kowa Maru,
which was anchored near Doi Island on February 17, 1944. Klestadt was
suspicious, however, because every person gave exaćtly the same testi-
mony down to the smallest detail, which was unusual, as there are nor-
mally gaps in memory or small inconsistencies in such interrogations. He
was even more convinced that they were fabricating the story.42
In order to break through this deadlock, Klestadt decided to concen-
trate his interrogations on those soldiers who displayed a weak character
or nervous mannerisms. One of these soldiers, Jitsukawa Kinjirō, was the
assistant engineer on the second barge of the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit.
Under Klestadťs insistent interrogations, Jitsukawa was unable to stick to
his original testimony and eventually admitted that he had been lying.
On June 24, 1947, he provided the following account of the fate of the
missing Australian civilians.43
On February 11, 1944, Kavieng suffered heavy bombing by the Allied
forces. A few days later, the crew members of the first and second barges
received an order to proceed to the south wharf at Kavieng. In the evening,
when they returned to the barge, they found between 15 and 20 heavy con-
crete blocks on deck as well as a roll of wire. A steel loop was attached to
each concrete block. As instructed, the crew went to the south wharf at
sunset and waited. Two officers from the Land Defense Party, together
with a small group of soldiers, came to the wharf. Although the sun was
setting, it was not completely dark, and Jitsukawa could see the Japanese
officers and soldiers. He also saw one white man brought to the wharf by
some soldiers, but he did not see what happened to him, as he soon went
into the engine room to prepare the barge for departure. While he was
there, he heard much stomping of feet and English voices and ascertained
that a number of white men had been brought on board. But at the same
time, he could hear white men screaming as if they were being beaten.
After a while, the departure bell rang and Jitsukawa began the engine.
About 15 minutes later, there was another signal to stop the barge. The
barge drifted for about 20 minutes, but Jitsukawa stayed in the engine
Massacre of Civilians 185

room and did not witness what was going on above deck. However, he
could hear very heavy objects being dragged along the deck and thrown
into the sea.
When the barge returned to Kavieng and Jitsukawa emerged from the
engine room, he realized there were no white men on board any longer.
He asked his colleague what sort of work had been carried out during the
voyage and was told that each detainee had been bound to a concrete
block with wire and that while the barge was floating between Nago and
Edmago Islands, the block was pushed into the water. Jitsukawa later was
told by crew members of the first barge that they had carried out the same
procedure.

Reconstruction of Events at Kavieng

Captain Klestadt obtained Jitsukawa's confession six months after start-
ing interrogations in January 1947. He showed the confession to Jit-
sukawa's seniors, such as the chief engineer of the second barge, Yamao
Unoharu, and the chief petty officer, Takatō Jūtarō, whom Jitsukawa
claimed had prepared the concrete blocks and wires, and demanded their
confessions.44 Realizing that they could no longer stick to their original
story, both men started recounting the true story. Klestadt later found that
Jitsukawa's testimony was not strictly accurate because he did not wit-
ness the executions, but he provided the initial evidence that the massacre
of the Australian civilians did in fact occur. (Jitsukawa probably confused
the date of the execution with the fabricated date and said that the execu-
tion took place on March 17,1944. The actual date was a month earlier.)
Rear Admiral Tamura Ryūkichi, who was bedridden in Kamakura, was
arrested and transferred to the 31st U.S. Occupation Forces Hospital in
Tokyo. On August 14 Klestadt visited Tamura in the hospital and showed
him the sworn statements of Jitsukawa and others. Tamura freely admit-
ted that they had murdered Australian civilians and German clergymen
in Kavieng.45 Based upon these confessions, Klestadt drew up a list of six
people who were responsible for the murders and finished reinterrogat-
ing them by mid-September. The following account of the Kavieng mas-
sacre is based on the documents he prepared for the Tokyo War Crimes
Tribunal and on tribunal proceedings.
At the end of 1943, the 23 Australian plantation owners and workers
who had been unable to escape the Japanese invasion of New Ireland in
January 1942 were in a detention camp in Kavieng, and the 9 German
clergymen were imprisoned in a separate camp 5 or 6 kilometers away.
Except for a 14-year-old boy, the 32 detainees were all adult men.46
In early 1944 the military situation in the Southwest Pacific was deteri-
orating for the Japanese, and Kavieng had suffered Allied air attacks since
186 Massacre of Civilians

early February. The bombing on February 11 was the most severe, and
headquarters of the 14th Naval Base Force and of the 83rd Naval Garrison
Unit were directly hit. New headquarters for each force were quickly es-
tablished adjacent to one another five kilometers away from the port in
the bush near the airfield. On February 17 Kavieng suffered its first naval
bombardment; more attacks followed on February 20, February 27, and
March 21.47
The Japanese forces in Kavieng thought the aircraft bombings were
precursors to a landing by the Allied forces, and the naval bombardment
strengthened this suspicion. At this time, there were only 1,500 Japanese
soldiers stationed at Kavieng under Tamura's command, and they knew
there was no possibility of winning a land battle. Therefore they were pre-
pared to fight to the end and die honorably. In this desperate situation,
the one problem that worried the acting commander of the 83rd Naval
Garrison Unit, Lieutenant Mori Kyōji, was what to do about the detained
civilians, who were his responsibility.48
On March 4 Lieutenant Mori approached the staff officer of the 14th
Naval Garrison Force, Commander Yoshino Shōzō, and sought his advice
about the treatment of the Australian civilians and German clergymen. At
this time, they were being guarded by only five soldiers from the 83rd
Naval Garrison Unit, and Lieutenant Mori believed these soldiers would
be more useful preparing for the Allied landings. Yoshino did not feel he
could make a decision about the civilians, so he consulted his colleague,
staff officer Lieutenant Commander Hiratsuka, and reported Mori's re-
quest to Tamura. However, neither Hiratsuka nor Tamura responded, and
Yoshino did not reply to Mori's request.49
After the failure of the Torokina battle, Allied bombing of Kavieng be-
came fierce beginning March 12. There were few civilians left in Kavieng;
the locals had escaped into the bush.50 Given the increased enemy attacks,
the officers of the 14th Naval Base Force thought Allied forces would
begin landing in a few days. On March 15 Yoshino received a phone call
from Mori and was again asked what to do about the Australian civilians
and German clergymen. This time Mori wanted permission to take the
detainees to Rabaul or "take some other action." Yoshino replied that
Mori should follow existing policy for the time being and thus avoided
making a decision. Yoshino again consulted Hiratsuka and Tamura but
received no clear instructions. Yoshino personally thought it would be
impossible to send these people to Rabaul or any other Japanese-
occupied territories because transportation from Kavieng had been com-
pletely cut off by the Allied forces. He also thought that "disposing" of
the civilians was inhuman and therefore believed that the 83rd Naval
Garrison Unit should continue to guard them. In a letter he advised
Tamura that because Tamura was the ultimate commander of the 83rd
Massacre of Civilians 187

Naval Garrison Unit, he should instruct Mori as to why this policy should
continue to be implemented. On the same day Yoshino submitted this
letter, he met Tamura and verbally reiterated his position. Tamura replied
that he had thought about the civilians but had not come to any con-
clusion.51
Two days later, just after nine in the morning on March 17, Yoshino
again received a phone call from Mori, who told him that because the sit-
uation was getting worse, he could no longer take any responsibility for
guarding the detainees. An hour later Yoshino passed this message on to
Tamura.52 It is necessary to consider the relationship between Mori and
Tamura. As commander and deputy commander, they met every other
day for briefing, so it is surprising that they did not discuss the treatment
of the detainees. Strangely, Mori always expressed his opinion through
Yoshino and did not directly consult with Tamura. At the War Crimes Tri-
bunal after the war, the prosecutor also thought this was strange and
asked Mori why he did not consult directly with Tamura. Mori's answer
to this question was deliberately obscure.53 Thus their relationship appar-
ently was strained, probably for some personal reason. This conclusion is
not wholly conjectural because during the tribunal Mori directly accused
Tamura of ordering the executions.54
Tamura, who received Mori's message through Yoshino, was forced to
make a decision and told Yoshino to pass on to Mori that in the face of the
Allied landing everyone should be prepared to die and that Mori should
dispose of the detainees secretly. Yoshino asked Tamura whether it was
possible for the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit to continue to guard the de-
tainees but could not change Tamura's mind.55 Tamura gave several rea-
sons why he could not avoid the disposal of the detainees.
First, Tamura had already asked Southeast Area Fleet Headquarters to
transfer the detainees to Rabaul or Japan but had been rejected. Indeed,
Tamura made this request soon after he came to Kavieng as commander
of the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit in October 1943 because he thought
Kavieng would soon become a battle zone. But there was no reply to
Tamura's request. He also made the same request through a staff officer
from fleet headquarters who had come to Kavieng on inspection. In Feb-
ruary 1944 he made the same request through Rear Admiral Ōta, his pre-
decessor as commander of the 14th Naval Base Force, when he returned
to Japan. This request was sent to the Bureau of Naval Affairs in Tokyo,
but he never received any instructions.56 It is not surprising that Tamura
thought his request had been rejected.
The second reason Tamura gave was that the Allied forces by then held
regional control on the sea and in the air, and it was impossible to send
detainees out of New Ireland, even with permission. Alternatively, if
these detainees were to be transferred to somewhere within New Ireland,
188 Massacre of Civilians

it would take at least two weeks to build new accommodations and trans-
port the detainees. This would also require a large amount of manpower.
Tamura said he could not afford to proceed with this option because the
Allied landing seemed imminent.57
His third reason was that if the detainees were released, they could in-
form on the Japanese because they were very familiar with the terrain of
the island and friendly with the local people. Tamura concluded that
strategically there was no option other than to dispose of the detainees.58
Yoshino, who could not change Tamura's mind, passed the order of the
"secret disposal" of the detainees on to Mori by telephone. Tamura again
gave his deputy an order through a staff officer, which was very unusual.
Ordinarily, Tamura should have given the order directly to Mori. It was
even more unusual in that the two men were headquartered only 150 me-
ters apart.59 Although Tamura personally thought the disposal should be
carried out as soon as possible, he did not give detailed instructions as to
when and where the executions should occur; he simply told Yoshino to
pass on to Mori the order that the detainees should be secretly disposed
of.60
It is possible that both Mori and Tamura believed it was impossible to
avoid the disposal of the detainees, but it seems likely each was waiting
for the other person to initiate the action. This probably explains why
they intentionally did not discuss the issue, despite the fact that they met
every other day. It also explains why Tamura in the order for the execu-
tions did not go into any detail. It is clear that Yoshino did not want to be
involved either and therefore just passed on the messages. All three were
obviously trying to avoid any responsibility for the executions.
Mori, who received the order from Yoshino, did not ask for any details
about the executions either. He had finally received the order he wanted
and therefore was intent on carrying it out as quickly as possible before
the Allied landing began. He had been placed in a desperate situation and
was anxious to be rid of the troublesome matter of the detainees so that
he could focus on confronting the Allied landing with his limited number
of soldiers.
Mori himself did not want to execute the detainees and ordered his ju-
nior officer to carry it out. He called Lieutenant Ichinose Sōichi, head of
the Land Defense Party of the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit, to his office on
March 17 and ordered him to carry out the executions that day. However,
Ichinose probably wanted to avoid taking any responsibility also and
suggested that the executions should be conducted by his juniors.61
At about half past one, Mori called Sublieutenant Mochizuki Shichi-
tarō, head of a security detachment under the control of the Land Defense
Party, and made Ichinose repeat Mori's original order to him. Mochizuki
Massacre of Civilians 189

asked Mori about the method and place of the execution. Mori thought
that it was better to execute the detainees on Nago Island, just off Kavieng
port, where Allied bombings had left many large craters that could be
used as graves after the detainees were shot. Ichinose replied that the
local people would hear the shooting, and therefore they could not carry
out the executions "secretly." He suggested the detainees be strangled.
Mori agreed with Ichinose, and Ichinose advised Mochizuki that the most
suitable place of execution would be the south wharf of Kavieng port.
Mori instructed Mochizuki that the bodies should be tied to heavy
weights and dumped into the sea on the west side of Nago Island. Mori
said that he would arrange for the barges, weights, and wires to be sup-
plied by the Sea Defense Party and stated that the time of the executions
would be just after sunset at around half past five.62
The executions were to be carried out by members of the Land Defense
Party; had Mori asked the Sea Defense Party, he would have had to be in-
volved because he was acting as head of the group. Mori did not mind
supplying the equipment but did not want to participate directly Though
Mori had been anxious to get the order for the disposal of the detainees,
once he received it, he was reluctant to have any personal involvement.
His decision to use the Land Defense Party for the executions is clear evi-
dence of his dilemma.
Similarly, Mochizuki, who was ordered to carry out the executions,
seemed to want to avoid being at the actual place of execution. At about
three in the afternoon, he summoned three platoon leaders—Suzuki,
Takada, and Muraoka—from his company and instructed them in the de-
tails of the method of execution and disposal of the bodies. Muraoka,
who was a judo expert, took responsibility for strangling the detainees.
Takada's duty was to guard the other detainees as each individual was
executed. Suzuki was to supervise the entire proceedings. Mochizuki told
these men that he could not attend because of illness. Mochizuki further
instructed them that they should select five soldiers from each platoon;
five others selected from two other platoons brought the total to 23 sol-
diers present at the executions. These soldiers were ordered to carry ropes
and assemble at 5:00 p.m . outside the Land Defense Party.63
Soon after Mori finished his discussion with Ichinose and Mochizuki,
he rang Fleet Chief Petty Officer Takatō Jūtarō and instructed him to pre-
pare two barges by five o'clock at the south wharf and to load the 5-
meter-long wires and 20 concrete blocks onto each barge. Despite the fact
that Takatō probably asked, Mori did not explain for what purpose these
wires and blocks would be used. Takatō instructed his juniors to prepare
the blocks and wires and load them onto the first and second barges.
Takatō then instructed the barge captains, Kanbe Ryōhei and Miyamoto
190 Massacre of Civilians

Haruo, to take the barges to the south wharf by half past five. Therefore,
the crews of these barges did not know what sort of work they would be
engaged in, as Jitsukawa testified.64
At around five o'clock, Mochizuki addressed the soldiers gathered in
front of the Land Defense Party, saying only that soldiers should follow
the orders of Suzuki, Takada, and Muraoka. He then disappeared inside
the office. Acting Sublieutenant Suzuki Shōzō detailed the instructions
and allocated 10 soldiers to Muraoka for the purpose of strangulation,
five to Takada to guard the detainees, and the rest to himself. These sol-
diers were responsible for blindfolding the detainees and taking them to
the middle of the wharf. Suzuki then instructed Chief Petty Officer
Horiguchi Yoshio to receive each blindfolded civilian at the middle of the
wharf and hand the individual over to Muraoka. Suzuki further in-
structed these soldiers to tell the civilians they were being transferred to
Rabaul and that the soldiers should never mention the execution. After
this briefing, the soldiers boarded two trucks. One drove to the Australian
civilians' camp, the other to the German clergymen's, where they picked
up the detainees and brought them to Kavieng port.65
The detainees were informed that they were being transferred to
Rabaul and were not suspicious. They hurriedly packed their possessions
into suitcases and boarded the trucks, as instructed. The trucks drew up
at the side of the road, 50 meters away from the south wharf. The de-
tainees were told to wait there as they got off the trucks. At the War
Crimes Tribunal, Horiguchi claimed that the detainees were told to squat
behind a large buoy that stood on the wharf to prevent them from wit-
nessing the executions.66
The executions began at six o'clock. The detainees were told that they
would be taken one by one to a barge that would in turn take them to a
boat off Kavieng port. A few soldiers were responsible for taking each
person to the middle of the wharf, and another would follow carrying the
person's suitcase. In the middle of the wharf, the detainee was blind-
folded and handed to Horiguchi, who instructed the detainee to carry his
own suitcase. Horiguchi then took him by the hand and led him to Mu-
raoka. Muraoka told each detainee that the barge was waiting under the
wharf and that for safety's sake he should sit on the edge of the wharf
with his legs dangling over the side and his suitcase next to him. As soon
as each victim sat on the edge of the wharf, Muraoka gently put two
nooses over the detainee's head—one from each side—and his men, who
were holding the end of each rope, would pull violently. Muraoka would
then make sure the detainee was dead by listening for a heartbeat,
remove the ropes, and throw the body onto the barge two meters below
the wharf. Some of Muraoka's men were on the deck of the barge and tied
Massacre of Civilians 191

each body to a concrete block with wire cable. The detainee's suitcase was
taken to the opposite side of the wharf and thrown onto a pile. Suzuki, as
supervisor, moved around among Muraoka, Horiguchi, and Takada and
ensured that the whole operation went smoothly.67
When half of the detainees had been executed and their bodies loaded
onto the second barge, the first barge took its place. After the executions
had been completed, Muraoka and his men boarded one barge, Takada
and his men the other, and the barges left for Nago Island. They dumped
the bodies on the west side of the island where the water was deepest.68
The executions on the wharf were completed between nine and half
past nine in the evening.69 Thus it took approximately three and a half
hours to execute 32 people, at the rate of approximately six and a half
minutes per person—an extremely quick operation. Therefore, it is obvi-
ous that the operation was extremely well planned and that the Japanese
soldiers carried it out with efficiency.
Suzuki, who saw off the barges, instructed some other soldiers to take
the suitcases away and bum them. At around 10:00 P .M ., he visited
Mochizuki to inform him that the executions had been completed. The fol-
lowing day, early in the morning, Mochizuki went to see Ichinose and Mori
and relayed to them the same information. Soon after, it is reported that
Mori went to the headquarters of the 14th Naval Base Force. However, he
again avoided seeing Tamura. He attempted to see staff officer Yoshino, but
he was absent. Therefore, Mori asked staff officer Hiratsuka to pass the
message on to Yoshino that the executions had been carried out.70
Two days after the executions, on March 19, Mori happened to bump
into Tamura on the path between the headquarters of the 14th Naval Base
Force and the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit, but Mori did not mention the ex-
ecutions at all. Hurriedly, Tamura asked him whether the executions had
really been carried out, to which Mori simply replied "Yes." Naturally,
Tamura did not report the executions to Southeast Fleet Headquarters in
Rabaul, as they were undertaken without permission.71
The long-awaited landing of the Allied forces in Kavieng never hap-
pened, and the war ended in August of the following year. Once the war
was over, the future war crimes tribunals that would be conducted by Al-
lied forces suddenly became a crucial issue to the Japanese forces scat-
tered around the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, those with guilty con-
sciences made enormous efforts to cover up their crimes—destroying
evidence and fabricating alibis well before the Allied forces arrived.
Southeast Fleet Headquarters in Rabaul was no exception. Immediately
after the Japanese surrender, senior officers called Commander Yoshino to
Rabaul and asked him whether any serious war crimes were committed
by the Japanese forces in New Ireland and, if so, whether it was possible to
192 Massacre of Civilians

cover them up. Yoshino first mentioned that some Australians and Ger-
mans were executed without permission in March 1944. In the light of this
information, the staff officer of headquarters, Captain Sanagi Tsuyoshi,
asked his juniors to assist Yoshino in fabricating an alibi. Yoshino and
these officers made up the story that the Australian and German civilians
were killed when Allied forces attacked and sank the ship on which they
were traveling. They studied a record of shipping movements around
March 1944 and selected the most suitable incident—the sinking of the
Kowa Maru a month before. Sanagi approved of this fabrication and told
Yoshino that if he was forced to undergo questioning by Allied forces, he
should tell them Sanagi had given Tamura orders to move the civilians
from Kavieng onto the Kowa Maru. Yoshino returned to Kavieng and ex-
plained the details of the arrangement to Tamura and Mori, who called to-
gether all those soldiers of the 83rd Naval Garrison Unit who participated
in the executions and instructed them as to what to say if they were ques-
tioned in the future. They carried out mock interrogations repeatedly so
that the soldiers would memorize the entire scenario.72
The preceding account of the Kavieng massacre is based on the reports
made by Klestadt and the court proceedings of the War Crimes Tribunal.
However, I have some suspicions about the statements of Suzuki and
Horiguchi, who were present at the executions. One of these is that the
detainees may have realized what was happening because they were only
50 meters from the execution site. There were no buildings around the
area, and even though the executions occurred after sunset, they still
would have been visible. Horiguchi stated that the detainees were placed
behind a big buoy, but it is unlikely the buoy could obscure the vision of
more than 30 people.
Even if we accept Horiguchľs statement, it is unlikely that these people
were not suspicious about being taken one by one onto the barge over the
course of three hours, a long and drawn-out process for boarding. Suzuki
also stated that none of the detainees realized what was happening until
the last moment, which he asserted was a very considerate method of ex-
ecution. But Suzuki's statement contradicts that of Jitsukawa, who was in
the engine room of a barge. Jitsukawa stated that he had heard the
screams of the detainees from above. Furthermore, Jitsukawa and Mori
Yahichi, a crew member from the first barge, both stated that the crew
spent several hours cleaning blood off the deck when they returned to
Kavieng port from Nago Island.73 It may be, therefore, that some de-
tainees noticed what was happening and attempted to resist the soldiers
and were bayoneted as a result. At the court, the prosecutor could not
pursue this issue, as by that time both Muraoka, who carried out the exe-
cutions, and Takada, another witness, were already dead. Both Suzuki
and Horiguchi said they could not remember the names of any of the
Massacre of Civilians 193

twenty-odd soldiers who had participated in the executions, which

makes it possible that Suzuki and Horiguchi had collaborated to cover up
any hint of undue violence.74
On December 17, 1947, the court handed down its verdict. The com-
mander of the 14th Naval Base Force and 83rd Naval Garrison Unit,
Tamura Ryũkichi, was sentenced to death by hanging. Others involved
received prison sentences: the deputy commander of the 83rd Naval Gar-
rison Unit, Mori Kyōji, 20 years; Yoshino Shōzō, staff officer of the 14th
Naval Base Force, 15 years; Mochizuki Shichitarō, 7 years; Suzuki Shōzō,
12 years; and Horiguchi Yoshio, 4 years. There is no record of the prosecu-
tion of Ichinose Sōichi, who was head of the Land Defense Party and who
suggested execution by strangulation, probably because he could not be
located by the Australian War Crimes Section after the war. Tamura, al-
though accused by his juniors Mori and Yoshino, accepted full responsi-
bility for the decision to execute the civilians and asked the judge to be le-
nient with the other soldiers implicated in the executions.75

Japanese Soldiers, International Law, and Gyokusai

It is significant that the War Crimes Tribunal hearing the Kavieng mas-
sacre prosecuted the Japanese only for the murder of 23 Australian civil-
ians, not for the murder of the 9 German clergymen. As with the Akikaze
massacre, responsibility for the deaths of the Germans was not taken into
consideration. These cases serve to highlight the limitations of war crimes
tribunals as a form of prosecution because the prosecuting country fo-
cuses on cases involving its own citizens or citizens of allied nations. In
view of these limitations, one cannot expect war crimes tribunals to carry
out full justice.
At the tribunal for the Kavieng case, the prosecutor brought up the
question of just how much knowledge Tamura and other Japanese naval
officers had of international law. Both the Hague and Geneva Conven-
tions impose a duty on military forces to guarantee the security of a de-
tainee's life, private property, and freedom of religion. Tamura, when
asked at court about his knowledge of international law, stated that he
briefly studied it at the Japanese naval academy at Edajima but had for-
gotten most of the content. Surprisingly, Tamura did not know that the
Japanese government had ratified the Hague Convention until just before
his court appearance. He also testified that he had never heard that the
Japanese government had made an announcement that it would apply
the principles of the Geneva Convention, even though it was not a signa-
tory. Yoshino also testified that he had received a lecture on international
law at the naval academy but was never given detailed information about
the Hague Convention. He stated that he had read the Hague Convention
194 Massacre o f Civilians

only once. Mori was one of the judges of the Japanese court-martial while
he was stationed in China from February to November 1939. Neverthe-
less, he stated that he did not know anything about international law,
although he knew it existed. Mochizuki was not only unaware of inter-
national law but also quite ignorant of Japanese naval disciplinary provi-
sions.76 Therefore, if officers were lacking in such basic knowledge of in-
ternational law, it is obvious that the ordinary Japanese soldier would
have had little if any knowledge of it at all.
At the Japanese naval college, an international law course had been in-
cluded in the curriculum from its inception. Especially between the Sino-
Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the
Japanese naval college made a great effort to educate the officers about
international law.77 The Japanese naval academy, founded twenty years
before the college, began teaching international law during the Russo-
Japanese War. However, as time passed, the subject at both institutions
came to be regarded as expendable. In the 1910s and 1920s, when Tamura
and Yoshino graduated from the academy, lecturers would have briefly
mentioned the existence of international law but would not have ex-
plained the details. At the advent of the Pacific War, hours of teaching at
the academy were shortened and the few lectures on law were further
cut. For example, in 1941 students at the naval academy who were non-
commissioned officers received only five hours of lectures on law, during
which they studied the Japanese constitution, naval law and disciplinary
provisions, and international law.78 Therefore, it is estimated that the stu-
dents received only one hour of teaching on international law during
their time at the academy. When Mori graduated from the naval academy
in 1936, the situation was no doubt similar. Even this limited exposure to
the subject was better than at the military academy, where they received
virtually no instruction on international law at all.79
It can be said that the massacres of civilians on the A kikaze and at Kavieng
were the result of the Japanese naval officers' lack of knowledge of interna-
tional law. However, the killing of innocent civilians, including women and
children, is not just a matter of law but of basic human rights. Tamura vis-
ited the detainees' camp several times during his tenure at Kavieng and
amiably asked about their living conditions and health. Yoshino, who had
been to Melbourne, Australia, before the war on a training exercise, found a
person from Melbourne among the detainees and had enjoyed a few
friendly conversations with him.80 Tamura seems to have been a very
warm-hearted person. There is an anecdote that once, before the war, he
gave his daughter's classmate money to go on a school excursion, as her
family was poor.81 So the question is, how could such a person give the
order to execute civilians, some of whom he had met several times?
Massacre of Civilians 195

