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Q. We know that many WWII German POWs were placed stateside and worked on farms until the war ended, but what happened to Japanese POWs?Japanese prisoners of war in america PACIFIC HISTORICAL REVIEWThe US maintained 425,000 enemy during the Second World War in prisoner-of-war camps from New York to California. The majority were Germans, followed by Italians and Japanese. 5,424 Japanese soldiers and sailors most captured involuntarily during the bloody battles of the South Pacific, tested the formidable ingenuity of the War Department. The very first prisoner Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, commander of a Japanese midget submarine which had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor, abandoned his damaged craft and swam for shore. As he crawled up onto Waimanalo Beach on Oahu, he was captured by one of the nervous military patrols positioned to repel a feared full-scale invasion. When it finally became evident that the disheveled POW knew less about Tokyo's war plans than did his captors, he was moved under heavy guard to a hastily constructed detention camp at Sand Island, Hawaii, where he remained until his transfer to the mainland on February 29, 1942. For the next six months, as German and Italian POWs poured into England and the United States from the battlefields of North Africa, Ensign Sakamaki remained the only Japanese military captive in American hands. In July 1942, he was finally joined by nine others.War Department's Provost Marshal General's Office created a network of permanent POW camps as well as hundreds of small branch camps designed as satellites around the larger camps located at or near existing military bases. Each camp averaged 2,500 prisoners, and adhered generally to the requirements of the Geneva Convention that the layout and food, sanitary, and health services be identical with that provided to American armed forces.There were several reasons for the substantial disparity in the number of prisoners from Europe, and those few from the Pacific. Foremost was the fact that unlike the German and Italian prisoners of war, who had been schooled in the provisions of the Geneva Convention, the average Japanese soldier was molded to prefer death to surrender. Moreover, the official Japanese Military Field Code commanded each Japanese soldier to remember that "rather than live and bear the shame of imprisonment by the enemy, he should die and avoid leaving a dishonorable name!" Capture by the enemy, even if wounded or unconscious and unable to move, was equated with irrevocable shame. Japanese soldiers were directed to save the last round of ammunition for themselves or to charge the enemy in a suicidal assault. Even on very rare occasions when a Japanese soldier might have been unable or unwilling to take his own life, the Pentagon's official histories of the war candidly admit that he might not have survived the heat of combat: "American troops, who were fearful of the widely publicized treacherousness of the enemy, were reluctant to take prisoners."Major battles in the Pacific theater often accounted for no more than a dozen Japanese captives, as against thousands of enemy killed. During the Burma campaign, for example, Commonwealth and American forces captured only 142 enemy prisoners (most of whom were badly wounded or unconscious) while killing 17,166!7 On Guadalcanal, between January 1 and February 15, 1943, the American XIV Corps took only eighty-four Japanese prisoners, thirty-three of whom were too sick or wounded to walk. In fact, from the opening salvo of the Pacific campaign, through the Battles of the Java Sea, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Savo Island, Bismarck Sea, New Guinea, Kula Gulf, Bougainville, Tarawa, and Makin, a grand total of only 604 Japanese were taken prisoner by the Allied forces. Not until the beginning of the Philippine campaigns in October 1944 did the number of Japanese prisoners of war approach the five thousand mark, including a twenty-nine-year-old sniper captured on Eniwetok-the only Japanese woman soldier taken prisoner in the entire war. The war was nearly over before significantly large numbers of Japanese soldiers, usually malnourished and disillusioned, surrendered to Commonwealth and American forces.The second reason for the low number of Japanese prisoners in the United States was the War Department's decision to turn the majority of its captives from the Pacific theater over to its allies. Since American forces lacked both the personnel and the rear-area facilities to detain large numbers of prisoners, an agreement was reached with Australia in September 1942 by which all captured Japanese-except for those whose potential military intelligence value necessitated their shipment to the United States proper-were turned over to the Commonwealth of Australia. In return, the United States assumed a proportionate share of the cost of their maintenance (through lend-lease aid), and was responsible for their final disposition at the end of the war.10 Thus, the Japanese prisoners who arrived in the U. S. were either brought in for special interrogation or because they were closer to the United States when captured than to the holding pens in Australia or New Zealand.The Japanese prisoners arrived in America at Angel Island, California, a small mountainous island in San Francisco Bay. A quarantine station of the Immigration Service before the war, Camp Angel Island was converted by the army into a temporary transit center for the incoming groups of Japanese captives before they were routed to the main interrogation center at Tracy, California. While at Angel Island the prisoners were deloused and their belongings disinfected;_____________________________________________________________________________Japanese Prisoners of War in Americaforms were processed and serial numbers assigned, and the prisoners given a much-needed medical examination. The majority of cases of malaria, syphilis, skin disease, intestinal worms, and minor combat wounds were treated in camp, and those few who required more serious treatment were cared for at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco. When it came time to fill out the mandatory postal card to inform their families of their safety, and to file their names with the International Red Cross Prisoner Information Bureau, nearly all the Japanese captives resolutely requested that their families in Japan not be advised of their imprisonment."l Better they be considered dead than dishonored by captivity.Then, finally, came their first meals in America, and the prisoners were astonished at the quality and quantity of their food. Indeed, they found themselves better fed in captivity than in their own army. A typical menu was that offered at Camp Angel Island on September 16, 1944:Breakfast: Sausages, rice, browned crusts, apples, coffee, milk, sugar.Lunch: Sukiyaki, cabbage salad, rice, caramel pudding, water.Dinner: Spaghetti and hash, baked tomatoes, lettuce and tomato salad, rice, cakes, cocoa.While it would not be long before both the Japanese and German prisoners demanded menus more to their national tastes-which the War Department, anxious to protect the interests of American prisoners in enemy hands, quickly produced-the newly arrived Japanese captives had every reason to be calmed by their treatment thus far. For the few days until their shipment to the Tracy interrogation center, the Japanese spent their time listening to the camp gramophone, playing cards and Mah-Jong, and whispering among themselves as they strove to understand the ulterior motives of their captors.The American authorities did, indeed, have ulterior motives. Aside from Washington's general adherence to the Geneva Convention, which, admittedly, was losing its appeal as atrocity stories began to pour in from enemy camps, the War Department was following a specific and calculated plan of treatment. Since the main reason for the prisoners' shipment to the United States was for interrogation purposes, the confidence of the incoming POWs had to be won over. The task appeared formidable: the prisoners feared and despised their captors, both militarily and culturally-no less, in fact, than they were themselves hated in return. Moreover, the captives loathed themselves for their failure to die in combat. Yet army intelligence quickly detected an encouraging pattern among these seemingly overwhelming obstacles.The POWs' psychological makeup evolved into three distinct phases. Immediately upon capture, and up to forty-eight hours afterwards, the Japanese prisoners were of little value to the American interrogators. They were certain that they would be tortured and killed, and were either unresponsive or the information they offered was confused and unreliable. After several days, the army found that a second phase set in, as the prisoners realized that they were not to be tortured or in any way mistreated. This was the moment that the intelligence officers awaited; the prisoners' fear was changing to gratitude and they were anxious to reciprocate by talking freely. For the next ten days to two weeks, the prisoners were most receptive and informative. Then came the third and final phase, when the Japanese captives grew accustomed to the plentiful food and kind treatment, and became annoyed at being questioned. Continued interrogation only drove them into a shell of indifference and they were no longer reliable sources of military information.The interrogation of the Japanese prisoners taught army inteligence officers several additional curious lessons. For example, no threat of physical violence or solitary confinement succeeded in extracting information from a prisoner as effectively as the simple threat of forwarding his name to his relatives in Japan. Another lesson was the captives' realization that they knew no rules of life which applied in this