Allied prisoners of war of Japan
Allied prisoners of war in Japanese hands during the Second World War died at nearly seven times the rate of those held by Germany. In 1943, Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru publicly declared that 'our Army maintains the position that Japanese prisoners of war do not exist.' A government that denied its own soldiers could surrender had little incentive to protect the enemy's. Over 35,500 Western Allied captives perished in Japanese custody before the war ended. The death rate for Australians reached 34.1 percent; for Americans, 32.9. On the Burma-Siam Railway alone, 16,000 men died out of 40,000 forced to build it. What ideology drove this, who bore responsibility, and how did the world reckon with the survivors' testimony?
Japan had ratified the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, acknowledging legal obligations toward prisoners of war. It signed the Geneva Convention but never ratified it. By the 1930s, rising nationalism had turned Japan sharply against Western norms. The Senjinkun military code, drafted in 1940 and put into effect the following year, explicitly forbade retreat or surrender. Under that code, soldiers who gave themselves up were seen as unworthy of any protection. General Tojo Hideki, Japan's war minister and prime minister, made this official in 1942. He declared that Japan would treat prisoners according to its own traditions and customs. The statement openly encouraged their use as forced laborers, which the Geneva Convention had prohibited.
The Japanese military was also shaped by the Second Sino-Japanese War, which had begun in 1937. The Nanjing Massacre had accustomed troops to extreme violence against captives. Beatings were standard discipline in the Imperial Army, and POW camp prisoners received the harshest treatment of all. A phenomenon called gekokujo allowed lower-ranking officers to overthrow or even assassinate their superiors. Commanders who tried to restrain violence risked mutiny or reassignment, and so abuses continued without effective check. Historians have pointed to the near-absence of court martial procedures as a root cause. After the war, many Japanese soldiers tried for crimes against prisoners claimed they had never even heard of the Geneva Convention.
The Arisan Maru was sunk by an American submarine, and Japanese vessels that arrived afterward rescued only their own seamen. Nearly 2,000 Allied prisoners aboard perished at sea. The hell ships, as POW transport vessels came to be known, claimed thousands of lives. Changi, in Singapore, housed thousands of Australian and other Allied soldiers. Work details from the camp spread across subcamps throughout the Burma theatre. Prisoners who tried to escape and were caught faced execution or torture at the hands of the Kempeitai, the Japanese military secret police. Unit 731 went further still, subjecting prisoners to experiments with biological and chemical weapons. Death marches claimed thousands of additional lives; the Sandakan Death Marches and the Bataan Death March became defining emblems of the catastrophe.
One estimate placed roughly 19,000 Allied fatalities across the Pacific theatre at the hands of their own side. Allied submarines and bombers struck ships and installations where prisoners were held as laborers near high-priority targets. Japanese forces stationed prisoners near such targets because they needed the labor. Proposals to relocate camps to safer areas were accepted only when the labor supply would not be interrupted. Historian Sarah Kovner has argued that much of the suffering arose from Japanese logistical failures and inadequate planning. The cause, she contended, was not a deliberate policy to destroy prisoners. She concluded that there was 'no overarching policy or plan to make POWs suffer, or starve them, or work them to death.' Most camps were run by individual officers with wide autonomy, and treatment varied from one to the next. It was only in August 1945, as Japan was preparing to surrender, that the government issued instructions for better POW treatment.
The Allies, by contrast, generally observed the Geneva Convention in their handling of Japanese prisoners. S. P. MacKenzie noted that food shortages and a certain amount of callousness among Allied troops nevertheless resulted in thousands of Japanese deaths in custody. The situation for Japanese troops captured by the Soviet Union was far worse. Roughly half of the 600,000 Japanese soldiers taken by Soviet forces remained unaccounted for decades after the war.
On the 5th of August 1937, Emperor Hirohito ratified a directive removing the constraints of international law from the treatment of Chinese prisoners. Japan and China had no formal declaration of war between them, which Japan used to deny Chinese captives recognized prisoner-of-war status. Historian R. J. Rummel noted that 'few if any camps were set up for Chinese prisoners of war.' Most survivors were either worked to death or used, in his words, 'by the Japanese army for practice or drill.' One estimate holds that only 56 Chinese prisoners were ever released after Japan's surrender. Werner Gruhl estimated roughly 750,000 Chinese POWs were taken, of whom around 267,000 survived, implying a death rate near 65 percent. Separate scholarship cited by Rummel placed Chinese POW fatalities at between 267,000 and a million, with a middle estimate of around 400,000 dead.
Filipino prisoners numbered at least 60,000 and were initially not recognized as proper prisoners of war. At least 5,000 died in the Bataan Death March alone. As many as 26,000 out of 45,000 were estimated to have died in Camp O'Donnell, a Japanese facility in the Philippines.
Japan initially handled the roughly 60,000 Indian soldiers captured early in the war with comparative care. The motivation was Pan-Asianism and a desire to recruit them into the collaborationist Indian National Army. Those who refused were treated as harshly as other Allied prisoners, or worse. Around 5,000 Indian POWs died from poor camp conditions. Following Italy's surrender in 1943, a small number of Italian sailors also fell into Japanese custody; some were conscripted into the Japanese navy, others interned.
