Establishment of Camps in Japan for Allied POWs
About 350,000 Allied soldiers from South East Asia and the Western Pacific were captured by the Japanese. In order to deal with this number the POW Information Bureau was established at the end of 1941 in the Japanese Army Ministry offices, Tokyo. Amongst POWs were local native soldiers from Allied colonies who shortly after capture were released on the condition that they would not resist Japanese soldiers. The IJA decided to keep about 140,000 Allied soldiers in camps which had already been established in SE Asia.
In early 1942 there was only one POW camp in Japan proper, Zentsuji POW Camp at Zentsuji City, Kagawa Prefecture, which held mostly American soldiers captured on Guam and Wake Islands.
Because Japan was short on manpower it was decided to transport a number of POWs to Japan from S. E . Asia. From the end of 1942 to the beginning of 1943, the IJA opened POW camps with the main administration camps in four cities of Hakodate, Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka. Under each main camp, branch camps, dispatched *1 camps, and detached camps were eventually opened.
NB *1: There were three kinds of camps;
branch camp: Japanese Army supplied all housing, food, and clothing for POWs
detached camp: is a branch camp in smaller size
and dispatched camps: food, housing, and clothing were provided by the companies and IJA only provided POWs and military staff.
Camps were established in mining and industrial areas such as Keihin (Tokyo and Yokohama), and Hanshin (Osaka and Kobe).
With the ever increasing frequency and efficuency of US air raids over Japan, the IJA was forced to move many camps in industrial areas further inland or to areas closer to Sea of Japan .
In April 1945, camp military districts were reorganized and three new POW Camps were established in Sendai, Nagoya, and Hiroshima. The Hiroshima Main Camp absorbed Zentsuji POW Camp making a total of seven main camps.
Although the Japanese Army was responsible for camp administration the Japanese navy wanted to interrogate captured pilots and crew hoping to improve their naval intelligence. As a result the Navy established Ofuna Transitory Prison Camp in Ofuna, Kanagawa Prefecture. A special camp where POWs captured by the Navy were held before they were transferred to Army control.
The total number of POWs incarcerated in Japan was around 36,000. Tragically about 11,000 POWs lost their lives when allied air and submarine forces attacked POW transport ships in convoys enroute to Japan because they were not identifiable. The organization of POW camps in Japan was repeatedly reformed and rearranged, so the main camps, branch camps, dispatched camps and detached camps opened during the war numbered about 130. On the other hand, there were some which closed. Thus, in addition to the seven main camps there were 81 branch camps and three detached camps at the end of the war.
32,418 POWs in total were detained in those camps. Approximately 3, 500 POWs died – mostly due to unsafe working irvonments and Iillnesses brought about by starvation and working slave hours. The Japanese rufused any request for medicines and as well failed to distribute Red Cross parcels containing essential food and medicines. POWs often worked in unsafe work conditions on wharves, mines and in factories.
US AIRMEN
Enemy Airmen’s Act was a law passed by Imperial Japan on 13 August 1942. It stated that Allied airmen participating in bombing raids against Japanese-held territory would be treated as “violators of the law of war” and subject to trial and punishment if captured by Japanese forces. This law contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Allied airmen throughout the Pacific and Asian theaters of World War II. Shortly after World War II, Japanese officers who carried out show trials and illegal executions under the Enemy Airmen’s Act were found guilty of war crimes.
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WE WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS FROM CHANNEL 9, 4th Dec 2018 by Journalist Nick Pearson.
The Chichinima incident; GEORGE H
W Bush’S EXTRAORDINARY WW2 SURVIVAL STORY.
The Chichijima incident (Japanese: 父島事件), also known as the Ogasawara incident (小笠原事件) took place in September 1944 Nine US airmen survived their plane being shot down off the coast of the tiny Pacific island of Chichijima, Bonin Islands. Eight the young men were captured by the Japanese and severely tortured. Japanese officers later cannibalized four of the victims, believing it would provide them health benefits.
The ninth airman drifted out to sea and was remarkably rescued by the US Navy. The survivor was a 20-year-old pilot who would go on to become US President, George HW Bush.
‘The extraordinary story of Mr Bush’s rescue was well-known during his presidency, with a Navy seaman able to film the moment the lanky youngster was pulled from his tiny inflatable raft onto the deck of a submarine.
But the terrible fate of the other survivors was kept secret for many years.
Mr Bush was 17 when the United States entered the war after the Pearl Harbour attacks, and signed up to join the military the moment he turned 18.’
