Continued from previous post!
One Act of Compasion :
While the Japanse were destroying the US forces in the Philippines, a pilot dropped a message saying they intended to destroy the facility next to the base hospital and that we should we move the patients. We did. They did.
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Additional reading. The Knights of Bushido: the Shocking History of Japanese War Atrocities
by Lord Edward Fredrick Russell, Dutton, 1958. Companion volume to his The Scourge of The Swastika.
Some items from the book.
• Jan 1942. Dutch naval POWs taken to the spot where their ship had fired on a Japanese destroyer, decapitated and thrown into the sea.
• 16Feb42. British evacuees from Singapore on the island of Bauka surrendered to a Japanese detail. The 26 soldiers were executed, the 22 Army nurses were marched into the sea and machine gunned, the twelve stretcher cases were bayoneted. -- Story told by the surviving nurse, who, though shot, was washed ashore. (Vivian Bullwinkle)
• March 1942. Kota Radja, Indonesia. Dutch prisoners put on a barge, towed out to sea, shot and thrown overboard.
• 7 Oct 43. Wake Island. On the order of RAdm Sakibara, 96 prisoners were blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs and massacred.
• Oct 1944. New Guinea. A battalion commander confessed after the war, "I asked if I could get an American POW and kill him." Two were delivered, blindfolded, stabbed with a bayonet and decapitated with shovels.
• 12 Nov 44. New Britain. US fighter pilot made a forced landing. Beheaded, flesh cut form his body, cut into small pieces, fried and served to a large group of officers.
• 14 Dec 44. Palawan, Philippines. About 100 army and 50 marines had been warned if the US invades, they would be killed. When American planes attacked, Lt. Sato led 50 soldiers to pour buckets of gasoline on the entrances to shelters and ignite it. As the men came out they were bayoneted, shot or clubbed. -- Told by one of five survivors who escaped through a fence, shedding his burning clothes. Last Man Out.
• 12 Nov 45. Guam. The flesh of LTjg H___, aviator, was served to an infantry battalion. [The Japanese order for this communion-like sacrifice was captured.]
Russell concentrates on events sanctioned by higher authorities as documented by War Crimes Trial, whereas I have extracted events from readings. Although many leaders practised human treatment, the norm was total indifference, and bestial behaviour was a totally accepted.
Use of Allied prisoners of war for slave labour by Japanese companies is discussed in: "Unjust Enrichment" by Linda Goetz Holmes, 2001.
Her 1994 book, "4000 Bowls of Rice: A Prisoner of War Comes Home", is about Allied prisoners of the Japanese who built the Burma Railway.
"Last Man Out: Glenn McDole, USMC, Survivor of the Palawan Massacre in World War II" by Bob Wilbanks.


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But that is history They are not our enemies anymore.

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