situation. They were dishonored and their life as Japanese had ended. When their earnest requests to be allowed to kill themselves were denied, many discarded their traditional views and became model prisoners. An American official later recalled that "Old [Japanese] Army hands and long-time extreme nationals located ammunition dumps, carefully explained the disposition of Japanese forces, wrote our propaganda and flew with our bombing pilots to guide them to military targets. It was as if they had turned over a new page; as if, having put everything they had into one line of conduct and failed at it, they naturally took up a different line." One group of Japanese prisoners of war changed its outlook so dramatically that the men announced that "they had been badly misled by the Emperor and the Japanese military clique ... and wished to fight back to Japan side by side with Allied soldiers!"Still another important lesson discovered in the interrogation of the Japanese prisoners was that, unlike German or Italian captives who had to be questioned in isolation before older prisoners had the opportunity to intimidate them or alter their stories, the new prisoners were far more willing to talk freely after being consoled by those captured before them. Time and again it was found that the old prisoners advised the new ones to disclose everything to the authorities lest they all be blamed for lying or falsifying military information. One American army report noted that on numerous occasions, "a Japanese prisoner who had been doubtful regarding certain points would come of his own volition the following day and state that he had discussed the point with other members of the same group and his version was right-or wrong-as the case might be." Having learned these lessons about Japanese captives at the interrogation outposts on Guadalcanal and New Guinea, American intelligence officers now brought them to bear on select prisoners being shipped from Angel Island to Tracy.There were two interrogation installations in the United States during the war: Fort Hunt, a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp about seventeen miles from Washington, D.C., and Byron Hot Springs, an isolated spot west of San Francisco near Tracy. Both were kept so secret that architectural plans used by construction workers were labeled "Officers' School," although these men must have wondered why officers needed eight-foot fences, hidden microphones in the long rows of cells, barred windows, and heavy gates at the entrances from the main highway. The locations were known only as "P.O. Box 1142" and "P.O. Box 541," respectively. While, strictly speaking, these interrogation centers contravened or, at the very least, "bent" a dozen or so articles of the Geneva Convention of 1929 relating to the rights of prisoners of war, the War Department was convinced that not only was the potential military information well worth the international ramifications but also that the treatment of American prisoners in Japanese hands could not have been made much worse by violations of the Geneva Accords. In any case, the interrogations were so shrouded in secrecy that there was little chance of disclosure.The interrogations were generally conducted in an informal atmosphere by American intelligence officers, many of whom were Japanese-American specialists from the army's Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) in Minnesota. It was a closed society; each of the forty-five interrogators was assigned to one prisoner whom he continued to interview until the authorities were satisfied that no further military information could be learned from the captive. The few surviving time sheets indicate that the interviews usually lasted from forty-five minutes to an hour and were conducted at a rate of two or three each day for a week or more.Yet, however informal these interviews, the interrogators were well aware of the seriousness of their task, and approached each Japanese prisoner in deadly earnest. Every question was planned, and the interrogators followed a lengthy and detailed checklist of questions concerning military equipment, fuel, rations, morale at the front as well as at home, rumors, personalities of commanders, postwar expectations, and so forth. The resulting reports, by contrast, were brief usually two or three single-spaced pages-concise, and frequent. Rather than chance the accumulation of critical military information, the interrogators nearly every four days forwarded their findings: a potpourri of items ranging from the deteriorating quality of Japanese clothing to the number of boiler rooms in the enemy aircraft carrier Hiryu. As the war progressed and the number of incoming Japanese captives increased substantially, so did the number of interrogations and reports. During 1944 the number of Japanese prisoners of war interrogated at Tracy were as follows:January 13 August 174February 5 September 74March 36 October 101April 132 November 75May 105 December 129June 87 July 146TOTAL 1,07723When it was clear that the prisoners had no further information of value, they were assembled into groups and shipped to several POW camps across the country.The War Department's network of prisoners-of-war camps by mid-1943 had reached five hundred main and branch enclosures and covered the nation from coast to coast. Their prime task, of course, was to house the thousands of Germans and Italians arriving each month from the battlefields of North Africa, which reached 360,000 by 1944. Since the number of Japanese prisoners was so small, they were simply shunted to existing camps as space and transportation became available. Although they would appear in dozens of camps, often just in transit, the bulk of the Japanese spent the remaining war years in one of three camps: McCoy, Wisconsin; Clarinda, Iowa; and Angel Island, California. While the largest and most representative was McCoy, the distribution of the Japanese in the United States was as follows:CAMP SER VICE OFFICERS NCO ENLISTED TOTAL COMMANDAngel Island 9 24 71 312 407Clarinda, Iowa 7 - 73 982 1,055McCoy, Wisconsin 6 3 10 2,749 2,762Meade, Maryland 3 1 - 1 2Kenedy, Texas 8 91 499 - 590Madigan General 9 3 - 2 524 Hospital, Washington, D.C.Camp McCoy, which began, typically, as a CCC camp in 1935, was located some five miles from the small town of Sparta, Wisconsin. It was ideal as both a training center and a prison camp since it was isolated yet located on the main line of the Milwaukee Railway between Milwaukee and Minneapolis, as well as on the branch line of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. Commissioned as an internment site by the Provost Marshal General's Office in March 1942,25 McCoy within weeks became the new home for 293 enemy aliens brought in by the FBI (106 Germans, 5 Italians, and 181 Japanese), and one Japanese prisoner of war (none other than Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki from Hawaii). Eventually, he would be joined by nearly three thousand other Japanese military prisoners, as well as some one thousand Germans, and five hundred Koreans who had been captured serving with the Japanese. Despite the apparently substantial numbers of enemy prisoners at Camp McCoy, they constituted only a small segment of the tumultuous events taking place there. Thousands of soldiers-indeed several hundred thousand soldiers-were trained at McCoy and prepared for shipment overseas. The few thousand foreign prisoners of war, relegated to a remote area of the military post and heavily guarded, went almost unnoticed.The world for the Japanese prisoners consisted of Compounds 1 and 2 (with the Germans in Compounds 3 and 4, and the Koreans in Compound 5). Within each compound were two rows of old CCC barracks with approximately fifty army double-decked bunks in each. Several additional barracks were used as mess halls, and one barrack in each compound was fitted as a day-room and equipped with furniture, playing cards, a gramophone, and an assortment of Japaneselanguage books donated by the YMCA. Each camp was required by the Geneva Convention to maintain a canteen where, during certain hours, the prisoners could purchase toothpaste, shoe polish,. handkerchiefs, candy, crackers, cigarettes, soft drinks, and locally grown produce at the prevailing market price. In some camps even beer and light wines were permitted at the prisoner's own expense.Each enlisted POW received eighty cents a day to spend at the camp canteen. A trifling sum by today's standards, perhaps, but during the war years it would buy eight packs of cigarettes or eight bottles of beer. Officers were paid a graduated salary based on rank-lieutenants, $15 per month; captains, $25; and majors through generals, $35-despite the fact that American POWs in Japanese hands were rarely paid anything. A later agreement with the Japanese government that was publicized as the Army's Prisoner of War Circular No. 28, 6 May 1944, listed the following higher salaries for captive Japanese officers, though they were now to be charged for the cost of their food, clothing, laundry, and orderly service:Equivalent grades in United States Army Navy Monthly Pay Army Navy Taisho Taisho $128.91 General Admiral Chujo Chujo 113.29 Lieutenant General Vice Admiral Shosho Shosho 97.66 Major General Rear Admiral Taisa Taisa 81.08 Colonel Captain Chusa Chusa 62.90 Lieutenant Colonel Commander Shosa Shosa 45.51 Major Lieutenant Commander Taii Itto (Tokumu Taii 40.53 TaiiNito ii Itto 37.11 Taii Santo Taii Nito 32.23 Captain Lieutenant Taii Santo 28.71 Chu Itto Chui First Lieutenant Lieutenant junior grade Chui Nito Tokumu Chuif 28.00 Shoi cShoibkumu Shoi o Shoi 28.00 5.00 Second Lieutenant Ensign (Tokumu ShoiSince War Department regulations (and common sense) prohibited the prisoners from obtaining real money which might enable them to bribe guards or make good their escape, their pay was maintained in a U.S. Treasury Trust Fund (#218915), and all sums were paid to the captives in canteen coupons.While the military was responsible for the overall maintenance of the prisoners' existence, nearly everything else, the daily amenities of life, were supplied by a religious or humanitarian organization-usually the YMCA. The War Prisoners Aid of the YMCA, as the captives soon learned, constituted an influence over their lives second only to the U.S. Army. The Japanese prisoners, no less than the Germans, Italians, and Koreans, received from the YMCA such items as their stationery, musical instruments, library books, sports equipment, phonograph records, hobby materials, handicraft tools, and religious items of all sorts. No requests were too insignificant. During one of his monthly inspection visits to Camp McCoy, for example, the representative of the YMCA, Dr. Howard Hong, noted that the prisoners appreciated his organization's earlier donations of Japanese volumes for the library, the colored crepe paper and thin wire needed by those making artificial flowers, and the Mah-Jong sets and Go games. But he cited the need for incense sticks for Buddhist services; a clarinet, flute, snare drum, and large harmonica; and some tennis equipment. He closed his report with the conclusion that the "Health and morale among the prisoners are excellent."Yet beneath this idyllic surface, there were serious problems in the Japanese prisoner community. A major difficulty was the strain which existed between the three nationalities imprisoned at McCoy. The Germans in the adjoining compound, separated as much by their respective racist ideologies as by reminders that Germany and Japan had been enemies in the First World War. The German prisoners, on the other hand, openly ridiculed their Japanese allies, often gesturing or mimicking across the fence that separated them. Every evening was potentially explosive since they all shared the same canteen, barber shop, and PX facility. "After dinner, they gulp their daily ration of two bottles of 3.2 beer and soft drinks," camp commander Lt. Colonel Horace I. Rogers told a reporter from Collier's, "but for each race, the other is nonexistent. They never look at each other, even in furtive curiosity. They hate each other."30 Relations between the truculent Japanese and the more cooperative Koreans were even more acrimonious and deeply rooted in the centuries of discrimination and subjugation by the Japanese over their peninsular neighbor. The capture of the Koreans gave them an opportunity to assert their national independence. Visiting State Department, Red Cross, and YMCA officials were always pleasantly surprised to learn that the Koreans generally requested nothing more than Christian Bibles and cloth to make Korean flagsrequests that the authorities were understandably happy to grant.Visiting officials to the camp were soon gritting their teeth when it came to meeting with the spokesman for the Japanese prisoners who, at Camp McCoy, was Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki. The complaints by the Japanese were petty and unending. They did not want to work with American women in the camp laundry; they resented being housed with three Marshall Island natives; they demanded coal for the barracks stoves instead of the wood made available by the camp authorities; they wanted more books and dictionaries; they did not want American personnel present in their barracks during Saturday morning cleaning; and on and on. On several occasions, the Japanese went over the head of the American camp commander, Lt. Colonel Horace Rogers, and lodged complaints with the Spanish embassy in Washington, D.C., which undertook to look after their interests. Each such complaint was immediately followed by a visit from the Spanish consul in nearby Chicago who would investigate the charges and help smooth out the difficulties.Finally, there were major divisions and animosities within the Japanese prisoner community itself. The most persistent and difficult problem was the rivalry between army and navy personnel. While such rivalries are common to all armed services, they were especially prevalent among captured survivors of a society based on the veneration of the warrior, and exacerbated by the need to blame someone for their nation's military defeats. Naval prisoners far outnumbered those from the army, and each incoming group of Japanese sailors from the battles of Midway or the Coral Sea increased the preponderance of naval prisoners over their increasingly hostile army colleagues.Another problem among the prisoners derived from the timing of their capture. The later in the war they were captured, the greater the implied resistance to the enemy, and the less shame and dishonor for having been captured. Consequently, each arriving group of prisoners viewed those who greeted them with arrogance and disdain, forcing yet another layer of hostility on an already highly anxious and introspective prisoner community. Each party was aware that the next layer of hostility was only as far away as the next arriving group of captives.Lastly, there was the ever-present question of honor and suicide. While suicide in a prison camp was not as glorious as death on the battlefield, to some, death by any means was preferable to living with the shame of failure. "Our desire for suicide, however, was thwarted on every hand," recalls Kazuo Sakamaki rather melodramatically, considering the tiny number of self-inflicted injuries among the Japanese POWs. "We had no knives to cut our throats. We had no ropes to hang ourselves with. Some of us banged our heads against every object in sight; some men refused to eat. And yet we did not die.... Our life was a dilemma. We wanted to die and yet we could not die. We wanted to kill ourselves and we could not." This issue was nearly always at the boiling point and was kept there by a small number of unruly hard-liners who rejected any compromise with their required fate. On occasion they went so far as to challenge the authority of their ranking POW officer, the venerable naval Lt. Commander Kametaro Matsumoto, for attempting to promote peaceful hobbies among them. While their challenge failed to dislodge the old officer, or ferment suicidal militarism among the prisoners, or swing control from the naval to the army officers, the event helped highlight the problems with which the American authorities had to contend.The War Department had a solution to these difficulties: put the prisoners to work. The captives would be kept occupied and, it was hoped, too tired to contemplate mischief. They could also help alleviate the domestic labor shortage caused by the shipment of millions of Americans overseas. The Geneva Convention permitted belligerents to utilize the labor of able prisoners of war, officers excepted, so long as their labor did not aid directly in the war effort. Such work fell into two broad categories: maintenance of military installations and contract work for private employers. With the initiation of the government's labor program on January 10, 1943, the German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war immediately began performing a variety of menial and clerical jobs within their own compounds and on military bases across the nation. They crated and packaged supplies, took inventories of equipment, operated laundries and sawmills, loaded creosote poles, marked surplus property, worked on company trash details, toiled at general construction work, did kitchen work, and served as orderlies to their senior officers. Contract labor was a different matter, though no less important. Farmers and small businessmen located near POW camps petitioned the local office of the War Manpower Commission for groups of twenty or more prisoners, although the regulations, certifications of need, objections from labor unions, and bureaucratic delays often exasperated all but the most laborstarved employers.The more than five thousand Japanese prisoners posed a particular problem. Unlike the German prisoners who went to work with the knowledge that it was not only unavoidable but perhaps even preferable to idleness, the Japanese proved to be poor workers. They were wracked by inner conflicts, indecisively led by their noncommissioned officers, and, most importantly, distrusted by their captors. Anti-Japanese sentiment was implacable in some American communities. When, for instance, the War Relocation Board released three Japanese Americans from an internment camp on the West Coast and shipped them to the labor-starved town of Marengo, Illinois, the residents arose in a storm of protest. The three startled farm boys from California were marched back to the train station by an angry mob led by the mayor, the president of the Park Board, and the commander of the local post of the American Legion. Officials recognized that this community, or others like it, would likely respond no better to the appearance of Japanese military captives. The result was that the overwhelming majority of Japanese prisoners worked on military posts, under guard, rather than on contract work in the civilian sector. To overcome the reluctance of some commanders to make maximum use of their Japanese prisoner-of-war labor, General Wilhelm D. Styer, commander of the U.S. Army in the Western Pacific, thundered: "We must overcome the psychology that you cannot do this or that. I want to see these prisoners work like piss ants! If they do not work, put them on bread and water!"Yet a portion of the Japanese prisoners, in some cases as many as fifteen to twenty percent, simply refused to work. On a few occasions, the cause was strife within the prisoner community, especially the refusal of army prisoners to take orders from naval prisoners. But most of those who refused to work did so on the grounds that their labor would assist the American war effort. Some feigned illness while others refused to work. Nearly every routine camp report to