The World Almanac states that the Total deaths related to the war was over 45 MILLION and that the government of Germany KILLED 5-6 million of its own people. German bombs killed 70,000 British Civilians. 100,000 Chinese civilians were killed by the Japanese just to capture the city of Nanking.
Japan was responsible for the torture and killing of more than 20 million persons and the rapes of over 200,000 women and girls.
We fought because we were attacked and because both the japs and Germany wanted to take over America. We also fought to restore freedom and justice for all to Europe.
Japan attacked the United States at Hawaii. Dec 7, 1941 - Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor;
MURDER OF AN AUSTRALIAN HERO
The Japanese were especially brutal in their treatment of captured Allied airmen and members of special forces, such as commandos. A Japanese soldier, Yasuno Chikao, prepares to behead Australian Sergeant Leonard G. Siffleet at Aitape in New Guinea in 1943. The Australian commando from "M" Special Unit was captured while his small patrol was operating deep behind enemy lines. This atrocity cannot be justified on the ground that Sergeant Siffleet and his team were spies. All were in uniform when captured. In the case of other Allied prisoners of war, the Japanese killed many of them by starvation, bashings, and forced labour. Yasuno Chikao escaped the hangman by failing to survive the war.
The Japanese government refuses to allow Japanese schoolchildren to be told the truth about Japan's military aggression and the terrible atrocities committed by the Japanese military between 1937 and 1945.
They have never apologized.
The statements quoted below are representative of the continuing denial of war guilt and atrocities at the highest levels of Japanese politics, academia, and cultural expression.
Denial of Japan's war guilt
"The Pacific War was a war of liberation..."
Nagano Shigeto, Japan's Justice Minister (1994).
"The Pacific War was a war to liberate colonized Asia."
A resolution moved in the Japanese Parliament (the Diet) in 1995 by 221 members of Japan's long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
"Japan was forced to go to war by American oil and other embargoes."
Hosei Norota, senior member of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (2001).
"Japan was forced into WW II to liberate Asia from the yoke of Western colonialism."
Hideaki Kase, producer of the controversial Japanese film "Merdeka" (2001).
Denial of atrocities
"The Nanjing Massacre is a lie made up by the Chinese."
Ishihara Shintaro, former Japanese Cabinet Minister, interviewed October 1990.
..the Nanjing Massacre is a fabrication.
Nagano Shigeto, Japan's Justice Minister (1994).
"The Americans brainwashed the postwar Japanese into believing they had committed terrible war crimes."
Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka, Professor of Education, Tokyo University (1997).
"We have to pass on true history to young people. We must fight this information war against the rest of the world."
Eiichiro Washio, member of a group of Japanese politicians who deny the Nanjing Massacre occurred in 1937.
"Foreign 'Comfort Women' conscripted for Japanese Army brothels were 'prostitutes'."
Kajiyama Seiroku, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary (1997).
JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABE - A STENCH IN THE NOSTRILS OF DECENT HUMANITY?
The ultra-nationalist Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shocked decent human beings by denying that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into sexual slavery in conquered countries by the Imperial Japanese Army between 1937 and 1945. Despite an apology to the so-called "comfort women" by Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993, testimony from the female victims and the Japanese soldiers who raped them, and support from historians who claim that as many as 200,000 captive women were forced into Japanese Army brothels in conquered countries, this prime minister has chosen to degrade himself and Japan in the eyes of civilized people by promoting a blatant lie that causes even more anguish to the female victims of Japanese brutality. Reported Tokyo, 1 March 2007. Predictably, the willingness of this neanderthal Japanese prime minister to sanitise Imperial Japan's hideous war crimes has encouraged other Japanese politicians to deny the Nanjing Massacre (Rape of Nanking) in 1937. Reported in "The Australian" 2 March 2007. See quote attributed to Eiichiro Washio above.
Reviving the ideology of Japanese militarism
"Japan is a divine nation centered on the emperor."