Lieutenant General Tamura Hiroshi was the last director of Japan's Prisoner of War Information Bureau and the Prisoner of War Information Management Office. Prosecutors used his case to put the entire POW camp system on trial. Historian Sarah Kovner later observed that Tamura himself had little actual authority and bore responsibility for few of the atrocities. She described him as having been 'prosecuted for being in the wrong place in a bureaucratic hierarchy.' He was found not guilty on most charges and sentenced to just eight years of hard labor. Kovner identified the Ministry of War and the Military Affairs Bureau as the bodies that had actually set major policies on POWs. Those officials were never effectively prosecuted.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the Yokohama War Crimes Trials were the main American-led proceedings. The British, Australians, Dutch, Chinese, and Soviets conducted their own. Most concluded by the early 1950s. Those convicted ranged from General Tomoyuki Yamashita at the senior level to prison guards and civilians; most defendants, however, were mid-ranking officers. The trials drew criticism for focusing on low and mid-level soldiers. Non-Japanese personnel from Japan's colonial territories, particularly Koreans and Taiwanese, were also prosecuted and faced additional discrimination from the Japanese government. Kovner concluded that the legal system ultimately could not pin blame for the POW mistreatment on any specific person, small group, or organization.
Compensation was slow to arrive. Article 16 of the Treaty of San Francisco, signed in 1952, required Japan to pay reparations to Allied POWs used as forced laborers. Payments were delayed for years by administrative complications; in some cases, disbursements did not begin until the 1960s. In the United States, some compensation came earlier through the War Claims Act of 1948. Individual survivors filed claims in Japanese courts as late as the 1990s. Japanese courts consistently dismissed these, holding that only governments could negotiate war reparations. They also declined to connect findings of war crimes to any monetary award.
Japan's own Investigation Committee on POWs, the Furyo kankei chōsa iinkai, was established on the 20th of September 1945. It was disbanded in 1957 having delivered no actionable results.
Pierre Boulle published The Bridge over the River Kwai in 1952. Its 1957 film adaptation brought Allied forced labor in Japanese-held Asia to audiences around the world. Survivor accounts had appeared even earlier. Behind Bamboo by Rohan Rivett appeared in 1946, as did Slaves of the Samurai by Wilfrid Kent Hughes. Both were written by men who had survived the camps themselves. The Naked Island by Russell Braddon came out in 1952. Laurens van der Post's The Seed and the Sower followed in 1963, adapted two decades later into the 1983 film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.
James Clavell's novel King Rat appeared in 1962. J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun was published in 1984, with a film adaptation three years later. Laura Hillenbrand's biography Unbroken appeared in 2010, tracing the experience of Louis Zamperini, an American prisoner of the Japanese; a film followed in 2014. John Grisham's The Reckoning, published in 2018, returned to the subject for a new generation of readers.
Three Came Home, released in 1950, dramatized the experience of civilian women interned by Japan. Paradise Road followed in 1997. Betty Jeffrey's memoir White Coolies appeared in 1954. Tenko, a British television series, ran from 1981 to 1985.
One Dutch historian compared the forced labor of Allied prisoners in Japanese captivity to the murder of millions of Soviet prisoners by Germany. Together, these belong, in the historian's words, 'among the most infamous crimes of the Second World War.'
Common questions
What was the death rate for Allied prisoners of war held by Japan in World War II?
Over 27 percent of the roughly 132,000 Western Allied POWs in Japanese custody died before the war ended, representing more than 35,500 men. Australians had the highest recorded rate among Western nations at 34.1 percent, and Americans at 32.9 percent. One estimate placed this toll at over seven times the roughly 4 percent death rate for the same nationalities held by Germany.
Why did Japan treat Allied prisoners of war so brutally during World War II?
Japan's Senjinkun military code, drafted in 1940 and enacted in 1941, explicitly forbade surrender and led soldiers to view prisoners as unworthy of protection. By the 1930s, rising nationalism had distanced Japan from Western norms and international law. In 1942, General Tojo Hideki declared that Japan would treat prisoners according to its own customs, openly endorsing forced labor despite the Geneva Convention's prohibition.
How many Allied prisoners of war died building the Burma-Siam Railway?
16,000 out of 40,000 Allied prisoners assigned to the Burma-Siam Railway died during its construction. The project became one of the most prominently documented instances of forced labor in Japanese captivity during World War II.
What war crimes trials were held for Japanese mistreatment of Allied POWs?
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the Yokohama War Crimes Trials were the main American-led proceedings; the British, Australians, Dutch, Chinese, and Soviets also conducted separate trials. Most concluded by the early 1950s. General Tomoyuki Yamashita was among the senior figures convicted, though critics noted that proceedings focused heavily on mid-ranking soldiers rather than the senior officials who had set POW policy.
What compensation did Allied prisoners of war receive from Japan after World War II?
Article 16 of the Treaty of San Francisco (1952) required Japan to pay reparations to Allied POWs who had been used as forced laborers. Administrative delays meant some payments did not begin until the 1960s; in the United States, some earlier compensation was available under the War Claims Act of 1948. Japanese courts consistently dismissed individual claims for further compensation, holding that only governments could negotiate war reparations.
What books and films have been made about Allied prisoners of war in Japan?
Survivor memoirs appeared as early as 1946, including Behind Bamboo by Rohan Rivett and Slaves of the Samurai by Wilfrid Kent Hughes. Pierre Boulle's The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) became a celebrated 1957 film, and Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken (2010) traced the experience of Louis Zamperini before becoming a 2014 film. The British television series Tenko dramatized civilian internment from 1981 to 1985.
All sources
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