NCJ Number
175211
Date Published
1996
Length
282 pages
Annotation
This book documents Japanese atrocities in World War II, including cannibalism, the slaughter and starvation of prisoners of war, rape and enforced prostitution, the murder of noncombatants, and biological warfare experiments.
Abstract
The author describes how desperate Japanese soldiers consumed the flesh of their own comrades killed in fighting, as well as that of Australians, Pakistanis, and Indians. He also traces the fate of 65 shipwrecked Australian nurses and British soldiers who were shot or stabbed to death by Japanese soldiers; 32 other nurses who landed on another island were captured and sent to Sumatra to become prostitutes for Japanese soldiers. The author recounts how thousands of Australian and British prisoners of war died in the infamous Sandakan camp in the Borneo jungle in 1945. Those who survived were forced to endure a tortuous 160- mile march on which anyone who dropped out of line was immediately shot. Individual atrocities are explored in their broader social, psychological, and institutional contexts. Japanese behavior during World War II is examined in the broader framework of the dehumanization of men at war, without denying individual and national responsibility. Notes, tables, figures, charts, maps, and photographs