Yoshiro Mori, Prime Minister of Japan (2000).
And the final word
"I do not think things are going well in terms of Japan accepting responsibility for the past."
Professor Saburo Ienaga, distinguished Japanese historian (1998).
I believe that a resurgence of extreme nationalism in Japan since the early 1990s should be ringing alarm bells and require Japan's neighbors to take very seriously the continuing denial of Japan's war guilt and the appalling atrocities committed by the Japanese military between 1937 and 1945.
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it".
George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher 1863-1952
JAPANESE WAR CRIMES 1937-1945
Between 1937 and 1943, Japanese military aggression spread across East Asia and the Pacific region like a hideous stain. Slaughter, looting, rape, and other forms of appalling brutality, accompanied the conquerors as each country fell victim to the Japanese war machine. Japan was responsible for the killing of more than 20 million people.
Singapore has fallen, and Britain has been humiliated. Victorious Japanese troops scream "Banzai!" These twentieth century barbarians slaughtered, raped, and looted their way across East Asia and the western half of the Pacific Ocean between 1937 and 1945. Including victims killed in China, historians estimate that the Japanese brutally murdered at least five million captive civilians and prisoners of war.
Historians outside Japan estimate that at least five million captive foreign civilians and prisoners of war were brutally murdered by the Japanese military between 1937 and 1945. To that figure, can be added hundreds of thousands of victims who were slowly murdered by starvation, disease, and beatings in Japanese prisoner of war and internment camps, and hundreds of thousands of women who were brutally raped by Japanese soldiers. The appalling rape figure includes two hundred thousand women in Japanese-occupied countries who were forced into sexual slavery in Japanese Imperial Army brothels. Finally, we cannot forget the terrible fate of hundreds of prisoners of war who were murdered by the Japanese Army's infamous Unit 731 in the course of horrible biological experiments.
The use of the word "murder" instead of "execution"
I have used the word "murder" in the context of Japanese war crimes when a barbaric act would constitute murder under the civil laws of Western countries and is contrary to the generally accepted laws and usages of war. I find the use of the word "execution" in connection with the victims of Japanese war crimes to be misleading, because the word "execution" can convey a false impression that a victim of Japanese brutality has undergone a semblance of a fair trial that resulted in a lawful order of execution.
Japanese military atrocities appall and puzzle Western societies
The Japanese conducted their military aggression in East Asia and the Pacific region with a savagery that most Westerners find difficult to comprehend. Even the Nazi Waffen SS troops at their worst would have had difficulty matching the brutality, racism, and fanaticism routinely displayed by the Japanese military; their cruelty towards, and frequent mass slaughter of prisoners of war and captive civilians; their wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages; their raping and looting; and their willingness to fight to the last man and never surrender.
Evidence of that brutality, racism, and fanaticism can be seen in the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war after the fall of the Chinese capital Nanking (now called Nanjing) in 1937; in the thousands of Allied prisoners of war murdered during the infamous Bataan Death March and Sandakan Death March; in the murders of American Navy airmen captured by the Japanese at the Battle of Midway; in the mass slaughter of Australian prisoners of war after their surrender on the islands of New Britain, Ambon and Timor; in the forced conscription of 200,000 foreign women, mostly Chinese and Korean, to be sex slaves in Japanese Army brothels; in the slaughter from March 1943 of all merchant seaman survivors after their ships had been sunk; and in the order by the Japanese Army to the civilian population of the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands to kill themselves and their children rather than endure the shame of being captured. Unable to reach the Japanese villagers in time to stop this atrocity, American marines could only watch as hundreds of Japanese mothers threw their children off a cliff onto the coral below and then followed them. These child murders and civilian suicides were praised and encouraged back in Japan.
Some Japanese were taken prisoner but no Australian survived as a prisoner of war during the bloody fighting in 1942 on the Kokoda Track. In addition to murdering all Australians captured by them on the Kokoda Track, the Japanese compounded this horror by killing and eating wounded Australian soldiers.