the Provost Marshal General's Office (PMGO) mentions such recalcitrant prisoners.The problem was how to get the prisoners to work without violating their rights or jeopardizing the safety of American prisoners. For the first two years of the war, the War Department prevented POW camp commanders from exercising any more pressure than a reprimand, an admonition, the withholding of privileges, and, in extreme cases, a court martial. Generally speaking, these were useless gestures that held no fear for combat-hardened enemy soldiers. Finally, in October 1943, the PMGO reinterpreted Article 27 of the Geneva Convention to permit the use of reasonable pressure in getting prisoners to comply with a work order. Called "administrative pressure," the policy authorized the camp commander to impose a restricted diet and reduced privileges for any recalcitrant prisoner. This was not a punishment, the War Department reasoned, since the prisoner could terminate the pressure at any time simply by complying with the order; such "administrative pressure" was just an inducement to obey a proper command.Given this new latitude, prison camp commanders now met each potentially explosive situation with vigor. At Camp McCoy, for example, even the normally "generous and kind" Lt. Colonel Rogers startled his Japanese POWs by his swift action. According to an amused delegation from the Spanish consulate:On May 30, 1944, about 22 Japanese officers ordered their men not to work. Colonel Rogers spent several hours in attempting to persuade the officer prisoners to change their minds. That night he approached the 90 non-coms and asked them whether they would cooperate with him. After 9 had absolutely refused to cooperate he put them in the guard house for the night and made no attempt to interview the rest.The next morning the prisoners staged a sit-down strike, refusing to turn out for roll-call, breakfast or work. After issuing a clear warning to the noncoms, Colonel Rogers ordered out his troops with bayonets and forced all prisoners to march at the double five miles to a place of work, to work all morning without the usual 10 minutes rest every hour, and to return to the camp at the double at noon. The prisoners of course became exhausted and about 12 stragglers received minor bayonet wounds. A few were so overcome that they had to be picked up by a truck which was ordered along for the purpose. This treatment effected a cure, for a spokesman for the non-coms informed Colonel Rogers that there would be no further trouble.Each incident had to be handled individually. Normally, prisoners who refused to obey a work order were sentenced to the stockade for fourteen days; in extreme cases the prisoners spent fourteen days at hard labor. In rare instances when the number of striking POWs ran into the hundreds and posed the threat of a camp uprising, the troops were called out. On only one occasion-when three Japanese naval prisoners being treated for tuberculosis at Denver's Fitzsimons General Hospital rushed their guards-were prisoners shot dead on the spot.Curiously, the War Department's greatest fear never materialized. From the moment that the first shiploads of prisoners arrived in the United States, the government worried that thousands of escaped Nazi and Japanese prisoners would sabotage and rape their way across the country while American military forces were locked in combat overseas. Elaborate precautions were taken in the location and construction of the camps, and camp commanders were encouraged to find the most efficient balance of security measures from among such options as additional floodlights, patrolling war dogs, the censoring of prisoner mail, sporadic bed checks, a network of prisoner informants, shakedown inspections, and a general aura of firm military discipline. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the symbol of domestic security, heightened public anxiety by warning that "even one escaped prisoner at large, trained as he is in the techniques of destruction, is a danger to our internal security, our war production, and the lives of our citizens!" Communities which hosted Japanese prisoners, such as Sparta, Wisconsin, near McCoy, were constantly warned to be especially vigilant and to report immediately any suspicious activities. "The Japanese, with their reputation for trickiness and sneakiness," the authorities cautioned, "are apt to make a greater attempt to disturb our homefront security than the Germans ever did."Despite the many obstacles to prisoner escape-substantial security measures; a fatiguing labor program; an array of artistic, musical, athletic, educational, and spiritual outlets; and the most compelling obstacle of all: there was simply nowhere to go-some captives still sought to flee. Since most prisoners in the U.S. were German, they not surprisingly accounted for most of the escapes, 1,036.41 Some escapees merely walked away while a guard's attention was directed elsewhere,while others cut fences, passed through the camp gates in makeshift American uniforms, smuggled themselves out aboard commercial delivery trucks, jumped over the compound fences from barracks rooftops, climbed out of hospital windows, or tunneled underground. The Japanese, to the government's astonishment and relief, seldom attempted to escape. Unlike the Germans who were breaking out at the monthly rate of three escapes per ten thousand captives, the Japanese attempted only fourteen escapes throughout the war, all from McCoy. The first to flee was Terumasa Kibata, who slipped away from his work detail, ten miles north of the camp, on July 3, 1944. While the records indicated that Kibata suffered from shell shock and was probably not in full control of his faculties, a near-hysterical search was initiated by the police, military authorities, and FBI. Two army planes were brought in for air surveillance. Even before this collective weight could be brought fully to bear, a bewildered Kibata wandered back into camp the day after his escape. He explained to the startled guards that he had hoped to "catch a train," though he was unsure about his destination or purpose for escape.The next escapes did not occur until nearly a year later. During the early morning hours of May 22, 1945, three Japanese POWs, Takeo Nakamura, Kokei Tanaka, and Hajime Hashimoto, all twenty-four years of age, dug under a fence enclosure in what was probably the most well-planned escape of them all. They had plotted since September of the previous year, stealing a Texaco road map from the glove compartment of the camp ambulance, a pair of bolt cutters from a storage area, and extra food from the mess hall. When finally apprehended, Nakamura had a duffel bag filled with enough items to cover a two-page list by the FBI, and included a styptic pencil, sixteen assorted fish hooks, a hundred "U.S. Army" matchbooks, and seven changes of socks. A Wisconsin farmer spotted him a week after his escape as he poled down the Mississippi River on a makeshift raft near the town of Prairie du Chien. His comrades did not make it that far. They were captured several days later, less than twenty miles west of the camp and near the community of West Salem, as they marched along Highway 16 in their Japanese uniforms with the letters "PW" stenciled in bright yellow on both front and back.No sooner had local farmers begun to relax than two more Japanese broke out in early July. The populace was warned that the POWs would try to steal food from local farms or take milk from cows in pastures, and that "these men, with their strange philosophy of 'dying for the Emperor,' could cause a great deal of damage. Residents in the county are urged to report anything they may see or hear that might aid authorities to track down the Japs." After being gone about a week, one escapee was captured at a local farm where he had knocked at the back door, rubbed his stomach to indicate to the startled farmwife that he was hungry, and was given some bread by the terrified woman who then dashed to the telephone. The highway patrol took him into custody as he waited politely at the back door for the next course. His comrade was apprehended on July 17 on the outskirts of West Salem, Wisconsin, where he was discovered by a Chicago & Northwestern railroad policeman huddled in a boxcar. He offered no resistance and, in the vernacular of the front-page news announcement, "the Nip was returned to confinement." Immediately, however, another Japanese prisoner slipped away. The local population, doubtless beginning to wonder about the highly touted security measures at McCoy, girded themselves for yet another "desperate Jap on the loose." The police and FBI were alerted as usual, dog patrols scoured the countryside, and two days later the escapee was sighted while creeping along the outer perimeter of the camp on his hands and knees. Apprehended without resistance, he told his captors that he escaped for fear that he would be beaten by the other prisoners who suspected him of being an informant. He was nonetheless returned to his compound with unknown results.Four more escapes occurred before the end of the war, but all the captives were returned in a matter of days. The last Japanese prisoner to escape during the war was Yuzo Ohashi, a recent captive from Iwo Jima. Early on the morning of August 29, 1945, he slipped away from his work detail and, under the mistaken belief that "Mexico was located about 300 miles south of Camp McCoy," spent the next four days moving south and foraging for food. He was apprehended on September 2-the day of Japan's official surrender-at Cashton, Wisconsin, about twenty-two miles south of McCoy. He told his guards that Japan had clearly lost the war and that he did not wish to return home in shame. It was escape, Ohashi explained, or suicide.As the end of the war with Japan approached, American authorities worried about the possibility of mass suicides among the POWs. Imaginations