Why did the Japanese execute POWs?

The POWs who were accused of committing serious crimes or those who tried to escape were prosecuted at the Japanese Army Court Martial and sent to prison for Japanese criminals, many were executed in front of their fellow POWs.
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Why did the Japanese treat their POWs so badly?

The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect. The IJA also relied on physical punishment to discipline its own troops.
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What did the Japanese do to POWs?

The treatment of American and allied prisoners by the Japanese is one of the abiding horrors of World War II. Prisoners were routinely beaten, starved and abused and forced to work in mines and war-related factories in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.
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What was the Japanese attitude towards POWs?

Believing themselves to be of divine origin, they treated all other races as inferior; therefore, the POWs suffered cruelties as sub-humans. The Japanese inflicted punishment and torture in the name of their emperor, believing that they did so through divine instruction.
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Why did the Japanese create POW camps?

On February 19, 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 with the stated intention of preventing espionage on American shores. Military zones were created in California, Washington and Oregon—states with a large population of Japanese Americans.
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How were CAPTURED Japanese Soldiers Actually Treated by the Allies?



Did the Japanese eat POWs in ww2?

The Chichijima incident (also known as the Ogasawara incident) occurred in late 1944. Japanese soldiers killed eight American airmen on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands, and cannibalized four of the airmen.
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Was Japan punished for war crimes?

The Fate of Emperor Hirohito

Six defendants were were sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace (Class A, B, and C).
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How did the Japanese treat female prisoners of war?

Unprepared for coping with so many captured European prisoners, the Japanese held those who surrendered to them in contempt, especially the women. The men at least could be put to work as common laborers, but women and children were "useless mouths." This attitude would dictate Japanese policy until the end of the war.
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Why did Japanese soldiers not surrender?

Kamikaze. It was a war without mercy, and the US Office of War Information acknowledged as much in 1945. It noted that the unwillingness of Allied troops to take prisoners in the Pacific theatre had made it difficult for Japanese soldiers to surrender.
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How many POWs died in Japanese camps?

Camps in the Japanese Homeland Islands

32,418 POWs in total were detained in those camps. Approximately 3,500 POWs died in Japan while they were imprisoned.
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Did anyone escape Japanese POW camps?

Cowra breakout, (August 5, 1944), mass escape by nearly 400 Japanese prisoners of war from a prison camp in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia. It was the largest prison break staged during World War II.
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Did Japanese throw prisoners overboard?

A postwar investigation found Japanese accounts that said he was interrogated and then thrown overboard with weights attached to his feet, drowning him. In terms of naval commanders, two of the greats participated in Midway and they complemented each other perfectly.
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What did POWs eat in ww2?

Most prisoners of war (POWs) existed on a very poor diet of rice and vegetables, which led to severe malnutrition. Red Cross parcels were deliberately withheld and prisoners tried to supplement their rations with whatever they could barter or grow themselves.
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What did Japan do to POWs in ww2?

The Japanese were very brutal to their prisoners of war. Prisoners of war endured gruesome tortures with rats and ate grasshoppers for nourishment. Some were used for medical experiments and target practice. About 50,000 Allied prisoners of war died, many from brutal treatment.
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Why were the Japanese so suicidal in ww2?

Another survivor, Kinjo Shigeaki, who took 20 years to speak about his experience, identified three factors that created this mentality: “The ideology of obedience to the Emperor, the presence of the Imperial Japanese Army, and being on an island…with no way to escape.”
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What did American soldiers call the Japanese?

In WWII, American soldiers commonly called Germans and Japanese as krauts and Japs.
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What happened to nurses who were captured by the Japanese?

In those critically undersupplied camps, they were able to provide vital professional care to all of the Allied POWs held there. Miraculously, the nurses all survived the long imprisonment from May 1942 to February 1945, but after liberation, received little recognition as military prisoners of war.
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What happened to Japanese POWs after ww2?

Following the war the prisoners were repatriated to Japan, though the United States and Britain retained thousands until 1946 and 1947 respectively and the Soviet Union continued to hold as many as hundreds of thousands of Japanese POWs until the early 1950s.
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Were there any female POWs in Vietnam?

During the Vietnam War Monika Schwinn, a German nurse, was held captive for three and a half years - at one time the only woman prisoner at the "Hanoi Hilton". The following missionaries were POWs: Evelyn Anderson, captured and later burned to death in Kengkok, Laos, 1972.
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Why was Japan not punished after ww2?

De-militarisation in Japan left the government largely intact, and the Japanese government continued to run the country, under the supreme authority of the occupation military government.
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Was Pearl Harbor a war crime?

Japan and the United States were not then at war, although their conflicting interests were threatening to turn violent. The attack turned a dispute into a war; --Pearl Harbor was a crime because the Japanese struck first. Sixty years later, the administration of President George W.
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Does Japan teach about ww2?

The Japanese school curriculum largely glosses over the occupations of Taiwan, China, Korea and various Russian islands before the attack on Pearl Harbor; it essentially doesn't teach the detail of the war in the Pacific and South East Asia until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Did crocodiles eat Japanese soldiers?

Some British soldiers, including the naturalist Bruce Wright, who participated in the battle, claimed that the large population of saltwater crocodiles native to the mangrove swamps on Ramree Island preyed on the trapped Japanese force at night and ate many soldiers.
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Was there cannibalism in concentration camps?

Living conditions in the camp when the US 8th Infantry and the 82nd Airborne arrived were deplorable. There was little food or water, and some prisoners had resorted to cannibalism. When the units arrived there, they found about 1,000 inmates dead in the camp.
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