The brutal treatment of women, children, and other non-combatants by the Japanese military during the Pacific War 1941-45 is especially puzzling, because although Japanese troops were taught that surrender was contemptible and that all foreigners were inferior to them, it was the Chinese who had been singled out for labeling by the Japanese military as sub-human and equivalent to vermin. The Japanese slaughtered British hospital medical staff when Hong Kong fell in December 1942. They slaughtered a group of twenty-one Australian Army nurses who had reached Bangka Island after their ship was bombed and sunk after leaving Singapore. Only one woman survived this massacre to testify at a war crimes trial. The Japanese bombed clearly marked hospital buildings on Bataan in the Philippines. They bombed and torpedoed clearly marked hospital ships in Australian waters in 1942 and 1943. Japanese troops hunted down and murdered two Australian female missionaries who fled inland when the Japanese landed at Buna on the northern coast of the Australian Territory of Papua in 1942. On the Alaskan Island of Attu, Japanese troops overran an American base camp in 1943 and slaughtered all of the patients and medical staff at the field hospital.
The brief references above comprise only a tiny cross-section drawn from many thousands of documented Japanese atrocities committed during the Pacific War 1941-45 and Japan's brutal undeclared war against China that began in 1937. These war crimes were committed in every place reached by Japan's conquering armies and the number of those slaughtered, raped, and brutally treated in other ways can be numbered in millions. The range of Japanese war crimes is so vast that it is not possible on this web-site to cover it extensively, and the material that follows and the historical reference material included at the end of this treatment of Japanese war crimes are primarily intended for those who want to learn more about this dark page in human history.
For those who are tempted to deny the full horror and extent of Japanese war crimes between 1937 and 1945, Lord Russell's book "The Knights of Bushido" is recommended preliminary reading. Lord Russell of Liverpool served in both World Wars and, at the conclusion of the war in Europe, he served as Deputy Judge Advocate General for the British Army of the Rhine. He gave legal advice on the prosecution of war criminals in the British Zone of occupied Germany.
"The Knights of Bushido - A Short History of Japanese War Crimes" by Lord Russell of Liverpool (1958).
This classic work was written by a British Deputy Judge Advocate who was actually involved in German war crimes trials at the end of WW II. This work is essential reading on the topic of Japanese war atrocities, and is highly recommended.
"Prisoners of the Japanese" by Gavan Daws (1994), published by William Morrow; reprinted 2004 by Scribe Publication, Melbourne.
This is a powerful book that covers in searing detail the horrors inflicted on Allied POWs throughout East Asia and the Pacific. It is highly recommended.
"Horror in the East" by Laurence Rees (2001).
This title was produced as a book and an acclaimed BBC historical series. The forcing of young female captives to submit to sexual slavery in Japanese Army brothels is covered in this carefuly documented account of Japanese brutality towards captives and prisoners of war.
"The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang (1997).
This book must cause the reader to wonder how an ancient culture such as Japan's could produce soldiers who could sink to the depths of depravity described by Iris Chang.
"Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" by Professor Herbert P. Bix (2000).
This extraordinary history of Hirohito won a Pulitzer prize. It is essential reading for anyone who ever believed that Hirohito was a war criminal who escaped justice.