ran wild, fueled by stories about the mass suicides on Iwo Jima and Okinawa; the riots by the Japanese prisoners at Camps Featherston and Cowra in New Zealand; and by the appearance of a lengthy alarmist article in the Rocky Shimpo, a Japanese-language newspaper published in Denver, which predicted a dreaded mass suicide of the prisoners at Camp McCoy. Despite such fears, the end of the war passed uneventfully with no suicides among the POWs.With Japan's surrender came the question of democracy in postwar Japan. The public mood was perhaps best summarized by a Texas cowboy in a "man-on-the-street" opinion poll, who stated that "You can't civilize or educate Germans or Japs in a short length of time. We've got to give them a new form of government so we might as well start making Democrats out of them right now."52 The War Department agreed. As early as April 1945, the Special Projects Division of the PMGO had considered a program to reeducate the Japanese prisoners despite a ban on such activity by the Geneva Convention. Following a secret study conducted among the Japanese POWs at McCoy, Clarinda, and Angel Island, the PMGO determined that such an indoctrination effort would not only provide the American occupation forces in Japan with reliable government officials, but would serve as a laboratory to test the educational and rehabilitation programs under consideration for the postwar period. The project was secretly authorized by the Secretary of War on July 18, 1945, after which the prisoners were screened, evaluated, and the most cooperative among them selected for reeducation. The potential converts to democracy, a total of 205 men, were then sent to one of three specially designated "re-orientation centers": Camps Huntsville, Kenedy, or Hearne, Texas.The program was directed by Lt. Colonel Boude C. Moore, born in Japan to missionary parents, educated in the United States, and resident of Japan from 1924 until 1941. He was assisted by Dr. Charles W. Hepner, a luminary from the Far Eastern Branch of the Office of War Information, who had spent some thirty years in Japan. Together they organized a dazzling program of lectures by the faculty of nearby Sam Houston State Teachers College, with simultaneous translation into Japanese; study of the English language and literature; comparisons of American and Japanese newspapers, books, and magazines; and the translation of material for distribution to the Japanese prisoners not participating in the program. The most important activity was the assignment every two weeks of a new "study topic" which required group and individual research and discussion. The topics ranged from an assessment of Japan's civilian and military morale to the comparison of various segments of Japanese and American ways of life. Moore and Hepner hoped that these exercises would cause the prisoners to consider the nuances of the subjects and require some measure of democratic input by all members. They also believed that the reports would serve as a barometer of the POWs' morale and allegiance to the Emperor.Augmenting these pursuits was a heavy dose of American music, newspapers, movies and cartoons, and such recreational activities as softball, table tennis, and baseball. The prisoners were also encour-aged to attend Sunday religious services in an effort "to replace their traditional Emperor-worship with a more positive philosophy, and to show them the close relationship between democracy and Christian principles." When the program ended in December 1945 and the POWs prepared for repatriation home, the authorities believed that a significant, if unknown, number of the prisoners had embraced the principles of the American dream. Unfortunately, no follow-up investigation traced the careers of the Japanese "graduates" and their impact, if any, on postwar politics.No sooner was the war over than Washington began repatriating Japanese POWs as promptly as shipping permitted.55 While Japanese prisoners in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Okinawa were not released for another year-due as much to Allied fears for the security of postwar Japan as to the need for cheap labor-the prisoners in the U.S. started home less than a month after the war ended. Beginning in October 1945, the Japanese POWs at McCoy, Clarinda, Hearne, Kenedy, and Huntsville were sent to a cluster of holding camps at Lamont, California. There they kept busy with the usual military post-related tasks as carpenters, cooks, and janitors and also as contract workers on local farms. By the end of December 1945, vessel space became available for 1,120 men (including 675 sick and badly wounded) and the captives were trucked to the Los Angeles Port of Embarkation for immediate shipment overseas. Each departing man was fingerprinted once again, his records updated, and his belongings searched for "contraband" or money in excess of the 500 yen ($125) or 200 yen ($50) which the officers or enlisted men respectively were allowed to bring back to Japan. A week later, on January 5, 1946, another 1,462 Japanese departed; on January 20, three days after a third group of 441 prisoners left Lamont for Los Angeles, that camp was deactivated. Also during January the remaining 2,376 Japanese prisoners departed from a similar system of camps in Corcoran, California, to the piers of San Francisco and Japan. A single Japanese prisoner remained to recover from his wounds, and on June 1, 1948, he waved an indifferent farewell to Angel Island from the railing of his departing ship. It was over. For the 5,400 repatriated Japanese captives, however, numerous difficulties still lay ahead.The events which greeted the returning Japanese were bitter-sweet. The emotion of seeing the port of Uraga and Mt. Fuji was mixed with shame of returning alive from enemy captivity. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki became something of a public figure, not only as a former POW, but as the first Japanese prisoner of the war. "Everyday, letters poured in," Sakamaki recalls, quoting from a representative sample:Your past is not wrong at all. You need not feel ashamed. On the contrary, we owe you thanks. With a new heart, please work for a reconstruction of our beloved country. No wonder we lost the war, Mr. P.O.W. No. 1. Although I am a mere merchant, I know how to commit hara-kiri. A man who does not know what shame is, is a beast. If you want to die now, I will gladly come and show you how it's done. Which is the more manly life-live long and cheap, or live short but glorious? Shame on you.And finally, I cannot understand how you could return alive. The souls of the brave comrades who fought with you and died must be crying now over what you have done. If you are not ashamed of yourself now, please explain how come. If you are ashamed of yourself now, you should commit suicide at once and apologize to the spirits of the heroes who died honorably.Many years passed before Sakamaki and his more than 1,500,000 fellow former prisoners of war held by Russia, China, Britain, and the United States 61 became comfortably integrated into Japanese society, a process made far easier for those who had been held in the United States. They returned better fed and clothed than their comrades in other Allied camps. They were also more emotionally stable and often had at least a smattering of the language of their new occupiers. Summing up his four years of war, Sakamaki described a metamorphosis which startled even himself:My steps were these: all-out attack, failure, capture, a sense of dilemma, mental struggle, attempts at suicide, failure again, self-contempt, deep disillusionment, despair and melancholy, reflections, desire to learn and yearning for truth, meditation, rediscovering myself, self-encouragement, discovery of a new duty, freedom through love, and finally, a desire for reconstruction.I claim no credit for this transformation. I wish to preach to no one. I only hope that this will show to all ... that man is capable of being made anew....The key to it all, Sakamaki concluded, was the concept of democracy. "I learned it as a prisoner. It was the best education of my life."Japanese prisoners of war in World War II - WikipediaAllied prisoner of war campsJapanese POWs held in Allied prisoner of war camps were treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. In an attempt to win better treatment for their POWs, the Allies made extensive efforts to notify the Japanese government of the good conditions in Allied POW camps. This was not successful, however, as the Japanese government refused to recognise the existence of captured Japanese military personnel.Most Japanese captured by US forces after September 1942 were turned over to Australia or New Zealand for internment. The United States provided these countries with aid through the Lend Lease program to cover the costs of maintaining the prisoners, and retained responsibility for repatriating the men to Japan at the end of the war. Prisoners captured in the central Pacific or who were believed to have particular intelligence value were held in camps in the United States.Japanese POWs practice baseball near their quarters, several weeks before the Cowra breakout. This photograph was taken with the intention of using it in propaganda leaflets, to be dropped on Japanese-held areas in the Asia-Pacific region.Prisoners who were thought to possess significant technical or strategic information were brought to specialist intelligence-gathering facilities at Fort Hunt, Virginia or Camp Tracy, California. After arriving in these camps, the prisoners were interrogated again, and their conversations were wiretapped and analysed. Japanese POWs generally adjusted to life in prison camps and few attempted to escape.There were several incidents at POW camps, however. On 25 February 1943, POWs at the Featherston prisoner of war camp in New Zealand staged a strike after being ordered to work. The