Allied POWs were spread out all over Japan, small camps
of only 500-1000 men. Outside the camps, the Japanese
population was eating miserably and the POWs were hardly
eating at all.
The POWs knew they had to slow down on their work
details or they would never see the States again. By the
end of 1944, the emperor of Japan knew that the war was
lost but he encouraged his commanders for one final
victory so that he may dictate the terms of peace. The emperor would never agree to unconditionally
surrender, a decision that cost Japan millions of lives.
The Allied push to recapture strategic islands in
the Pacific put Allied bombers within reach of Tokyo. POWs were
beginning to hear and experience the bombings from the new B-29
Superfortress. These massive planes were delivering a payload of
4-5 tons, with air raids lasting several hours. The early months of
1945 began with a different method of aerial attack, incendiary
bombing.
Modern Japanese cities were constructed mainly of wood and
Japanese society would soon be burned to the ground. Along side any
industrial district is heavily populated civilian areas. The
industrial center of Tokyo had more than one million people living
and working in a twelve mile area.
The night of March 9th of '45 saw the biggest air raid in
history to that date, 279 B-29s turned Tokyo into a solar flare.
Temperatures as high as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit turned buildings
into blast furnaces, cars simply melted and civilians disappeared.
This single bombing raid burned sixteen square miles of Tokyo,
80,000-100,000 Japanese died, 40,000 Japanese burned and a million
left homeless.
Downed aircrews who became POWs received the worst possible
treatment. As early as 1942, the Japanese command classified them
as war criminals. Any pilot or crew member captured were likely to
be tortured or killed as soon as their parachute folded on the
ground. In Singapore, four flyers were paraded through the streets
naked and then had their heads chopped off in public. At Hankow in
China, airmen were tortured and burned alive. At Kendebo, after a
speech by a major general, a decapitated fighter pilot was cut up,
fried, and eaten by 150 Japanese officers. Eight captured B-29
crewmen were turned over to the medical professors at Kyushu
Imperial University. The professors cut them up alive, stopping the
blood flow in an artery near the heart to see how long death took.
The fire bombing continued and by the end of June, 13 million
Japanese were homeless. The B-29s were dropping bombs at the rate
of 40,000 tons a month and all major industrial cities were left in
ashes. A naval blockade completely surrounded Japan and on July
25th, the Potsdam Declaration had warned the Japanese that if they
did not surrender unconditionally, their country would face 'prompt
and utter destruction.' Japan was defeated but the devastation
continued.
Allied commanders knew that an invasion into Japan would be
difficult. When the tiny
island of Corregidor was recaptured, five thousand Japanese
defended for eleven days to the death and only twenty were taken
prisoner. The battle for Iwo Jima captured 200 prisoners out of
21,000 Japanese soldiers. The capture of the island had cost nearly
25,000 American casualties.
On Okinawa, the carnage lasted for two
and a half months. The total number of Japanese killed, 110,000 -
Americans wounded, 37,000 - Americans killed, 12,500. Even more
disturbing was the fact that Okinawans were coerced into killing
their own family members. They were told by the Japanese command to
expect rape and murder after the American occupation. 95,000
Okinawans were killed before the surrender of the island. The
Japanese homeland was told to expect the same thing, they were told
that the American forces were going to rape your daughters, kill
your grandfathers and completely destroy all of Japan. The emperor
expected all of Japan to resist to the death.
The Japanese command had a policy as of late 1944 that stated,
'prevent prisoners of war from falling into enemy's hands.' In the
southern islands, Palawan was becoming very close to liberation.
The Japanese gathered the remaining 150 prisoners into an air raid
shelter, poured gasoline all around and lit the shelter and men on
fire. As men scrambled out engulfed in flames, machine guns were
waiting on them. Miraculously, ten of the men escaped. The men in
the camp at Davao were not killed, just left for dead. On Formosa,
an logged entry in the Japanese Headquarters journal recorded the
policy. 'Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or
however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons,
drowning, decapitation, or what, dispose of the prisoners as the
situation dictates. In any case it is the aim not to allow the
escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave
any traces.'