The Rape of Nanking or Nanjing Massacre
History Information of China
The Nanking Massacre (Nanjing Massacre)
The Nanjing Massacre and the Tokyo War Crime Trials
The Nanking Atrocities
The Nanking Massacre
The other Holocaust - Nanjing
Japanese War Crimes in general
Japanese War Crimes
Censorship of History Books for Japanese Schoolchildren
Children and Textbooks Japan Network21
INDEX TO SELECTED IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY WAR CRIMES
The Rape of Nanking (1937), also known as the Nanjing Massacre
The Bangka Island Massacre (1942): Slaughter of Australian Army Nurses
The Bataan Death March (1942)
The Sandakan Death March (1945)
Murder and cannibalism on the Kokoda Track (1942)
Conscripting women for sexual slavery in Japanese Army brothels (1937-1945)
Mutilation and murder of Dutch civilians in Borneo
Murder and cannibalism - captured American pilots
INDEX TO SELECTED IMPERIAL JAPANESE NAVY WAR CRIMES
Murder of American pilots and aircrew at Midway (1942)
The bombing of the hospital ship Manunda (1942)
The sinking of the hospital ship Centaur (1943)
Extermination of survivors of merchant vessels sunk by the Japanese (1943-45)
BATAAN DEATH MARCH
The courageous defense of Bataan had a sad and ignominious end. Marching their prisoners toward camps in northern Luzon, the Japanese denied food and water to the sick and starving men. When the weakest prisoners began to straggle, guards shot or bayoneted them and threw the bodies to the side of the road. Japanese guards may have killed 600 Americans and 10,000 Filipino prisoners. News of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had outraged the American people; news of the "Bataan Death March" filled them with bitter hatred.
The Wikipedia had the following Quote with source at end.
As in other dictatorships, irrational brutality, hatred and fear became commonplace. Perceived failure, or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating on to lower ranks, all the way down. In POW camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all.
de Jong, Louis . The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War, translation J. Kilian, C. Kist and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206, Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press, 289 311 417. ISBN 90 6718 203 6.
The following is a direct quote from Wikoipedia with sources at end.
The same day, veteran soldier Yasuji Kaneko admitted to The Washington Post that the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."
On April 17, 2007, Yoshimi and another historian, Hirofumi Hayashi, announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.
On 12 May 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Netherland government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.
In other cases, some victims from East Timor testified they were forced when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers.
A Dutch-Indonesian "comfort woman", Jan Ruff-O'Hearn (now resident in Australia), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims and that it wanted to rewrite history. Ruff-O'Hearn said that she had been raped "day and night" for three months by Japanese soldiers when she was 21.
To this day, only one Japanese woman published her testimony. This was done in 1971, when a former "comfort woman" forced to work for showa soldiers in Taiwan, published her memoirs under the pseudonym of Suzuko Shirota.
There are different theories on the breakdown of the comfort women's place of origin. While some sources claim that the majority of the women were from Japan, others, including Yoshimi, argue as many as 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, and some other countries such as the Philippines, Taiwan, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Netherlands, and Australia were forced to engage in sexual activity.
Life as a POW - excerpts taken from the book "BANZAI YOU BASTARDS!" by Sgt. Jack Edwards, former POW #159
..." the food was never enough - the meager rice ration was supplemented at morning and night by about ½ pint of watery vegetable soup. . . we only had two thin blankets and had to sleep on wooden boards with only about 1 ½ feet of space per man... at every conceivable opportunity the guards would find an excuse to hit us.
. . .we were screamed at, shouted at, slapped, kicked and bashed. . . for the slightest infringement (of the rules) anyone could be sentenced to the "Ice Box!! (a wooden cubicle five feet high and only two feet six inches square) - you had nothing, not even a blanket and it was impossible to lie down.
. . .when the call came for !!volunteers!! to work in the mine, I signed up - anything would be better than life in that camp.
IN THE MINE. . .
. . ."we were issued black cardboard helmets, canvas shoes, a threadbare short-sleeve green shirt and shorts - these were to be our "mining clothes". .. we marched up about 250 steps to the brow of the hill (above the camp) and in the distance below us, we could see the mine head - we had to clamber all the way down on a very rough path with stone steps. . . we were marched to the mine entrance and forced to stop at a small Japanese shrine to pray for our safety in the mine. . . then into the mine. . . for forty-five minutes we trudged on and then turning off to the left, climbed down very rough steps under a low ceiling for several levels. . . warm air hit us . . . water dripped down, quite warm. . . down we went, getting hotter and hotter. . . .there were cries of pain all around as we caught our backs or arms on the jagged walls and low ceiling. . . .I thought we were descending into hell.