protest turned violent when the camp's deputy commander shot one of the protest's leaders. The POWs then attacked the other guards, who opened fire and killed 48 prisoners and wounded another 74. Conditions at the camp were subsequently improved, leading to good relations between the Japanese and their New Zealand guards for the remainder of the war.More seriously, on 5 August 1944, Japanese POWs in a camp near Cowra, Australia attempted to escape. During the fighting between the POWs and their guards 257 Japanese and four Australians were killed.Other confrontations between Japanese POWs and their guards occurred at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin during May 1944 as well as a camp in Bikaner, India during 1945; these did not result in any fatalities.In addition, 24 Japanese POWs killed themselves at Camp Paita, New Caledonia in January 1944 after a planned uprising was foiled.Post-warA Japanese prisoner of war watching a British Royal Air ForceDakota transport landing at Bandoeng, Java, during May 1946.Soviet and Chinese forces accepted the surrender of 1.6 million Japanese and the western allies took the surrender of millions more in Japan, South-East Asia and the South-West Pacific.In order to prevent resistance to the order to surrender, Japan's Imperial Headquarters included a statement that "servicemen who come under the control of enemy forces after the proclamation of the Imperial Rescript will not be regarded as POWs" in its orders announcing the end of the war. While this measure was successful in avoiding unrest, it led to hostility between those who surrendered before and after the end of the war and denied prisoners of the Soviets POW status. In most instances the troops who surrendered were not taken into captivity, and were repatriated to the Japanese home islands after giving up their weapons.Japanese prisoners released from Soviet captivity in Siberia prepare to disembark from a ship docked at Maizuru, Japan, January 1946.Repatriation of some Japanese POWs was delayed by Allied authorities. Until late 1946, the United States retained almost 70,000 POWs to dismantle military facilities in the Philippines, Okinawa, central Pacific, and Hawaii. British authorities retained 113,500 of the approximately 750,000 POWs in south and south-east Asia until 1947; the last POWs captured in Burma and Malaya returned to Japan in October 1947.The British also used armed Japanese Surrendered Personnel to support Dutch and French attempts to reestablish their colonial empires in the Netherlands East Indies and Indochina respectively.At least 81,090 Japanese personnel died in areas occupied by the western Allies and China before they could be repatriated to Japan. Historian John W. Dower has attributed these deaths to the "wretched" condition of Japanese military units at the end of the war.Nationalist Chinese forces took the surrender of 1.2 million Japanese military personnel following the war. While the Japanese feared that they would be subjected to reprisals, they were generally treated well. This was because the Nationalists wished to seize as many weapons as possible, ensure that the departure of the Japanese military didn't create a security vacuum and discourage Japanese personnel from fighting alongside the Chinese communists.Over the next few months, most Japanese prisoners in China, along with Japanese civilian settlers, were returned to Japan. The nationalists retained over 50,000 POWs, most of whom had technical skills, until the second half of 1946, however. Tens of thousands of Japanese prisoners captured by the Chinese communists were serving in their military forces in August 1946 and more than 60,000 were believed to still be held in Communist-controlled areas as late as April 1949.Hundreds of Japanese POWs were killed fighting for the People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Civil War. Following the war, the victorious Chinese Communist government began repatriating Japanese prisoners home, though some were put on trial for war crimes and had to serve prison sentences of varying length before being allowed to return. The last Japanese prisoner returned from China in 1964.Hundreds of thousands of Japanese also surrendered to Soviet forces in the last weeks of the war and after Japan's surrender. The Soviet Union claimed to have taken 594,000 Japanese POWs, of whom 70,880 were immediately released, but Japanese researchers have estimated that 850,000 were captured.Unlike the prisoners held by China or the western Allies, these men were treated harshly by their captors, and over 60,000 died. Japanese POWs were forced to undertake hard labour and were held in primitive conditions with inadequate food and medical treatments. This treatment was similar to that experienced by German POWs in the Soviet Union.The treatment of Japanese POWs in Siberia was also similar to that suffered by Soviet prisoners who were being held in the area.Between 1946 and 1950, many of the Japanese POWs in Soviet captivity were released; those remaining after 1950 were mainly those convicted of various crimes. They were gradually released under a series of amnesties between 1953 and 1956. After the last major repatriation in 1956, the Soviets continued to hold some POWs and release them in small increments. Some ended up spending decades living in the Soviet Union, and could only return to Japan in the 1990s. Some, having spent decades away and having started families of their own, elected not to permanently settle in Japan and remain where they were.Due to the shame associated with surrendering, few Japanese POWs wrote memoirs after the war.

Q. It is a good idea to say I want to go to medical school on my application to an engineering school (I want to be a chemical engineer)?Will the fact that I won’t want to say in the chemical engineering field be a “con” on my application? I plan to apply to some big name schools, including Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia.A. Some schools offer Engineering Pre-med curriculum and keep students on track of the needed prerequisites, MCAT, EC’s etc for successful application (for example the University of Arizona.)Columbia University also has a robust engineering pre-med program. Harvard has strong premed advising office. So does Stanford. Although neither geared towards engineering/premed aspirants.The question is: Why do you want a Chemical Engineering Degree and how useful will it be to you in the long run? Second, knowing engineering grade deflation, are you willing to have your GPA suffer and possibly self deselect from pursuing a medical career?For most people, getting accepted to medical school is the ultimate goal. This often requires stellar GPA and decent MCAT scores.A high engineering GPA is difficult to achieve. Although medical school admission committees make an allowance for the difficulty of the major, a low GPA despite best effort will jeopardize any hope of acceptance to medical school.Most people cannot do both. It’s either engineering/no med school or medical school and a more lenient major (perhaps humanities).Engineering to Medicine: The Road Less TraveledPosted by Jonathan Haughton onJanuary 12th, 2014Making the CommitmentGetting an MD isn’t like obtaining other advanced degrees such as a PhD, MS or MBA. You cannot study part time or get it paid for by a company. It is a full-time affair for which you must be completely committed for at least four more years after your undergrad (and probably more for residency/fellowship training). Medical school isn’t cheap either, so you must be prepared to take on (or add to your undergrad) debt.How to Do itYour undergraduate engineering classes (usually) will not cover all of the general course requirements for medical school. This means you’ll have to carefully plan your coursework in order to satisfy the engineering and pre-med curricula as well as any general education classes your school requires. It is not easy but definitely do-able and working with an advisor to develop a multi-year plan will help. Pre-med requirements can vary between schools but will at least include physics I/II, chemistry I/II, organic chemistry I/II, biology I/II and an English or literature class. For those beginning to think about medicine after already completing two or more years of their undergraduate degree, taking an extra year to finish all the coursework and prep is not uncommon. This extra time can also be used to study for the dreaded MCAT.The MCAT is the medical school equivalent of the SAT or ACT you took in high school. It must be taken before you can apply, so this usually means the summer before your senior year. There’s a myriad of references, guides and avenues of support for this ranging from free practice tests to intensive classroom courses. Contrary to popular belief, this test is not about rote memorization. Almost all groups of questions are accompanied by a passage. So if you have a very basic understanding of the scientific principles and equations but excellent problem solving, you will do great. The key words here are understanding and problem solving. Memorizing the equations is pointless, they will give them to you on the test, spend your time understanding each equation’s components. This is a great opportunity for engineering students to show off their problem solving skills!So you’ve finished the courses and taken the test, what now? The application process is started about a year before your planned enrollment date. So, if your graduating in 2014, you would apply in the summer or early fall of 2013. Thankfully, there is a standard application for all schools called the AMCAS, but plan on getting secondary applications specific to each school and working on them into the fall. Then save up some money and pray for interviews.Where Engineering Falls ShortThese days medical schools are looking more and more at extracurricular activities in addition to metrics