At Sandakan, two thousand to three thousand Australian and
British POWs were in the last stages of disease and starvation. In
January 1945, the Japanese began a 175 mile death march to Ranau.
Groups of fifty men were moved out in anticipation of an Allied
invasion. About a month into the POW march, Australian forces were
planning a rescue operation that would land only thirty miles from
the camp. The supreme commander Douglas MacArthur refused to
release any DC-3 airplanes to aid in the operation. This rescue
operation in March would have liberated approximately one thousand
POWs but instead the death march continued until August 1945. Only
six prisoners survived the Sandakan-Ranau death march while almost
2,400 POWs were killed in the process.
One successful liberation by Allied forces took place at
Cabanatuan. On January 30, 1945, the 6th Ranger Battalion along
with twelve Alamo scouts went thirty miles behind Japanese lines
and rescued all of the remaining 500 POWs. The Rangers wiped out
all of the Japanese forces but lost two of their own in the rescue
operation.
Then in early February, Bilibid Prison was liberated by an
advance patrol of the Army's 37th Infantry. The Japanese had left
only hours before leaving the prison unguarded and quickly the
relief of being liberated began to overwhelm the four hundred POWs
as well as a couple hundred civilian prisoners. In this group of
liberated prisons was the mascot of the 4th Marines, Soochow. That
small mongrel dog from Shanghai made it through the shelling of
Corregidor, the disease and starvation of prison camp and now was
free with his fellow China Marines.
The atomic age began on August 6th, 1944 when a single B-29
dropped "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima. The city was leveled
in seconds and one hundred thousand Japanese were dead. One factor
that favored Hiroshima as the target was the fact that Allied
intelligence said there were no POWs in the city. However, twenty
or so downed airmen were being held close to the hypocenter of the
blast. The ones who did not die in the blast were killed in the
streets, two beaten to death and another tied to a stake and stoned
to death.
President Harry Truman gave notice to Japan stating they must
give up or 'face a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has
never been seen on this earth.' The emperor chose to subject his
people to more devastation. On August 9th, Nagasaki was hit with
'Fat Man', a plutonium bomb that killed another 40,000 Japanese.
Thousands and thousands more would die later from diseases that
ravaged their bodies.
On August 15th, Japan's national radio announced a broadcast of
great importance and listeners were told to stand. After the
national anthem was played, a strange voice began to speak about
the complete destruction of the Japanese Empire. The voice said
that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allied forces.
The voice they were listening to was the 'Son of Heaven', the
emperor himself. Never in the history of Japan had the commoner
heard the voice of the emperor, and on this occasion he spoke about
Japan's complete defeat and the end of World War II.
The end of the war did not mean immediate liberation for all
POWs. Several downed airmen and other POWs were killed the very
afternoon after the emperor's radio broadcast. In Manchuria, the
infamous Unit 731 laboratory machine-gunned the remaining 600
Chinese and Manchurian laborers and destroyed all human
experimental subjects. Before the medical staff of two thousand
deserted their laboratories, they released thousands of infected
rats.
For most of the POWs, liberation did not come in a formal
announcement from the camp commander. Instead, work details were
cancelled and the guards gave excuses explaining why there would be
no more work details. The POWs knew the war was over when American
fighter planes and bombers began appearing overhead, thousands of
seabags and 55-gallon drums full of food, clothes, and cigarettes
were parachuted into the camps. In just seconds, the POWs finally
had a full stomach after 3 1/2 years of starvation. However, the
POWs were still being held by the Japanese and a nervous tension
began to settle in with the prisoners. One of the most painful
feelings the POWs had to endure the length of the war was never
knowing what the Japanese were going to do next. Based on what they
experienced with the Japanese, it would not have surprised any of
the prisoners if the guards started to massacre each and every one
of them.
For many of the POWs, they were told that they were going to be
moved to another camp, they boarded trains and trucks and were
driven to American forces. Now, finally the POWs knew they had
survived and were going home.
