Questions about Japanese war crimes
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What were the Japanese war crimes committed during World War II?
Japanese war crimes during World War II included mass killings of civilians and prisoners of war, sexual slavery, torture, forced labor, and human experimentation. The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were responsible for atrocities across East Asia and the Pacific, including the Nanjing Massacre of 1937-38, in which the International Military Tribunal for the Far East found that as many as 260,000 people were killed, the Sook Ching massacre in Singapore, and the Manila massacre of February 1945, which killed 100,000 civilians.
What was Unit 731 and what experiments did it conduct?
Unit 731 was a covert Japanese biological warfare unit commanded by Shiro Ishii that conducted lethal experiments on prisoners of war and civilians in China. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, amputations, frostbite experiments, and testing of biological weapons. According to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the Imperial Japanese Army's germ warfare and human experiments killed approximately 580,000 people. Top officers of Unit 731 were never prosecuted; they received immunity in exchange for turning their research over to the Allies.
How many people were killed by Japanese war crimes?
Estimates vary widely among historians. R. J. Rummel, a political science professor at the University of Hawaii, estimated that between 1937 and 1945 the Japanese military murdered between nearly three million and over ten million people, most likely around six million. British historian Mark Felton argued the total reached thirty million, the majority of them civilians. The Tokyo Tribunal found that the death rate among Asian prisoners of war held by Japan was 27.1 percent.
Did Emperor Hirohito authorize Japanese war crimes?
Historians Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Seiya Matsuno found that Emperor Hirohito personally signed orders authorizing the use of chemical weapons in China, including authorizing toxic gas on 375 separate occasions during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938. A directive ratified by Hirohito on the 5th of August 1937 removed the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war. The Three Alls Policy (Sanko Sakusen), which directed forces to kill all, burn all, and loot all in China from 1942 to 1945, was also sanctioned by Hirohito.
What was the Nanjing Massacre and how many people died?
The Nanjing Massacre of 1937-38 was a mass killing carried out by the Japanese Army following its capture of the Chinese city of Nanjing. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found that as many as 260,000 civilians and prisoners of war were killed, though some estimates reach 350,000. The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders has the figure of 300,000 inscribed on its entrance. Japanese journalist Honda Katsuichi concluded in the early 1980s that the violence was part of a broader pattern of atrocities across the Lower Yangtze region.
How did Japan's Bushido code contribute to the treatment of prisoners of war?
The Bushido code was formally inculcated into Japanese soldiers as part of basic military training, teaching that death for the Emperor was the greatest honor and that surrender was cowardice. Soldiers who had surrendered were regarded as having forfeited all rights to dignity, regardless of how honorably they had fought. This belief was used to justify the execution and brutal treatment of prisoners. The Tokyo Tribunal found that the death rate among Asian POWs held by Japan was 27.1 percent, and only 56 Chinese prisoners of war were released after Japan's surrender.