like MCAT score and GPA. This included things like research, volunteering, shadowing and other jobs. Engineering coursework doesn’t always provide enough time for all of this stuff, but if you pick carefully, the right extracurricular can give you an excellent experience with a smaller time commitment. Academic research can be a volunteer or paid experience, and when done during the academic year, can mesh well with your class schedule since research labs are typically close to classroom buildings so you can go there before, after or in-between classes.The extra pre-med courses have also been known to give engineers some trouble. For many, it is tough adjusting to biology type classes, as they are much more memorization based and less analytical in nature. There is no easy solution for this. Figure out what works for you (flashcards, re-writing notes, etc.). This is also the stuff more likely to be seen on the MCAT, so pay extra special attention to the material.When it comes to the interview, some claim engineers don’t fare as well. Anyone in engineering has heard the stereotype that engineers aren’t the most social of people. While that’s an outdated view of the field, it can be used to your advantage during an interview or application essay. By having an outgoing personality and being animated, lively, witty and generally sociable, you defy the stereotype and make yourself look that much better the to the admissions board or interviewer.All that being said, medical schools look very highly upon engineering applicants. They understand that to be a legitimate applicant, the engineering student has given it their 110%, as evidenced by their ability to succeed in such a demanding major in addition to coursework and extracurricular activities. A career in medicine will be time consuming, stressful and at times you will doubt your ability, but in the end extremely rewarding and well worth it. So, it’s just like a degree in engineering!SummaryThe problem solving skills and engineering mindset so thoroughly developed during your undergraduate degree can prove to be an incredibly useful tool for solving medical cases. The human being is an isolated system, and once that system is defined, you can apply your knowledge of that system to create a solution, just like any engineering question. The rational and systematic route of thinking honed during any study of engineering is ideal for a career in medicine.About the authorChris Bobba received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering for the University of Rhode Island in 2013. He is currently an MD/PhD student at the Ohio State University pursuing his PhD in Biomedical Engineering. Current research interests include the intersection of organ conditioning/regeneration techniques and surgical/transplant medicine.University of Arizona College of EngineeringAcademic Focus AreasUA chemical engineering is one of only a few approved College of Engineering pre-med programs. The three academic focus areas prepare students for careers in a broad range of industries.Environmental is focused on increasing environmental safety in industry and reducing emissions and contaminants in the environment.Biomedical centers around modernizing disease diagnostics and treatment.Pre-medical prepares students to succeed in medical schoolResearch OpportunitiesUA chemical engineers are finding better ways to protect and repair the environment, improve the human condition, and ensure sustainability. And chemical engineering students tend to make the most of studying at a Tier-1 research institution. In fact, more than 90 percent of chemical engineering undergraduates are estimated to be involved in research at some point during their time at the University.Researchers are advancing processes, technologies and understanding in the following areas, for example:Algae-based biofuelsWater treatment and reuseClean semiconductor manufacturingDesalinationSolar energyDrug deliveryCancer detection and treatmentClimate changeOutside the ClassroomNot only is undergraduate research a mainstay of UA chemical engineering, but also many students do internships. Additionally, clubs and organizations play an important role in students’ personal and professional development, strengthening leadership, teamwork and communication skills.The honor society Omega Chi Epsilon promotes creativity, entrepreneurship, professionalism and camaraderie among chemical engineering students. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers hosts social events and provides opportunities for mentoring, tutoring and professional networking. And, in the UA Home Brew club, students put chemical engineering skills to the task with craft brewing techniques.Career PathsUA chemical engineering is known for getting students where they want to go, whether it is a prestigious medical or graduate school somewhere in the world or a career in any number of industries – manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, design and construction, pulp and paper, petrochemicals, food processing, specialty chemicals, polymers, biotechnology, or environmental health and safety.Columbia University Premedical CurriculumPREMEDMedical, dental, and other health professional schools prefer that undergraduates complete a four-year program of study toward the bachelor's degree. All health professional schools require prerequisite course work, but they do not prefer one type of major or scholarly concentration. Students with all types of engineering backgrounds are highly valued.It is important to note, however, that each medical school in the United States and Canada individually determines its own entrance requirements, including prerequisite coursework and/or competencies. Each medical school also sets its own rules regarding acceptable courses or course equivalents. It is therefore essential that students plan early and confirm the premedical requirements for those schools to which they intend to apply. The Engineering curriculum covers many of the prerequisite courses required by medical schools, however, in addition to completing the mathematics, chemistry, and physics courses required by the First Year– Sophomore Program, most schools ask for a full year of organic chemistry, a full year of biology, a full year of English, a semester of statistics, and a semester of biochemistry. Advanced Placement credit is accepted in fulfillment of these requirements by some schools but not all. Students are responsible for monitoring the requirements of each school to which they intend to apply. Generally, students with Advanced Placement credit are strongly advised to take further courses in the field in which they have received such credit.In addition to medical school requirements, all medical schools currently require applicants to sit for the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). A new format of this exam was introduced in the spring of 2015, for which recommended minimum preparation is:One year of general chemistry and general chemistry labOne year of organic chemistry and organic chemistry labOne year of introductory biology and biology labOne year of general physics and physics labOne semester of introductory psychologyAs you prepare for this path, you should consult regularly with both your assigned adviser and one of the premedical advisers in the James H. Christine Turk Berick Center for Student Advising. These individuals will help to guide you in your course selection and planning, and introduce you to extracurricular and research opportunities related to your interests in health and medicine. Preprofessional Advising maintains an online list of many different clinical volunteer and research opportunities across New York City and beyond. Exploration of the career and sustained interactions with patients is viewed by many medical schools as essential preparation and therefore students are strongly encouraged to spend time volunteering/working in clinical and research environments before applying to medical school.Students must apply for admission to health professional schools more than one year in advance of the entry date. Students who are interested in going directly on to health professional schools following graduation should complete all prerequisite courses required for the MCAT by the end of the junior year. It is entirely acceptable (and most common) for students to take time between undergraduate and health professional school and thus delay application to these schools for one or more years. Students planning to apply to medical or dental school should be evaluated by the Premedical Advisory Committee prior to application. A Premedical Advisory Committee application is made available each year in December. For more information regarding this process and other premedical-related questions, please consult with a premedical adviser in the Berick Center for Student Advising or peruse their websiteFAQ for Preprofessional AdvisingMaking the Cut: The Real Pre-med Requirements (Harvard University Crimson)The story of droves of students entering college expecting to be pre-med, but later switching tracks—whether because of the rigor or the draw of other disciplines—is a familiar one. However, at Harvard unique factors play into this whittling down of aspiring doctors.by LIBBY R. COLEMAN Sep 26, 2013Students file one-by-one into the green seats of Science Center B’s lecture hall. They sit down, pulling out laptops or legal pads, sometimes problem sets to complete in class. A constant hum of gum chewing, chair-shifting, and text notifications is amplified against the walls.The room has yet to quiet down when Life Sciences 1a, Harvard’s 448-person introduction to chemistry, molecular biology and cell biology, begins with an unwelcome announcement.There will be a “little quiz” in section. Students in the packed lecture hall respond to the news with a loud groan.