In answering this, one must not forget the extremely tense psychologi-
cal pressure endured by Tamura and other Japanese soldiers in Kavieng.
Their situation was desperate: They were convinced that the landing of
the Allied forces was imminent, there was no communication with
Rabaul, and there were no supporting forces to assist them. Therefore, for
many weeks they endured the psychological position that there was no
other option but gyokusai, or "glorious self-annihilation." As is well
known, Japanese soldiers were not allowed to surrender and had to fight
until the end. It was their duty to inflict as much damage as possible on
the enemy, even if there was no hope of winning the battle, and then to
die. The idea of gyokusai was to force a Japanese soldier to destroy his
most precious possession—his own life. In other words, a person who
must face gyokusai was forced to recognize how dispensable his life was.
For this reason, a soldier had to find his own profound meaning for his
death in order to commit the act. He gained a false sense of immortality
through his belief that his life would continue through the spirit of the
emperor or kokutai, "the national body." It is ironic that the more desper-
ate the situation Japanese soldiers were in, the more fiercely they would
fight and show strong loyalty toward the emperor so that their spirit
might live on.
However, no matter how one rationalizes the meaning of one's life, this
concept of immortality is basically flawed. Often, a soldier tried to ratio-
nalize his actions with fanatical nationalism, but he could not erase the
unconscious fear that his life was about to be terminated. Because the sol-
dier was forced to eliminate his own life by a violent organization of mili-
tary forces that he could not resist, a natural and easy psychological "ra-
tionalization" would have been for him to regard the lives of other people
as dispensable also. Therefore, for the soldier, the most important ques-
tion was how to make his own death a meaningful consequence—that is,
how to achieve immortality. This became his obsession, so that the lives of
prisoners, detainees, and the like meant nothing to him.
At the tribunal, Tamura said that "strategically" the executions were
unavoidable.82 However, the only strategic option they had at that time
was gyokusai, so it was up to Tamura and his men to make the act as
meaningful as possible. The fact that Mori repeatedly requested Tamura
to make a decision as quickly as possible clearly demonstrates the psy-
chology of gyokusai, whereby the lives of detainees were regarded as ob-
stacles toward the successful completion of glorious self-annihilation. In
this sense, Mori and Tamura were both victims of the gyokusai ideology as
well as perpetrators of a horrendous act.
The problem, therefore, is not just a question of the failure to teach
Japanese soldiers international law. What must be examined is why the
196 Massacre of Civilians

concept of basic human rights, in particular respect for individual lives,

was lacking among the Japanese soldiers, and how this is strongly related
to the concept of gyokusai. Thus the key is to examine the historical
process that created this unique ideology, found only in the Japanese mil-
itary forces during the Asia-Pacific War.
Conclusion: Understanding Japanese
Brutality in the Asia-Pacific War

The Japanese Concept of Basic Human Rights

The extreme ill-treatment of POWs by the Japanese was a historically spe-
cific phenomenon that occurred between the so-called China Incident and
the end of World War II. By making this claim, I am not denying that mis-
treatment of POWs, along with the other horrors of war, is a universal
problem. Since the end of World War II, there have been constant recur-
rences of the same kinds of atrocities that were perpetrated by the Japa-
nese. At the time of writing, the most notable ongoing conflicts (in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Chechnya) have all been marked by
frequent reliable reports of atrocities. Needless to say, atrocities commit-
ted against prisoners have figured prominently among them. However,
to say that these problems are therefore exactly the same in any war at
any time and place would unduly distort the picture, because there are
important historical and cultural differences to take into account.
Prior to the China Incident, Japanese POW policy and practice were
comparatively humane. Even the Chinese, who were the most brutally
treated during the Asia-Pacific War, had been treated with relative respect
in previous military encounters.1In order to understand how such drastic
changes could occur within a few decades, at most, it is necessary to ex-
amine more closely some underlying developments. It is especially im-
portant to understand more about the changes that occurred in Japanese
military ideology from about 1910 onward, how these affected the organi-
zational structure of the Japanese military forces, and how both affected
Japanese POW policy.
As was explained in detail in Chapter 2, Japanese POW policy and
practice during the Meiji and Taishō periods were scrupulously in accor-
dance with the international law of the time. However, it is undeniable
that the Japanese military structure had within it the potential for brutal-
ity right from the creation of Japan's modem military forces in the early
Meiji period. That potential was evident in the harsh treatment the mili-
tary imposed on its own officers and soldiers. A case in point is the order
198 Conclusion

given by the com m ander of the First A rm y of the Japanese im perial

forces, General Yam agata A ritom o, during the first Sino-Japanese War of
1894-1895 that Japanese soldiers m ust com m it suicide rather than surren-
der to the enemy.2 This order m arked the beginning of a m odem reconsti-
tution of bu sh id ō, the ancient m artial code of conduct. Yam agata's order
rem ained in effect over the next half century. Thus, the m ilitary leaders'
disregard for life and the new ethic that underpinned that attitude w ere
taking shape long before the A sia-Pacific War. By the tim e of the China In-
cident, the m ilitary leadership's attitude of disregard for hum an life ex-
tended beyond its own m en to encom pass POW s as well. This develop-
m ent can be seen as an alm ost inevitable result of the changes in Japanese
im perial ideology during that time.
The core of any m ilitary force is the soldiers them selves. N o m atter
how sophisticated their w eaponry, if there are not enough disciplined and
able-bodied soldiers to utilize it, m ilitary pow er is dim inished. Therefore,
for any m odem m ilitary force, a critical consideration in planning its
strategies should be how to m inimize casualties while still carrying out
an operation effectively. H ow ever, m odem Japanese m ilitary forces,
w hich w ere established in the latter half of the nineteenth century and de-
veloped quickly over a short period, tended to undervalue the strategic
im portance of m inim izing casualties. This tendency increased as the em -
peror ideology gained hold over the m inds of the Japanese people and
reached its peak during W orld W ar II, w hen the g y o k u sa i ideology
em erged. G y oku sai held that a soldier w as expected to fight to the end for
the emperor. Even w hen the situation w as becom ing hopeless for a Jap-
anese victory, the Japanese m ilitary com m and, instead of trying to mini-
m ize casualties, forced g y o k u sa i on its soldiers, thereby further dim in-
ishing its m anpow er. Instead of acknow ledging imminent defeat, the
m ilitary leaders becam e caught up in an escalating cycle of such desper-
ate and counterproductive tactics as kam ikaze (suicide attack by an air-
craft) and kaiten (suicide attack by a subm arine).3 Suicidal attack is not a
phenom enon peculiar to the Japanese. Suicidal attacks have occurred
am ong both W estern and Islam ic m ilitary forces but as a spontaneous act
rather than as p art of a strategy. In this sense, the Japanese g y oku sai is of a
different nature.
It is the duty of any soldier to kill the enem y in war. Of course, soldiers
violate the basic hum an rights of others by killing them , and in this sense
the Japanese and W estern forces w ere no different. H ow ever, in w artim e,
killing can be legitim ized by the rationalizations that a soldier m ust kill
others in order to defend him self and that his actions serve the higher
purpose of defending his nation. These legitim izations, in com bination
w ith any m ilitary force's im position of a rigid com m and structure that
places the soldier's duty of obedience to his superiors as param ount, fur-
Conclusion 199

ther compound the military's tendency to undervalue the basic human

rights of the individual.
Despite this common element, ĵapanese forces were unusal in the ex-
tent to which they undervalued their soldiers. In order to discover why
the Japanese committed such cruel war crimes upon detainees, POWs,
and civilians in occupied territories during the Asia-Pacific War, we also
need to understand more deeply why there was disregard for the basic
human rights of the Japanese soldier. The answer to this question cannot
be confined to the Japanese military because all sectors of Japanese soci-
ety supported the imperial ideology. Therefore, we must examine what
sorts of concepts of human rights the Japanese had before, during, and
after the war.
This question is difficult to answer, and it is insufficient to debate the
question on an abstract level. A comprehensive treatment of the issue
would be a large undertaking (not even a whole book would suffice). For
the moment, I will simply provide a thumbnail sketch of the trajectory of
events that mark the evolution of the dominant concept of human rights
in Japanese society from the Meiji restoration to the end of the war.
Japan created its first state constitution—the Meiji constitution—in Feb-
ruary 1889. Between 1890 and 1898, a body of five laws—civil law, com-
mercial law, criminal law, civil procedure, and criminal procedure—was
established. The Meiji government borrowed from Freņch and German
legislation and, in less than ten years, created a body of law of compara-
ble complexity and comprehensiveness. The reason for the Meiji govern-
ment's comparatively hasty establishment of a constitution was not out of
urgent concern for the protection of the basic human rights of the Japa-
nese people or the need for clarification of legal duty. The constitution
was adopted principally as a device to establish the power of the Japa-
nese imperial state in the face of challenges to its authority by the "un-
equal treaties" the Tokugawa regime had signed with the Western pow-
ers. These treaties guaranteed Western powers legal jurisdiction over
their own citizens who committed crimes on Japanese soil and made
them immune from existing Japanese law. The ratification of the Meiji
constitution was intended to demonstrate to the West that Japan had a
systematic, nationwide body of rational laws, thereby creating the basis
for ending extraterritoriality. The motive for adopting the constitution
was thus primarily a response to external political forces rather than in-
ternal ones.4
The Meiji constitution imposed a body of laws on a society in which a
demand for such laws had not developed organically. Thus a significant
gap remained between the codified law and the everyday understand-
ings of lawful and moral conduct as practiced by the populace. Nowhere
was this more obvious than in the confusion surrounding the notion of
200 Conclusion

kenri, or "rights." The very word kenri was an invention of the Meiji con-
stitution; there had previously been no word for the concept of political
rights in Japan.5
Of course, this does not mean the Japanese had no concept of rights
prior to the adoption of the Meiji constitution; property and contractual
rights were highly developed.6 But there was little or no concept of uni-
versal political rights, such as those included in the U.S. Bill of Rights.
The ratification of the Meiji constitution did not sweep away the histori-
cally inherited network of feudal conventions that constituted the Toku-
gawa regime; rather, the Meiji constitution was a superimposition of
modem legal and political forms onto a continuing feudal structure, most
clearly evident in the retention of the emperor. Thus Japan has no history
of political rights gained by large-scale mass revolution of the common
people, as is the case in Western Europe and the United States. In Japan,
political rights were established mainly by the state in advance of their
adoption or understanding by the common people.7
The Meiji constitution ostensibly enshrined a range of rights then estab-
lished in Western Europe, but these rights could be circumscribed or even
overridden by specific legislation. Thus the system contrasted with that
of the United States, for instance, where the constitution takes prece-
dence. For example, Chapter 2 of the 1889 constitution (Rights and Duties
of Subjects) contained 15 articles that covered and ostensibly protected
the range of political rights. However, the majority of these articles were
framed in such a way as to make it easy for them to be overridden. An ex-
ample is Article 29: "Japanese subjects shall, within the limits of the law ,
enjoy the liberty of speech, writing, publication, public meetings and as-
sociations." [Emphasis added.]
The Meiji government used provisions of this nature to make laws that
flouted the spirit of the constitution but remained within the letter. In-
deed, the government emphasized the concept of duty over and above
the concept of rights in its practice. For example, the relatives of a man
killed by a fire engine were denied compensation by the government on
the grounds that the driver of the fire engine was engaged in public duty
at the time of the accident. When the Itabashi ammunition depot near
Tokyo exploded, destroying several houses, the owners were denied com-
pensation on the grounds that the depot was of great importance to
Japanese defense and thus it was part of public duty to live with the dan-
ger of such an installation. And when the negligence of a professor of
medicine at Kyoto Imperial University resulted in the crippling of a pa-
tient on whom he operated, he was exempted from paying compensation
on the grounds that, as an employee of the public education system, he
was engaged in public duty at the time.8
Conclusion 201

However, it would be a mistake to believe that there was widespread

public outrage at such official conduct. The Meiji constitution had been
imposed on a feudal value structure, and significant features of that value
structure persisted in the early period of Japanese modernity. Much of the
populace seems to have placed a higher value on the concepts of duty
and fealty to the nation than on the concepts of rights and liberties. To
claim one's "rights" was seen as egocentric, individualistic, and destruc-
tive of the social fabric. The organic model of the nation—with the state as
a family and the emperor as the "nation's father"—persisted as the domi-
nant model of national life for the vast majority of Japanese.9

Japanese Moral Concepts and the Emperor Ideology

The absence of a developed liberal concept of universal human rights in
Japanese society had a corresponding effect on the everyday Japanese
concept of the rights of others as individuals. The "other" was conceived
of in national, social, and organic terms as a "sibling," owing similar du-
ties to the national family-state. Responsibility was conceived in terms of
a pyramidal model. Duties were always to one's superior: the duty of a
family to the father, of the father to the state, and of the state to the em-
peror. The chain of responsibility was conceived of as predominantly uni-
directional, from subordinate to superior.10
Responsibility was effectively unlimited; there was no concept of "in-
alienable rights" to serve as a bulwark against the demands of the state.
Duty was always seen in highly sentimental terms—up to and including
one's duty to die for the emperor. The terms of such duty could be highly
arbitrary. Apart from duty to one's superiors, there were no clear guide-
lines as to whom one owed responsiblity. Nor was it clear what demands
could be made on an individual—in the name of duty—by the different
people in the hierarchy. Thus the notion of "national duty and responsi-
bility" in general led to a collapse of responsibility in particular. The spe-
cific and habitual duties of citizens, and the reasonable limits to such,
were never clarified. Universal responsibility thus laid the groundwork
for a comprehensive irresponsibility in individual conduct.11
The clearest example of such an abrogation of individual responsibility
for one's actions is undoubtedly the conduct of Japanese soldiers and offi-
cers during the course of the Asia-Pacific War, especially in their treat-
ment of POWs. The military doctrine of unquestioning obedience to su-
perior officers was heightened by the fact that such orders were explicitly
given "in the name of the emperor"; the chain of duty was thus made
explicit at each stage, and the responsibility for acts was transferred up
the chain to the emperor. Consequently, the Japanese soldiers who were
202 Conclusion

defendants in the war crimes trials denied responsibility for their acts—and
did so in good faith: They honestly believed that responsibility rested with
the military, the state, and ultimately their highest allegiance, the emperor.
Such a displacement of responsibility was a factor even in the defense
of the A Class war criminals, such as Tōjō, who claimed that as prime
minister he was nothing more than the most senior servant of the em-
peror.12Another example of a means to avoid personal responsibility was
the doctrine of ichioku sōzange—the notion that the entire population of
Japan was responsible for losing the war and should apologize to the em-
peror. Thus the political leaders òf Japan avoided particular responsibility
for their conduct of the war and absolved the emperor of personal re-
sponsibility by apologizing on behalf of the nation. In contradiction to
Tōjō's defense, a myth grew that the emperor was a victim of the war
leaders and, having no real power to make or effect political decisions, he
did not bear any responsibility for Japan's war crimes.
The absence of a notion of personal responsibility for political acts has
had an enduring impact on Japanese cultural construction of the Asia-
Pacific War. The current generation of Japanese still do not have a clear
concept of the responsibility of their parents and grandparents in relation
to the war. This is an entirely different situation from what exists in, for
example, Germany, where an acute awareness of the role of the German
people in World War II and genocide of Jews and Gypsies continues to be
a major factor in political life and memory.
Indeed, in Japan the whole framework of ethics was not seen as ema-
nating from individuals or even from a collective cultural base. Instead it
was seen as coming downward from the emperor to the people as a
framework for understanding their duties, and these duties went upward
from the people to the emperor. In both cases, the state acted as the con-
duit and the effective framer of the details—the emperor thus becoming a
symbolic national father who legitimized state power. Thus the document
defining social relations and citizenship known as Kyōiku Chokugo, which
was introduced into Japanese schools as a basis for developing good
Japanese citizenship, was known as the "Imperial Rescript on Education"
and was presented as having come (whether literally or metaphorically)
from the emperor himself. Such a framework for ethics gives rise to a con-
flict between the universalizing tendency of modernity, with its aim of
founding morality in rationally discoverable rules for the personal con-
duct of any individual, and the older feudal ideal of a morality that was
fused with authority, which emanated from the emperor and over which
abstract demands for legitimation had no purchase.13
The authoritarian basis of Japanese morality in this period can be seen
very clearly in the habitual ill-treatment of Japanese soldiers by their offi-
cers. Discipline was conducted through bentatsu (the routine striking and
Conclusion 203

bashing of soldiers), which was presented as an "act of love" by the offi-

cers for the soldiers. Even in the Japanese Navy—which was far more
Westernized in its conduct than the Army14—adopted a practice of harsh
discipline known as tekken seisai (the iron fist) in the wake of the Russo-
Japanese War.15 It was often called the ai-no-muchi, or "whip of love." Not
surprisingly, this manner of conduct was extended to Allied POWs dur-
ing the Asia-Pacific War. Violence against POWs by Japanese guards was
routinized and made psychologically easy for the perpetrators, as it oc-
curred within a legitimizing framework.
Within such an authority-based system of morality, the worth of indi-
viduals was conceived in terms of their proximity to the emperor. Despite
the fact that the constitution ostensibly guaranteed equality to citizens be-
neath the emperor, the everyday reality was that those who carried out
the emperor's wishes—the state bureaucracy and the military, in particu-
lar—were represented as the most worthy and valuable citizens.16 The
"untouchable" class (burakumiń)—the slaughtermen, cremators, and tan-
ners—and those involved in entertainment and theater were, by virtue of
their livelihoods, represented as the furthest from the emperor and the
least worthy of all the Japanese people.17
This value system, in which human worth was anchored in proximity
to the emperor, became accepted and embedded in Japanese culture to
such a degree that it did not require active efforts by the state to make it
hold. However, in the colonies it was a different story The anchoring of
responsibilities and rights in the authority of the emperor was not readily
accepted by the colonized peoples and had to be imposed by a combina-
tion of military force and ideological inventions such as "the Asian Co-
Prosperity Sphere" and hakkō ichiu ("the whole word under one roof," i.e.,
under the emperor). Within Japan's expansive empire, the emperor-as-
supreme system was intended to apply to whole nations. The worth of
nations was to be judged by their proximity to the emperor as repre-
sented by the Japanese nation.18
The Japanese notion of "world peace"—a phrase used frequently by
Japan on the world stage in the 1930s—was at variance with the Wilso-
nian concept of "a world peace achieved by the democratic relationship
of states" within the League of Nations, although in reality, the Wilsonian
concept also served the interests of powerful nations (in this case, Britain
and the United States) rather than weaker ones. The Japanese concept of
world peace was one in which "peace" was anchored in the submission of
many nations to imperial domination. In the Asian sphere the dominant
nation was to be Japan. This resistance to the dominant notion of a liberal
democratic framework for international relations extended to Japan's atti-
tude to international law, which it saw as an illegitimate imposition on its
anchored legal-value system.
204 Conclusion

The value system of proximity to the emperor created a contradiction

in the self-regard held by Japanese enlisted men. Within the borders of
Japan they were of relatively low status, yet in the colonies, among the
subjected peoples, they were representatives of the emperor and their sta-
tus rose greatly. This led in many cases to unbalanced psychological
states: extremes of self-abnegation in relation to the Japanese domestic hi-
erarchy alternating with excessive self-regard in relation to colonial non-
Japanese subjects. The repressed resentment of the former was often ex-
pressed in violence toward the latter.19 This was exemplified by the 1937
Nanjing massacre, in which large numbers of Chinese civilians were
raped or murdered or both.
Undoubtedly POWs were also the target of such transferred anger and
frustration. In literal terms, Japanese soldiers were obviously the physical
perpetrators of such atrocities. In psychological and ideological terms,
they were also the victims of an emperor system that legitimized such
atrocities in the name of serving the emperor. The wartime propaganda
used by the Allied nations portraying the Japanese people as "schizo-
phrenic"—gentle at home yet violent outside their own country—was
therefore by no means groundless. Yet any imperial nation contains the
double standard of one set of morals for use within the nation and an-
other for use outside. But in the Japanese case, the gap between these two
moral standards was probably wider than that of Western imperialism.
The reason for this can be found in the emperor system, which has the
specific ideology and the structure of oppression.
However, like any ideology, the emperor ideology was constituted so
that its oppressive elements were not easily recognized by the general
populace. The concept of the emperor's paternal love toward his subjects
is one such example. This feudal notion of family ties was used to cover
up the political control exerted over the Japanese people. Thus, just as the
familiar notion of a father's love for his children was exploited and ex-
panded in the concept of the emperor's love for his subjects, so too was
the notion of trust and obedience of the child toward the father reiterated
in the concept of the subject's loyalty toward the emperor.20 Another ele-
ment was the Shinto philosophy incorporated in the emperor ideology.
Because Shinto is not formulated in any readily expressed doctrines and
does not have any sacred texts, it can potentially absorb a vast range of
ideas so long as they are not antiauthoritarian.
As the emperor ideology strengthened, the emperor, as head of the
Shinto religion, became associated with a range of political ideas and atti-
tudes, some of which are, from a rational standpoint, contradictory or
incompatible.21 Therefore, the emperor ideology had a tendency toward
totalitarianism from the beginning, but this tendency was veiled with
mysticism, and as a result the illusory concept of the harmony of the
Conclusion 205

nation was established. The two concepts of a familial love among all
Japanese people and harmony within the nation served to disguise the
oppression of the Japanese people by their rulers. Thus, in the minds of
many, the emperor became the key figure in maintaining national har-
mony. It seemed natural to demonstrate strong loyalty to him in return
for the "social welfare" he provided.
Although I have portrayed the Japanese as strongly in the hold of the
emperor ideology, I certainly do not want to give the impression that
there was never any organized opposition. Especially during the period
of the "Taishō democracy"—which spanned 1915 to the early 1920s—
there was lively political debate in Japanese society, and such strongly
antiemperor ideologies as anarchism, feminism, and communism gained
significant numbers of adherents, even if they always remained minori-
ties. However, the 1920s brought the beginning of a clampdown on politi-
cal dissent. Organized opposition was targeted by the police and military
for violent treatment. For example, in the wake of the 1923 Kantō earth-
quake, the military used the ensuing disorder as a cover for rounding up
prominent political activists, some of whom were executed extrajudi-
cially. Among those executed were four famous anarchist political ac-
tivists: Ōsugi Sakae, Itō Noe, Kaneko Fumiko, and Pak Yeol.22
The modem Japanese state, based upon the emperor system, was not
established overnight. According to influential political scientist Ishida
Takeshi, the point of full development of the concept of the family-state
was reached around 1910. Ishida's analysis is based upon changes in
school textbooks on morals, theories of the state produced by the leading
Japanese philosophers of the time, and the rhetoric of grassroots national-
ist political organizations.23 We can certainly treat Ishida's claim as reli-
able and can therefore say something more about politics during the
Taishō democracy. After 1910 the emperor ideology was sufficiently well
formed to be a recognizable target for opposition. The brief flourishing of
left-wing politics in the period of the Taishō democracy can be under-
stood as a rearguard action against the emerging fascism that was moti-
vated in large part by the emperor ideology.
Maruyama Masao, another influential political scientist, analyzed the
historical development of Japanese fascism based on a concept similar to
Ishida's notion of the family-state. Maruyama identified the period be-
tween the end of World War I and the Manchurian incident (1920-1930)
as the preparatory stage of the Japanese fascist movement. The move-
ment developed fully in the period between Japan's seizure of Manchuria
in 1931 and the February 26 Incident (a failed coup d'etat on February 26,
1936). The period between 1936 and August 1945 following the entrench-
ment of fascism was the high point of the movement.24 In other words,
the emperor ideology, based upon the family-state concept, gradually
206 Conclusion

penetrated the Japanese mind from around 1910, became strongly en-
trenched during the 1920s, then fed into Japanese fascism from the 1930s.

