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War Crimes in the Pacific: This article refers to terrible common crimes committed by Japanese Naval Personnel (military Medical or Naval equivalent) and Kempeitai Military police during World War II . Examples of these atrocities:
This concerns the criminal acts committed by Japanese Naval personnel during "medical experiments" on American POWs. Specifically, experiments where prisoners were injected with live cultures of Streptococcus bacteria and others where tourniquets were applied to limbs for several hours to evaluate a prisoner's resistance. Several prisoners died from shock after these were removed.
Before the capture of Wake island, the Japanese Navy took revenge on these American civil prisoners, shooting all 98 to death.
During and after the retirement of Japanese naval forces, Japanese forces murdered any one suspected of spying in the last days of the war to take revenge for war losses.
Of the 51 American pilots who participated in the decisive Midway battle, only 18 failed to return. Of 41 American torpedo planes sent, 37 were lost and other losses in total of 80 American planes lost in battle. Of these losses some were caught in Japanese Navy hands as POWs or are executed. Specifically American Ensign Wesley Osmus (from Chicago) assigned to CV Yorktown and Ensign Frank O'Flaherty assigned to CV Enterprise. They were captured by the Japanese Navy during battle and held in the destroyers Arashi and Nagara respectively. The prisoners were subjected to intense interrogations from their Japanese captors. Several days later the first of the American prisoners was murdered with an axe and thrown into the sea. The others were executed and thrown into the ocean.
This refers to Japanese Transport Prisoner vessels, called "Hell ships or Death Vessels" by allied POWs. Many of these "passengers" did not survive the journeys from to capture to prisoners centers. Many of these vessels were sunk during battles. Notable is the case of Oryoko Maru, on which some 1,300 prisoners died en route from the Philippines to Japan in 1944. Similar fates occurred at prisoners transport from Wake to Japanese held territories.
Personal revenge taken for five Japanese seamen against the Americans in 1942, for Japanese navy loses in Wake battle.
In the New Guinea island area one Japanese navy officer was ordered to murder one Australian prisoner. The prisoner petitioned for his life but the Japanese officer applied the Bushido Code strictly. At the same time in Rabaul (the greatest Japanese fortress during war) Japanese inflicted bad treatment on 1,000 American and British prisoners and ordered them to walk 165 miles in bad terrain. Only 183 survived this trip. In Celebes Island, a Japanese officer ordered the crucifying of four airmen (included one American) and in Amboina Island other Japanese military inflicted cruel treatment against Americans, Dutch and British prisoners
Japanese forces committed other crimes in these islands. Other nationalities who were victims of these were Swiss and Spanish (including Spanish in the Philippines).
Warrant Officer Tatanichi Manaka in person beheaded American Crewmen of a downed North American B-25 of USAAF, in Mille Atoll, during February 1944.
During the voyage of the Japanese prisoner vessel Nitta Maru, the Japanese Lieutenant Toshio Sato, with a Katana Sword, in person and in front of more eyewitnesses (150 Japanese seamen), beheaded five Americans POWs (3 seamen and 2 marines) during travel in the Pacific sea en route to Japanese Prisoner camps in Woosung, near at Shanghai on the China Mainland. The bodies of unfortunates were used later for Bayonet practices on the vessel. The rest continued their horrible voyage to the prisoner camp. The other 380 American prisoners which the Japanese retained in Wake Island were used to rebuild the islands defenses. In October 1943, when Japanese expected the American and allied invasion, the commander ordered mass executions of all these survivors.
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