"after descending nearly 800 steps, we were given our tools - a chunkel and a two-handled bamboo basket . . .our task was to scrape the ore into the basket, and then carry it to the trolley (ore cart) which we called "bogies" . . .at lunch time we would return to the rest area to eat our "bento" - only to find it alive with cockroaches . . .we brushed them off and ate the tasteless cold rice and bits of green - it seemed like a banquet to us ravenous prisoners. . . at the end of the day we had to climb those terrible stairs to get out of the mine, and then still face that long climb back up over the mountain to the camp. .. no-one spoke during those climbs - you needed all your breath.!!
The following eyewitness accounts were told by surviving prisoners and soldiers who found the mutilated bodies of their lost comrades during WWII. They told how the Japanese placed Bamboo shoots under the tied down Allied Prisoner. The bamboo shoots are rapid growing, even so it might take days for a prisoner to finally die from the sharpened Bamboo tips that pierced their body bit by painful, slowly, bit. Japanese soldiers raped, beheaded, stabbed, set people on fire, buried people alive, tore out the eyes of babies, ripped open the stomachs of pregnant women, and then the Japs laughed while the victims suffered. The Japs would kick and beat both civilians and POWs daily and often cut them open with their swords so that their intestines would hang out. Many cases of cutting open pregnant women were reported some of this done on a bet of what the sex of the baby was. Beating and torturing civilians and POWs in the most painful ways was a common sport to the Japs. (Sources are the stories of our own POWs)
Some prisoners that were captured had their testicles and private parts cut off, then placed into their mouths and their mouths sewn up. Then they would send the prisoner back to the Allied Battle lines.
Our Mother just happened to mention one day that her husband had told her about one of his friends who had been captured, but was finally released afterwards, WITH HIS TONGUE CUT OUT!
The extracts are reminiscences written by survivors of the war's worst atrocities. Statistics tell only a part of the full story ~ for example, that of the 85,000 captured at the fall of Singapore, one third died in captivity ~ and only those who read books such as this will be able to understand the horrific way in which the prisoners died, and the inhumane way in which the survivors were forced to live. (When the Japanese troops burst their way into the Tanglin Military Hospital they bayoneted not only the patients in the beds, they bayoneted also the patients on the operating tables as well as the doctors and nurses treating them.)
Japan's invasions were far more brutal than Germany's invasions. They killed, enslaved and raped millions of civilians. Japan was the only country to use chemical weapons, and it pioneered biological warfare by dropping plague, cholera and anthrax germs on Chinese villages. The number of people submitted to medical experiments in Japan's secret labs is much higher than the number of German prisoners who suffered the same fate. Nobody will ever know the number of "sex slaves" who were used (probably more than one million) and who died (sources say up to 90%). Prisoners of war in German camps were not mistreated (only 1% died) but prisoners of war in Japanese camps were used as slave laborers (and 31% died). If one includes China and all the occupied countries (Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc), Japan caused the death of about 12 million civilians, far more than those caused by Germany.
Red Cross parcels were never distributed to the prisoners they fed their captors instead. Occasionally a starving man would endeavor to recover something from where the parcels were stored, but the
retribution if caught would be to be beaten unconscious and then to be tortured, sometimes to death, sometimes not. Japanese torture is bestial, as these accounts, written by survivors who are not
professional authors, bear irrefutable witness. Strung by his thumbs to a branch, (His toes, even with the rocks attached, Yet still failing to reach the ground) He awaits the morning's bayonet drill.
His friends had had it worse. Old Joe, Trussed with barbed wire, mouth stopped,
Pumped through his nose with water, Died beneath the boots that jumped and split
His distended stomach open To their wearers' laughter.