The Corruption of Bush¡dõ

While the emperor ideology was taking form and gaining a hold on the
Japanese people, related changes were occurring within the ideologies
and ethical codes of the military. One of the most important changes was
the reinterpretation—or more plainly, corruption—of the ethical code of
bushidō ("the way of the warrior") in order to subordinate it to the em-
peror ideology and the new military ideology. The inculcation of trainee
officers in the emperor ideology at the military college gave them a very
distorted understanding of bushidō. In the early Meiji period, the military
code of conduct was still strongly influenced by bushidō, yet by 1920 the
true spirit o į bushidō had vanished from the armed forces. What remained
was a mere husk of what bushidō had been in previous times—whatever
superficial features that could be appropriated for the emperor ideology
while dispensing with the substance.
An example of how bushidō had previously influenced military conduct
during the Meiji period can be seen in a book written by the philosopher
Nishi Amane, Heika Tokugyō (The Moral Virtue of the Soldier), first pub-
lished in 1879. Nishi argued that it was necessary to set up a Westem-
style military that was mechanical in its organizational form in order for
Japan to be able to fight a modem war. However, Nishi also strongly em-
phasized the need to maintain the traditional Japanese values of benevo-
lence and right conduct—values that are the essence of bushidō.25 During
the early Meiji period the spirit of bushidō could still be seen in the rituals
of military discipline. High-ranking officers were expected to commit sep-
puku (ritual suicide) for serious offenses, whereas ordinary soldiers were
subject only to minor forms of corporal punishment.26 In their willingness
to place higher demands on themselves than those under their command,
officers demonstrated their commitment to bushidō. This forms a stark
contrast with the conduct of officers during the Asia-Pacific War, when
the court-martials were used to punish the rank and file harshly for dis-
obeying orders, no matter how absurd, and to cover up the wrongdoings
of officers. Self-discipline was clearly no longer a value of the senior ranks
in the Asia-Pacific War.
It is often held that the inhumane conduct of the Japanese during the
Asia-Pacific War arose from within bushidō itself. The Japanese Field Ser-
vice Code, Senjinkun, which among other things required that soldiers
commit suicide rather than surrender, and the Imperial Code of Military
Conduct, Gunjin Chokuron, which demanded absolute loyalty to the em-
peror, were both held to carry the essence of bushidō. All Japanese soldiers
Conclusion 207

as well as Formosan and Korean prison guards were required to memo-

rize them, and much of their understandings of bushidō would have come
from these codes. Prisoners of the Japanese also often believed that the
cruelty of their captors stemmed from bushidō.
Does bushidō justify cruelty? To answer this question it is necessary to
look at the details of the code, which consists of seven essential elements.
The first element is righteousness: commitment to justice and duty and
despising of cowardice. The second element is courage: the will to do
right and an indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. The warrior
should be concerned about nothing, including death, as an obstacle to
doing right. To die for a just cause is the highest honor, although to die for
a trivial cause is despised. Dying for a trivial cause is called inujini—"a
dog's death." The third element is humanity: love, tolerance, and sympa-
thy for others. Humanity is seen in bushidō as a particular requirement for
leaders. Humanity toward the weak or the defeated is seen as a most hon-
orable way for a warrior to conduct himself; therefore the ill-treatment of
POWs is completely opposed to this element. The fourth element is pro-
priety: the realization of humanity in acts of kindness. The fifth element is
sincerity: the respect for truth and the avoidance of lying. The sixth ele-
ment is honor: the realization of one's own duty and privilege. The hon-
orable warrior can do no wrong without feeling great shame. The seventh
element is loyalty: obedience to one's seniors but never blind obedience.27
In summary, it can be seen from the elements of the code that bushidō
requires great self-discipline together with great tolerance toward others.
So how and why were the demands for tolerance and compassion in
bushidō forgotten?
The Imperial Code of Military Conduct, which was issued in 1882 by
Emperor Meiji, emphasized five elements that every Japanese soldier
must respect: loyalty, propriety, courage, righteousness, and simplicity.
The code held that sincerity underlay all five elements. Justice and moral-
ity were also emphasized. It is clear that the code was heavily influenced
by bushidō. This is not at all surprising, as Nishi Amane participated in
drafting the conduct code, and he had the highest regard for bushidō as a
moral code. Nothing in the conduct code could possibly be taken as justi-
fication for the cruel treatment of POWs. In Article 3 requiring the soldier
to respect courage, it was stated that violent and impetuous acts can
never be acts of courage. It was also stated that the courageous soldier
must treat others with love and respect.28
However, as time passed, the real content of the conduct code was for-
gotten, and the code became a mere prop for ritualism. The booklet itself
took on the status of a sacred object. Soldiers were given the task of mem-
orizing the content (at least the words), but they no longer learned what
the words really meant. In the period leading up to the Asia-Pacific War,
208 Conclusion

an absurd situation developed: Officers who made mistakes in reciting

the code would see themselves as having committed a shameful act and
commit ritual suicide.
The Field Service Code was formulated in 1941 for the purpose of pre-
venting crimes by Japanese soldiers, such as those that occurred in the
Nanjing massacre in 1937, by tightening the definitions of how soldiers
should conduct themselves. Army Minister Tōjō Hideki issued the code
to all battalions of the imperial forces. It made specific reference to POWs
and their humane treatment. However, it also specifically stated that
Japanese soldiers should not allow themselves to become POWs. This no-
surrender policy was emphasized, and the other directives concerning
POWs were forgotten. As explained in Chapter 1, Tōjō himself violated
the Field Service Code by planning the exploitation of POWs as forced la-
borers for the Japanese war effort.29
Therefore it should be clear that the ethic in which the ill-treatment of
POWs was justifiable did not originate from within bushidō but rather
from the corruption of it. The single greatest corruption was in the de-
mand for blind loyalty to the emperor. This demand became an essential
element of the new Japanese military ideology. Article 1 of the Meiji code
emphasized loyalty, but this loyalty was toward the nation or state rather
than to the emperor. The object of Article 1 had been to foster nationalism
among the soldiers of the imperial forces. Article 2 clearly stated that sol-
diers should obey any order from a senior as if that order had come from
the emperor himself, but it also stated that senior officers should never
despise their juniors and should never behave in an arrogant manner.
Therefore Article 2 emphasized propriety and demanded cooperation
and mutual respect among all men in the armed forces.30 During the Asia-
Pacific War, however, the demand for obedience to senior officers was
stripped of its original context of mutual respect and cooperation. The
phrase "to obey orders as if they came from the emperor himself" became
a slogan that was constantly used by officers. Soldiers were punished se-
verely for disobedience, no matter how absurd the orders, and the slogan
was quoted as justification.
In this way the type of loyalty emphasized in the Meiji code was re-
placed by blind obedience. Soldiers attempted to demonstrate their loy-
alty by carrying out all and any orders and to prove their courage by reck-
less violence toward the enemy. The new military ideology—which
placed so much weight on the concepts of no surrender, loyalty through
blind obedience, and honor in dying for the emperor—spread throughout
the Japanese armed forces with little apparent resistance. The brutal treat-
ment of POWs by the Japanese can be seen as a way this ideology was put
into practice. To despise men who had surrendered rather than fight to
the death became a first step toward justifying reckless violence against
them.
Conclusion 209

Yamagata Aritomo, who invented the no-surrender policy, had a very

different concept of what loyalty meant. He was typically harsh in the
treatment of his own men, but Yamagata never believed in blind obedi-
ence. In 1878 he published a pamphlet entitled Gurtjin Kunkai (Admoni-
tion for Soldiers) in which he stated that if an order is illogical, soldiers
should be allowed to appeal to a higher authority, even if only after carry-
ing it out.31 Unfortunately, Yamagata's proposed brake on unreasonable
demands for obedience was far from practical on the front lines. During
the Asia-Pacific War there was no real possibility of successfully appeal-
ing illogical orders, and acts of questioning or disobedience invariably led
to court-martial.
The fact that such corruption of bushidō brought about a major change
in Japanese military ideology from around 1910 is also evident from vari-
ous revisions made to the existing military regulations and methods of
training in the same period. In 1908 there was a revision of army regula-
tions on internal affairs, and revision of drill books took place for the in-
fantry (1909), the artillery (1910), machine gunners (1910), and the cavalry
(1912). Moreover, in 1913 the ordinance of military education was created,
and the ordinance of field duty was created in 1914. By revising the drill
books and establishing new regulations, the Japanese forces fundamen-
tally changed their existing military strategy and methods of training
based upon the French and German models. As a result of these reforms,
the most prominent change was the emphasis placed on "fighting spirit"
and the concept of victory at any cost. The importance of devotion to the
state and emperor was reiterated in these new regulations. At the same
time, in order to enhance loyalty toward the state and emperor, the family-
state ideology was reintroduced into the military forces by the demand
that the soldier show obedience to his superior officers as a son shows
obedience to his father.32
This important change within the Japanese military forces is closely re-
lated to the fact that most of the older military leaders, who had been
samurai prior to the Meiji restoration, retired immediately after the
Russo-Japanese War. The replacement of the old military leaders con-
tributed to the distortion of bushidō and thus the creation of the new char-
acter of the Japanese forces. Until the Russo-Japanese War, Army leaders
had been former samurai from the Chōshŭ region, and Navy leaders for-
mer samurai from Satsuma. These former samurai, who had seized the
high command, had not only the tradition of bushidō to draw upon but
also their previous dual roles as politicians and military leaders. These
men had conducted the civil war, which culminated in the Meiji Restora-
tion, at a time when Japan was under threat of Western colonization. In
such circumstances they had to be concerned with much more than ac-
complishing their immediate military objectives; they had to understand
the value of compromise and they did. In other words, they proved they
210 Conclusion

had wisdom concerning how to conduct a war in accordance with the po-
litical conditions of the time. In the feudal period before the civil war, it
was also important for the samurai leaders to understand how to conduct
limited conflicts. For instance, they often lacked the material resources to
conduct prolonged conflicts, and consequently they were always pre-
pared to stop a war in order to accomplish their political objectives. The
priority of politics over warfare in the thinking of Japanese military lead-
ers in the early Meiji period was evident in their policies during the
Russo-Japanese War. Men such as General Ōyama Iwao and Rear Admi-
ral Yamamoto Gonbei as well as Prime Minister Katsura Tarō, who was
also a general in the Japanese Imperial Army, showed their ability to com-
promise while still obtaining their political objectives.33
However, because these former samurai, who had been brought up
with a strong fighting ethic, all retired after the Russo-Japanese War, their
wisdom was lost to the military. The new military leaders were either
their sons or sons of middle- and upper-class civilians, but in both cases
they apparently had little concept of bushidō. Most were graduates of the
newly established military college, where they were inculcated with the
emperor ideology and a corrupted version of bushidō. For these new se-
nior officers, a major war was regarded as a collection and expansion of
smaller battles rather than as a complex political situation that demanded
new ways of thinking. These new leaders had been in the front line of the
Russo-Japanese War. Proud of their victory in their first war experience,
they arrogantly saw themselves as the emperor's military forces.34 From
that time on, the special Japanese "fighting spirit" was heavily empha-
sized in their rhetoric, and they considered it more important than mili-
tary technology as a means to victory. The revision of the Japanese mili-
tary code and the penetration of the emperor ideology based upon the
family-state concept were therefore closely related to the fact that with the
retirement of the former samurai, the means by which the military tradi-
tion could be transmitted was lost.
In 1910 both the Japanese Army and Navy decided to expand their
forces, and the number of drafted soldiers suddenly increased dramati-
cally. In 1905, immediately after the Russo-Japanese War, 68,720 men were
drafted. The number jumped to 103,784 in 1912 and reached 135,948
in 1921.35 Most of the drafted men came from poor rural areas. They
were mainly the sons of tenant farmers, who were exploited by their land-
lords and suffered from the economic depression created by the Russo-
Japanese War. In contrast to the professional warrior class, these men did
not have a strong existing loyalty toward either the state or the military.
As a consequence, loyalty toward their senior officers, the state, and ulti-
mately the emperor had to be inculcated in them, often by violence.36
Thus, the "familylike relationship" within the military forces became a
Conclusion 211

sham, and the emphasis on fighting spirit promoted by the military lead-
ers became increasingly dogmatic.
It is highly likely that the dramatic change in Japanese POW policy co-
incided with the preparatory period of fascism in the 1920s, a period
marked by the corruption of bushidō and the development of the emperor
ideology. This ideology reshaped the Japanese people's idea of the em-
peror as well as their attitudes toward other countries, and such changes
were reflected in Japanese POW policy. If we compare the attitudes of sol-
diers involved in the Russo-Japanese War with those of soldiers in the
Asia-Pacific War, we can see a clear difference in their ideas about the em-
peror and the state. Letters home from soldiers in the Russo-Japanese War
show that they entertained few illusions about their own glorious self-
annihilation, and few expressed fanaticism for the state. These men were
nationalists, but their idealization of the emperor was lacking within their
nationalism.37 In this sense, they were clearly different from the Japanese
soldiers who fought so tenaciously against the Allied forces in the Asia-
Pacific War. This difference is clear in the wills written by Japanese war
criminals from all ranks who were sentenced to death. Many of these
show the degree to which these men genuinely believed they were dying
in order to save their country and to maintain the integrity of the em-
peror, although undoubtedly there were those who were not committed
to fighting for the emperor and the state.38 Further evidence of the general
belief that it was necessary to die for the state comes from the example of
Okinawan people. Many Okinawan civilians fought with the Japanese
against the U.S. forces in the battle of Okinawa and died because of the
nationalistic indoctrination that they should fight for the state until death,
despite the fact that they distrusted the Japanese as a result of racial dis-
crimination they had experienced for many generations.39
There is also a large difference between the Russo-Japanese War and
the Asia-Pacific War not only in the treatment of POWs by Japanese forces
but also in the Japanese people's attitudes toward Japanese soldiers who
became POWs themselves. For example, in 1906 the Japanese soldiers
who had been POWs in Russia stopped in Singapore on their way back to
Japan. The Japanese residents in Singapore welcomed them warmly, and
they enjoyed the same reception when they arrived in Kobe. These sol-
diers were taken to Tokyo by train, and whenever the train stopped at a
station, local people would shower the men with gifts. Some of the offi-
cers who became POWs were investigated by a special military investiga-
tion committee and accused of the "shameful act" of becoming POWs,
but all were let off lightly. None were court-martialed; in fact, some were
awarded medals.40 It is difficult to imagine the leaders of the Japanese
military behaving in such a generous manner toward their men who be-
came POWs during the Asia-Pacific War.
212 Conclusion

Toward Further Research

It clearly is insufficient to examine only military organizational structure
and ideology in order to reach an understanding of Japanese military war
crimes during the Asia-Pacific conflict. Also required is an understanding
of how emperor ideology was consolidated in the minds of the Japanese
during the 1920s and 1930s and how this affected the nation's military
structure and ideology. Japanese themselves have not yet truly examined
the interrelationship among ideology, ethics, and war crimes, but the task
is crucial and not only for historical reasons.
After the war, the Meiji constitution was abolished and the so-called
democratic constitution replaced it. Human rights were unconditionally
guaranteed, and the emperor was stripped of his divinity and of any ad-
ministrative political power. The death of emperor ideology seemed as-
sured. Again, however, a constitution was imposed from above—this
time by the Allied occupation forces—rather than arising from the strug-
gles and sentiments of the Japanese people. As with the Meiji reforms, the
concept of human rights was not (and has not been) thoroughly internal-
ized by the people as a living, day-to-day code of behavior, even though it
is well understood in theory.
This gap between theory and practice is evident in various forms of
discrimination found in Japanese society today. It is well known that mi-
nority groups such as those of Korean origin, the burakumin (Japan's "un-
touchables"), the Ainu (Japan's aborigines), and the Okinawans all suffer
from discrimination in such fundamental aspects of everyday life as mar-
riage and employment.41 Many in postwar Japan have been arrested and
jailed for years at a time without sufficient evidence to be convicted in a
legitimate trial.42 Similarly, the struggle of the people of Minamata to gain
compensation for the devastating effects of industrial pollution can be
seen as part of a historical continuum with antecedents in the Itabashi
ammunition depot explosion mentioned earlier. Guest workers in Japan
from the Philippines, Thailand, and China, for example, most of whom
do dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs ranging from construction work to
prostitution, also suffer numerous forms of discrimination and hardship.43
There are many other examples in Japanese society today of people's
failure to link the theory and practice of human rights. The recent contro-
versy over whether the Japanese government should pay compensation
to wartime comfort women (ianfu ) extends beyond the issue of war
crimes to encompass exactly how the Japanese view the concept of hu-
man rights.
The Japanese government's superficial grasp of human rights does not,
however, mean that the degree of human rights abuse is greater in Japan
than in the West. It is true that Western cultures were the source of much
Conclusion 213

of what constitutes the loose rubric of "human rights" stemming from the
Judeo-Christian tradition. John Locke and Immanuel Kant developed the
most influential theories of an individual's rights to freedom and equal-
ity, for which the biblical premise that all human beings are equal in the
eyes of God is a basic tenet. Furthermore, many Western revolutions,
most notably the French Revolution of 1789, had as their object the attain-
ment of freedom and equality. Although both of these examples aimed at
universality, in reality they were limited by class, principally to the bour-
geoisie. This is clearly seen in the failure to take seriously the rights of
workers, especially in the early stages of capitalism, and in the exploita-
tion of indigenous peoples in colonized regions.
"Respect for human rights" in Western society is an idealistic rather
than realistic concept. In this sense it is similar to the Japanese concept of
"national harmony" under the emperor. The West's vision of respect for
human rights has been exploited by politicians and promoted as reality,
despite its illusory status for many people. The use of the myth of "free-
dom and equality" as a political slogan is typified by the invasion of Viet-
nam by the United States and its allies under the pretext that the authori-
ties (i.e., governments) are protecting the freedom and equality of all in
the "free society." Discrimination, both racial and sexual, continues to
exist in various guises in most if not all Western societies.44
Another important issue that needs to be considered when examining
the brutality of the Japanese forces during the war is the study of these
acts from the viewpoint of the perpetrators. Until now, critical Japanese
historians have concentrated on the discovery and detailed examination
of the historical facts of Japanese war crimes and have usually relied on
oral history. However, the sources for these histories generally have been
the victims rather than the perpetrators. This investigatory method is suc-
cessful for discovering exactly what sort of war crimes were committed,
but it offers no way of uncovering how or why Japanese people became
capable of committing such horrific acts. Japanese historians need to
broaden the scope of oral history to include the perpetrators, principally
to follow their psychological development closely.
Some historians have recently focused on the confessions and diaries of
former Japanese soldiers, and this has been helpful in reconstructing the
events of various war crimes. However, these scholars seem satisfied with
using the information from the perpetrators to confirm events; they fail to
examine the important psychological process involved that would be at
least partially accessible in the confessions and diaries 45
For obvious reasons it is very difficult to interview perpetrators of war
crimes. However, perhaps because of these difficulties, it is a matter of ur-
gency that a method for obtaining the oral histories of perpetrators be de-
veloped, all the more so now that so many Japanese perpetrators are well
214 Conclusion

into old age or have already died. Successful methods have been devel-
oped for obtaining oral histories from those involved in war crimes com-
mitted by Nazis in World War II and Americans during the Vietnam War.
We can learn much from that work about how better to enable and en-
courage Japanese perpetrators of war crimes to tell their stories.
Although I feel there is a lack of research into the psychology that leads
an individual to commit or otherwise be involved in a war crime, I am not
advocating this as the primary level of investigation. Psychological ap-
proaches to crime almost invariably concentrate on the individual and ig-
nore or even obscure the relationships between the individual and his or
her social context. In the case of war crimes, we must always place the
psychological processes of the individual within the context of the partic-
ular circumstances of war, military structure, and dominant forms of ide-
ology of the time. In other words, we must always keep in mind what
broader social currents can make a human being a perpetrator. It is
through such a method that we can discover more about how war turns
ordinary people into both criminals and victims.
As I explained in the Introduction, popular thinking in Japan remains
strongly linked to the feeling that responsibility for the war lies over-
whelmingly in the hands of the war leaders who deceived a gullible pop-
ulace and led citizens into a war no one would want to see repeated. Con-
sequently people at large were made to feel they were victims. This is a
much weaker kind of antiwar thinking than can be found among German
people. It should probably be called a "dislike-of-war sentiment" rather
than "antiwar thinking." Contributing factors are undoubtedly the
absence of an equivalent to the Jewish Holocaust, the bombing of Hi-
roshima and Nagasaki,46 and the exculpation of Emperor Hirohito and
his portrayal as a victim of the war manipulated by military leaders.47
As previously mentioned, Maruyama Masao took popular thinking
about victimhood into account and attempted to undermine it. He began
the task in the late 1940s by accepting that the Japanese allowed them-
selves to become victims of the war leaders and then asked what kind of
weakness existed in the Japanese people and their social structure to
make this possible. Maruyama's proposition was strikingly appealing.
Since then many progressive scholars and writers have repeatedly
pointed out this weakness in Japanese people who fail to see themselves
simultaneously as perpetrators and victims.48 Unfortunately, the account
Maruyama initiated was never elaborated into one that made it possible
for most Japanese people to see that they also bear responsibility for the
war. What seems to be lacking in Japanese history writing is the kind of
work that can bring home to readers how much continuity there is
between life during wartime and everyday life here and now. By con-
trast, this is brilliantly done by some German historians, such as Detlev
Conclusion 215

Peukert, the author of In sid e N azi G erm an y: C on form ity , O p p osition , an d

R acism in E v ery d ay L ife.49
What is needed is a clear indication that the extraordinary atrocities
and crimes in wartime have a closer connection with the everyday life of
ordinary people than we might want to acknowledge. It is also necessary
to help Japanese people understand that by failing to acknowledge that
they were deceived and dragged into the war by the military leaders, citi-
zens at large eventually su p p orted the war and as such bear responsibility.
Seen from this viewpoint, they are thus incapable of making correct po-
litical decisions. If ordinary people are unable to examine their past
unequivocally, I believe such people are also incapable of the clear self-
analysis needed to grasp and confront current political and social prob-
lems. For scholars, therefore, studying our responsibility for the war is
not simply an intellectual historical exercise but a profound analysis in-
tertwined with a close self-examination of our own everyday life and
thinking.
Notes
Introduction

1. Chaen Yoshio and Shigematsu Kazuyoshi, Hokan Sensō Saiban no Jissō (Fuji
Shuppan, 1987), pp. 7-8.
2. For details of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, see, for example, A.C. Brack-
man, The Other Nuremberg: the Untold Story o f the Tokyo War Crimes Trials
(Fontana/Collins, 1989); and Awaya Kentarō, Tokyo Saiban Ron (Ōtsuki Shoten,
1989).
3. These sentences were later commuted, especially after the San Francisco
peace treaty was signed in 1951 between Japan and 49 countries, including the
former Allied nations with the exception of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1958
virtually all Japanese war criminals were released from jail. Such a drastic change
in the attitude of the Allied nations toward the war criminals was of course
closely related to the growing political tension between the West and the East,
that is, the beginning of the Cold War. The United States and its Western allies
granted commutation to all war criminals as a political strategy to gain Japanese
support for the anticommunist campaign. The Soviet Union and the People's Re-
public of China held their own war crimes tribunals at which a large number of
Japanese POWs were tried, but no one received the death sentence. The details of
the Russian trials are still unknown, but it is said that about 10,000 Japanese were
tried. China showed a surprisingly generous attitude to Japanese war criminals.
Self-criticism by the war criminals rather than forced confession was adopted as
the principal method of dealing with them. Eventually, only 45 of 1,108 were
prosecuted, and the rest were released and returned to Japan by September 1956.
See Sumiya Yukio, Akazawa Shirō, Utsumi Aiko, Ogata Naokichi, and Otabe Yūji
(eds.), Tokyo Saiban Hando Bukku (Aoki Shoten, 1989), pp. 128-131,218-225.
4. Even the eleven judges of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal differed in their
opinions about how the tribunal should be conducted and about its final verdict.
Sir William Webb from Australia, the president of the tribunal, Delfin Jaranilla
from the Philippines, B.V.A. Roling from Holland, Henri Bernard from France, and
Radhabinod Pal from India each issued a "concurring opinion," which was in dis-
agreement with various points of the final verdict endorsed by the majority of the
judges. Paľs opinion was particularly distinctive, as he fundamentally dismissed
the legality of the tribunal. Richard Minear, author of Victor's Justice (Princeton
University Press, 1971), basically supported Paľs opinion, whereas Ienaga Saburō,
author of The Pacific War: 1931-1945 (Pantheon, 1978), was concerned with the ex-
ploitation of Paľs opinion by right-wing Japanese intellectuals for the purpose of
discrediting the tribunal. My personal view on this issue is that the trial was unfair
218 Notes

because the Allies did not deal with any war crimes committed by Allied forces;
the most obvious example of war crimes committed by the United States was the
dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, the unfair-
ness of the tribunal itself does not invalidate the criminality of the various atrocities
that the Japanese forces committed during the Asia-Pacific War.
5. Awaya K., op. cit., pp. 285-288.
6. Kosuge Nobuko, "Horyo Mondai no Kihonteki Kentō: Rengō-gun Horyo no
Shibōritsu to Gyakutai no Haikei," Report on Japan's War Responsibility, No. 3,
1994, p. 20.
7. "Horyo Saishū Ronkoku Fuzokusho B," Tokyo Saiban, No. 337. According to
information in The Australian Encyclopedia (Grolier Society of Australia, 1983), the
number of Australian POWs was 22,376, of whom 8,312 died, a death rate of 35.9
percent.
8. Kyokutō Kokusai Gunji Saiban Sokkiroku (Yūmatsudō, 1968), Vol. 10, p. 766.
9. Hugh Clarke, Australians at War: Prisoners o f War (Time-Life Books Aus-
tralia, 1988), p. 153.
10. More than 60,000 Allied POWs and a greater number of Asian laborers
were mobilized for the construction of a 412-kilometer railway from Kancha-
naburi in Thailand to Thanbyuzayat in Burma. It is said that 12,000 POWs died
because of ill-treatment, sickness, and starvation during the 16-month construc-
tion work between July 1942 and October 1943. The number of deaths of Asian la-
borers is unknown. For further details, see Gavan McCormack and Hank Nelson
(edsj, The Burma-Thailand Railway: M emory and History (Allen and Unwin, 1993).
11. Many books and journal articles have been published on this issue in the
last few years, most of which are works by either critical historians or feminists.
However, even Japanese feminists tend to see this problem as a peculiarly Japa-
nese one. See, for example, Suzuki Hiroko, "Jŭgun Ianfu Mondai de Towareteiru
no wa Naηika," Sekai, No. 572, September 1992, pp. 32-39; and Nishino Rumiko,
Jũgun Ianfu: M oto H eishi-tachi no Shōgen (Akashi Shoten, 1992).
12. Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Num ber One: Lessons fo r America (Harvard University
Press, 1979); Karel von Wolferen, The Enigma o f Japanese Power: People and Politics
in Stateless Nation (Knopf, 1989).
13. Gavan Daws, Prisoners o f the Japanese: POWs o f World War II in the Pacific
(William Morrow, 1995).
14. For example, John Dower, War Without M ercy: Race and Power in the Pacific
War (Faber and Faber, 1986); and Mark Seiden, "Sumisonian Genbakuten no
Shippai," Shŭkan Kinyōbi, No. 85 (August 4 , 1995), pp. 19-20.,The same article in
English, "From the Fire Bombing of Tokyo to Hiroshima," appeared in Japan-Asia
Quarterly Review , Vol. 26, No. 2 , 1995. See also Mark Sélden, "Sengo 50 nen: Tokyo
Dai-küshū kara Hiroshima e," Shükan Kīnyōbi, Nos. 73, 74, and 75, May 1995. An-
other article by Seiden, "Before the Bomb: The 'Good W ar/ Air Power, and the
Logic of Mass Destruction," Contention , Vol. 5, No. 1, is also an excellent example
of comparative analysis of war crimes.
15. See, for example, Nakamura Akira's work Daitōwa Sensō e no M ichi (Tenten-
sha, 1990). Nakamura is a leading conservative intellectual who publicly claims
that the Japanese government should not apologize to neighboring Asian nations
and former Allied nations for the atrocities committed by Japanese forces. He be-
Notes 219

lieves that Japanese atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre are heavily distorted
by critical historians and that the Allied forces also committed equally serious
war crimes against the Japanese. In February 1995 he and his colleagues orga-
nized a political rally in Tokyo to demand that Japanese parliamentarians not
pass a resolution commemorating the 50-year anniversary of Japan's World War
II surrender. This resolution was intended as an official apology for wartime
atrocities committed by the Japanese. It was passed in June 1995, but it is only a
token apology and implies that Japan was just one of many nations to engage in
such conduct.
16. Especially historians (e.g., Fujiwara Akira, Yoshida Yutaka, Hayashi Hiro-
fumi, and Yoshimi Yoshiaki) who belong to the group called Όkinawa-sen to
Nankin Gyakusatsu Kenkyũ-kai" (A Group Researching the Okinawan Battle and
Nanjing Massacre) are actively criticizing the interpretations of major Japanese
war crimes by nationalist historians.
17. During one month between December 1937 and January 1938, a large num-
ber of Chinese soldiers and civilians were massacred in Nanjing by the Japanese
Army. The exact death toll is unknown, but according to findings at the Tokyo
War Crimes Trbunal, about 200,000 Chinese were killed and 20,000 women were
raped by the Japanese. For further details, see Chapter 3.
18. C.R. Browning, Ordinary M en: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solu-
tion in Poland (HarperCollins, 1992), p. xix. For different attitudes to their own war
crimes held by the Japanese and Germans, see Ian Buruma's recent work, The
Wage o f Guilt: M emories o f War in Germany and Japan (HarperCollins, 1994); and
Gavan McCormack, Emptiness o f Japan's Affluence (M.E. Sharp, 1996), Chapter 5.
19. Oda Makoto, Nanshi no Shisō (Iwanami Shoten, 1991), pp. 41-99. One might
refute Oda's argument by claiming that killing others in self-defense is unavoid-
able in certain circumstances. However, this is the very problem Oda tried to deal
with by establishing the principle of "absolute peace," because this principle can-
not be attained unless both sides adhere to it. Thus the principle seems to belong
to an imaginary realm rather than reality. In order to solve this problem and make
this principle practical, Oda suggested the following: "We have to continuously
recognise our own experience as a perpetrator (or the possibility of becoming
one) as well as the experience of others as perpetrators. Conversely, in order to
achieve this truly universal principle, we must continue to criticise others as per-
petrators at the same time as ourselves" (ibid., p. 81). I believe this is the only way
to achieve mutual recognition of the basic human rights of others rather than to
insist on the right to kill others for the purpose of self-defense.
20. An opinion survey conducted in September 1994 by one of the major
Japanese newspapers, A sahi Shimbun, indicates that 34 percent of those surveyed
think Japan should take an active military role in world political affairs, while 57
percent still object to such an opinion. In 1992 only 21 percent of those surveyed
supported the expansion of Japanese military activities overseas, while 71 percent
of people were against. See A shahi Shimbun, September 2 2 , 1944. According to re-
cent NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) TV news, an opinion survey con-
ducted by NHK in January 1995 indicates that more than 50 percent of those sur-
veyed believe that Japan should be involved in more peacekeeping activities in
various parts of the world. NHK conducted the same opinion survey in March
220 Notes

1995 in which 80 percent of those surveyed strongly supported the idea of send-
ing Japanese forces to United Nations missions overseas.
21. Yoshida Yutaka, "Nipponjin no Sensō-kan: Rekishi Ishiki wa Henka shita
ka," Sekai, September 1994, p. 25.