"We had hope. Now that was the thing. If you gave up
hope, then you'd die because there's nothing else to live for
then. But every day was the end of the war, see, and you'd go day
by day. At first you'd say, well, we surrendered in May and by
Christmas the Americans are going to be here and get us out. Of
course they never made it so then it would be the 4th of July and
then it would be Christmas again. So it just kept you going all
the time. . . . Oh, gosh the feeling that you had, boy, was just
like somebody had 10,000 pounds on your shoulder and all of a
sudden it was lifted. You were just elated that you were free
and, people just don't understand that if you don't have your
freedom, what it really feels like. It's just -- it's just bad.
That's all it is. It just holds you down and everything else. And
boy, from then lifting that weight and knew that the war was over
with and that we were free and that we were going -- that we were
going to go home and boy, you were just -- your smile was just
moving your ears away. You know, in other words you're smiling so
wide, you know, that it was really something though."
- Pete George
One year and nine months after the surrender of Corregidor, the
4th Marines were reactivated on Guadalcanal. Forming the nucleus of
the new 4th Regiment were the Marine raiders, some of the Corps'
most colorful and battle-hardened units. From the raiders the new
4th Marines inherited its famous regimental motto: "Hold High the
Torch." The 4th Marines battled and fought through Emirau, Guam and
Okinawa. After the surrender of Japan, Admiral Nimitz requested a
regimental combat team for immediate occupation duty. General
Shepherd was directed to furnish the team, which would be the first
foreign troops ever to occupy Japan's own soil. There was a certain
rightness to the fact that the 4th Marines received the honor.
As soon as the occupation regiment secured their positions in
Japan, the new 4th Marines went out to claim their own. A few of
the old 4th were already liberated and they got themselves to the
4th Marines area at the Yokosuka Naval Base. About 150 Marines of
the old 4th were treated to a joyous reunion with the new 4th
Marines. The number was but a fraction of the nearly 1,500
captured, of whom only about 1,000 survived to return to the
States. The extreme hardships of life in the Japanese POW camps
caused around 250 deaths. An additional 175 men lost their lives in
the hellships unknowingly bombed or torpedoed by Allied forces.
The former POWs were treated to a full banquet with a military
band and a particularly poignant moment to them was the receiving
of new Marine Corps emblems, their cherished identification. The
men of the Old 4th reviewed the New 4th as it staged a formal guard
mount in their honor.
" . . a bunch of Marines from the new 4th division,
came over and said, we want all of the old 4th Mariners out of
Shanghai. They rounded up 125 of us, took us over to Yokosuka,
and they had the Marine Corp band there. They had steaks. They
had chicken. They had every kind of food you could think of. We
could have anything we want and could request any music. Well,
the music we knew was way back in the '40s. They didn't even know
them. But the climax was that they threw a full battle dress
parade for us. That's something that you don't get until you
serve 30 years in the Marine Corp and we got a full battle dress
parade. We had the commanding general there with us and Clement's,
who was the one who organized the new 4th. And the irony of that
was that when they organized the new 4th division, they took the
flag and the standard which is a Marine Corp flag and kept them
covered and encased. They made a vow that they would not uncase
those colors until they came to Japan and liberated all of the
4th mariners and throw a big parade for us, and that was what
they did. They unfurled those colors and I think that you could
hear the uproar back in the States, you know. And they went
through that parade for us and everything. Well, you cried
really. Just no way that you could hold it back, you know. "
- Pete George
Just days after the war, reports of war crimes come pouring in
by the thousands. Wherever Japan invaded, atrocities followed and
not just against Allied prisoners. Men, women and children were
beaten, shot, tortured and slaughtered. China by far suffered the
most, Japan is to blame for over 10 million Chinese lives. A United
Nations Report in 1947 estimated that 9 million Chinese were killed
in the war, and "an enormous number" died of starvation and disease
in 1945 and 1946 in the prolonged famine that occurred as a result
of Japan's final devastating offensive in China. Japan's last,
vicious assault swept through the rice-producing regions of China.