13/12/1937 - 3/1938: Rape of Nanking or "Nanjing Datusha" (369,366 Chinese killed, and 80,000 women raped)
18/4/1942: 250,000 Chinese civilians murdered in retaliation for Chinese help to USA airmen
23/12/1943 - 14/2/1944: Rape of Manila (all male Filipinos 14 and older condemmed to die, 100,000 killed)
1937-45: Forced prostitution or "jugun ianfu" (400,000 Chinese women, 250,000 Korean women, 90% death rate, largest and most deadly mass rape recorded in history)
1933: Shiro Ishii'ss medical experiments in Manchuria (victims vivisected while still alive)
Only nation that used biological weapons in WW II
1939: Shiro Ishii's biological experiments in Harbin, China (10,000 prisoners died)
1940: Air bombing of Chinese villages with germs of bubonic plague (October 1940, Quzhou), cholera (1940, Yunnan), anthrax, etc (200,000 die)
Only nation that used chemical weapons in WW II
10 million Asians were used as slaves and only 5,000 or so survivors may still be alive.
Death rate in Japanese prisoner camps: 38.2 %
25/4/1943-6/44: 16,000 POWs and 80,000 Asian slave labourers died constructing the Thai-Burma railway
Japan was responsible for the torture and killing of more than 20 million persons and the rapes of over 200,000 women and girls.
Few Remember WWII Massacre Victims From Associated Press October 4, 2003
ST. LOUIS - Glenn McDole lives to tell of the suffering he endured as a prisoner of war on Palawan island in the Philippines. He hopes a new memorial will help people remember his 139 comrades who were killed by Japanese during one of their many massacres. There were 150 American servicemen taken prisoner in 1942 by the Japanese at Corregidor and Bataan in the Philippines, then a U.S. possession. Malnourished, injured and ill, the American captives reported to work Dec. 14, 1944. Only 11 lived through the day. Then after working through the day, the men were herded into three air-raid trenches at the Puerto Princesa Prison Camp. Survivors say the captors poured fuel into the pits and ignited it with torches and grenades. Prisoners trying to escape were killed with machine-gun fire or bayonets.
Chicago Daily News's quiet-spoken Far Eastern Correspondent Archibald T. Steele wrote the following story July 21 1941 after interviewing the person.
First I was beaten repeatedly about the head and this was followed by 50 lashes with a whip. . . . Then I was flattened on my back, my head was jerked back and water was poured into my nostrils. . . . Next they strapped me into the 'tiger's chair'—an ordinary chair anchored to the floor. Bricks were placed under my feet and piled up one by one. As each brick stretched my taut leg muscles farther, the agony became unbearable. I fainted seven times within 40 minutes. . . . They gave me what they called the 'electric punishment.' I was forced to grasp two electronically charged tubes and the voltage was gradually stepped up. Every inch of my body trembled like jelly. I felt as though I were going to burst." But Liu did not talk; months later the Japanese released him, still under suspicion, let him join the Puppet Government at Nanking. Traveling one day from Shanghai to Nanking by train, Liu outwitted shadowing spies, slipped off at a way station. By devious route he then made his way to Chungking, told his story to Steele.
The above is from Wikipedia article on Japanese war crimes and
See the History site The Fourties the Japanese section http://www.forties.net/japs.html
To learn more just do a search on Google for “Jap war crimes”
Actual interviews are in the National Archives. These stories were not made up. They happened to our POWs and innocent civilians. There is no excuse for this inhumanity to fellow humans. To kill an enemy in time of war is one thing but to torture, maim, vivisect, rape, behead and kill innocent civilians and POWs is inexcusable. This savage behavior must be outlawed and not tolerated.
George Bush's Sr. comrades eaten by their Japanese PoW guards (http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?t=850)
By Charles Laurence in New York (Filed: 26/10/2003)
The former President George Bush narrowly escaped being beheaded and eaten by Japanese soldiers when he was shot down over the Pacific in the Second World War, a shocking new history published in America has revealed.