Chapter 1

1. Hugh Clarke, Colin Burgess, and Russell Braddon, A ustralians at War: Pris-
oners o f War (Time-Life Books Australia, 1988), p. 118.
2. Ibid., p. 105; Gavan McCormack and Hank Nelson (eds.), The Burma-Thai-
land Railway (Allen and Unwin, 1993), p. 1.
3. The International M ilitary Tribunal fo r the Far East (Tokyo, 1946, hereafter
IMTFE), pp. 13,344-13,453.
4. Tim Bowden, an ABC journalist, interviewed Owen Campbell, Nelson
Short, Dick Braithwaite, and Keith Botterill in 1983. Braithwaite subsequently
died; only three of the six original survivors are still alive. I obtained permission
to use typed manuscripts of these interviews, which run for more than 300 pages
(hereafter ABC Interview). These records are extremely useful because they con-
tain the survivors' personal feelings about their ordeals, which do not vividly ap-
pear in the transcripts from the war crimes tribunals.
5. Harada Katsumasa (ed.), Shōwa: Niman Nichi no Zen Kiróku, Vol. 6, "Taiheiyō
Sensō " (Kodansha, 1990), pp. 142-143.
6. In fact, soon after the Pacific War started, Japanese Imperial Headquarters,
in consultation with Yamada Masaharu, a staff officer in charge of air force affairs
at the headquarters of the Borneo Garrison, decided to build an airfield not only
in Sandakan but also in Labuan, Api, and Tawao. However, the Sandakan airfield
was regarded as the most important strategically. This information was obtained
during my interview with Yamada in April 1995.
7. H. Clarke, C. Burgess, and R. Braddon, op. cit., p. 70; Australian War Memo-
rial (hereafter AWM) Collection, A W M 54/554/3/2, "Information Regarding Al-
lied PW: Sandakan, Jessellton, Ranau," p. 2.
8. Ajia Minshŭ Hōtei Jumbi Kai (ed.), Shashin Zusetsu : Nippon no Shinryaku (Ōt-
suki Shoten, 1992), pp. 216-217.
9. ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (Second Interview), pp. 52-53.
10. It was Yamada Masaharu, a staff officer of the Kuching Headquarters, who
went to Changi to get POWs and take them to Sandakan. According to Yamada,
the ship that carried POWs from Singapore to Sandakan via Kuching was not the
Ubi Maru but the Umi M aru (ship of the ocean). It is quite possible that the POWs
mispronounced the ship name and memorized it incorrectly. Yamada believes
that it was not originally a Japanese ship and that it could have been confiscated
by the Japanese somewhere in Southeast Asia. This was mentioned during my in-
terview with Yamada in April 1995.
11. ABC Interview: Dick Braithwaite (First Interview), p. 5.
12. Ibid., p. 7.
Notes 221

13. This information was obtained during my interview with Yamada Masa-
haru in April 1995.
14. ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (First Interview), p. 4.
15. ABC Interview: Owen Campbell, pp. 16-17.
16. Chaen Yoshio (ed.), Horyo ni Kansuru Sho-hōki Ruishŭ (Fuji Shuppan, 1988),
p. 264.
17. Ibid., pp. 340-342.
18. Ibid., pp. 189-198.
19. For details of these new regulations, see ibid., pp. 24-2 9, 36-39.
20. Ibid., p. 51.
21. IMTFE, pp. 13,349-13,350; Australian National Archives (hereafter ANA)
Collection, A 471/1,80777, "W ar Crimes Opening Address: Trial of Captain Ho-
shijima," p. 1, and "Testimony by WOI Stiepewich," p. 14.
22. Chaen Y., op. cit., pp. 24-35.
23. Utsumi Aiko, Chōsenjin BC-kyŭ Sempan no Kiroku (Saegusa Shobõ, 1982),
pp. 116-117.
24. Chaen Y., op. cit., pp. 264,299,301.
25. IMTFE, p. 13,345; ABC Interview: Nelson Short, p. 8.
26. AWM Collection, 5 4/1010/4/174, "Testimony by QX9538, WOI Hector
Stiepewich," p. 1; ABC Interview: Nelson Short, p. 8. Much later, a group of eight
Australian POWs from E Force who came to Sandakan in 1943 escaped while E
Force was still detained on Bahara Island in Sandakan Bay. E Force spent a few
months on Bahara Island until huts in the Sandakan POW camp were completed.
These eight POWs were rescued by Philippine guerrillas and taken to Tawitawi
Island. This was the only successful case of escape from the Sandakan area, and
no one succeeded in escaping once the POWs moved from Bahara Island. For de-
tails of the escape of the eight POWs, see Hank Nelson, Prisoners of War:
Australians Under Nippon (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1985), pp.
110-117.
27. Don Wall, Sandakan Under Nippon: The Last March (private publication,
1988), p. 16.
28. For details of this event, see ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of
Hoshijima: Witness for Defence (Capt. Hoshijima Susumu)" p. 43; IMTFE, pp.
13,347-13,348; ABC Interview: Dick Braiťhwaite (First Interview), pp. 13-14.
29. Chaen Y., op. cit., pp. 308-310.
30. Ibid., p. 24.
31. Ibid., p. 55.
32. Ibid., p. 24.
33. For details of this first case of the execution of a POW in Japan, see Hayashi
Eidai, Jüsatsu Meirei: BC-kyũSempan no Sei to Shi (Asahi Shimbun-sha, 1986).
34. Utsumi A., op. cit., p. 118.
35. Ibid., p. 119.
36. ANA Collection, A 471/1,80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Hoshijima Taii Horyo
Gyakutai Benron Yöshi," pp. 2-3.
37. Harada K., op. cit., pp. 222-223; Barrie and Frances Pitt, The Chronological
Atlas of World War II (Macmillan, 1989), pp. 7 7 , 7 9 , 8 1 , 8 5 , 87.
222 Notes

38. AWM Collection, S4 5 5 4 /3 /2 , "Information Regarding Allied PW: San-

dakan, Jessellton, Ranau," p. 2; IMTFE, p. 13,360.
39. ANA Collection, M P 742/l,81/1/801, "Report on the Activities of Έ '
Forces for Period July 1942 to July 1943 Written by Lieut. R.G. Wells," p. 1.
40. Ibid., p. 2, and "Appendix Ά ': Civil Organizations."
41. Ibid., pp. 1-2.
42. Ibid., pp. 4-5.
43. Ibid., p. 5.
44. Ibid., p. 6.
45. Ibid., p. 7.
46. Ibid., pp. 7-8.
47. For details of the official history of the Kempeitai and its duties, see
Zenkoku Kenyŭkai Rengõkai (ed.), Nippon Kempei Seishi (Hara Shobō, 1978), pp.
2 4 -4 8 , 123-131. A former member of the Kempeitai, Sadashi Yamada, revealed in
his autobiography, Kempei N ikki (Shinjimbutsu Ōrai-sha, 1982), various methods
of surveillance and torture.
48. Zenkoku Kenyŭkai Rengõkai, op. cit., p. 1,051; ANA Collection, M P897/1,
156/19/152, "War Crimes, Borneo: 111 Treatment of Prisoners of War by Members
of the Kempeitai at Sandakan"; ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1943, "111
Treatment and Torture of Australian PWs at Sandakan by the Kempeitai."
49. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 8 1 /1 /80 1, "Appendix 'D': Japanese Military
Police Interrogations and Conditions of Custody"; ANA Collection, M P897/1,
156/19/152, "Statement by A.G. Waynton."
50. For details of the Haga and Pontianak incidents, see Izeki Tsuneo, Nishi
Boruneo Gyakusatsu Jiken: Kenshō "Ponteana Jiken " (Fuji Shuppan, 1987). Izeki was a
businessman who resided in Pontianak during the war, but he was forced to act
as an interpreter by the Naval Special Police Force during the interrogations. See
also Goto Kenichi, "Ponchanakku Jiken no Shiteki Kōsatsu," in Tanaka Hiroshi
(ed.), Nippon Gunsei to Ajia no M inzoku Undo (Ajia Keizai Kenkyū-sho, 1983), pp.
21-40.
51. Zenkoku Kenyŭkai Rengõkai, op. cit., pp. 1,052-1,053; Hara Fujio, "Nippon
no Kita Boruneo Tōchi to Api Jiken," in Tanaka H., op. cit., pp. 41-80.
52. Pat Burgess, Warco (Richmond, 1986), pp. 155-163.
53. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 81 /1/80 1, "Appendix Έ ': Conditions at Ku-
ching Military Gaol and the Death of Spr. Keating."
54. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,8 1 /1/80 1, "Appendix Έ ': Details of P.O.W. ar-
rested by the Japanese in Borneo."
55. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 81957, "W ar Crimes: Trial of Yamawaki and One
Other."
56. For details of the judicial system of the Japanese court-martial, see Hana-
zono Ichirō, Gumpō Kaigi (Shinjimbutsu Ōrai-sha, 1974); and Yamanaka Hisashi
(ed.), Zaiman Gumpō Kaigi Shokei Tokushu Hanzai-shü (Fuji Shuppan, 1989), espe-
cially pp. 1-9. Hanazono Ichirō, a law graduate from Tokyo University, acted as a
judge of the special court-martial at Bougainville between March and August
1945; his critical analysis of the Japanese court-martial system based upon his ex-
perience is quite sharp and persuasive.
57. Yamanaka H., op. cit., pp. 4 , 18.
Notes 223

58. Kita Hiroaki (ed.), Gunńtsu Kaigi Kankei Shiryō (Fuji Shuppan, 1988), p. 84.
59. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 81/1/8 01, "Appendix 'D': Japanese Military
Police Interrogations and Conditions of Custody."
60. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/2084, "Trial of Yamawaki Masataka,
Tsutsui Yōichi, and Watanabe Haruo."
61. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 81956, "W ar Crimes: Trial of Yamawaki and
Others."
62. ANA Collection, M P742/336/1/2121, "Trial of Yamawaki Masataka and
Others"; ANA Collection, A 471/l, 81956, "W ar Crimes: Trial of Yamawaki and
Others."
63. Hanazono I., op. cit., pp. 181-191.
64. Ibid., p. 192. The kin of those Japanese soldiers, who were illegally court-
martialed after the war and consequently executed, are not entitled to receive sur-
vivors' benefits because of the "criminal" status of the soldiers. It is said that
50,000 men were categorized as "criminals" in this way because they had fled the
battlefield. Many people, especially the wives and children of these soldiers, suf-
fered not only from financial difficulties but also from social discrimination as the
kin of "criminals" for a long time in the postwar era. For details of their hard-
ships, see Uryŭ Ryōsuke and IJirotsuka Masashi, Shögen Kiroku Tekizen Tōbō: Iki-
teiru Rikugun Keihō (Shin Jimbutsu Ōrai-sha, 1974).
65. There are eight files on Yamawaki Masataka in the Australian National
Archives Collection. For a long time they were closed as "classified materials,"
but two of them were opened in 1975 and others in 1986 and 1990. It is rather un-
usual that it took so long for a Japanese war crimes record to be declassified in
Australia, although there are a few special exceptions such as those on cannibal-
ism, which is discussed in Chapter 4.
66. AWM Collection, S4 5 5 4 /3 /2 , "Information Regarding Allied PW: San-
dakan, Jessellton, Ranau," p. 3.
67. IMTFE, p. 13,361.
68. Ibid., pp. 13,351-13,354; ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshi-
jima: Testimony by WOI Stiepewich," pp. 21-22, and "Trial of Hoshijima: Witness
for Defence (Capt. Hoshijima Susumu)," pp. 45-46.
69. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Testimony by WOI
Stiepewich," pp. 18-19.
70. Article 12 in Rikugun Chōbatsu Rei (Hitofumi-kan, 1941), p. 2.
71. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Witness for the De-
fence (Capt. Hoshijima Susumu)," pp. 47-50, and "War Crimes Opening Address:
Trial of Captain Hoshijima," pp. 4-5.
72. AWM Collection, AWM 54 /1010/4/174, "Testimony by QX9538, WOI
Hector Stiepewich," p. 3.
73. ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (First Interview), pp. 8-12.
74. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Witness for Defence
(Capt. Hoshijima Susumu)," p. 49.
75. Articles 54-59 of the Geneva Convention. For details of these articles, see
Chaen Y., op. cit., pp. 309-311.
76. Rikugun Chōbatsu Rei (Hitofumi-kan, 1941), p. 10.
77. ABC Interview: Dick Braithwaite (Second Interview), p. 27.
224 Notes

78. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, 'Trial of Hoshijima: Testimony by WOI

Stiepewich," p. 22.
79. Utsumi A., op. cit., pp. 101-111.
80. Ibid., pp. 121-140.
81. Ajia Minshū Hōtei Jumbi Kai, op. cit., pp. 114-119.
82. Yi Hak-Nae, "The Man Between: A Korean Guard Looks Back," in G. Mc-
Cormack and H. Nelson, op. cit., pp. 120-126. Yi was a Korean guard at the
Burma-Thailand railway site and was accused as a war criminal for ill-treatment
of POWs. At the Australian War Crimes Tribunal in Singapore he received the
death sentence, but later it was commuted to 20 years' imprisonment. His experi-
ence typifies the position of Korean and Formosan guards at Japanese POW
camps during the Pacific War.
83. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Testimony by WOI
Stiepewich," p. 22.
84. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80776, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: S/Maj.
Murozumi Hisao and Others: Witness for Defence (Toyoda Kōkichi)," p. 22, and
"Statement by Toyoda Kōkichi," p. 35.
85. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1715, "Re Toyoda Kōkichi—Formosan—
War Criminal Compound by K. Botterill (1 June 1946)"; ANA Collection, AWC
843, "Formosan Toyoda Kōkichi: Sentenced War Criminal (15 July 1946)."
86. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Cutting Ratio of Chief
Rations," p. 240, and "Testimony by WOI Stiepewich," p. 15.
87. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Witness for the De-
fence (Col. Takayama Hikoichi)," p. 99, and "Witnets for the Defence (Arai
Yoshio)," p. 108.
88. ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (Second Interview), p. 32.
89. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Witness for the De-
fence (Col. Ōtsuka Mitsugi)," p. 91; ABC Interview: Dick Braithwaite (Second In-
terview), p. 25-26.
90. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Statement of Nakano
Ryōichi," p. 92.
91. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Testimony by WOI
Stiepewich," p. 20.
92. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Cutting Ratio of Chief
Rations," p. 240; D. Wall, op. cit., p. 57.
93. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Testimony by WOI
Stiepewich," p. 18.
94. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Hoshijima Taii Horyo
Gyakutai Benron Yōshi," p. 3.
95. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Testimony by WOI
Stiepewich," p. 18.
96. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Witness for the De-
fence (Fujita Hirouchi)," p. 118.
97. ABC Interview: Dick Braithwaite (First Interview), p. 19-20; ANA Collec-
tion, A 471/l, 80777, "War Crimes Opening Address: Trial of Captain Hoshijima,"
p. 2; AWM Collection, AWM 54/1010 /4/17 4, "Testimony by QX9538, WOI
Hector Stiepewich."
Notes 225

98. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80777, "Trial of Hoshijima: Witness for the
Defence (Ogawa Hiroshi)," p. 103, "Witness for the Defence (Arai Yoshio),"
p. 117, and "British and Japanese Medical Stores Held by the Japanese at
Sandakan, Checked 17-18 Oct. 1945," pp. 225-227.

Chapter 2

1. Zenkoku Kenyūkai Rengōkai (ed.), Nippon Kempei Gaishi (Zenkoku Ken-

yūkai Rengōkai Honbu, 1983), pp. 1,286-1,287.
2. Don Wall, Sandakan Under Nippon: The Last M arch (private publication, 1988),
p. 64.
3. Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM) Collection, 54 /1 0 1 0 /6 /5 9 ,
"Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt. Yamamoto Shōichi, Capt. Abe Kazuo etc.:
Interrogation of Capt. Yamamoto (24 Sept. 1945)."
4. Ibid., "Interrogation of Capt. Yamamoto (24 Sept. 1945)" and "The State-
ment of Capt. Yamamoto Shōichi." In fact, a few weeks before the march started,
the deputy commander of the Yamamoto battalion, Lieutenant lino Shigeru, was
sent to Kuching headquarters by plane to request a longer period for the march as
well as more food and medical provisions along the way. However, lino met the
harsh attitude of Manaki Takanobu, chief of staff of the 37th Army, who showed
no sympathy for the Yamamoto battalion and insisted on the order being carried
out immediately. This information was obtained during my interview with lino in
April 1995.
5. Australian National Archives (hereafter ANA) Collection, A 471/l, 8077,
"Trial of Captain Hoshijima: Hanketsu o Uketaru-go no Shokan."
6. Transcript of interview with Nelson Short conducted by Tim Bowden, an
Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, in 1983 (hereafter ABC Inter-
view), p. 31.
7. AWM Collection, 54/1010/6/59, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt. Ya-
mamoto Shōichi, Capt. Abe Kazuo etc.: The Statement of Capt. Yamamoto Shōichi."
8. Ibid., "The Statement of Capt. Yamamoto Shōichi," "Statement by W.C.138
Abe Kazuo," and "Interrogation of Lt. Abe."
9. Ibid., "Interrogation of Officers and NCOs Who Came Over in the First
Ranau March in February 1945: W.C.589 lino Shigeru" and "Second Witness for
Prosecution (Keith Botterill)."
10. Ibid., "The Statement of Lt. Hirano Yukio" and "Third Witness for Prosecu-
tion (W.D. Moxham)."
11. Ibid., "Second Witness for Prosecution (Keith Botterill)."
12. Ibid., "Second Witness for Defence (lino Shigeru)."
13. Ibid., "Second Witness for Prosecution (Keith Botterill)" and "Interrogation
of Capt. Yamamoto (24 Sept. 1945)"; ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (Second Inter-
view), p. 44.
14. AWM Collection, 5 4 /1 0 1 0/6 /59 , "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Yamamoto Shōichi, Capt. Abe Kazuo etc.: Second Witness for Prosecution (Keith
Botterill)."
15. Ibid., "Third Witness for Prosecution (W.D. Moxham)."
226 Notes

16. Ibid., "Second Witness for Prosecution (Keith Botterill)."

17. Ibid., "The Statement of Lt. Abe Kazuo."
18. Ibid., "The Statement by Endō Hiraki." "Hiraki" is not typically a Japanese
given name. It seems that "Hiroaki" was mistyped as "Hiraki" in the original
document.
19. Ibid., "Second Witness for Prosecution (Keith Botterill)."
20. Ibid., "Interrogation of Capt. Yamamoto (24 Sept. 1945)" and "The State-
ment of Capt. Yamamoto Shōichi"; ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (First Inter-
view), pp. 18-21; AWM Collection, 5 4 /4 /3 /2 , "Information Regarding Allied
P.W. Sandakan, Jesselton, Ranau," p. 4.
21. ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (First Interview), p. 21, (Second Interview),
pp. 24-26; The International M ilitary Tribunal fo r the Far East (Tokyo 1946, hereafter
IMTFE) pp. 13,375,13,422-13,424.
22. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 8077, "Trial of Captain Hoshijima: Hoshijima Taii
Horyo Gyakutai Jiken Benron Yōshi," p. 16.
23. D. Wall, op. cit., p. 83.
24. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: The Prosecutor's Address," p. 2.
25. According to Masaharu Yamada, a former staff officer at Kuching head-
quarters, Hoshijima actually expressed to headquarters his opposition about the
second march by saying that he would stay on at the camp and thus protect the
POWs. This was mentioned during my interview with Yamada in Aprü 1995.
26. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Seiso-jō: Hikoku Rikugun Taii Takakuwa
Takuo, Rikugun Taii Watanabe Genzō," pp. 1-2.
27. Ibid., p. 2; AWM Collection, 54/1010/4/174, "Affidavits by Japanese Per-
sonnel in Connection with Charges Arising from Sandakan-Ranau Death March
with Comments by WO HW Stiepewich Covering Prelude to March: Fourth Wit-
ness for Defence (Iwashita Manabu)," p. 32.
28. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: The Prosecutor's Address," p. 2;
IMTFE, pp. 13,364-13,366.
29. ABC Interview: Dick Braithwaite (First Interview), pp. 41-44; AWM Collec-
tion, 54 /1 010/4/174, "Affidavits by Japanese Personnel in Connection with
Charges Arising from Sandakan-Ranau Death March with Comments by WO
W.H. Stiepewich Covering Prelude to March: The Statement of W.H. Stiepewich,"
p. 6.
30. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: Second Witness for Defence (Wata-
nabe Genzō)," p. 14.
31. Ibid., "Extract from Statement of W.H. Stiepewich," p. 41.
32. Ibid., "Evidence Taken Before Justice Mansfield at 1st Aust. Base Sub. Area
on 19 October 1945: The Statement of W.H. Stiepewich," p. 46; IMTFE,
pp. 13,367-13,368.
33. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: Extract from Statement of W.H.
Stiepewich," p. 42.
Notes 227

34. Ibid., "Joint Statement Made by Chen Kay, Chin Kin, and Lo Tong Who
Reside Near the 15.5 Mile Post, Sandakan." This is a statement made by three local
Chinese residents who witnessed the murder of POWs by the guards in the jungle.
35. Ibid., "The Prosecutor's Address," p. 2, and "Second Witness for Defence
(Watanabe Genzō)," pp. 14-15.
36. Ibid., "Statement by Takemoto Isao, W.C. 547, Suga Butai," p. 64.
37. Ibid., "Statement by Nakayama Tamao, a Former Member of Suga Butai,"
p. 72.
38. Ibid., "Statement by Matsuba Shōkichi, W.C. 527, Suga Butai," p. 79.
39. Ibid., "The Prosecutor's Address," p. 3.
40. Ibid., "Evidence Taken by Justice Mansfield at Sydney on Friday 16 No-
vember 1945: Pte. N.A.E. Short"; IMTFE, p. 13,385.
41. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzõ: The Prosecutor's Address," p. 3;
IMTFE, p. 13,371.
42. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: Statement by Capt. Takakuwa Takuo."
43. ABC Interview: Owen Campbell, p. 31.
44. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: The Prosecutor's Address," p. 3.
45. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 8077, "Trial of Captain Hoshijima: Witness for
Defence (Col. Takayama Hikoichi)," p. 97.
46. ANA Collection, M P375/14 WC19, "War Crimes: Sandakan, Borneo: Mur-
der of Unknown POW: Interrogation of Nishikawa Yoshinori."
47. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80776, "War Crimes, Proceeding of Military Tri-
bunal, Murozumi H. and Others: Precis of Evidence, Minute Paper"; AWM Col-
lection, 5 4/1 010/4/174, "Affidavits by Japanese Personnel in Connection with
Charges Arising from Sandakan-Ranau Death March with Comments by WO
W.H. Stiepewich Covering Prelude to March: Statement by Murozumi," p. 418.
48. According to Stiepewich's testimony, the only surviving Japanese soldier
of this final march to Ranau was interrogated in Api after the war (see IMTFE, pp.
13,385-13,386). However, I have been unable to locate the relevant document at
either the Australian National Archives or the Australian War Memorial.
49. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80776, "War Crimes, Proceeding of Military Tri-
bunal, Murozumi H. and Others: First Witness for Defence (S/M. Murozumi
Hisao)," p. 10.
50. Ibid., p. 9.
51. Ibid., "Third Witness for Defence (Goto Yoshitarō)," p. 15, and "Statement
by Toyoda Kokichi, Suga Butai (12 December 1945)."
52. Ibid., "First Witness for Defence (S/M . Murozumi Hisao)," p. 10; ANA Col-
lection, M P375/14 WC19, "War Crimes, Sandakan, Borneo: Murder of Unknown
POW: Interrogation of S/M . Murozumi Hisao (16 July 1947)."
53. ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (First Interview), p. 21.
54. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: Extract from Statement of W.H.
Stiepewich," p. 43.
228 Notes

