Japanese civilian prisoners guarded by a Chinese soldier, Burma 1945. About 35 percent of American prisoners of war held by Japan perished compared to 0.9 percent of Americans captured by Germany.
Almost half of Australian battles deaths in the war (8,000 of 17,000) occurred among those captured by Japan. When Japan was required to hand over the prisoners of war she held after surrender, she presented a total of 56 Chinese. Historian Herbert Bix noted the nadir of Japanese savagery towards prisoners. In eight years of war in China from 1937 to 1945, the Japanese killed at least two to three million Chinese soldiers. Their crimes against comrades we never forgave As an Indian officer serving with the British wrote in a poem capturing typical Allied views of the Japanese enemy: National Archives photo.Īll the who fought the Japanese learned that the Japanese did not take prisoners, or if they took a prisoner, that individual would likely be cruelly tortured before being dispatched. Japanese soldiers murdering Sikh prisoners in Singapore, circa 1942. Multiple millions of these nearly mobilized former male and female civilians now combatants, would be in the Kyushu invasion area. Japan lacked uniforms or any other visible marker to distinguish this new sea of combatants from the remaining civilian population. This inducted about a quarter or more of Japan’s total population, about 18 to 20 million people. But in March, Japan mustered a vast additional body of combatants: every single male age 15 to 60 and every single female age 17 to 40. The Japanese armed forces burgeoned in 1945 under urgent mobilization from about 4.5 million men under arms to over 6 million by August. That settlement would certainly preclude an occupation of Japan and guarantee that the old order would continue. These would either defeat the invasion attempt or at least inflict such horrific casualties-American and Japanese-that American will to continue the war would be broken. Then in the second phase of the plan, Japan would obtain a negotiated settlement of the war, far from the declared American aim of the unconditional surrender of Japan. The plan aimed to meet the initial invasion of Japan (which they correctly anticipated would be on southern Kyushu) with massive ground and air forces. Instead, they devised a sequenced military and political strategy called Ketsu Go (Operation Decisive.) Its fundamental premise: Americans possessed enormous material power but their morale was brittle. When 1945 began, Japanese leaders recognized their nation’s dark military situation, but they rejected any form of surrender. This document does provide a portal to see exactly how the summer of 1945 looked to Americans, particularly those directing or participating in final operations against Japan. THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN.” Those seeing this for the first time think it represents hyperbole at best, racist sanction for mass extermination at worst. On July 21, 1945, a senior US Army Air Force intelligence officer in the Pacific distributed a report declaring: “The entire population of Japan is a proper Military Target.