Japanese War Crimes on the High Seas
by Raymond Lamont-Brown
New Hardback with color dust jacket
174 pages, 30 black and white photographs, 2 maps
New $29.95
Japanese War Crimes on the High Seas
by Raymond Lamont-Brown
New Hardback with color dust jacket
174 pages, 30 black and white photographs, 2 maps
New $29.95
More than 140,000 POWs fell to the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy in World War II. Many of these men were shipped to the Japanese home islands for slave labor aboard seaborne transports, crammed in their airless holds and stricken with disease. Countless Allied troops and civilians died in these horrible conditions while at sea. Sick, starved, suffocated, tortured and massacred when they became a nuisance, or killed when the unmarked transports or maru's were bombed by the Allies, or torpedoed by American submarines, the hapless prisoners experienced unbelievable horrors. Against the background of the Pacific war at sea, the author also describes the actions that led to the capture of Allied servicemen, in conflicts such as the fighting at Wake Island in 1941.
Author Raymond Lamont-Brown’s chilling account tells their story. Through his account, we see the gradual fall from power of the Japanese armed forces that led ultimately to their surrender at the end of World War II, in 1945. Details of what happened to the men responsible for these despicable war crimes show surprisingly that many were never prosecuted and were integrated into Japanese society after the war. Whereas many other accounts of Japanese atrocities have concentrated on the fate of the POWs on land, the author has researched original records and drawn on eyewitness accounts to write this frightening record of Japanese barbarity against defenseless prisoners of war.
New Hardback with dust jacket. 174 pages, 30 black and white photos, 2 maps, 1 diagram, appendix and an index.
New Book --- $29.95
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"This book describes the inhumane and sometimes macabre treatment of Allied prisoners of war by their Japanese captors. The first part of the book describes the feared "Hell Ships". These were massively overcrowded freighters that the Japanese used to transport POWs. Most of the time, the POWs were packed in so tightly that they were unable to lay down. Very little food or water was given to them, and their latrine amounted to a trough hanging over the side of the ship. Aside from facing the constant beatings from the Japanese, these men also lived in fear of Allied submarine attack. Indeed, many of the POWs died as a result of an Allied torpedo striking their Hell Ship. The Japanese did very little to assist the prisoners in case the ship needed to be abandoned. Most of the time, they were locked in their holds to drown as the ship sank. Japanese submarines and commerce raiders also played a role in the high seas atrocities. Many Japanese submarine captains would surface their sub after sinking an enemy vessel and machine gun the survivors in the water.
The chapters dealing with biological warfare and "comfort women" are particularly disturbing. The Japanese would use Allied POWs as human "guinea pigs" for "medical" experiments. As noted in the book, the Japanese would allow the POWs very little clothing and as they proceeded into colder climates, they would see how the POWs bodies would react. Many of them died from exposure to the cold. Others were thrown into the sea for "survival tests", while others were subjected to various vaccine tests.
The "comfort women" were mostly young Korean women, about 12 to 20 years old, who were subjected to forced prostitution. These women were lured in by false promises from the Japanese commander, placed aboard a ship, and sent to the front lines for the Japanese sailors and soldiers. Many went mad, most contacted various diseases, and many died. The fact that amazes me is how to this day the Japanese can still deny so much of these atrocities. Much of the history from this time period is not mentioned at all by the Japanese. Hopefully one day they will realize their earlier wrongdoings and apologize for them. I felt this was a good, albeit short, analysis of some of the atrocities committed by the Japanese. I found the reading hard at some points due to all of the Japanese terms that the author chose to use, but overall, the book gives a good introduction to some of the crimes committed by the Japanese." Jeffrey T. Munson
ISBN # 0-7509-2719-4