55. Ibid., p. 44; ABC Interview: Nelson Short, p. 18.

56. IMTFE, pp. 13,376-13,378; AWM Collection, 5 4 /1 0 0 /6 /5 , "War Crimes,
Trial by Military Court: Fukushima Masao of Sandakan PW Camp: First Witness
for Prosecution (W.D. Moxham)."
57. ABC Interview: Keith Botterill (First Interview), pp. 28-34, (Second Inter-
view), pp. 1-12.
58. ANA Collection, A 471/1, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: Extract from Statement of W.H.
Stiepewich," pp. 43-44. t
59. IMTFE, pp. 13,382-13,383.
60. ANA Collection, A 471/1, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt.
Takakuwa Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō: Extract from Statement of W.H.
Stiepewich," p. 45.
61. Ibid., "The Prosecutor's Address," pp. 17-18, and "Statement of Okada
Toshiharu," pp. 73-74; ANA Collection, A 4 71 /1,336/1/268, "Massacre at Ranau:
Trial of Goto, T. and Others."
62. ANA Collection, M P375/14 WC19, "War Crimes, Sandakan, Borneo: Mur-
der of Unknown POW: Statement by Wong Hiong," pp. 127-128.
63. Ibid., p. 128.
64. Ibid., "Interrogation of Wong Hiong (16 January 1947)."
65. Ibid., "Telegram from Sandakan to War Crimes Section, Melbourne, Aus-
tralia."
66. Ibid., "Affidavit by Wong Hiong (30 April 1947)," p. 1.
67. Ibid., "Telegram from Sandakan to War Crimes Section, Melbourne, Aus-
tralia."
68. Ibid., "Interrogation of Murozumi Hisao and Others."
69. Ibid., "Statement by Ali Asa."
70. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 8077, "Trial of Captain Hoshijima"; ANA Collec-
tion, A 471/l, 3 3 /1/7 07, "Trial of Capt. Hoshijima, S."; ANA Collection,
(CRS)B5569, "Hoshijima Susumu"; AWM Collection, 5 4/1 0 1 0 /6 /5 9 , "Trial of
Japanese War Criminals: Capt. Yamamoto Shōichi, Capt. Abe Kazuo etc."; ANA
Collection, A 471/l, 80771, "Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Capt. Takakuwa
Takuo, Capt. Watanabe Genzō"; ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80776, "War Crimes,
Proceeding of Military Tribunal, Murozumi H. and Others"; ANA Collection,
A 471/l, 336/1/258, "Sandakan Death March: Trial of Nagahiro, M. and Others";
ANA Collection, A 471/l, 336/1/268, "Massacre at Ranau: Trial of Goto, T. and
Others"; Chaen Yoshiō` (ed.), BC-kyŭ Sempan Gōgun Rabauru Saiban Shiryō (Fuji
Shuppan, 1990), pp. 108-109.
71. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1180, "Sandakan-Ranau Death March:
Lt. Gen. Baba Masarō."
72. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 8077, "Trial of Captain Hoshijima: Witness for
Defence (Col. Takayama Hikoichi)," pp. 97-98.
73. This information was obtained during my interview with Yamada Masa-
haru in April 1995.
74. Ibid.
75. The total number of Japanese soldiers in North Borneo in July 1944 was
23,000, but by the end of the war more than 13,000 were dead. Most of them died
Notes 229

of a combination of tropical diseases and malnutrition during the march from the
east coast to the west coast of North Borneo. For details of the extremely harsh
conditions of the march and the high death toll, see, for example, the memoir of a
former member of the Iemura battalion, Ueno Itsuyoshi, Kita Boruneo no Mitsurin:
Shi no Kōgun 600 kiro no Shinjitsu (private publication, 1984).
76. Zenkoku Kenyŭkai Rengõkai (ed.), Nippon Kempei Seishi (Hara Shobō,
1978), p. 1,055; ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1180, "Sandakan-Ranau Death
March: Lt. Gen. Baba Masarō."
77. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1416, "War Crimes Borneo: Lt. Gen.
Yamawaki Masataka," p. 1.
78. Kyokutō Kokusai Gunji Saiban Sokkiroku (Yũmatsudõ, 1968), Vol. 10, p. 766;
"Horyo Saishū Ronkoku Fuzokusho B," Tokyo Saiban, No. 337.
79. Hugh Clarke, Colin Burgess, and Russell Braddon, Australians at War: Pris-
oners of War (Time-Life Books Australia, 1988), p. 153.
80. Awaya Kentarō, Tokyo Saiban Ron (Ōtsuki Shoten, 1989), pp. 286-287.
81. Chaen Yoshio (ed.), Horyo ni Kansuru Sho-hōkiruiju (Fuji Shuppan, 1988),
pp. 20-21.
82. Awaya K., op. cit., p. 291.
83. Hon Jun-Muk, Taimen Tetsudō: Aru Chōsenjin Horyo Kanshiin no Shuki (Pon-
sonfa Henshu-bu, 1988), pp. 20-21.
84. Chaen Y., Horyo ni Kansuru Sho-hōkiruiju, pp. 1-2; Hata Ikuhiko, "Nippon-
gun ni Okeru Horyo Kannen no Keisei," Gunji Shigaku, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1992,
pp. 9-10. According to another source, during the Sino-Japanese War, 988 Chi-
nese POWs were brought to Japan and detained in various locations such as
Nagoya, Hiroshima, and Osaka. However, in August 1895, less than four months
after the war, 976 POWs safely returned to China. It is not clear what happened to
the other 12, but they were probably too sick to travel at that time. It is said, how-
ever, that a large but unknown number of Chinese soldiers and civilians were
massacred in Lushun by Japanese soldiers between November 22 and 24, 1894.
Nevertheless, in general, the Japanese treatment of Chinese POWs and civilians in
this war was relatively humane, and two prominent Japanese military leaders,
Yamagata Aritomo and Ōyama Iwao, respectively issued a special order to their
soldiers not to ill-treat POWs and civilians. See Kanda Fumito, "Dai-ichiji Taisen
mae no Nippon no Horyo Shogŭ to sono Tenkan," Yokohama ĩchiritsu Daigaku
Ronsō, Vol. 45, No. 1 , 1994, pp. 163-166. See also Olive Checkland, Humanitarian-
ism and the Emperor's Japan, 1877-1977 (St. Martin's Presβ, 1994), Part 2, pp.
45-94.
85. Utsumi Aiko, "Ikensho: Kokusai Kanshŭ ni Hansuru Nippon-gun no
Horyo Seisaku no Sekinin o Katagawari Saserareta Chōsenjin Kanshiin" (unpub-
lished paper), pp. 7-8; Chaen Y., Horyo ni Kansuru Sho-hōkiruiju, pp. 3-4.
86. For details of the life of German POWs in Japan and the friendship they
formed with local residents, see Hayashi Keisuke, Bandō Horyo Shüyōjo: Dai 9
Kōkyō-kyoku no Rütsu (Nankai Bukkusu, 1978); and Chaen Y., Horyo ni Kansuru
Sho-hōkiruiju, p. 7.
87. Chaen Y., Horyo ni Kansuru Sho-hōkiruiju, p. 341.
88. Ibid., p. 18.
89. Ibid., p. 7.
230 Notes

90. John Dower, War Without M ercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (Faber
and Faber, 1986), pp. 11-12.
91. Account o f Forgotten Army (BBC documentary film, 1993), written and pro-
duced by Neil Cameron.
92. Katsumata Hideo, "Rabauru Sempan no Shinsō" in Chaen Y., BC-kyü Sem-
ipan Gōgun Rabauru Saiban Shiryō, p. 189.
93. This particular incident is mentioned in the diary written by Lt. Commd.
Suzuki Nao-omi, commander of the Japanese naval force on Ocean Island during
the war. Suzukľs diary contains various descriptions of ill-treatment of Japanese
by Australian forces. See his diary, which is held at the Australian War Memorial
(AWM 5 4 /2 5 3 /8 /1 ).
94. Katsumata H., op. cit., p. 201.
95. Many books by former POWs in Siberia are now available that reveal the
extremely harsh living conditions, forced labor, and malnutrition that resulted in
a large number of deaths. See, for example, Maeno Shigeru, Soren Gokusō Jüichi-
nen, Vols. 1-4 (Kodansha, 1979); and Shida Yukio, Shiberia Yokuryŭ o Tou (Saegusa
Shobō, 1984). Maeno spent 11 years and Shida spent 10 years at a POW camp in
Siberia.
96. J. Dower, op. cit., p. 11.
97. Robert J. Lifton, "Home from the War: The Psychology of Survival," in
Walter Capps (ed.), The Vietnam Reader (Routledge, 1990), p. 60.
98. William Broyles Jr., "Why Men Love W ar," in W. Capps, op. cit., p. 76.
99. Virginia Woolf, “A Room o f One's Ow n” and "Three G uineas" (Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992), p. 158.
100. W. Broyles Jr., op. cit., pp. 68-69.

Chapter 3

1. International M ilitary Tribunal fo r the Far East (Tokyo, 1946, hereafter IMTFE),
p. 4467.
2. Ibid., pp. 4526-4527.
3. Ibid., pp. 3904-3943, 4459, 4464-4466, 4476, 4479, 4526-4536, 13638-13652;
A.C. Blackman, The Other Nuremberg: the Untold Story o f the Tokyo War Crimes Tri-
als (Fontana, 1989), pp. 20-21.
4. For example, see Dō Tomio (ed.), Nitchŭ Sensō Shiryō , Vols. 8 and 9 (Kawade
Shobō, 1973); Nankin Jiken Chōsa Kenkyū Kai (ed.), Nankin Jiken Shiryō-shŭ (Aoki
Shoten, 1992); Honda Katsuichi, Chügoku e no Tabi (Asahi Shimbun-sha, 1972).
5. IMTFE, pp. 13454-13476.
6. Harada Katsumasa et al. (eds.), Shōwa Niman-nichi no Zenkiroku: Dai 6 Kan
"Taiheiyō Sensō " (Kodansha, 1990), pp. 134-135.
7. Peter Charlton, War Against Japan 1941-42 (Time-Life Books Australia, 1988),
pp. 28-81.
8. Hank Nelson, Prisoners o f War: Australians Under Nippon (Australian Broad-
casting Corporation, 1985), p. 71.
Notes 231

9. Catherine Kenny, Captives: Australian Army Nurses in Japanese Prison Camps

(University of Queensland Press, 1989), p. 21.
10. Australian National Archives (hereafter ANA) Collection, M P741/1,
336/1/1976, "Report Prepared by the British Land Forces, Hong Kong."
11. C. Kenny, op. cit., p. 21.
12. ANA Collection, M P742/1,336/1/1976, "Testimony of Major W.A. Tebbutt."
13. Ibid.
14. H. Nelson, op. cit., p. 74.
15. IMTFE, pp. 13454-13457.
16. Ibid., pp. 13457-13464; ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1976-152, and
M P742/1,336/1/1976.
17. Interview with Vivian Bullwinkel in Survival: Tape 3 (Social History Unit,
Australian Broadcasting Corporation); H. Nelson, op. cit., pp. 74-75.
18. H. Nelson, op. cit., p. 76.
19. C. Kenny, op. cit., pp. 33-34.
20. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1976 IJIM, "Interrogation of Maj-Gen
Tanaka Ryōsaburō"; M P 742/1,336/1/1976, "W ar Crimes: Preliminary Report by
K.M. Dixson, No. 12 Team on Major War Crimes Against Australians—Murder of
Australian Nurses on Banka Island" and "Report by Major Tebbutt, AIF: Evacua-
tion Nurses on Banka Island"; M P742/1, 336/1/772,"In the Matter of Japanese
War Crimes and in the Matter of the 111 Treatment of Prisoners of W ar." The offi-
cer's name is replaced by the initials "O.M." for protection of privacy.
21. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1976,"Memorandum for the Secretary,
Department of External Affairs, Canberra A.C.T.: Alleged Japanese War Crimi-
nals—O.M."
22. Ibid., "Report Sent by HQ Land Forces, Hong Kong, to GHQ Far East Land
Forces."
23. Ibid., "Australian Mission in Japan, Memo No. 570: War Crimes Suspect a
Suicide."
24. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1289,"Statement Made by VX39347 Sis-
ter James, H."
25. Jessie E. Simmons, In Japanese Hands: Australian Nurses as POWs (William
Heinemann, 1954), pp. 34-35.
26. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1288,"Statement Made by VX39347 Sis-
ter James, H ."; MP 7 4 2 /1 , 336/1/1976-152,"Australian War Crimes Board of In-
quiry: Sister Vivian Bullwinkel."
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Betty Jeffrey, White Coolies (Angus and Robertson, 1954), pp. 89-90.
31. Ibid., p. 85; "POWs Fight Comfort Women Rumours," The Australian, July
2 5 , 1992.
32. J. Simmons, op. cit., p. 63.
33. Asahi Shimbun, July 21 and 2 2 , 1992.
34. The Age, December 1 1 , 1992.
35. Interview with Doug Davey, August 1992.
232 Notes

36. Utsumi Aiko, Koshida Ryõ, Tanaka Hiroshi, and Asukada Yŭichi (eds.),
Handobukku Sengo Hoshö (Nastünoki-sha, 1992), p. 37; Yoshimi Yoshiaki (ed.),
]ŭgun lanfu Shiryöshü (Ötsuki Shoten, 1992), p. 26.
37. Yoshimi Y., op. cit., pp. 28-29.
38. Yoshida Seiji, Watashi no Sensō Hanzai (Sanichi Shobõ, 1983).
39. Yamada Sadashi, Kempei Nikki (Shinjimbutsu Örai-sha, 1982), pp. 160-172;
Nogi Harumichi, Kaigun Tokubetsu Keisatsutai: Anbon-tō BC-kyŭ Senpan no Shuki
(Taihei Shuppan, 1975), Chapter 9.
40. Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility,
"Jügun lanfu Mondai no Shiteki Narabi ni Hōteki Kenkyŭ" (unpublished paper, 1994),
p. 9.
41. This idea is clear from the instructions for dealing with Chinese civilians,
which were issued on June 27, 1938, by Okabe Naozaburõ, chief of staff of the
North China Area Army, to all subordinate units. For details, see Yoshimi Y., op.
cit., pp. 209-210.
42. Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility,
op. cit., pp. 9-10.
43. A report prepared by the medical section of the North China Area Army in
February 1940 warned that a soldier suffering from venereal disease required an
average of 86 days' hospitalization; thus the spread of such a disease would
weaken the strength of the Army considerably. For details of this report, see
Yoshimi Y., op. cit., p. 237. On the concern of the military about the potential ef-
fect on Japanese public health of venereal disease brought home by soldiers, see a
report prepared by a senior officer of the Ministry of the Army on June 1 8 , 1942,
reproduced in Yoshimi Y., op. cit., pp. 171-172.
44. Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility,
op. cit., p. 17.
45. Ibid., pp. 37-38. The fact that 7 of 19 comfort women interviewed by the
Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility had suf-
fered from venereal disease also indicates a high rate of venereal disease among
the comfort women.
46. Yoshimi Y., op. cit., p. 354.
47. In contrast with Nazi Germany, the bulk of medical opinion in Japan dur-
ing the war was that infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, were the most sig-
nificant problem to be dealt with and that genetically based illness was a lesser
threat to the nation. Thus, there were far fewer victims of eugenics in Japan than
in Nazi Germany. Only 454 of 17,085 people categorized as genetically inferior
were sterilized. For details of Japan's eugenic policy during the Asia-Pacific War,
see Matsunaga Ei, "Nippon no Yūsei Seisaku: Nachisu Doitsu to no Hikaku," and
Yonemoto Shōhei, "Yūseigaku: Nippon to Doitsu to no Hikaku," in Kanagawa
University (ed)., Igaku to Sensō (Ochanomizu Shobõ, 1994), pp. 2 4 -4 3 , 137-154.
48. Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility,
op. cit., p. 12. For evidence that some minors from colonies and occupied territo-
ries were forced to become comfort women, see Yoshimi Y., op. cit., pp. 102-103,
135-137,304.
49. Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility,
op. cit., pp. 13-15.
Notes 233

50. Ibid., pp. 22-24.

51. This instruction appears in the telegram sent by Tōgō to the head of foreign
affairs in the government-general of Taiwan on January 1 4 , 1942. It is reproduced
in Yoshimi Y., op. cit., p. 143.
52. Ibid., p. 146. An open question is whether Emperor Hirohito also bore re-
sponsibility because of his position as grand marshal, the highest position in the
Japanese Imperial Forces, even if he was not informed on this matter.
53. Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility,
op. cit., p. 17.
54. Yoshimi Y., op. cit., pp. 365-375: Shigemura Minoru, "Tokuyōin to iu Na
no Butai," Bungei Shunjŭ, Vol. 1 , 1955, pp. 224-225.
55. Yoshimi Y., op. cit., pp. 83-84.
56. Hayashi Hirofumi, "Marei Hantō no Nippongun Ianjo," Sekai, May 1993.
57. Kankoku Teishin-tai Mondai Taisaku Kyögikai (ed.), Shōgen: Kyōsei Renkō
Sareta Chōsenjin Gun-ianfutachi (Akashi Shoten, 1993), p. 125.
58. Utsumi A. et al., op. cit., p. 37.
59. Yoshimi Y., op. cit., p. 232.
60. Ibid., p. 229.
61. Unpublished private memoirs written by a former soldier of the Kantō
Army, which I obtained a few years ago, clearly testify to such action. However,
the author's name is not disclosed here for the sake of privacy.
62. Yoshimi Y., op. cit., p. 232.
63. Jewish Black Book Committee (ed.), The Black Book: The Nazi Crime Against
the Jewish People (New York, 1946), pp. 301,329,340,342,366,436.
64. Paul Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (Quadrangle, 1961), p. 28;
William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Simon & Schuster, 1960), pp.
430-431.
65. Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Seeker and
Warburg, 1975), p. 52.
66. Ibid., p. 52.
67. Ibid., p. 52.
68. Ibid., pp. 5 1 , 5 3 -5 4 , 64; Nora Levin, The Holocaust (Thomas Crowell, 1968),
p. 150; R.J. Minney, I Shall Fear No Evil: The Story of Dr. Alina Brewda (William Kim-
ber, 1966), pp. 141 ff.
69. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Vol. 7
(Nuremberg, 1947), pp. 456-457.
70. Ibid., Vol. 6, pp. 404-407.
71. Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (Simon & Schuster, 1966), pp. 26-33,
484-493.
72. Theodore Schieder (ed.), Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from
Eastern Central Europe, Vol. 1 (Bonn, 1953).
73. S. Brownmiller, op. cit., p. 67.
74. Tanigawa Mitsue, Onna-tachi no Harukanaru Senjō: Jŭgun Kangofu-tachi no
Nagakatta Shõwa-shi (Kojin-sha, 1989), p. 196.
75. Ibid., pp. 184-188.
234 Notes

76. Ibid., pp. 204-209.

77. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives
(Pluto Press, 1983), pp. 27-28.
78. Ibid., p. 28.
79. Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (Schocken, 1972) p. 133; Yamada Meiko,
Senryõ~gun Ianfu (Kojin-sha, 1992) p. 29.
80. However, there are many anecdotal testimonies by Okinawans about rape
committed by U.S. soldiers during the Okinawa battle between March and Au-
gust 1945. For example, according to Ōshiro Masayasu, an eminent Okinawan
historian who recorded much information on this battle, almost all the women of
a village on Motobu Peninsula on Okinawa were raped by a troop of U.S.
marines. See his book, Okinawa-sen: M inshŭ no Me de Toraeta Sensō (Kobunken,
1988), pp. 171-173. The Japanese forces brought many Korean comfort women to
Okinawa well before the battle started, but accurate numbers of these women are
unknown. Research indicates that some of these Korean women were forced to
serve Americans after the Japanese forces were defeated. For details, see Ya-
matani Tetsuo (ed.), Okinawa no Harumoni (Bansei-sha, 1992), p. 169.
81. Yamada M., op. cit., pp. 34-36.
82. S. Brownmiller, op. cit., p. 77.
83. Yamada M., op. cit., pp. 90-91.
84. A. Clifton, Time of Fallen Blossoms (Cassell, 1955), in particular pp. 141-148,
174-182.
85. Ibid., p. 141.
86. Harada Katsumasa (ed.) Shōwa Niman-nichi no Zenkiroku: Dai 1 Kan " Haikyo
kara no Shuppatsu" (Kodansha, 1989), p. 136.
87. Ōshima Yukio, Genshoku no Sengo-shi: Sengo o Nipponjin wa dō Ikita Ka (Ko-
dansha, 1986), p. 166; Yamada M., op. cit., pp. 25-27.
88. Yamada M., op. cit., pp. 7 , 42-43.
89. B. Fall, op. cit., pp. 132-134.
90. S. Brownmiller, op. cit., pp. 94-95.
91. For details of rape and massacre in My Lai, see Michael Bilton and Kevin
Sim, Four Hours in My Lai: A War Crime and Its Aftermath (Viking, 1992), especially
Chapter 4.
92. Slavenka Drakulic, "Good People Must Not Keep Quiet This Time," The
Age, December 2 3 , 1992; Catherine Bennett, "Ordinary Men Can Rape," The Age,
January 2 7 , 1993.
93. W. Broyles Jr., "Why Men Love W ar," in Walter Capps (ed.), The Vietnam
Reader (Routledge, 1991), p. 79.
94. S. Brownmiller, op. cit., p. 107.
95. Ibid., p. 32.
96. C. Enloe, op. cit., p. 15.
97. Recently a number of cases of rape and sexual harassment within the mili-
tary have been reported in Australia. In the United States, too, there have been re-
ports of this phenomenon, which increased noticeably during and after the Gulf
War. For example, at a U.S. Navy convention held at the Hilton Hotel, Las Vegas,
in September 1991, which celebrated the Gulf War victory, 90 sexual assaults were
reported. The victims in 83 cases were women, either female officers or wives
Notes 235

who accompanied their husbands to the convention. About 5 percent of 4,000 par-
ticipants were female naval officers. Some male officers were wearing T-shirts
that had "Women Are Property" written on the back and "He-Man Women
Haters' Club" printed on the front. For details of sexual harassment at this con-
vention, see Tailhook Report: The Official Inquiry into the Events o f Tailhook 1991 (St.
Martin's Press, 1993).
98. Virginia Woolf, "A Room of One's Own" and "Three Guineas" (Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992), pp. 151-414.
99. S. Brownmiller, op. cit., p. 11.

diopter 4

1. Australian National Archives (hereafter ANA) Collection, M 1418/l, 517,

Telegram No. 388.
2. Ibid., Cable, December 1 0 , 1946.
3. Chaen Yoshio (ed.), BC K yũ Senpan Gōgun Manusu Saiban Shiryō (Fuji Shup-
pan, 1991), p. 37.
4. Õoka Shōhei, Fires on the Plain (Charles E. Tuttle, 1967). In this novel, starv-
ing Japanese soldiers in the Philippines start killing each other fighting over
"monkey's meat," a euphemistic expression the soldiers used for human flesh.
Ōoka himself was sent to the Philippines as a member of the Japanese forces and
was taken prisoner in the 1945 defeat.
5. Haŗa Kazuo (dir.), Yuki Yuki te Shingun (Imamura Production, 1987).
6. Ocawa Shōji, Kyoku?en no Naka no Nin¢en: Shi no Shima Nyũginia (Chikuma
Shobō, 1983), pp. 166-167.
7. Ogawa Shōji, Tōbu Nyŭginia Sensen: Suterareta Butai (Tosho Shuppan-sha,
1992), p. 196.
8. Ibid., p. 196.
9. Nogi Harumichi, Kaigun Tokubetsu Keisatsutai: Anbon Shima BC K yũ Senpan
no Shuki (Taihei Shuppan-sha, 1975), p. 207. It seems there were many cases of
Japanese cannibalism during the battle on Leyte Island in the Philippines in late
1944 in which U.S. soldiers and the locals also became victims. U.S. forces investi-
gated this matter in April 1945 when Leyte, Luzon, and Mindoro came under U.S.
control. The following is an extract from testimony given by an American Pfc.,
Richard Charles Rusell, that appears in the investigation report (U.S. National
Archives [hereafter USNA] Collection, RG 331 SCAP 1066, F-96): "At about
4 o'clock on the afternoon of December 12th or 13th, 1944, my battalion, the 3rd
Battalion of the 511th Parachute Regiment, 11th Airborne Division, 8th Army,
withdrew from a hill we were occupying about half way in the interior of Leyte
between the cities of Tacloban and Ormoc. A few of our soldiers failed to with-
draw with the balance of the regiment. Upon again advancing and occupying this
hill the next morning at about 11 o'clock, the mutilated bodies of Pfc 'S' [the origi-
nal document contains a full name, but initials only are used here for the sake of
privacy] and four or five other American soldiers were found. All flesh was cut
from the bodies of these men, apparently with a knife. The legs had been removed
236 Notes

and the meaty flesh cut from the calves and thighs. The cheeks had been cut from
the faces of the men, and in fact, all fleshy portions of their bodies had been sliced
from the bodies We were opposed by the 16th and 26th Japanese Divisions
and the Japanese who committed this act were no doubt members of these divi-
sions It was almost impossible to recognize any of the dead men because
of the way in which the flesh had been sliced from their bones and I recognized
only'S.'"
10. Ogawa S., Kyokugen no Naka no Ningen, p. 167.
11. ANA Collection, M P729/8, 12/431 /5; 02762, "Report on Japanese Atroci-
ties to Australian Personnel."
12. USNA Collection, 775011, RG331, Box 943, "Japanese Cannibalism and
Atrocities."
13. ANA Collection, M P 729/8,12/431/5; 4607, "Report: Japanese Atrocities."
14. USNA Collection, 775011, RG331, Box 943, "Japanese Cannibalism and
Atrocities."
15. The Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM) Collection, 54/1010/9/116.
Of all the Australian documents on Japanese cannibalism I have found, this 127-
page document contains the largest number of cases on cannibalism, of which all
the victims were Australian soldiers. It contains reports on over 80 cases and gives
evidence that about 100 Australians were victims of this crime.
16. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1263, "War Crimes Wewak New
Guinea: Cannibalism of Australian Airman."
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Gavan McCormack and Hank Nelson (eds.), The Burma-Thailand Railway
(Allen and Unwin, 1993), pp. 1 , 64.
20. AWM Collection, 5 4 /1 0 10 /9 /94 , "Interrogation of Lt-Col Tanaka Kengorō,
Staff Officer of 18 Army H.Q.," and "Interrogation of Cap Araki Kankichi."
21. Ibid., 87, Box 12: A -l, a Japanese document entitled "Rikukai-gun Genkyō
ni Kansuru Shuyō Sūryō."
22. Ibid., 5 4 /1 0 10 /9/94 , "Statement of No. 20531 L/N k Hatam Ali."
23. Ibid.
24. ANA Collection, A 476/l, 80794, "Record of Military Court: T.T. and
Others."
25. Ibid.
26. USNA Collection, NG 343(G-37), "Cannibalism—Kumusi River."
27. Ibid., NG 313(F-61), "Mutilation of Bodies—Maffin Bay."
28. ANA Collection, M P 729/8,12/431/5, "Statement of Wimbap."
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., M P 742/1,336/1/1129, "Interrogation of Lt F.M."
31. Ibid., M P 729/8,12/43 1/5 , "Alleged Atrocities by Japanese."
32. Ibid., "VX5383."
33. G.M. Byrnes, Green Shadows (Queensland Corrective Commission, Bris-
bane, 1989), pp. 1-2.
34. Mentioned by Dick Collins during my interview with him September 18,
1992.
Notes 237