The book, Flyboys, is the result of historical detective work by James Bradley, whose father was among the marines later photographed raising the flag over the island of Iwo Jima.
Lt George Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot, was among nine airmen who escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichi Jima, a tiny island 700 miles south of Tokyo, in September 1944 - and was the only one to evade capture by the Japanese.
The horrific fate of the other eight "flyboys" was established in subsequent war crimes trials on the island of Guam, but details were sealed in top secret files in Washington to spare their families distress.
Mr Bradley has established that they were tortured, beaten and then executed, either by beheading with swords or by multiple stab-wounds from bayonets and sharpened bamboo stakes. Four were then butchered by the island garrison's surgeons and their livers and meat from their thighs eaten by senior Japanese officers.
Mr Bradley pieced together the horrific truth from secret transcripts of the war crimes trials, given to him by a former officer and lawyer who was an official witness at the time, and the testimony of surviving Japanese veterans.
A radio operator, Marve Mershon, was marched to a freshly dug grave, blindfolded, and made to kneel for beheading by sword, testified a Japanese soldier, named as Iwakawa, at the war crimes trial. "When the flier was struck, he did not cry out, but made a slight groan."
The next day a Japanese officer, Major Sueo Matoba, decided to include American flesh in a sake-fuelled feast he laid on for officers including the commander-in-chief on the island, Gen Yoshio Tachibana. Both men were later tried and executed for war crimes.
A Japanese medical orderly who helped the surgeon prepare the ingredients said: "Dr Teraki cut open the chest and took out the liver. I removed a piece of flesh from the flyer's thigh, weighing about six pounds and measuring four inches wide, about a foot long."
Another crewman, Floyd Hall, met a similar fate. Adml Kinizo Mori, the senior naval officer on Chichi Jima, told the court that Major Matoba brought "a delicacy" to a party at his quarters - a specially prepared dish of Floyd Hall's liver.
According to Adml Mori, Matoba told him: "I had it pierced with bamboo sticks and cooked with soy sauce and vegetables." They ate it in "very small pieces", believing it "good medicine for the stomach", the admiral recalled.
A third victim of cannibalism, Jimmy Dye, had been put to work as a translator when, several weeks later, Capt Shizuo Yoshii - who was later tried and executed - called for his liver to be served at a party for fellow officers. Parts of a fourth airman, Warren Earl Vaughn, were also eaten and the remaining four were executed, one by being clubbed to death.
The following is from a History site http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/after/jap/w2ja-wcmcc.html
First the Japs killed the soldiers and all men of soldier age. “ Next came the civilians. Japanese soldiers as a reward for taking a cHinese town were normally given 3 days to do as they please, including rape and pillage. In the case of Nanking the rape, killing, and pillaging of the civilian population continued for nearly 2 months. The Japanese soldiers proceeded to shoot thousands down in the street, including the elderly, women and children. Shop keepers were ordered to open their shops which were then looted and the owner killed. Japanese soldiers used both living and dead Chinese soldiers and civilians for bayonet practice. They mutilated, tortured, and maimed untold Chinese. These were not all assembly-line, dispassionate murders. Reports indicate that the Japanese hung Chinese by their tongues and threw some in acid.