Mr Bush proved himself brilliantly during training and became the youngest aviator in the US Navy, piloting a three-person Avenger dive-bomber in the Pacific’s Torpedo Squadron.
The mission
At dawn on Sept. 2, 1944, a group of American pilots fighting in the Pacific theatre of World War II took to the skies. Only one would survive their bombing mission to the Bonin Islands — the rest would be tortured, killed, and cannibalized in what became known as the Chichijima Incident.
Mr Bush was part of a mission against the Japanese occupied island of Chichijima, 1000km southwest of Japan.
While flying over, the Avenger was struck by flak, setting his engine ablaze.
For years, the U.S. Navy obscured the horrifying truth of what happened at Chichijima. A lawyer involved in the episode said:
“The Navy didn’t want people back home to know that their sons were eaten.”
As for the survivor? The sole man to escape the awful fate of the Chichijima Incident was a 20-year-old pilot. His name was George H.W. Bush.
Tiny Chichijima was about twice the size of Central Park but was of strategic importance. It was 500 miles from Japan with a radio tower which allowed the Japanese to send long-range messages.
NATIONAL AFFAIRS:
THE UNTHINKABLE CRIME. by TIME, Sep 16, 1946
A U.S. military commission on Guam last week read into the record a Japanese Army major’s confession of cannibalism. Unlike rumored instances elsewhere, this was no story of starving Japanese eating their own or enemy dead in an effort to survive. It was ritual cannibalism practiced on the bodies of U.S. flyers who had been decapitated after being shot down in the Bonin Islands. The sole excuse: “war madness.”
Though three other officers and ten smaller fry were also on trial, archvillain of the piece was Major Sueyo Matoba, a slim, mild, scholarly Jap with a sadistic nature which had won him the nickname “Tiger of Chichi Jima.” Major Matoba had stomach ulcers; he also loved sake.
By 1945, when the blockaded Bonins had no fresh meat, he hatched the idea that liver would soothe his gnawing stomach pains. The islands’ commander, fat, bullnecked Lieut. General Yoshio Tachibana, had ordered all captured U.S. flyers executed. That was the chance Matoba had been waiting for.
Cannibal Feast.
At least two aviators were beheaded publicly by Matoba’s own 308th Battalion, to buoy the troops’ morale. In each case, the liver was cut from the still-warm bodies, delivered to Matoba’s cook, cut into strips and served in sukiyaki. At one gay party, where the cannibal dish was washed down with sake, Tachibana was Matoba’s guest. That night, during a U.S. air attack, Matoba boasted that enemy bombs could not hurt him because he had eaten the enemy’s flesh.
Other unit commanders who wanted a morale-booster for their own men were given the privilege of staging the executions of flyers captured in their bivouac areas. On at least two occasions the livers of the executed men were served in the officers’ messes while strips of flesh cut from the legs were used to flavor enlisted men’s soup.
Ironically, the crime of devouring human flesh was so unthinkable that it was not listed in international law, was not clearly punishable as a crime in itself. The evidence* could be used only to support such formal charges as murder or prevention of honorable burial.
* Operating at the start only on suspicion, U.S. investigators got their first firm lead from Frederick Arthur Savory—a great-grandson of U.S.-born Nathaniel Savory who colonized the Bonins in 1830—when he returned from exile in Japan bearing gruesome reports of executions and cannibalism.
By mid-1945, due to the Allied naval blockade, the 25,000 Japanese troops on Chichijima had run low on supplies. However, although the daily ration of rice had been reduced from 400g per person a day to 240g, the troops were in no risk of starvation. In what later came to be called the Chichijima incident,[1] and February/March 1945[2] Tachibana’s senior staff turned to cannibalism. Nine American airmen escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichijima, eight of whom were captured. The ninth, the only one to evade capture, was future US President George H. W. Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot.[3][4] Over a period of several months, the prisoners were executed, and allegedly by the order of Major Sueyo Matoba, their bodies were butchered by the division’s medical orderlies and the livers and other organs consumed by the senior staff, including Matoba’s superior Tachibana.[5]
At the end of the war, Tachibana and his staff were arrested by the American occupation authorities and were deported to Guam, where they stood trial for war crimes in connection with the Chichijima Incident in August 1946.[6] However, as cannibalism was not covered under international law at the time, Tachibana was charged with “prevention of honorable burial”.[5] Tachibana was sentenced to death by hanging along with four other defendants, including Major Matoba.[7] He and the other defendants executed were buried in unmarked graves on Guam.[citation needed]. Wikipedia