35. G. Byrnes, op. cit., p. 167.

36. W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth (Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 20 in the
Japanese edition published by Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo.
37. Ogawa S., Kyokugen no Nàka no Ningen, p. 167.
38. For example, see some reports included in AWM Collection, 54/1010/
9/116.
39. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1323, "Abstract of Evidence: Etiringae
of Irorkor."
40. USNA Collection, NG 315(F63), "Cannibalism at Guhu, New Guinea."
41. ANA Collection, A A 1978/67/1, "A Report on Japanese Atrocities and
Breaches of Rules of Warfare (March 1944)."
42. AWM Collection, 54/1010/4/168, "Mutilation of Dead and Cannibalism."
43. ANA Collection, A 471/l, 80713, "Record of Military Court: First Lieut T.T."
44. ANA Collection, M P 729/8,12/431/5; 44/rlj, "Prisoner of War Preliminary
Interrogation Report."
45. Ibid., "Information from Captured Document No. 80,107."
46. Bŏei-chō Bŏei Kenshūjo Senshi-shitsu (ed.), Senshi Sōsho: Tōbu Nyüginea
Hōmen Rikugun Kōku Sakusen (Asagumo Shimbun-sha, 1968), p. 188.
47. Peter Charlton, Australians at War: War Against Japan 1942-1945 (Time-Life
Books Australia, 1989), p. 68.
48. Bōei-chō Bōei Kenshūjo Senshi-shitsu, op. cit., pp. 189,275-276.
49. Ogawa S., Tōbu Nyüginia Sensen, pp. 12-22.
50. Bōei-chō Bõei Kenshūjo Senshi-shitsu, op. cit., pp. 276-277.
51. Ogawa S., Tōbu Nyüginea Sensen, p. 240.
52. Argus, April 2 4 , 1945.
53. ANA Collection, M P 729/8,1945-1957,4 3/4 3 1 /6 , "Chief Publicity Censor:
FPC/1548."
54. Ibid., "War Cabinet Minute, No. 4187."
55. The first two reports prepared solely by Webb are A Report on Japanese
Atrocities and Breaches of Rules of Warfare (March 1944) and A Report on War Cńmes
by Individual Members of the Armed Forces of the Enemy Against Australians (October
1944). The third report, Australian War Cńmes Board Inquiry Report on War Crimes
Committed by Enemy Subjects Against Australians and Others, Vols. 2-3 (1945-1946),
was a joint work by Webb and two other judges. These reports are now available
to the public, but all details related to the victims (names, locations where the
bodies were found, unit names, etc.) have been deleted from the documents.
56. Chaen Yoshio and Shigematsu Kazuyoshi, Hokan: Sensō Hanzai no Jissō (Fuji
Shuppan, 1987), pp. 105,109, 111, 122,152.
57. Brian McKinlay, Australia 1942: End of Innocence (Mead and Beckett, 1985),
pp. 96-97.
58. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (Faber
and Faber, 1986), p. 71.
59. Tim Bowden, One Crowded Hour: Neil Davis Combat Cameraman, 1934-1985
(Angus and Robertson, 1987), pp. 293-303.
60. Key Ray Chong, Cannibalism in China (Longwood Academic, 1990).
61. Hanazono Ichirō, Gunpō Kaigi (Shinjimbutsu Õrai-sha, 1974), pp. 16-21.
238 Notes

diopter 5

1. U.S. documents on the activities of Unit 731 as well as Japanese biological

warfare activities during the Asia-Pacific War are now held in the U.S. National
Archives. Documents on these subjects total about 8,000 pages. A Japanese histo-
rian, Tsuneishi Keiichi, selected about half of these documents and translated
them into Japanese, available in book form. See Tsuneishi Keiichi (ed.), Hyōteki
Ishii: 731 Butai to Bei-gun Chōhō Katsudō (Ōtsuki Shoten, 1984). The English transla-
tion of large amounts of original Japanese medical reports on various human ex-
periments conducted by Unit 731 are now housed in the U.S. Army Dugway Lab-
oratory in Utah. Some original Japanese documents on various types of human
experiments were also in the possession of a former member of Unit 731, Inoue
Yoshihiro, who died in 1969. In 1983 Dr. Inoue's relatives sold these documents to
a waste-paper recycling merchant, who then sold them to a secondhand book-
shop in Kanda, Tokyo. Eventually they were found by researchers at Keio Univer-
sity and purchased by the university library. These documents and other origi-
nals found elsewhere are now available in book form. See Tanaka Akira and
Matsumura Takao (ed.) 731 Butai Sakusei Shiryō (Fuji Shobō, 1991).
2. Tsuneishi K., op. cit., pp. 10-11; Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731:
The Japanese Army's Secret of Secrets (Hodder and Stoughton, 1989), pp. 5-12. The
United States commenced research on biological weapons in 1943 at Camp Det-
rick in Frederick, Maryland. In June 1944 the Special Project Division was set up
to promote further research in this field, and three additional research facilities
were built in Mississippi, Indiana, and Utah. At this stage, the Special Project Di-
vision had a staff of 3,900 (including 100 academics at various universities) with
an annual budget of $12 million. See Tsuneishi K., op. cit., pp. 22-23.
3. For details of the organizational structure and the various research activities
of Unit 731, see "Sanders' Report" and "Thomson's Report" in Tsuneishi K., op.
cit., pp. 215-376.
4. Ibid., pp. 331-334; Miyazaki Akira, "Impei to Kaimei to: 731 Butai Kenkyŭ
no Rekishi o Tadotte," Report on Japan's War Responsibility No. 2 , 1993, p. 35. For
details of Unit 731's activities in Singapore and Malaysia, see Takashima No-
buyoshi, "Marei Singapōru no Saikin Butai: Pekin no Saikinsen Butai o Fukumu
Nippon-gun Himitsu Butai no Jittai," Report on Japan's War Responsibility No. 2,
1993, pp. 36-51.
5. P. Williams and D. Wallace, op. cit., pp. 63-65.
6. Ibid., pp. 25-27.
7. Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Ika Toshiya, "Nippon-gun no Saikin-sen: Akiraka ni
natta Rikugun Sōgakari no Jissō, Report on Japan's War Responsibility No. 2 , 1993,
pp. 12-13.
8. Ibid., p. 17.
9. P. Williams and D. Wallace, op. cit., pp. 31-50.
10. Ibid., pp. 42-44. The original medical summary report on details of frost-
bite experiments written by Yoshimura Hisao is included in Tanaka A. and Mat-
sumura T. op. cit., pp. 225-288. Dr. Yoshimura, who was head of the frostbite re-
search team of Unit 731, became a member of the Special Committee on the
Notes 239

Antarctic Expedition set up by the Science Council of Japan in 1972 in order to ad-
vise the Japanese expedition team on the problem of frostbite.
11. For details of the production, research, and use of chemical weapons by the
Japanese forces during the Asia-Pacific War, see Yuki Tanaka, "Poison Gas: The
Story Japan Would Like to Forget," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 44, No. 8,
1988, pp. 10-19; and Tanaka A. and Matsumura T., op. cit., pp. 1-42.
12. The newly discovered documents are 111 volumes of Gyōmu Nisshi (Rec-
ords of Military Plans and Operations) written by four army officers: Lieutenant
Colonel Imoto Kumao and Major General Sanada Jõichirõ in the Chiefs of Staff
and Colonel Kanahara Setsuzō and Colonel Ōtsuka Fumiro in the Bureau of
Army Medical Affairs. These records contain various plans for biological warfare,
some of which were carried out during the Asia-Pacific War. Some records were
hitherto virtually unknown to researchers. The records are held by the Research
Library of the Japanese Defense Agency, but until Ika Toshiya and Yoshimi
Yoshiaki analyzed them late in 1993, their details had not been thoroughly exam-
ined. See Yoshimi Y. and Ika T., op. cit., p. 8.
13. Ibid., pp. 15-16.
14. Ibid., pp. 1 7 , 22-23.
15. Ibid., p. 24; Tsuneishi Keiichi, Kieta Saikin Butai (Kaimei-sha, 1981),
pp. 249-250; Hata Ikuhiko, Shōwa-shi no Nazo o Ou (Bungei Shunjū, 1993), pp.
249-250.
16. Of course, most on-the-ground intelligence gathering concerning the
Japanese would have been done by U.S. and Australian forces. See Australian Na-
tional Archives (hereafter ANA) Collection, M P729/8, 9/431/107, "Memoran-
dum on B.W. Intelligence up to 1st September, 1944."
17. Ibid.
18. Allied Translator and Interpreter Section Southwest Pacific Area (hereafter
AΉS-SWPA), The Japanese and Bacterial Warfare (July 2 4 , 1944), p. 17.
19. ANA Collection, M P729/8, 9/431/107, "Minutes of the Tenth Committee
Meeting" Appendix, pp. 3-5.
20. AΉS-SWPA, AΉS Enemy Publications No. 96: Bacterial Culture Media—
issued June '41 by No. 1 Section of Sasaki, Ko Force.
21. Tanaka Nobuyoshi, "Gun-i Gakkō Atochi no Jinkotsu Jiken sono go," Gi-
jutsu to Ningen, Vol. 22, No. 7 , 1993, p. 41.
22. "W ar Memories of Misaki Yōichi," in English translation, has not been pub-
lished, but the Australian War Memorial holds a typescript. Australian War
Memorial (hereafter AWM) Collection, 010545.
23. AΉS-SWPA, AΉS Enemy Publication No. 381: Defense Against Bacterial
Warfare.
24. AWM Collection, 5 4 /7 3 7 /5 /1 , "Historical Division, GHQ, AFPAC 'Biolog-
ical Warfare' AG 385,16 Oct., 1944."
25. It is not clear why these two hospitals were initially targeted for investiga-
tion; no existing documents give any reason for this decision. See the documents
dated between April 2 and July 3 1 , 1947, which are in the file of ANA Collection,
M P742/1,3 3 6 /1 /1398-155C.
26. Hugh Clarke, Colin Burgess, and Russell Braddon, Australians at War: Pris-
oners of War (Time-Life Books Australia, 1988), p. 115. Zenkoku Kenyūkai
240 Notes

Rengōkai (ed.), Nippon Kenpei Gaishi (Zenkoku Kenyukai Rengökai Honbu, 1983),
pp. 1227-1228.
27. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1398, p. 1.
28. Ibid., "Capt. Jose Holoquin's Affidavit," p. 8.
29. Ibid., "Affidavits of 1st Lt. James A. McMurria and S/Sgt. Escoe E.
Palmer," p. 4.
30. Zenkoku Kenyükai Rengökai, op. cit., pp. 1233-1234,1242.
31. ANA Collection, M P742/1,336/1/1398, "Capt. Jose Holoquin's Affidavit,"
p. 14.
32. Ibid., pp. 8-9.
33. Ibid., "Statement by Mr. J.J. Murphy," pp. 1-2.
34. Joseph G. Nason and Robert L. Holt, Horn: You Next Die (Pacific Rim Press,
1987), pp. 184-185. Joseph Nason was one of eight POWs in Rabaul who survived
until the end of the war. Two other books by surviving POWs are Trial and Tri-
umph by James McMurria (private publication) and Missing in Action over Rabaul
by John B. Kepchia (Palace Printer, 1986).
35. Mentioned by J. Murphy during the 1983 interview conducted by Tim
Bowden, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist.
36. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1398, "Capt. Jose Holoquin's Affidavit,"
p. 11-12. Biologist Koch mentioned in this affidavit was not French but German.
37. Ibid., "Statement by Mr. J.J. Murphy," p. 3.
38. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1398-155C , "Interrogation of Dr Hirano
Einosuke," p. 6.
39. Ibid., "Interrogation of Nishikawa Masao," pp. 3-4.
40. Ibid., pp. 4-8.
41. AΊΊS-SWPA, Research Report: Survey of Japanese Medical Units (January 18,
1947), pp. 1-3.
42. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1398-155C , "Interrogation of Dr Hirano
Einosuke," pp. 3-5.
43. Ibid., p. 6.
44. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1398, "Case Analysis," p. 5.
45. ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1398-155C , "Interrogation of Dr Hirano
Einosuke," pp. 9-10,12.
46. ANA Collection, M P742/1, 336/1/1955, "Interrogation of Wakabayashi
Zenichi."
47. Ibid., "War Crimes—Rabaul Area Written by Director of Prisoners of War
and Internees (September 27,1948)."
48. Ibid., "Statement by Ogata Kahachi, Formerly CO of Watom Island," "In-
terrogation of Kikuchi Satoru," and "Interrogation of Imamura Hitoshi."
49. Wakabayashi complained bitterly about "psychological torture" with the
lie detector as well as physical ill-treatment by the staff of the Australian War
Crimes Section. See his complaint written in Japanese on December 2 2 , 1948, in
ANA Collection, M P 742/1,336/1/1955.
50. Ibid., "Summary of Material Held on Praed Point Matupi File."
51. Ibid., "Statement by Kiyama Tatsuo," "Sworn Statement by Sanagi Sa-
damu," and "Report on Death of Kiyama Tatsuo."
52. Ibid., "Sworn Statement by Kubo Saichirō."
Notes 241

53. Ibid., "Sworn Statement by Hosaka Katsumi."

54. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Record of Proceedings
(Tokyo, 1946), Vol. 48, pp. 13961-14005.
55. Ibid., p. 13962.
56. Mentioned by George Williams and Jack Pannaotie during the ABC inter-
view conducted by Tim Bowden in 1983.
57. P. Williams and D. Wallace, op. cit., pp. 53-55.
58. Ibid., pp. 57-59.
59. Ibid., p. 56.
60. Ibid., pp. 133-134; Tsuneishi K., Hyōteki Ishii, pp. 377-435.
61. Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-4 5 and
the American Cover-up (Routledge, 1994), pp. 190-223. In December 1949 the Soviet
Union independently held a war crimes tribunal in Khabarovsk to prosecute 12
former members of Unit 731 who were among the Japanese POWs captured by
the Red Army in Manchuria. They were sentenced to various terms (2 to 25 years)
of forced labor. The Soviet government published the details of the trial proceed-
ings in Russian in 1950; the Japanese translation is available as Kōhan Kiroku: 731
Saikin-sen Butai (Fuji Shobō, 1982). The U.S. government virtually ignored this
trial. For more details on U.S. and Japanese reactions to it, see P. Williams and
D. Wallace, op. cit., Chapter 16.
62. Surviving POWs are still angry that no one was prosecuted for such hor-
rific medical experiments. See, for example, J. Nason and R. Holt, op. cit., p. 251.
63. As far as I know, there are two cases of U.S. prosecutions of Japanese med-
ical doctors who experimented on American POWs. The first was of doctors at
Kyūshū University who experimented on eight B-29 bomber crews while they
were anesthetized and ultimately dissected them. The second was of staff of the
naval hospital on Truk Island, including the head of the hospital, medical officer
Captain Iwanami Hiroshi, who killed 10 POWs altogether on three separate occa-
sions. In these two cases, however, those who were convicted were not associated
with Unit 731 at all. They were ordinary doctors of hospitals that were not under
the unit's control, and they were never involved in developing and testing biolog-
ical and chemical weapons. In particular, the experiments on POWs at the Truk
hospital were not really medical experiments in the strict sense but rather acts of
revenge against the American pilots who bombed the hospital and thus killed
many Japanese patients. For details of these two cases, see the U.S. National
Archives documents, RG 153, Entry 143, Boxes 1062-1073 and 1362-1363.
64. AΉS-SWPA, Research Report: Infringement of the Laws of War and Ethics by the
Japanese Medical Corps (January 2 6 , 1945), p. 4. It seems that dissection of live pris-
oners for the purpose of medical training was widely practiced by Japanese mili-
tary doctors throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Dr. Yuasa Ken's rare and honest
account of such conduct seems to support this claim. According to Dr. Yuasa,
who participated in these operations several times at an Army hospital in Man-
chukuo, the practice was common at military hospitals in Manchukuo. Normally,
the Kempeitai supplied Chinese prisoners for this purpose. See Yoshikai Natsuko,
Kesenai Kioku: Yuasa Guni Seitai Kaibō no Kiroku (Nitchŭ Shobō, 1981), pp. 65-93.
65. AΉS-SWPA, Research Report: Infringement of the Laws of War and Ethics by the
Japanese Medical Corps, p. 9.
242 Notes

66. Ibid., pp. 1-3. This ATIS research report uses much information obtained
from Japanese POWs on the behavior of Japanese doctors on the battlefield.
67. "Tōjō Shushō Mizukara Butai Honbu o Shisatsu: Moto Tai-in ga Akasu 731
no Senritsu," Report on Japan's War Responsibility No. 2 , 1993, p. 65. This is a repro-
duction of an interview with Koshi Sadao conducted by Yamaguchi Toshiaki in
Nagano on October 1 0 , 1992.
68. "731 Butai to wa Nani ka," Report on Japan's War Responsibility No. 2 , 1993,
p. 54.
69. For details of Robert Lifton's concept of doubling, see his book The Nazi
Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (Basic Books, 1986), in partic-
ular, Chapter 19, "Doubling: the Faustian Bargain." His book coauthored with
Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat (Basic
Books, 1990), is also useful to an understanding of his argument on this issue.
70. R. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, pp. 269-302,420-421. For details of Josef Men-
gele's doubling character, see the collection of testimonies by twins who were ex-
perimented on by Mengele in L.M. Lagnado and S.C. Dekel Children of the Flames:
Dr. JosefMengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz (Pan Books, 1991).
71. R. Lifton, op. cit., p. 445.
72. See various articles on this topic that have appeared in The Albuquerque Tri-
bune (November 1 5 , 1 6 , 1 7 , 1 9 , 22, and 2 3 , 1993; December 7 , 1993; January 5 and
1 4 , 1994; February 4, 8 , 12, and 2 3 , 1994; March 5, 8, 9, and 2 2 , 1994; August 17,
1994). See also Phillip McCarthy, "Poisoning Their Own: U.S. Experiments on Cit-
izens to Keep Cold War Edge," The Age, January 1 , 1994.

Chapter 6

1. Bōeichō Bōei Kenshŭjo Senshi-shitsu (ed.), Senshi Sōsho: Nantō Hōmen Kaigun
Sakusen, Vol. 1, Ga-tō Dakkai Sakusen Kaishi Mede (Asagumo Shimbun-sha, 1971),
pp. 26-73.
2. Australian National Archives (hereafter ANA) Collection, M P158/98, "At-
tacks on Kavieng, 21st January, 1942—Report by District Officer J.H. Macdonald."
3. Bōeichō Bōei Kenshūjσ Senshi-shitsu, op. cit., p. 73.
4. Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM) Collection, 5 4 /8 3 1 /3 /9 3 , "Re-
connaissance Report."
5. AWM Collection, 5 4 /4 1 9 /1 /8 , "Reconnaissance Report."
6. ANA Collection, M P 742/1/336/1/160, "Missing Civilians: Suspected Mur-
der Kavieng."
7. ANA Collection, M P158/98, "An Intelligence Report on New Ireland."
8. ANA Collection, M P137/93, "Statement of Rear Admiral Tamura Ryū-
kichi."
9. Ibid., "Nago Island: Fate Allied Airmen and Civilians."
10. ANA Collection, M P 742/1/336/1/1444, "Civilians in New Britain and
New Ireland" and "Interrogation of Naval Capt Sanagi Sadamu"; M P137/93,
"New Guinea: Missing Personnel."
Notes 243

11. ANA Collection, M P742/1/336/1/144 4, "Report on Interrogation: Baba

Takashi," Missing Australians and Foreign Nationals: Akikaze Massacre," and
"Translation of a Statement of Kai Yajirō."
12. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Baba Takashi."
13. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement by Mikawa Gunichi."
14. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement by Takahashi Manroku" and "Transla-
tion of a Statement by Ishigami Shinichi."
15. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement by Takahashi Manroku" and "Transla-
tion of a Statement by Ishigami Shinichi."
16. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Ichinose Harukichi."
17. Ibid., a Japanese document entitled "Ichinose Harukichi Sensei-sho."
18. Ibid., "Ichinose Harukichi Sensei-sho."
19. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Oimoto Yoshiji" and "Translation of a
Statement by Takahashi Manroku. "
20. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement of Kai Yajirō" and "Report on Interroga-
tion: Oimoto Yoshiji."
21. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement of Kai Yajirō."
22. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Takahashi Manroku."
23. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Takahashi Manroku," "Report on Interro-
gation: Oimoto Yoshiji," and "Report on Interrogation: Takahashi Shigeo."
24. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Oimoto Yoshiji," "Translation of a State-
ment of Kai Yajirō," and "Report on Interrogation: Oguchi Shigeru."
25. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement of Kai Yajirō" and "Report on Interroga-
tion: Yagura Satoshi."
26. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Onishi Shinzō."
27. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement by Mikawa Gunichi."
28. Ibid., "Translation of a Statement by Mikawa Gunichi."
29. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Mikawa Gunichi."
30. Ibid., "Missing Australians and Foreign Nationals: Akikaze Massacre" and
"Report on Interrogation: Yamazumi Teijirō."
31. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Maeda Shigeru."
32. Ibid., "Comments in the Report on Interrogation: Mikawa Gunichi."
33. The Australian War Crimes Act of 1945, No. 48, Article 12. For details of
this law, see Chaen Yoshio (ed.), BC-Kyü Senpan Gō-gun Rabauru Saiban Shiryō
(Fuji Shuppan, 1990), p. 171.
34. ANA Collection, M P 742/1/336/1/160, "Report on Interrogation: Ōtsu
Yoshio" and a Japanese document entitled "Ose Toshio Sensei-sho"; ANA Collec-
tion, M P742/336/1/1444, a Japanese document entitled "Ōtsu Yoshio Sensei-
sho."
35. ANA Collection, M P 742/1/336/1/160, "Report on Interrogation: Ötsu
Yoshio."
36. ANA Collection, M P742/1/336/1/1444 , "Ōtsu Yoshio Sensei-sho."
37. ANA Collection, M P742/1 /3 3 6 /1 /1 6 0 , "Report on Interrogation: Ōtsu
Yoshio."
38. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Ōtsu Yoshio."
39. Ibid., "Ōse Toshio Sensei-sho."
244 Notes

40. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Kuriyama Shigeru" and "Civilians in New

Britain and New Ireland and Movement of Kowa Maru/'
41. ANA Collection, M P742/1 /336 /1/144 4, "Proof of Evidence: VX128203
Captain Albert Klestadt." Albert Klestadt, a refugee from Germany under Hitler,
went to Japan in 1935. When it became clear that Japan was about to enter the
war, he moved to the Philippines. He escaped from Manila soon after Japanese
forces invaded in January 1942 and went to North Sangboy. From there he sailed
to Australia on a small boat with a crew of seven Filipinos without any navigation
instruments. Almost seven months later he reached Darwin in northern Australia.
For details of this voyage, see Albert Klestadt, The Sea Was Kind (Kangaroo Press,
1988).
42. ANA Collection, M P742/1/336/1/1 444 , "Comment in the Report on Inter-
rogation: Hiratsuka Seiichi."
43. Ibid., "Summary of Examination on Jitsukawa Kinjirō." AWM Collection,
54 /1010/6/134, PT2, a Japanese document entitled "Jitsukawa Kinjirō Sensei-
sho."
44. ANA Collection, M P742/1/33 6/1/1 444 , "Report on Interrogation: Takatō
Jūtarō," "Summary of Examination of Takatō Jŭtarō," "Takatō Jūtarō Sensei-sho,"
"Translation of Statement by Yamao Unoharu," and "Summary of Examination of
Yamao Unoharu."
45. Ibid., "Sworn Statement by Tamura Ryŭkichi."
46. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Suzuki Shōzō" and "Report on Interroga-
tion: Horiguchi Yoshio."
47. AWM Collection, 1 0 1 0 /6 /1 3 4 /, PT1, "War Crime Trial: Admiral Tamura
Ryŭkichi and Others," pp. 38,103.
48. Ibid., pp. 39,71. Lieutenant Mori, whose official title was deputy comman-
der, acted as commander for the 83rd Unit after February 10 when Tamura took
on additional duties as commander of the 14th Naval Base Force.
49. Ibid., pp. 67-68; ANA Collection, M P742/1/336/1/1 444 , a Japanese docu-
ment "Yoshino Shōzō Sensei-sho."
50. AWM Collection, 54/1010/6/134, PT1, p. 71.
51. Ibid., p. 68.
52. Ibid., p. 69.
53. Ibid., pp. 106-107.
54. Ibid., pp. 120-121. At the tribunal Mori implied that Tamura was solely re-
sponsible for the execution of detainees. However, from Mori's statement it is
clear that he was avoiding any responsibility.
55. Ibid., pp. 68-69.
56. Ibid., pp. 36-37, 83; ANA Collection, M P742/1/336/1/144 4, "Yoshino
Shōzō Sensei-sho."
57. AWM Collection, 5 4 /1 0 1 0 /6 /1 3 4 , PT1, pp. 40-41,43.
58. Ibid., p. 70.
59. Ibid., p. 101.
60. Ibid., p. 42.
61. Ibid., p. 108.
62. Ibid., pp. 108-109,140-142.
Notes 245

63. Ibid., pp. 145-146,160-165; ANA Collection, M P742/1/336/1/1444, "Swom

Statement by Suzuki Shōzō" and "Report on Interrogation: Horiguchi Yoshio."
64. ANA Collection, M P 742/1/336/1/1444, "Report on Interrogation: Takatō
Jŭtarō," "Summary of Examination of Takatö Jūtarō," and "Takatō Jūtarō Sensei-
sho."
65. AWM Collection, 5 4/1010/6/134, PT1, pp. 165-167.
66. Ibid., pp. 167-168,189-191.
67. Ibid., pp. 167-168.
68. Ibid., pp. 176-178.
69. Ibid., p. 168.
70. Ibid., pp. 110-111,142,152,168.
71. Ibid., pp. 57-58, 92-94; ANA Collection, M P 742/1/336/1/1444, "Yoshino
Shōzō Sensei-sho."
72. ANA Collection, M P742/1 /33 6/1 /1 444 , "Yoshino Shōzō Sensei-sho,"
"Swom Statement by Suzuki Shōzō," and "Report on Interrogation: Horiguchi
Yoshio"; AWM Collection, 5 4 /1 0 1 0 /6 /1 3 4 , PT1, pp. 5 7 , 144.
73. ANA Collection, MP74 1 336 1 1444, "Translation of Statement Con-
cerning POW made by Mori Yahichi," "Summary of Examination of Mori
Yahichi," and "Summary of Examination of Jitsukawa Kinjirō."
74. Ibid., "Report on Interrogation: Suzuki Shōzō" and "Report on Interroga-
tion: Horiguchi Yoshio"; AWM Collection, 54/1010/6/134, PT1, p. 171.
75. AWM Collection, 54/1010/6/134, PT1, p. 2, and "Petition Against the Find-
ing and/or Sentence of the Military Court by Tamura Ryūkichi." In fact Tamura ex-
pressed his gratitude to Albert Klestadt for the fair trial after being sentenced. This
information was obtained during my interview with Albert Klestadt in June 1995.
76. Ibid., pp. 5 3-54, 5 8 -5 9 , 7 8 -7 9 , 117,147.
77. Kita Yoshito, "Kyũ Kaigun Shogakkō ni okeru Kokusai-hō Kyōiku," in
Chaen Y., op. cit., pp. 260-263.
78. Ibid., p. 267.
79. Kita Yoshito, "Kyũ Rikugun no Shōkō Yōsei Kikan ni yoru Kokusai-hō
Kyōiku," in Chaen Yoshio (ed.), BC-Kyŭ Senpan Beigun Shanhai-to Saiban Shiryō
(Fuji Shuppan, 1989), pp. 150-166.
80. AWM Collection, 5 4/1010/6/134, PT1, pp. 3 6 , 81.
81. Ibid., "Statement in Mitigation Re Tamura Ryūkichi by Reiko Osawa." It is
apparent from various petitions and character references put forth in support of
Tamura that he was a warm and sincere person. This episode was described by
his oldest daughter in her character reference about him.
82. Ibid., pp. 40-42, and "Petition Against the Finding and/or Sentence of the
Military Court by Tamura Ryūkichi."