The Japanese dismembered victims, used grenades. Others were impaled, and flayed. [Chang] No one knows how many rapes occurred. One estimate suggests that 80,000 women were raped. [Yin and Young] Soldiers collected women by the truck load. They were then allocated to groups of soldiers for gang raping after which they were normally mutilated or shot. [Kozo] One American woman wrote, "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today. Thirty girls were taken from language school last night, and today I have heard scores of heartbreaking stories of girls who were taken from their homes last night--one of the girls was but 12 years old. ... Tonight a truck passed in which there were 8 or 10 girls, and as it passed they called out "Ging ming! Ging ming!"--save our lives." [Vautrin] One victim who was 8-years old at the time described her experiences. First her grandparents and parents were shot in front of her. Then her older sisters were killed. She was bayoneted three times and left for dead. Thousands of children were in fact bayoneted. [Shuqin] Children not killed outright when the women were collected often died from abandonment and starvation. So many men, women and children with machetes that the soldiers often tired and to rest. Many Chinese shot or butchered, but not yet dead were buried alive. [Mills] The news stories flowing out of Nanking to the international press caused the Japanese Army to establish brothels which were staffed with women seized from occupied countries, initially Korea. These were the so called comfort women. European diplomats tried to stem the killing. A NAZI official was elected to lead this group. He even appealed to Hitler to intercede with the Japanese Government. Rabe wrote. " During their atrocities, no difference was made between adults and children. There were girls under the age of 8 and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beat up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots."
“Today in Japan they deny that these events ever took place.” and they refuse to apologize. (from a history site http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/after/jap/w2ja-wcmcc.html)
Many thousands of Children and Women were raped by the Japs and pregnant women cut open for sport. Thousands of civilians were tortured in the most painful way. Thousands of civilians were beaten, tortured, bayoneted, vivisected (abdomen cut open so intestines were exposed), and beheaded daily.
Below results of child rape
Results of the Jap sport of vivisection
The Japs also cut open persons abdomens and sicced the dogs on them.
The Japs often tortured our POWs and civilians in front of others.
Millions of persons were cruelly massacred
Here the Japs are playing their Sport bayonet practice by killing innocent civilians.
Our POWs were tortured, mutilated, and beheaded often in front of others.
The above pictures and stories were not made up. They happened to our POWs and innocent civilians. There is no excuse for this inhumanity to fellow humans. To kill an enemy in time of war is one thing but to torture, maim, vivisect, rape, behead and kill innocent civilians and POWs is inexcusable. This savage behavior must be outlawed and not tolerated. This is criminal behavior and criminals such as these should be executed.
Now here is the shocker.
This savage behavior is still being done today around the world. The killing of Americans in a surprise attack is in the planning stages. Experts on national security say that the 3,000 that died on 9-11 are actually a small number in comparison to the numbers that could die in a well planned attack on a large American city.
What can be done about this?
First we need to set standards of human behavior even in war.
Second those who ignore these should be severely punished. Criminals who willfully take the lives of others and who torture, rape, maim and cause severe pain should be executed not coddled as we do now.
All high school students should be educated on history and in these matters.
We cannot control what people do in other countries but we can keep our country prepared against attacks BECAUSE IF WE DON'T, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT WE COULD SUFFER THIS CRUEL SAVAGE BEHAVIOR ON US AND OUR FAMILIES. IT IS A FACT OF HISTORY.
This is especially true if one looks at the Asian and Muslim mind set. They do not value human life. Witness the way the Japanese treated civilians and POWs. And look at Muslim run states today. Non Muslims are killed. Women become slaves and are denied education. Human rights including freedom of religion are denied. Don't believe it look at Iran. Even their own bible, the Koran, it states that it is OK to kill infidels and those who wish to believe in another religion. Their own Koran states in many places to kill the non believers. And Muslims believe that every word in the Koran is the word of God to be obeyed. Then they will explain that it is only the Arabic language version that is the word of God. But look at the translations they still say to kill the unbelievers. Islam is not merely a religion it is a way of life which includes a legal, and judicial system. Look at France and Europe. Muslims were allowed to immigrate there. Now the Muslims want take over. Muslim teenagers are burning hundreds of cars. Europe is changing and becoming Muslim. Once they get into power they will enforce their Sharia law and throw out the constitution. Of course they deny this because that is their best weapon. They are anti liberty, anti democracy and anti freedom of religion. If you have any doubts just look at Iran. Many believe our best defense is to stop allowing then to immigrate here and to deport the rest. Read the Koran you will find that it is not the religion of love as they try to mislead you into thinking, rather it is a system of hate, subjection of women and world domination.