Japanese WWII Torture Document Eerily Reminiscent of US Torture Program
The following is taken from a 63 year old book published in the early days of the Cold War. Titled Materials on the Trial of Former Serviceman of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1950), the book contains trial summaries and testimony from the Khabarovsk war crimes trial in December 1949.
Derided as just another Stalinist show trial at the time, historians have since confirmed the evidence regarding the crimes prosecuted, including deadly biological experiments on prisoners by special units of the Japanese Imperial Army, the most famous of which was Unit 731.
The selection below is one of the exhibits contained in the book, collected in a section labeled “Documentary Evidence.” The book itself has been out of print for decades, and is generally unavailable, except via some few libraries and antiquarian bookstores.
The selection included here is on the Japanese Army use of torture. The reader will notice that the Japanese Army demonstrated many of the same techniques and concerns the U.S. showed when it was implementing its own torture program under the CIA and the Department of Defense.
The Japanese torture program included, as described here, use of stress positions, physical attack, and a form of waterboarding. The interrogators were instructed to be aware of possible false information by prisoners in order to get “relief from suffering.” They appeared to also be concerned in the truthfulness of information obtained, and the possibility of deception.
Moreover, the Japanese were quite worried about others knowing about the torture. While they do not outright call for the murder of prisoners, one is left to guess at what “measures must be taken” so that prisoners did not talk of the torture “afterwards.”
The material from the Khabarovsk trial is consistent with that published in a report by the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers on “Japanese Methods of Prisoner of War Interrogation” (June 1, 1946). Techniques described there include: beatings of various sorts (derided, though, as “the most clumsy method”); threats of “murder, torture, starving, deprivation of sleep, solitary confinement, etc.”; psychological threats; water torture, which sometimes resulted in fatalities; attaching a prisoner’s thumbs to a “motor car which proceeds to pull him around in a circle until he falls exhausted,” and other tortures. Some Japanese soldiers and officers were prosecuted for war crimes after the war for such inhumane and criminal conduct.
What Made the Khabarovsk Trial Special
What makes the selection from the Khabarovsk trial unique is the degree to which the document discusses the importance of hiding the torture, and how to deal with deception. Interestingly, there is no discussion of producing false confessions.
It is noteworthy, too, to understand that thousands of prisoners who were sent to Unit 731 had also been, or were interrogated and/or tortured, at the site where biological experiments on them were done. All the prisoners were killed after the experiments were completed. The results of the experiments were operationalized in biological warfare campaigns by the Japanese in China that killed, recent estimates claim, perhaps as many as half a million people.
In future stories, I will discuss at much greater length aspects of this material that has gone unreported for years. The reasons for such a lack of historical writing is not lack of interest, but the fact that what materials the Japanese did not destroy were kept classified by the Americans for decades as part of an amnesty deal made with the leaders of the Japanese biological warfare program. The deal included a transfer of data on the fatal human experiments to the U.S. Army and intelligence services. Both the Department of Defense and (most likely) the CIA were involved in the decision to give amnesty to the Unit 731 et al. criminals.
For more information on the deal made between the U.S. and the Japanese described here see Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731: The Japanese Army Secret of Secrets, 1989, Hodder and Stoughton, London; Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-up, rev. ed. 2002, Routledge, New York; and Daniel Barenblatt, A Plague Upon Humanity: the Secret Genocide of Axis Japan’s Germ Warfare, 2004, Harper, New York.
The Khabarovsk selection reprinted below appears on pages 235-237 of Materials. I have tried my best to reproduce the material as it is in the book. What is italic or bold here is italic or bold in the book. Extra spacing between letters is as in the printed material. Case has been preserved. Paragraph breaks are by extra lines, while in the book they are by indent.
File No. 48. Pages 90, 112, 113, 124, 125, 126. “Operation Officer’s Guide (Part I).” From the files of the Mutankiang J.M.M.
Translated from the Japanese
S t r i c t l y C o n f i d e n t i a l
Seal: “MUTANKIANG J. M. M.
Received June 14, 1945
Inc. No. 9”
MILITARY INVESTIGATION DIVISION
OF GENERAL HEADQUARTERS
Copied by Unit
SECRET WAR SERVICE GUIDE
I n c l o s u re
Fundamental Rules for Interrogating War Prisoners
G e n e r a l R u l e s
1. The present rules relate to cases of interrogation with the view to obtaining information, but do not relate to the interrogation of criminals.
2. Persons who have surrendered, deserters, captured enemy spies, those who illegally cross the frontier, crews of aircraft compelled to make a forced landing or of vessels compelled to come to our shores, escaped war prisoners who had formerly served in our army, the inhabitants of districts we have newly occupied, and also civilian refugees from the sphere of enemy influence, except on special matters, are interrogated in conformity with the methods of investigating and interrogating war prisoners.
62. Sometimes, depending on circumstances, it is advantageous to resort to torture, but often this may lead to harmful consequences, and therefore, before resorting to it, it is necessary to carefully consider whether this should be done or not. Furthermore, torture must be applied in such a way as not to lead to bad consequences for us.
63. Torture, the infliction of physical suffering, must be sustained and continued in such a way that there shall be no other way of relief from suffering except by giving truthful information
Torture is advantageous because of the speed with which it is possible with relative ease to compel persons of weak will to give truthful testimony, but there is the danger that, in order to relieve himself from suffering, or in order to please the interrogator, the person interrogated will, on the contrary, distort the truth.
In the case of persons of strong will, torture may strengthen their will to resist and leave ill-feeling against the empire after the interrogation.
64. In relation to persons of weak will, torture is usually applied in those cases when the person interrogated does not speak the truth in the face of evidence, but there is full reason to suppose that this person will speak frankly if torture is applied.
65. It is necessary to bear in mind that the methods of torture must be such as can be easily applied, as will sustain suffering without rousing feelings of pity, and as will not leave either wounds or scars. However, in those cases when it is necessary to create apprehension of death, the harm caused the person interrogated can be ignored, but this must be done in such a way as not to make it impossible to continue the interrogation.
The following examples of torture may be given:
1. Compelling the person to sit up straight and motionless.
2. Putting pencils between the fingers not far from their bases and tying the tops of the fingers with string and moving them.
3. Putting the person interrogated on his back (it is advisable to raise the feet a little) and dripping water into the nose and mouth simultaneously.
4. Putting the interrogated person on his side and stamping on his ankle.
5. Compelling the interrogated person to stand under a shelf that is too low to enable him to stand straight.
66. In a case when a wound is accidentally inflicted on the person interrogated, it is necessary, taking into account the general situation and the interests of our country, to take resolute measures, taking full responsibility for same.
67. On receiving testimony as a result of applying torture, it must be ascertained whether this testimony is the result of a desire to avoid further suffering and to please the interrogator; in such cases, some corroboration of the truth of the testimony is necessary.
68. After the application of torture, it is necessary to convince the person who had undergone torture that the torture applied to him was quite a natural measure, or to take such measures as will induce him out of a sense of pride, sense of honor, etc, not to speak of it afterwards. In the case of persons from whom this cannot be expected, measures must be taken as in the case of those upon whom accidental wounds have been inflicted.
69. Nobody must know about the application of torture except the persons concerned with this. Under no circumstances must other prisoners know about it. It is very important to take measures to prevent shrieks from being heard.*
Translated by Senior Interpreter, Master of Historical Sciences
*The rest is omitted. – Trans.
Cross-posted from Invictus