Conclusion

1. Although it is almost certain that during the Asia-Pacific War the Chinese
were seen as inferior by the Japanese (and by white people as well), it is difficult
to define when the Japanese actually adopted such discriminatory ideas and
246 Notes

attitudes toward the Chinese (and the Koreans). Soon after the Meiji restoration,
Japanese political leaders quickly developed the idea that international relation-
ships with other nations were determined principally by the strength of military
power. Based upon such a notion, they believed that Korea should be subordi-
nated to Japan immediately and that Japan would subjugate China in the near fu-
ture when Japan's military power superseded that of China. Therefore, the basic
element for racial discrimination against other Asian races already existed in the
very early years of the Meiji period. However, it seems that the general popula-
tion in Japan at this time did not have a fixed image of neighboring countries and
races. For details of the views of Japanese political leaders about China and Korea
in this period, see Shibahara Takuji, "Taigai-kan to Nashonarizumu" in Shibahara
Takuji, Ikai Tadaaki, and Ikeda Masahiro (eds.), Nippon Kindai Shisō-shi Taikei Dai
12-kan: Taigai-kan (Iwanami Shoten, 1988), pp. 458-534.
2. Chaen Yoshio (ed.), Horyo ni Kansuru Sho-hōkiruiju (Fuji Shuppan, 1988),
p. 18.
3. For details of how various methods of suicidal attacks were planned and
carried out, see, for example, Morimoto Tadao, Tokkō:Gedō no Tōsotsu to Ningen no
Jōken (Bungei Shunjū, 1992).
4. Kawashima Takenori, Nipponjin no Hō Ishiki (Iwanami Shoten, 1967), pp. 2-3;
Inoue Kiyoshi, Jōyaku Kaisei (Iwanami Shoten, 1955), pp. 129-170.
5. Kawashima T., op. cit., p. 16. The word kenri was developed by Japanese
scholars of Dutch (the most prominent Western language in Japan in the Toku-
gawa period) as a neologism to translate the Dutch word regt (rights). It was first
officially used in the Meiji constitution.
6. Ibid., pp. 16-19.
7. However, I am not claiming that popular movements such as those by peas-
ants (e.g., ikki in the Edo period) or the democratic rights movement (e.g., minken
undo in the early Meiji era) had no influence upon the advancement of political
rights of the common people in Japan.
8. Kawashima T., op. cit., pp. 51-55.
9. Ibid., p. 32; Ishida Takeshi, "Kokka-shugi no Shisō to Undo," in Maruyama
Masao et al. (eds.), Nippon no Nashonarizumu (Kawade Shobō, 1953) p. 118. The re-
stored emperor system in the Meiji era was not, of course, the system of feudal
practice simply continued from the Edo period. Many revisions and inventions
were added to the existing emperor system in order to adjust it to the modem po-
litical and socioeconomic environment. In particular, new methods to enhance the
emperor's symbolic power were invented in order to control mass ideology. On
this point, see, for example, Taki Kōji's excellent work Tennō no Shōzō (Iwanami
Shoten, 1988).
10. Maruyama Masao, Nippon no Shisō (Iwanami Shoten, 1961), p. 47.
11. Ibid., pp. 31-32 , 39.
12. Ibid., p. 37-38; Maruyama Masao, Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōzō (Mirai-sha,
1956), p. 123.
13. Maruyama M., Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōzō, p. 11-16.
14. The Japanese naval academy had been founded in 1870. In 1872,34 British
naval officers were invited to take up positions as instructors. For details of
British influence on the Japanese navy in the early period of its history, see
Notes 247

Nomura Minoru, "Kaigun Hei-gakkō Enkaku-shi: Sono Eikō to Kunō," in Bessatsu

Rekishi Dokuhon: Edajima Nippon no Kaigun Kyōiku (Shinjimbutsu Ōrai-sha, 1992),
pp. 40-43.
15. Kamisaka Yasushi, "Saigo no Sotsugyōsei 75-ki," in Bessatsu Rekishi
Dokuhon: Edajima Nippon no Kaigun Kyōiku, p. 82.
16. Maruyama M., Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōzð, pp. 13,19.
17. For details of the cultural and ideological link between burakumin and the
emperor system, see Kan Takayuki, Senmin Bunka to Tennŏsei (Akashi Shoten,
1986); Kobayashi Sueo, Sabetsu to Tennŏsei (Shiraishi Shoten, 1986).
18. Maruyama M., Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōzō, p. 23; Shibahara T., op. cit., pp.
464-467.
19. Maruyama M., Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōzō, p. 22.
20. Ishida T., op. cit., p. 134.
21. Maruyama M., Nippon no Shisō, pp. 33-36.
22. Okuma Miyoshi, Kantō Daishinsai: Sono Jissō to Rekishiteki Igi (Yūzankaku,
1973), pp. 217-273. For details of various political ideas and movements during
the Taishō democracy, see Matsuo Takayoshi, Taishō Demokurashii no Kenkyŭ
(Aoki Shoten, 1966).
23. Ishida T., op. cit., pp. 115-141.
24. Maruyama M., Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōzō, pp. 27-28.
25. Nishi Amane, Heika Tokugyō, reproduced in Yui Masaomi, Fujiwara Akira,
and Yoshida Yutaka (eds.), Nippon Kindai Shisō Taikei Dai 4-kan: Guntai Heishi
(Iwanami Shoten, 1989), pp. 149-162.
26. Fujiwara Akira, "Tōsuiken Dokuritsu to Tennõ no Guntai," in Yui M., Fuji-
wara A., and Yoshida Y., op. cit., pp. 477-502.
27. For details of the spirit of bushidō, see, for example, Takahashi Tomio,
Bushidō no Rekishi, Vols. 1 and 2 (Shinjimbutsu Ōrai-sha, 1986); Nitobe Inazō,
Bushidō: The Story of Japan (Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1969); and Adachi Sumio,
"Traditional Asian Approach: A Japanese View" in Queensland Ex-POW Repatri-
ation Committee (ed.), Nippon Very Sorry—Many Men Must Die: Submission To the
United Nations Commission of Human Rights (Boolarong Publications, 1990), pp.
12-17.
28. Gunjin Chokuron, reproduced in Yui M., Fujiwara A., and Yoshida Y., op.
cit., pp. 173-177.
29. Chaen Y., op. cit., pp. 17-18.
30. Articles 1 and 2 of Gunjin Chokuron, in Yui M., Fujiwara A., and Yoshida Y.,
op. cit., pp. 174-175.
31. Article 2 of Gunjin Kunkai, reproduced in ibid., p. 166.
32. Fujiwara Akira, Nippon Gunjishi: Jōkan Senzen-hen (Nippon Hyöron-sha,
1987), pp. 127-132.
33. Maeda Tetsuo, Nippon no Guntai: Jō Kōgun-hen (Gendai Shokan, 1994), pp.
68-69.
34. Ibid., p. 70.
35. Ōe Shinobu, "Tennŏsei Guntai to Minshū," in Tōyama Shigeki (ed.), Kindai
Tennŏsei no Tenkai (Iwanami Shoten, 1989), p. 72.
36. Between 1910 and 1920, it became popular throughout Japan for families
who had young boys to visit Shinto shrines and pray that these children would
248 Notes

not be drafted into the military forces. At the same time, many incidents occurred
at various army camps in which soldiers deserted in a group because they could
not bear the ill-treatment by their officers. Such phenomena clearly indicate that
veneration for the emperor and loyalty toward the military by the general popu-
lace were still weak in this period. For details, see Fujiwara A., Nippon Gunji-shi:
Jōkan Senzen-hen, pp. 132-133; and Ōe S., op. cit., pp. 73-99.
37. Ōe Shinobu, Heishi-tachi no Nichirō Sensō: 500 tsu no Gunji Yübin kara (Asahi
Shimbun-sha, 1988), p. 304.
38. Such romantic ideas and nationalistic sentiment are also clear in some of
the last letters written by the soldiers who died from gyokusai or by those who
committed suicide after defeat in battle during the Asia-Pacific War. See, for ex-
ample, Fukutake Takeshi and Fukushima Jurō, Jiketsu to Gyokusai (Chōbun-sha,
1993).
39. For details of the general attitude of Okinawans during the battle of Oki-
nawa, see, for example, Shōji Sakakibara, Okinawa: Hachijŭyon-nichi no Tatakai
(Iwanami Shoten, 1994), pp. 202-225.
40. Hata Ikuhiko, "Nippon-gun ni Okeru Horyo Kannen no Keisei," in Gunji
Shigaku, Vol. 28, No. 2 , 1992, p. 15.
41. For details of various discrimination problems that minorities in Japan are
facing, see, for example, G.A. de Vas and W.O. Wetherall, Japan's Minorities:
Burakumin, Koreans, Ainu, and Okinawans (Minority Rights Group, 1983).
42. The case of Sakae Menda is a good example. Sakae was suspected of mur-
der and was arrested and imprisoned for many years without trial. Subsequently
he was proved innocent and released. For details of his ordeal and other similar
cases, see Gavan McCormack, "Crime, Confession, and Control in Contemporary
Japan/' and Igarashi Futaba, "Forced to Confess," both in Gavan McCormack and
Yoshio Sugimoto (eds.) Democracy in Contemporary Japan (M.E. Sharp, 1986),
pp. 186-214.
43. See, for example, Tezuka Kazuaki, Gaikokujin Rōdōsha (Nippon Keizai
Shimbun-sha, 1989), in particular Chapter 2; and Japan-Asia Quarterly Review, Vol.
19, No. 4 , 1988, pp. 2-21.
44. Although the analyses by Maruyama Masao and Ishida Takeshi of the em-
peror ideology were extremely incisive, both idealized Western society in terms
of democracy and human rights. It is interesting that very few scholars in the field
of Japanese political science have tried to critically analyze and develop the con-
cepts that Maruyama and Ishida constructed more than 40 years ago. On
Maruyama's concept of democracy, see Andrew Barshay, "Imagining Democracy
in Postwar Japan: Reflections on Maruyama and Modernism," in Journal of Japa-
nese Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 , 1992, pp. 365-406.
45. One reason for such tendency in the research by progressive historians
seems to lie in the particular type of debates on war crimes between these histori-
ans and nationalist scholars in Japan. Progressive historians constantly face na-
tionalist historians' efforts to dispute the occurrence of specific events such as the
Nanjing massacre. In order to counter such attacks, they tend to concentrate their
efforts on discovering historical documents that can corroborate Japanese atroci-
ties and war crimes.
Notes 249

46. John Dower's recent article on the relationship between the bombing of Hi-
roshima and Nagasaki and the failure by Japanese people to acknowledge re-
sponsibility for the war is quite appealing. His approach to this problem through
analysis of the Japanese government's postwar policy to promote science educa-
tion and of the corresponding popular thinking is novel and persuasive. See his
article, "The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory/' Diplomatic
History, Vol. 19, No. 2 , 1995, pp. 275-295.
47. On the role Emperor Hiorohito played in decisionmaking at various stages
of the Asia-Pacific War and the myth created after the war to conceal such active
conduct, see, for example, Fujiwara Akira, Awaya Kentarō, Yoshida Yutaka, and
Yamada Akira, Tettei Kenshō: Shōwa Tennō "Dokuhaku-roku" (Ōtsuki Shoten, 1991);
Herbert Bix, "The Shōwa Emperor's 'Monologue' and the Problem of War Re-
sponsibility," Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 , 1992, pp. 295-363; Herbert
Bix, "Japan's Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation," Diplomatic History, Vol. 19,
No. 2 , 1995, pp. 197-225.
48. See, for example, Takeuchi Yoshimi, "Chūgoku-jin no Kōsen Ishiki to Nip-
pon-jin no Dõtoku Ishiki," Chisei, May 1949; Hashikawa Bunzō, "Nippon Kindai-
shi to Sensō Taiken," in Gendai no Hakken, Vol. 2, ed. Hashikawa Bunzō (Shunjū-
sha, 1959); Arai Shinichi, "Kiki Ishiki to Gendai-shi," in Gendai no Hakken, Vol. 6 ,
ed. Hashikawa Bunzō (Shunjŭ-sha, 1960); Irokawa Daikichi, Am Shōwa-shi (Chūō
Kōron-sha, 1975); Yasumaru Yoshio, Nippon no Nashonarizumu no Zenya (Asahi
Shimbun-sha, 1977); Yoshida Mitsuru, Senchũ-ha no Shisei-kan (Bungei Shunjū-
sha, 1980); Watanabe Kiyoshi, Watashi no Tennō-kan (Henkyō-sha, 1981); Yoshi-
zawa Minami, Watashi-tachi no naka no Ajia no Sensō (Asahi Shimbun-sha, 1986).
49. D.J.K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in
Everyday Life (Harmondsworth, 1989).
About the Book and Author

This book documents for the first time previously hidden Japanese atrocities in
World War II, including cannibalism; the slaughter and starvation of prisoners of
war; the rape, enforced prostitution, and murder of noncombatants; and biologi-
cal warfare experiments.
The author describes how desperate Japanese soldiers consumed the flesh of
their own comrades killed in fighting as well as that of Australians, Pakistanis,
and Indians. Another chapter traces the fate of 65 shipwrecked Australian nurses
and British soldiers who were shot or stabbed to death by Japanese soldiers.
Thirty-two other nurses, who landed on another island, were captured and sent
to Sumatra to become "comfort women"—prostitutes for Japanese soldiers.
Tanaka recounts how thousands of Australian and British POWs died in the infa-
mous Sandakan camp in the Borneo jungle in 1945. Those who survived were
forced to endure a tortuous 160-mile march on which anyone who dropped out of
line was immediately shot. Only six escapees lived to tell the tale.
Based on exhaustive research in previously closed archives, this book repre-
sents a landmark analysis of Japanese war crimes. The author explores individual
atrocities in their broader social, psychological, and institutional milieu and
places Japanese behavior during the war in the broader context of the dehuman-
ization of men at war—without denying individual and national responsibility.

Yuki Tanaka is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian National University.

Index

ABC. See Australian Broadcasting Anthrax bomb, testing, 137

Corporation Antimalaria medicine, 43,154
Abe Kazuo Aozu, Major General, cannibalism ban
death sentence for, 67 and, 129
Sandakan march and, 48,51 Api, uprising in, 28
Absolute peace, 7 ,8 ,219(nl9) Apology issue, 8 ,218-219(n15)
A Force (Australian POWs), Arbin, G.A., shooting of, 21
mobilization of, 13,15 Argus, The, on cannibalism, 130
Ahbin (police officer), 24,25,26 Army Accounts Department, condoms
execution of, 29 from, 96
Ah Ping, 25 Asahi Shimbun, 9 2 ,219(n20)
Aiello, Sergeant, 127 Asian POWs, cannibalization of, 115,
Ainu, discrimination against, 212 116,120-123,124
Airfields, construction of, 16-18,23,34, AΉS-SPA. See Allied Translator and
41,42 Interpreter Section, Southwest
Akikaze (destroyer), 171,173 Pacific Area
course of, 172 (map) Atkiss, Ensign, 152
diagrams of, 176,177,178 malaria experiment and, 151
Akikaze massacre, 182,194 Atomic weapons, war crimes and,
discovery of, 171,173-175 218(n4)
responsibility for, 193 Atrocities, 197,218(n4), 219(nl5)
Ali, Hatam, 123 condemnation of, xiii, xiv
testimony of, 120-121 corroborating, xv, 248(n45)
Allied Translator and Interpreter potential for, 165,215
Section (AΉS) Enemy preventing, 5
Publication no. 381, on cholera race/ethnicity and, xiv
attack, 144 Auschwitz, brothel at, 101
Allied Translator and Interpreter Auschwitz self, 162-164
Section, Southwest Pacific Area Australian Army/military forces
(AΉS-SPA), 143 Australian Military Nursing Service,
report by, 140-141,153,160 87
Alltagsgeschichte, analysis of, 6 First Independent Company, 167
Ambon POW camp, 11 1st, 2nd, and 3rd New Guinean
Andō Norisaka, Akikaze massacre and, Infantry Battalions,
180 cannibalization of, 125
Andō Rikichi, 98 2/4th Casualty Clearing Section, 82
254 Index

2/10th Australian General Hospital, Beppu, Sergeant, 63

82 Bernard, Henri, concurring opinion of,
2/13th Australian General Hospital, 217(n4)
82 B Force (Australian POWs)
8th Division, 82 mobilization of, 13,15
Australian Broadcasting Corporation at Sandakan, 15-16,24
(ABC), program by, 12,220(n4) Biological warfare, 159,238(nl)
Australian National Archives, developments in, xiv, 135-145,
cannibalism and, 115 238(n2), 241(n63)
Australian soldiers, 168 responsibility for, 160
cannibalization of, 115-116,119,124, Black, Dr., shooting of, 82
126,128,236(nl5) Black Christmas, 83
medical experiments on, 157-160 Blarney, Thomas
rape by, 104 on cannibalism, 130-131
Australian War Crimes Act, on Japanese, 132
responsibility under, 179-182 Bonney, E.G., on cannibalism, 130
Australian War Crimes Section, 155, Borneo
156,184,224(n82) invasion of, 13,167
A kikaze massacre and, 171,173-175, map of, 14
179,180,181 Botterill, Keith
cannibalism and, 115,120,124,125, escape of, 61
126-128 punishment of, 36
Kowa Maru and, 183 Sandakan march and, 1 2,40,50,52,
massacres and, 154-155,193 4 9 ,6 1 ,220(n4)
medical experiments and, 9,158, Bowden, Tim, interviews by, 220(n4)
160 Braithwaite, Dick, 6 2 ,220(n4)
Sandakan march and, 32,67,68 Brandeis, William, capture of, 32
Tunnel Hill massacre and, 156,157 Brennan, B.J., on Mukden experiments,
Australian War Memorial, cannibalism 159
and, 115 British Bacteriological Warfare
Intelligence Committee, 140
Baba Masarō, 68,69,70 on biological warfare, 141-143
Bacteriological warfare, 9,140 British Commonwealth occupation
documents relating to, 141-143 forces (BCOF), rape by, 104
Banaka Island Brothels, 93,101,103,104,105
detention camp on, 89 military, 92,99,106
map of, 85 private, 98
massacre at, 81-84,86-88,108 See also Comfort women
Bataan death march, 15 Brussels Declaration, 72
BCOF. See British Commonwealth Brutality, 74,76
occupation forces psychology of, 8 ,9 -1 0 ,7 7
Beatings, 2 7 ,3 5 ,3 7 ,3 9 ,5 5 ,6 1 Biülwinkel, Vivian, on Banaka
character-building through, 40 massacre, 8 1,8 4 ,8 6 ,8 7
Benson, William C., testimony of, 116, Burakumin ("untouchables"), 203,
117 212
Bentatsu, 202-203 emperor system and, 247(nl7)
Index 255

Burma-Thailand railway, 6,40,120, Cho, Seki Ju, cannibalism and, 123

148,224(n82) Cholera strategy, 144
construction of, 11-12 Chong, Key Rey, 133
POWs at, 3 ,2 2 ,218(n10) Civilians. See Noncombatants
Bushidō , xv, 7 7 ,247(n27) Class A war crimes, 1,202
corruption of, 206-211 cannibalism and, 111, 112,130,
reconstitution of, 198 131
dealing with, xiii, 2
Campbell, G.N., 19 Class B war crimes, xiv, 17,34,71, 111,
Campbell, Owen, 62 131
testimony of, 5 7 ,220(n4) cannibalism and, 132
Camp Detrick, biological weapons dealing with, 2 ,6
research at, 238(n2) nonconventional, 1
Camp issue, establishment of, 12-13, Class C war crimes, xiv, 1 ,1 7 ,3 4 ,7 1 ,
15,18 111, 131
Cannibalism, 9 ,1 3 3 ,223(n65), cannibalism and, 132
235-236(n9) dealing with, 2 ,6
convictions for, 132 Clifton, Allan, on rape, 104
endo-/exo-, 126 Cold war
evidence of, 112,114-115 medical experiments during,
group, 126,128 164
murder and, 120,128-129,132 war crimes and, xiv
reaction to, 129-131 Collins, Dick, cannibalism and,
reports of, 130-131,132 125-126,128
responsibility for, 129-131 Comfort houses, establishment of,
starvation and, 126-129,133 89-90,92-100
systematic, 121,126,127,128 Comfort women, 3,7 1,79,10 4,106 ,
victims of, 112,114,115-120,124 234(n80)
as war crime, 111-112 compensation for, 99,212
widespread, 129,130,132,133,134 exploitation of, 3,99
Cannibalism in China (Chong), 133 Japanese prostitutes and, 97
Carr, Matt, escape of, 19 non-Japanese, 96-97,105
Carson, A.B., testimony of, 117-118 nurses as, 90-92
Centre for Research and racism and, 96
Documentation on Japan's War recruiting, 90 ,94 ,9 5 -9 6 ,9 7 ,9 8
Responsibility, 96 responsibility for, 98-99
Changi camp, POW labor at, 13,15 venereal disease for, 232(n45)
Chemical weapons, 239(nll) See also Brothels; Prostitution
developing, 139,241(n63) Condoms, 96,100
China Incident, 9,73 Confessions, extracting, 26-28
atrocities of, 197 Contract law, 21
POW policy and, 198 Court-martials, 134
Chinese POWs, 229(n84) illegal, 223(n64)
experimenting on, 138,139,159 types of, 30-34
treatment of, 7 2 ,7 3 -7 4 ,245-246(n1) Crimes against humanity, xiii, 1
Chinese women, rape of, 8 0 ,94r-95,100 Crimes against peace, xiii, 1
256 Index

Crucifixion, described, 63-67 Enigma o f Japanese Power, The (Von

Cruelty, psychology of, 74-78 Wolferen), 4
Culture, manipulation of, xv Epidemic Prevention and Water
Purification Department
Davey, Doug, on forced prostitution, (Kwantung Army), 136
94 diet experiment and, 150
Daws, Gavan, 4 distribution of, 146-147 (map)
Dehumanization, 76-77,165 Epidemic Prevention Department
Desertions, 33,38 (Kwantung Army), 136
Dickson, E., testimony of, 117 Epidemic Prevention Laboratory, 136,
Diet experiments, 150-151,158 144
Discipline, maintaining, 34,35-36 Escapes, 18-23,55
Diseases, 48,52,62 punishment for, 20-21
dealing with, 130 Espinoza, Felix, Jr., testimony of, 127
death from, 2 3,4 3,53,75 ,1 58 Ethics, 202
suffering from, 23 medical, 160-165
tropical, 23,35,49 ,6 0,130 ,1 53,15 8 war crimes/ideology and, 212
See also Venereal disease Euthanasia, 160,161
Doctors Evatt, H.V., 111
ethics of, 160-165 Everyday life, wartime life and,
POW camp, 42-43 214-215
Doubling, 160-165
Dower, John, 5 ,7 4 ,249(n46) "Family-state" concept, 9
on dehumanization, 76 Fascism, 205-206
Drummond, Matron, 84 Fealty, concept of, 201
Durham, Alfred, military nurses and, February 26 Incident, 205
83 Feinberg, David, report by, 125,
Duty, concept of, 201 127-128
Field Service Code, 22,39
E Force (POWs), 2 3,24,2 5,3 5 POWs and, 208
escapes and, 221(n26) suicide and, 206
Emperor Fighting spirit, emphasis on, 209,210
divinity of, 212 Fires on the Plane (Ōoka), 112
ethics through, 202 Formosan guards, 15,57,59
loyalty to, 163,164,195,198,206, blame for, 71
209,210-211 cannibalization of, 122-123
spirit of, 195,246(n9) mistreatment by, 34-43,61
value system of, 204 Sandakan march and, 5 4,55,56 ,6 0
veneration for, 248(n36) sentences for, 67
Emperor ideology, xv, 201-206,210, Frostbite, experiments with, 138,
211 238-239(nl0)
burakumin and, 247(nl7) Fukuda Nobuo, crucifixion by, 63,65
comfort women and, 79 Fukushima, Sandakan march and, 56
fascism and, 205-206 Funayama, Chief Petty Officer, 171
totalitarianism and, 204-205 Funk, Alex, 25-26,29
Empire Star (transport), 83 Fushida, Dr.
Endō Hiraki, 51,226(n18) diet experiments and, 150
Index 257

malaria research and, 154 Hattori Takushirō, biological warfare

Tunnel Hill bombing and, 155 and, 139
Hayao Takeo, on rape, 100
Geishas, 104,105 Heika Tokugyō (The Moral Virtue of the
Geneva Convention, 16-17,39,73 Soldier) (Nishi), 206
chemical/bacteriological weapons Hickman, Captain, 127
and, 136 Higashikuni Naruhiko, 104
contravention of, 17-18,20,21-22 Higuchi Keishichirõ
court-martial and, 33 comfort women and, 98
Japanese military law and, 22 on non-Japanese guards, 38
massacres and, 87,179,193 Hinata (guard), 63
medical experiments and, 158 Hinchcliffe (sapper), punishment of, 36
nonescape contract and, 20 Hinomaru Club, comfort women at, 92
POWs and, 2 ,1 7 -1 8 ,3 7 ,7 0 Hirano Einosuke, 145,160
German POWs diet experiments and, 150
legacy of, 73 malaria experiment and, 151-154
treatment of, 75 Hirano Yukihiko, Sandakan march
Gotanda, Corporal, Sandakan march and, 49
and, 49 Hiratsuka, Lieutenant Commander,
Griffin, J., 116 Kavieng massacre and, 186,
Guards, 37-38,15 191
duties of, 39-40 Hirohito, Emperor
massacre plans for, 71-72 descisionmaking role of, 249(n47)
See also Formosan guards; Japanese responsibility of, 214,233(n52)
guards; Korean guards Hirøta (guard), crucifixion by, 63,65
Guest workers, 212 History, manipulation of, xv
Gumpō kaigi, 30-31 Holocaust, 163,214
Gunjin Chokuron, loyalty and, 206 Holquin, Jose, testimony of, 149,150,
Gunjin Kunkai (Admonition for 151-152
Soldiers), 209 Hon Jun-Muk, on prison guard
Gunriłsu kaigi system/puipose of, massacre, 71
29-34 Horiguchi Yoshio, Kavieng massacre
Guo Hengnan, arrest of, 28 and, 190,191,192,193
Gyokusai ("glorious self-annihilation")/ Horiuchi, Lieutenant, 142
9 ,248(n38) Hosaka Katsumi, testimony of,
concept of, 195,196,198 156-157
international law and, 193-196 Hoshijima Susumu, 2 6 ,4 3 ,226(n25)
complaints to, 17
Haga, B.J., 27 death sentence for, 67,70
Haga incident, 27,28 escapees and, 21
Hague Convention, 16,72,73 guards and, 39-40
Kavieng massacre and, 193-194 medical supplies and, 42
POWs and, 2,18 nonescape contract and, 19-20,22
Hakkō ichiu, 203 punishment and, 36,37
Hanazono Ichirō, court-martial system rations and, 42
and, 222(n56) responsibility of, 22-23
Hanazuki (destroyer), 171 Sandakan march and, 46,52,53
258 Index