Indonesia suffered greatly as well, around 130,000 Europeans
were interned and 30,000 perished, including 4,500 European women
and 2,300 children. Between 300,000 and 1 million Indonesians were
mobilized as slave labor, with many being sent outside the country
to work on the Burma-Siam "railroad of death". After the war, the
United Nations accepted a figure of 300,000 deaths among Indonesian
slave labor during the Japanese occupation.
The International Military Tribunal of the Far East, IMTFE, was
established in Tokyo. The Allies defined three classes of war
crimes and criminals. Class A referred to the policymakers who
conspired to wage war. Class B and Class C referred to the men who
ordered atrocities, allowed them to happen, or actually committed
them. Class A war criminals were convicted, sentenced and executed
in Sugamo Prison.
Twenty five Class A criminals were convicted and sentenced, 7 of
them to death, 16 to life. Five thousand seven hundred-plus Class B
and C criminals were brought to trial, about 3,000 were convicted
and sentenced, 920 were executed.
In peacetime, General MacArthur once again let down the men of
Bataan and Corregidor. At Macarthur's insistence, the emperor was
not held accountable for the actions of his island nation. During
Imperial Japan's reign of terror, every facet of the war was
committed in the name of the emperor. The general consensus of the
Japanese was that as a nation they were not to blame for the
slaughter committed during the war, only the militarists in the
government were at fault. These post war feelings carry over to
this very day, as many Japanese do not fault themselves and some
even believe that their aggressive behavior was committed out of
self defense and preservation of Asia as a whole.
MacArthur also cut a deal with the devil himself, the Japanese
medical Unit 731 was never held accountable for the unspeakable
horrors committed upon men and women as human guinea pigs. In a top
secret research facility called Unit 731, Japanese doctor Shiro
Ishii and his staff conducted diabolical weapons research that
claimed the lives of untold thousands--perhaps even hundreds of
thousands--of Chinese civilians. Unlike his equals in the Nazi
death camps, his deeds were not exposed and no one was ever
punished for the atrocities committed at Unit 731 and other similar
camps, because the documents recording their grim findings were
secretly sold to the United States in exchange for amnesty. Japan's
Unit 731 were years ahead in the development of biology and germ
warfare, and with the Cold War beginning as soon as WWII ended,
MacArthur forgave these murderous doctors and scientists as long as
the turned over their research data to American scientists.
The peace treaty of 1951, guided by MacArthur himself, was
deliberately worded to tie off the issue of Japanese liability.
During the war, POWs heard wild stories about compensation for
their suffering: free homes, free cars and lifetime supplies of
this and that when actually all they received was their military
back pay. Japan was truly destroyed economically after the war but
the years since the war has seen Japan rise to one of the world's
strongest economies. Japan to this day hides behind the peace
treaty as an excuse not to pay reparations to the men and women who
suffered so badly.
As the POWs grew older and the effects of malnourishment,
physical beatings, and emotional pain began to take their toll, a
new fight laid ahead. EX-POWs had to fight the bureaucracy of the
United States Veterans Administration for benefits and pension
purposes. The VA was unresponsive, skeptical, and not ready to take
a man's word about the beating he took that ruined his back or when
a man had to survive 3 1/2 years on a vitamin deficient diet. To
this day EX-POWs have to explain their ordeal to twenty and thirty
year old VA doctors, many of whom have never heard of Corregidor,
the hellships or Japanese slave labor camps.
All EX-POWs have one common goal to pass along to future
generations, REMEMBER THEM. Remember the men who died in battle,
remember the men who marched days upon days with no food or water,
remember the men who were beaten when they worked and killed when
they did not. Remember the men who had to wait to die in the Zero
Ward, remember the men who lost their lives at sea after their hellship was sunk, and remember the men who survived their 3 1/2
year ordeal.
All prisoners of the Japanese will tell you, we can
forgive but we can't forget.
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