Human rights, 194,196,248(n44) Ishida Takeshi

concept of, 197-201,212-213 on emperor ideology, 248(n44)
"family-state" concept and, 205
Ichikawa, 57 Ishii Shirö, 105,137
Ichinose Sōichi, Kavieng massacre and, biological warfare and, 141,144
188,189,191 Epidemic Prevention Laboratory
Ichinose Harukichi, Akikaze massacre and, 136
and, 173-174 frostbite and, 138
Ichioku sōzange, doctrine of, 202 Unit 731 and, 159
Ideology, ethics/war crimes and, 212 Ishii Unit, 136
Iemura Battalion, Sandakan march Itō Noe, 205
and, 69 Iwahashi Manabu, 53,70
Ienaga Saburō, Pal opinion and, Iwanami Hiroshi, 241(n63)
217(n4) Iwashita, Lieutenant, Sandakan march
lino Shigeru, 4 8 ,225(n4) and, 59-60
Ika Toshiya, biological warfare and, Izeki Tsuneo, interrogations and,
239(nl2) 222(n50)
Imamura Hitoshi, Tunnel Hill
bombing and, 155 Japan as Number One (Vogel), 4
Imoto Kumao, biological warfare and, Japanese Army/military forces
239(nl2) Field Epidemic Prevention and
Imperial Code of Military Conduct, 22, Water Purification Department,
206,207 144
Imperial Headquarters, cannibalism Japanese Navy, 246(nl4)
and, 133-134 comfort women and, 98
Imperial Proclamation of War, 72, draft for, 210
73-74 international law and, 194
"Imperial Rescript on Education," 202 Westernization of, 203
Indian National Army, war crimes Ko Force, 143
against, 181-182 Naval Special Police Force,
Infringement of the Laws of War and arrests/torture by, 27
Ethics by the Japanese Medical O Battalion, Banaka massacre and,
Corps (ATIS-SPA), 160 88
Inoue Yoshiłűro, 238(nl) Okumura Battalion, Sandakan
Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, march and, 69
Opposition, and Racism in Okuyama Battalion, Sandakan
Everyday Life (Peukert), 215 march and, 54
Insubordination, punishment for, Sasaki Section (Ko Force), 143
35-36 Tiantan Central Epidemic
International Code on Human Prevention Institute, 143
Experiments, 164 Unit 731,241(nn61,63)
International law, 197 biological warfare and, 135-139,
gyokusai and, 193-196 141
teaching, 194-196 doubling by, 162,164
International Military Tribunal for the experiments by, 158-159,238(nl),
Far East. See Tokyo War Crimes 238-239(nl0)
Tribunal medical schools and, 145
Index 259

psychological problems and, Akikaze massacre and, 174

161-162,164 medical experiments by, 148
2nd Special Naval Base Force, 174 Tunnel Hill massacre and, 156
Akikaze massacre and, 173 83rd Naval Garrison Unit, 168
4th Fleet, medical experiments and, command structure of, 169 (chart)
145 Kavieng massacre and, 186,188,
6th Field Kempeitai, POWs and, 145 191,192,193
8th Army, 145,155 Kowa Maru and, 183,184
malaria research and, 154 89th Naval Garrison Unit, 168
Tunnel Hill massacre and, 156 751st Air Force Unit, 183
8th Fleet, 175 Japanese guards, 15
Akikaze massacre and, 173,174, escapees and, 21
179,180 ill-treatment by, 202-203
medical experiments and, 145, Japanese soldiers
148,149 cannibalization of, 115
8th Fleet Naval Hospital, Tunnel ill-treatment of, 75
Hill massacre and, 157 Japs' free girlfriends, as victims, 92
10th Army, rape/massacre by, 80 Jaranilla, Delfin, concurring opinion of,
14th Garrison Force, 170 217(n4)
14th Naval Base Force, 168,186 Javanese women, forced prostitution
Kavieng massacre and, 187,191, for, 94
193 Jinhua pathogen attack, casualties
Kowa Maru and, 183,184 from, 138
15th Division, comfort women for, Jitsukawa Kinjirō
96 Kavieng massacre and, 190,192
16th Division testimony of, 184-185
cannibalism by, 236(n9)
rape/massacre by, 80 Kaiłen, 198
20th Division, cannibalism by, 130 Kai Yajirō, Akikaze massacre and,
24th Field Epidemic Prevention and 174-175,179
Water Purification Department Kamikaze, 198
medical experiments by, 145 Kami Shigetoku, Akikaze massacre and,
Tunnel Hill massacre and, 157 179,180
25th Army, in Thailand, 81 Kanahara Setsuzō, biological warfare
26th Division, cannibalism by, and, 239(nl2)
236(n9) Kanazawa camp, Russian officers at,
37th Army (Borneo Defense Force) 72
defense reorganization by, 45 Kanbe Ryōhei, Kavieng massacre and,
Sandakan march and, 53,59,68, 189
69 Kạneko Fumiko, 205
41st Division, cannibalism by, 130 Kanshi-hei (guard), rank of, 39
51st Division Kant, Immanuel, individual rights
cannibalism by, 130 and, 213
tropical disease for, 153 Kantō earthquake, 205
67th Communications Hospital, Karayuki-san (women travelers), 11
malaria research and, 154 Katayama, Corporal, Sandakan march
81st Naval Garrison Unit and, 55
260 Index

Katō Rimpei, Tunnel Hill bombing Kowa M aru (transport), 171

and, 155 course of, 172 (map)
Katsura Taro, 210 sinking of, 182,183,184,192
Kavieng Kubo Saichirō, Tunnel Hill massacre
bombing of, 184,185-186 and, 156,157
Japanese invasion of, 167-168, Kuching POW camp, 13,16,29
170-171 doctors at, 42-43
POWs at, 168,170 mistreatment at, 34
Kavieng massacre, 194 rations at, 42
discovering, 182-193 Kulang, 45-46
responsibility for, 193 Kuroda Shigeru, 69,70
Kawara Naoichi, comfort women and, Kwantung (Kantō) Army, 135,136
98 Kyōiku Chokugo, 202
Kempeitai, 22 Kyoto University, biological warfare
cannibalism and, 119 and, 137
comfort women and, 96,97,98
court-martial and, 31 Labor issue, establishment of, 12-13,
escapees and, 19 15,18
executions by, 33 Labuan War Crimes Tribunal, 66
massacre by, 150,155,156 Lamb, Clinne C., testimony of, 117
medical experiments by, 148,149 Land Defense Party, 184,188,189,190,
medical training and, 241 (n64) 193
POW treatment and, 42 Lanigan, Gunners Mate, 151,152
Sandakan incident and, 23-29 League of Nations, Japan and, 203
torture by, 2 6 -2 7 ,2 8 ,2 9 ,222(n47) Leyte Island, cannibalism on,
Unit 731 and, 162 235-236(n9)
Khmer Rouge soldiers, cannibalism of, Liberal Democratic Party/apology
133 issue and, 8
Kikuchi Satoru Liberties, concept of, 201
massacre by, 150 Lifton, Robert Jay
Tunnel Hill bombing and, 155 on dehumanization, 77
Kingsley, Private, Banaka massacre on doubling, 162-164
and, 86 Lo, Jackie, 25
Kiyama Tatsuo, suicide of, 156, Locke, John, individual rights and, 213
157 Lohar, Rabi, 122
Klestadt, Albert, 244(n41), 245(n75) Loyalty, no-surrender policy and, 209
Akikaze maosacre and, 180,181 Lushun, massacre at, 229(n84)
Kavieng massacre and, 185,192
Kowa Maru and, 183-184 MacArthur, Douglas, 105,159
Koh, Dominic, 25 MacBain, Douglas, Sandakan march
Kokai M aru (transport), 182,183 and, 70
Kókutai, spirit of, 195 Mackay, Iver, on Rape of Nanjing, 80
Komachien (brothel), 105 McCallum, James, on rape, 80
Korean guards, 15,71 McKenzie, Donald, capture of, 32
ill-treatment by, 38-39,40 McMurria, James
Koshi Sadao, Unit 731 and, 161-162 malaria experiment and, 151,152
Kota Bharu, at Singapore, 81 testimony of, 149
Index 261

Maeda Minoru, A kikaze massacre and, "family-state" concept during, 9

180 military leadership of, 209,210
Maeda Toshitame, Hoshijima and, 23 POW policy during, 197
Maginal, Dick, intelligence gathering Mengele, Josef, 242(n70)
by, 24 Auschwitz self of, 162-164
Malaria, 36 ,4 8 ,5 0 ,5 2 ,7 5 Mikalson, Roy G., testimony of,
immunization experiment, 151-154 118-119
prevention of, 144 Mikawa Gunichi, A kikaze massacre
Malaria Immunization and Treatment and, 179,180,181
Research Squad, 154 Military law, 31,34
Malnutrition, 36-37,41,60,150 Geneva Convention and, 22
deaths from, 43,75,158 Military leaders, manipulation by, 214
long-term, 151 Military units. See Australian
Maltby, Commander, surrender by, 83 Army/military forces; Japanese
Manaíd Takanobu, 225(n4) Army/military forces; U.S.
POW deaths and, 43 Army/military forces
Sandakan march and, 69,70 Miller, Lieutenant, 127
Manchurian incident, 135,205 Minamatans, compensation for, 212
Mansfield, A.J., cannibalism and, 112 Minear, Richard, Pal opinion and,
Maruta, 163 217(n4)
deaths of, 162 Ming, Joe, 25,29
experimenting on, 138,139 Ministry for the Army (Japan)
Maruyama Masao POW policy and, 71
on emperor ideology, 248(n44) special court-martial and, 31
Manchurian incident and, 205 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan),
victimhood and, 214 comfort women and, 99
Mason, Lieutenant, malaria Ministry of Home Affairs (Japan),
experiment and, 151,152 prostitutes and, 97
Massacres, 154-160 Misaki Yōichi, biological warfare plans
responsibility for, 67-68 and, 144-145
Matsuda Saiji, massacre by, 150 Miyamoto Haruo, Kavieng massacre
Matthews, Lionel, 26,27,28 and, 189-190
execution of, 29 Mochizuki Shichitarõ
intelligence gathering by, 24 international law and, 194
Meager, Gordon F., testimony of, Kavieng massacre and, 188-189,190,
118-119 191
Medical ethics, 160-165 sentence for, 193
Medical experiments, xiv, 9,145, Molotov, Foreign Minister, note by, 101
148-150 M ontevideo M aru (transport), 145
Medical supplies, 42,48 Morality, 1,201-206
shortage of, 43,75 authoritarian basis of, 202-203
Meiji constitution, 201 rape and, 107
abolition of, 212 Mori Kyōji, 244(nn48,54)
rights in, 199-200 international law and, 194
Meiji period, 246(nn5,7,9) Kavieng massacre and, 186-189,192,
China and, 246(nl) 193,195
bushidō and, 206 sentence for, 193
262 Index

Moritake, Lieutenant Nogi Harumichi

atrocities by, 6 3,64 ,6 5,67 prostitution and, 95
Sandakan march and, 59,60 on rape, 114
Mori Torao, A kikaze massacre and, 180 testimony of, 127
Moxham, Dick, 61 Noncombatants, 86-87
testimony of, 50 cannibalization of, 115,124-126
Mukden experiments, 159 massacre of, 8,9,171,173-175,179,
Murakami Seisaku, torture by, 26-27 194
Muraoka (platoon leader), Kavieng rape of, 95
massacre and, 189,190,191,192 Nonescape contracts, 18-23
Murayama Tomiichi, apology from, 8 No-prisoners rule, 134
Murozumi Hisao, 59 Nuremburg race laws, 101
atrocities by, 66,67 Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal, xiii,
interrogation of, 75 101,164
« Sandakan march and, 60 Nurses
sentence for, 67 "Japs' free girlfriends" and, 92
Murphy, John massacre of, 8,81-84,86-88,108
on diet experiment, 150,151 prostitution threat and, 90
malaria experiment and, 154 rape of, 83,108-109
testimony of, 152-153
Mutilation, 112,134 Oda Makoto, absolute peace and, 7,8,
My Lai massacre, 106 219(nl9)
Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff,
Nagai, Captain, Sandakan march and, Unit 731 and, 135
46 Office of the Judge Advocate General,
Nagaoka Takasumi, comfort women Unit 731 and, 135
and, 98 Officers' Club, comfort women at, 92
Nagaura (transport), sinking of, 183 Ogawa Shōji, on cannibalism, 112,114,
Naitö Ryōichi, Unit 731 and, 159 114,126
Nakamura (Formosan guard), 40,61 Oil Corps, 13
Nakamura Akira, apology issue and, Okabe Naozaburō, 232(n41)
218-219(nl5) Okada, Sergeant, 62
Nakamura Toshihisa, comfort women Okamura Teiji
and, 98 brothel by, 94,99
Nanjing. See Rape of Nanjing rape and, 100
N aruło Maru (freighter), 145 Okinawans
Nason, Joseph G., 240(n34) deaths of, 211
National Eugenic Law (1940), 97 discrimination against, 212
Nationalism, 195,208 Ōnishi Shinzō, Akikaze massacre and,
New Guinea, map of, 113 179,180,181
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Ōoka Shōhei, 112,235(n4)
Corporation) TV, opinion Oral histories, obtaining, 213-214
survey by, 219-220(n20) Ōse Toshio
Nishi Amane, bushidō and, 206,207 Kokai M aru and, 183
Nishikawa Masao testimony of, 182
crucifixion by, 64 Ōshiro Masayasu, 234(n80)
malaria test and, 153,154 Ōsugi Sakae, 205
Index 263

Ōta, Rear-Admiral, 168 punishing, 20-21,35-36,203

Kavieng massacre and, 187 shooting, 4 9 ,5 0 -5 1 ,5 2 ,5 5 ,5 6 ,5 7 ,5 8 ,
Ötsuka Fumiro, biological warfare 59-67,87
and, 239(nl2) See also Asian POWs; Chinese
Ōtsu Yoshio, 183 POWs; German POWs
testimony of, 182 Prisoners o f the Japanese (Daws), 4
Ōyama Iwao, 210,229(n84) Prostitution, 103,104
forced, 8,9 2,93-94,9 5,1 05,10 8
Pak Yeol, 205 Japanese, 97,105
Pal, Radhabinod, concurring opinion military, 3,99
of, 217(n4) nurses and, 90-92
Palmer, Airman, malaria test and, threat of, 88-92
152-153,154 See also Comfort women
Pannaotie, Jack, medical experiments Psychological distance, creating, 163
and, 158 Punishment, 35-36,37,42
Patriarchy, rape and, 105-109 corporal, 206
Patterson, George, military brothels Punishment cage, 35-37,42
and, 103
Peaty, Robert, 158 RAA. See Recreation and Amusement
Percival, A.E., surrender by, 82 Association
Perpetrators Rabaul, medical experiments at, 145,
interviewing, 213-214 148-150
psychological state of, 203 Racism, xv, 9-10,211,213
victims and, 8,134 comfort women and, 96
Peters, Corporal, beating of, 39 Radiation experiments, 164
Peukert, Detlev, 214-215 Radjik beach, massacre at, 84,86~θ8
Piccone, Captain, beating of, 37 Ranau POW camp, 61-62
Plutonium experiments, 164 Rape, 8,82-83,94-95,102,114,
Poisons, experiments with, 154-160 234(n80), 23Φ-235(n97)
Pontíanak incident, 28 gang, 106-107,108
POW Information Bureau, 71 mass, 103-104,105,106,108
POWs, 22,145,168,170 patriarchy and, 105-109
crimes against, 71,75 preventing, 99,100
death rate for, 2 -3 ,3 (table), 41,43, victims of, 92,99
4 8 ,4 9 ,5 2 ,5 3 ,7 0 -7 1 ,218(n7) war and, 100-101,105-109
ill-treatment of, xiii, 2 ,3 ,4 ,9 ,1 7 , War Crimes Tribunal and, 79-81
34-43,71-73,75-76,78,197,204, See also Sexual harassment
207,208 Rape of Manila, xiii
illness of, 54,55 Rape of Nanjing, xiii, 6,80,204,208,
international law and, 197 219(nnl5,17),248(n45)
Japanese policy on, 9,70-71,197,211 Rationalization, psychological, 195
labor by, 13,15,16-17,18 Rations, 16,42
massacre of, 6 2-6 3,67-68,75,76,78, problems with, 4 1 ,4 3,49,75
154-160 Recreation and Amusement
medical experiments on, 152, Association (RAA), 104,105
241(n63) Red Army, rape by, 101,102
mobilization of, 218(nl0) Red Cross, 42,87,161
264 Index

Regulation Respecting the Laws and Sandakan POW camp, 11-43

Customs of War on Land, POW crisis at, 19-20
policy and, 72 escape from, 1 8-23,221(n26)
Reither, death of, 62 guards at, 37-38
Remargen POW camp, 75 Kempeitai and, 23-29
Responsibility, 5 ,6 ,7 ,7 0 massacre at, 8
abrogation of, 201-202 rations at, 16
bearing, 214-215,249(n46) survivors of, 12
recognition of, xiv, 8 Sandakan-to-Ranau route, map of, 47
Ri, Shin Te, cannibalism and, 123 Sanders, Murray, Unit 731 and, 159
Richards, Corporal, radio receiver and, Satō, Private, Sandakan march and, 51
24 Science Council of Japan, 239(nl0)
Rights, concept of, 201 Scribner, J.H., 19
Rights and Duties of Subjects (1899 Sea Defense Party, 189
constitution), 200 Seiun-sō, comfort women at, 92
R Invasion Operation, 167 Seiden, Mark, 5
Roling, B.V.A., concurring opinion of, Self-abnegation, self-regard and, 204
217(n4) Self-annihilation, 195,211
Rudwick, Alfred, capture of, 32 Self-discipline, 206,207
Ruff-OΉeame, Jeanne, prostitution Self-sustainment, policy of, 130,151
for, 93-94 Semarang Club, comfort women at, 92
RuseU, Richard Charles, testimony of, Semarang detention camp, military
235(n9) brothel at, 92,93-94
Russo-Japanese War, 74 Senjinkun, suicide and, 206
international law and, 194 Seppuku (ritual suicide), 206-207
POW policy during, 72-73,211 Sewell, Sergeant, 116
Ryan, Cornelius, 101 Sexual harassment, 99,109,213,
234-235(n9 7)
Sabe Tsurukichi, Akikaze massacre and, See also Rape
173,174-175,179,181 Shimada Shigetarō, comfort women
Sadashi Yamada, 222(n47) and, 98
Saitō Masazumi, testimony of, 22 Shimomura Sadashi, 71
Sakae Menda, imprisonment of, Shinto philosophy, political
248(n42) ideas/attitudes of, 204
Samurai, bushidō and, 209,210 Short, Nelson, 6 1 ,220(n4)
Sanada Jōichirõ, biological warfare Shu, Kon Tsu, cannibalism and,
and, 239(nl2) 122-123
Sanagi Tsuyoshi, 171 Singapore, fall of, 81-82,167
Kavieng massacre and, 192 Sino-Japanese War, 74
Sandakan airfield international law and, 194
bombing of, 45 POW policy during, 72
construction of, 1 6,17-18,23,34,41, Smith, Henry C , testimony of, 116
4 2 ,220(n6) Son, Kei Zun, cannibalism and, 122
Sandakan-Api road, construction of, 45 Soviet Union, war crimes tribunals in,
Sandakan death march, 43,46,52-59 217(n3), 241(n61)
Sandakan Hachiban Shōkan (Sandakan Special Committee on the Antarctic
Brothel Number Eight) Expedition, 238-239(nl0)
(Yamazaki), 11 Special Project Division, 238(n2)
Index 265

Stanley College, rape at, 82-83 K o ĩvū Maru and, 171

Starvation, 89,90 sentence for, 193
cannibalism and, 126-129,133 testimony of, 168,170,184
deaths from, 23,53 Tamura Yoshio, biological weapons
group psychosis and, 126-129 and, 137
threat of, 91 Tanaka Ryūkichi, comfort women and,
Stiepewich, William, 42,62 98
Sandakan march and, 12,55,61 Taylor, J.P., 25,26,42
Stragglers imprisonment of, 29
beating, 55 smuggling by, 24
shooting, 50-51,52,58 Terada Takeo, A kikaze massacre and,
Sugamo prison, 88 175,181
Suga Tatsuji, 16,17 Three Guineas (Woolf), 109
rations and, 42 Tōgō Shigenori, comfort women and,
responsibility of, 68 98
suicide of, 67 Tōgō Unit, 136
trials and, 29 Tōjō Hideki, 18,233(n51)
Suicide, 9 ,248(n38) comfort women and, 98
ritual, 206-207,208 death sentence for, 2
types of, 160,198 emperor and, 202
Sumiyoshi Maru (transport), 182 Field Service Code and, 208
Suzuki, Lieutenant, 61 Tokkō-ka (Special Service), 26
Sandakan march and, 54,55 Tokusełsu gum pō kaigi (special court-
Suzuki Nao-omi, 230(n93) martial), 30
Suzuki Shōzō Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal
Kavieng massacre and, 189,190,191, (International Military Tribunal
192,193 for the Far East), 2 ,9 ,2 2 ,1 5 8
sentence for, 193 cannibalism and, 111-112,131-134
judges of, 217-218(n4)
Taishō period Kavieng massacre and, 185,190,192,
antiemperor ideologies of, 205 193
"family-state" concept during, 9 problems with, 134
POW policy during, 197 rape and, 79-81,109
Takada (platoon leader), Kavieng Rape of Nanjing and, 8 0 ,219(nl7)
massacre and, 189,190,191, Sandakan march and, 49,56,5 8,6 0,
192 63,70
Takakuwa Takuo, 6 1,62,68 ,7 4 Unit 731 investigation by, 159
death sentence for, 67,70 Toniuea, testimony of, 156
Sandakan march and, 53-60,69 Torokina battle, 186
Takatō Jūtarō, Kavieng massacre and, Torture, 4,2 6 -2 7 ,2 8 ,2 9 , 111, 222(n47)
185,189 Toyoda Kōkichi, generosity of, 40
Takayama Hikoichi, 68,70 Toyohara, Lieutenant, Sandakan
POWs and, 58-59 march and, 49
Tamura Ryūkichi, 244(n54), 245(nn75, Trackson, Herb, escape by, 19
81) Tsuji, Staff Sergeant, 62
Germans and, 173 Sandakan march and, 54,55-56
Kavieng massacre and, 185,186-188, Tsuneishi Keiichi, on biological
191-195 warfare, 238(nl)
266 Index

Tsutsui Yōichi, 32 examining, 3 ,4 -6 ,2 1 2 ,248(n45)

Tunnel Hill POW camp ideology/ethics and, 212
location of, 148 (map) intermediate, 111
massacre at, 155-156 preventing, 5
psychology of, 214
Ubi M aru (transport), 220(nl0) reconstructing, xv, 213,248(n45)
B Force aboard, 15 social context of, 214
Ueda Yatarõ, testimony of, 162 See also , Class A war crimes; Class B
U.S. Army/military forces war crimes; Class C war crimes
G -2 (Intelligence), Unit 731 and, 135 War crimes tribunals, 1,9
U.S. Army Air Force, Sandakan War criminals, 12
attack by, 41-42 releasing, 217(n3)
31st U.S. Occupation Forces War leaders, responsibility of, 214
Hospital, Kavieng massacre Wartime life, everyday life and,
and, 185 214-215
U.S. National Archives, cannibalism Watanabe Genzō, 61,62
and, 115 death sentence for, 67
U.S. soldiers, rape by, 103,104 Sandakan march and, 54,55-56
U.S. War Crimes Section, Unit 731 Watanabe Haruo, 32
investigation and, 159 Watanabe Yoshio, Sandakan march
Utsumi Aiko, 38 and, 52
Webb, William F., I l l , 217(n4)
Van Nooten, John, on medical cannibalism and, 112,130,131-134
experiments, 157-158 Wells, Rod, 26
Venereal disease, 9 6 ,1 0 5 ,232(nn43, intelligence gathering by, 24-25
. 45). See also Diseases Sandakan incident and, 32
Vergangenheitsbewältigung , 1 sentence for, 29
Victims, xv, 7-θ Weynton, Lieutenant, radio receiver
perpetrators and, 8,134 and, 24
women as, 79-80,92 Wildemar, P.W., cannibalism and, 119
Violence, 10 Williams, H.S., investigation by,
male propensity for, 77-78 119-120
Vivisection, 160,165 Williamson, George, medical
Vogel, Ezra, 4 experiments and, 158
Von Wolferen, Karel, 4 Wilson, J., 167,168
Vyner Brooke (transport), sinking of, Wo, Hugo, II, testimony of, 116
83-84,88,89 Wong Hiong, on crucifixion, 63,65,
66
Wakabayashi Zenichi, Tunnel Hill Woolf, Virginia
bombing and, 155 on male violence, 77
Wakamatsu Unit, 136 on war as male activity, 109
Walsh, A.W., nonescape contract and, Workman, J., nonescape contract and,
19-20 20
War crimes, xiv, 10 World peace, Japanese notion of, 203
categories of, 1-2
condemnation of, xiii Yamada Masaharu, 220(n6), 228(n73)
everyday life and, 215 on Hoshijima, 226(n25)
Index 267

Sandakan march and, 69 Yamawaki Masataka, 23,32,33

Ubi M aru and, 220(nl0) POW deaths and, 43
Yamagata Aritomo, 7 3 ,229(n84) Sandakan march and, 69,70
blind obedience and, 209 Yamazaki Tomoko, 11
on no-surrender policy, 209 Yanagida Shōichi, 22
suicide and, 198 Yoshida Reiko, on rape, 102
Yamaguchi Toshiaki, on Unit 731, Yoshida Seiji, prostitution and, 95
161-162 Yoshimi Yoshiaki, biological warfare
Yamamoto Gonbei, 210 and, 239(nl2)
Yamamoto Isoroku, death of, 23 Yoshimura Hisao, 238-239(nl0)
Yamamoto Shōichi, 43,58,74 Yoshino Shözö, Kavieng massacre and,
death sentence for, 67,70 186,188,191-194
Sandakan march and, 4 6,48,49 ,5 0, Young, Mark, surrender by, 83
52,59,69 Yuasa Ken, on medical training,
Yamao Unoharu, Kavieng massacre 241(n64)
and, 185 Yuki Yuki te Shingun (Onward Holy
Yamashita Hirofumi, at Singapore, 81 Army) (film), 112,128