“Don’t you want to know how things are going?” molecular and cellular biology professor Robert A. Lue calls back. The class responds with a resounding “No!”Lue reasons, “It’s important to diagnose how everyone’s doing.” He tailors his word choice to the make-up of the class. Diagnosis is a familiar concept to these students, many of whom are interested in attending medical school.Often taken as the first of many pre-med required classes, LS1a introduces Harvard freshmen to the academic life of a pre-med. While many of the students in the lecture hall believe that they will go to medical school, between one and two thirds of them will end up dropping the program.The story of droves of students entering college expecting to be pre-med, but later switching tracks—whether because of the rigor or the draw of other disciplines—is a familiar one. However, at Harvard unique factors play into this whittling down of aspiring doctors.Although Harvard offers a robust pre-med advising program in the Houses, many pre-meds struggle freshman year, when they say that advising is less structured. Later on, a variety of factors—from alternate disciplines and academic communities that are perhaps less grade-obsessed or more diverse, to more lucrative careers that require less up-front time investment—draw students away from the path towards medical school.Learning The RopesThe Office of Career Services estimates that a quarter of the incoming class each year is “exploring medicine.” This data is based on annual attendance at Opening Days events aimed at students considering pre-med and pre-health careers.However, popular wisdom among Peer Advising Fellows says that the proportion is closer to 50 percent. “Half of them are pre-med, or more,” says Khin-Kyemon Aung ’14, who is a PAF and president emeritus of the Harvard Pre-medical Society.OCS estimates that, ultimately, 17 percent of a given class will apply to medical school.As is the case at most of its peer institutions, Harvard does not offer a pre-med concentration, secondary, or citation. Rather, the school suggests that students take a particular set of classes before taking the MCAT or applying to medical school.Currently, most medical schools require students to take one year of biology, one year of general chemistry, one year of organic chemistry, one year of general physics, and one year of English. On top of these requirements, medical schools expect applicants to have leadership experience and strong extracurriculars.These requirements offer some framework, but the open-endedness can leave students unsure of how to navigate their courses or envision what it means to be a strong candidate for medical school.“They would like to come in here and have us just hand them a checklist,” says Robin Mount, Director of Career, Research, and International Opportunities at OCS. “But there isn’t the checklist for life.”While all undergraduates benefit from advising, freshman pre-meds seem to be particularly in need of guidance. Myths abound regarding both Harvard’s pre-med track and the medical school application process.Though OCS advises that there is no correct pre-med mold, Aung has noticed that many pre-meds spend freshman year trying to live up to what they believe pre-meds should do.“You’re asking: ‘What should I be doing?’” Aung says. “Everyone’s very eager and enthusiastic and it’s great, but it also leads to individuals really wanting to follow the set path.”Christian Ramirez ’15 entered Harvard expecting to be pre-med after spending time on his parents’ farm in rural Ecuador. He came face-to-face with the lack of health care in the region, which sparked the idea that he might want to later work for Doctors Without Borders.So, falling in step with his fellow pre-meds, Ramirez enrolled in LS1a his freshman fall. Ramirez’s freshman advisor, with whom he had little contact, quickly approved his course selection.“My freshman advisor really didn’t do much, to be completely honest. I don’t even remember his name,” Ramirez says. “He told me to take things that I already knew I had to take as a pre-med.”In hindsight, Ramirez realizes that he should have instead taken the alternative course, Life and Physical Sciences A, a more foundational class that also fulfills pre-med requirements.However, Ramirez explains that “people are coming into this with the idea that they’re too good for LPS A.”After his freshman fall, Ramirez decided to quit the pre-med track when he realized he no longer wanted to be a doctor. On top of disliking LS1a, Ramirez also discovered a passion for studying classics. In making his decision, he did not reach out to Harvard’s pre-med advising network.Although pre-med advising for freshmen exists in the form of OCS drop-in hours, pre-med events, and freshman advising (albeit without mandatory scheduled check-ins), the system requires students to be proactive about seeking advice.“As a freshman, I had no idea what to do,” says Katie C. Gamble ’15, a social studies concentrator, Peer Advising Fellow, and former pre-med. She wears a sweatshirt after staying up late to finish a paper for a social studies course. “You definitely have to do some work to get access to the advising,” she says. “It’s great and it’s there but you have to know what you’re doing to get to it.”Without a highly structured advising system, freshmen are more likely to worry that, for example, a bad grade in one class spells disaster for their medical school application. Their preconceptions about the model pre-med student are more likely to inform their decisions about classes, extracurriculars, and whether to be pre-med at all.Kruti B. Vora ’17 volunteered at Newton-Wellesley Hospital the summer after ninth grade. She loved it and the experience inspired her to pursue a career in medicine.However, two weeks into the school year, Vora says that she is still unsure how pre-med advising works.“I don’t know too much yet about pre-med advisors and who I’m supposed to talk to specifically about pre-med advising,” Vora says. “I saw some things at the Activities Fair that would pair me with hospitals and volunteer activities.”One such group is the Harvard Pre-medical Society, whose purpose is to be “a student-run organization at Harvard College committed to providing educational support and volunteer opportunities for the campus pre-medical community.”Grace ’15, who was granted anonymity by The Crimson because she did not want her comments to affect medical school applications, decided to be pre-med sophomore year. She has noticed that Harvard’s peer pre-med advising cannot fill in all of the gaps left by an incomplete freshman advising system. “The Pre-med Society has to use their own people and they have juniors and seniors who mentor freshmen, but seniors and juniors haven’t applied to medical school, so it’s really just a shot in the dark,” Grace says.Grace believes that if she had entered her freshman year as a pre-med, she would have dropped out. “I would have done all those things I think you’re supposed to do and wouldn’t have done the things I’m interested in like theater because I would have thought, ‘No, I have to do the pre-med stuff to get into medical school,’” Grace says.Harvard’s pre-med advising is led by the OCS’s two pre-medical advisors, Oona B. Ceder ’90 and Sirinya Matchacheep. Students say that meeting with Ceder and Matchacheep can be remarkably helpful. But the two of them are responsible for all pre-med students at the College, not just freshmen, which means that younger students sometimes take a backseat to those who are currently applying to medical school.“If you want an appointment with them, it’s often backed up for weeks,” Aung says.The choice to have less structured freshman pre-med advising stems from Harvard’s philosophy that students should keep their options open freshman year, as well as its commitment to providing a liberal arts education.“If we had pre-med advisors—this is the way everything is at Harvard—we’d have people saying where are the pre-law, where are the engineering advisors?” Mount says.Once in the House system, students are each assigned a pre-med tutor, which results in more individualized guidance and support than freshman year. “Harvard’s pre-med advising within the House system is incredibly strong compared to other schools,” says Joshua H. St. Louis ’09, who is now in his last year of Tufts’ MD/PhD program. The House advising system offers assistance including mock interviews, personal statements, and advice on application deadlines.However, many freshmen drop out of pre-med before they are even given access to the strong Harvard House advising network. At the cost of encouraging greater exploration, pre-meds are left largely on their own freshman year to grapple with the realities of being pre-med.A Lack of CommunityMany of those who have remained on the pre-med track find that there is a lack of community and pride among pre-meds. These students explain that strongly identifying as pre-med will lead peers to judge them as cut-throat, intense, and grade-obsessed. Therefore, they often socialize outside of the pre-med community, prioritizing their concentration or their extracurriculars.“You want to express your passion for medicine, but you don’t want to be a stereotypical pre-medder,” says Anna ’16, a pre-med who was granted anonymity by The Crimson because she did not want her comments to affect medical school applications. “It creates a very anti-intellectual community.”For Grace, being identified as pre-med takes on the form of an insult. “People are like, ‘Do you do social studies?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh I wish, thank you for thinking that. I wish I was that cool,’” Grace says. “It’s kind of a badge of shame to be called a pre-med.”Because of the negative connotations surrounding the pre-med personality, many students on the track to medical school actively seek out the company of non-pre-meds. St. Louis says that as an undergraduate, he “found [pre-meds] to be super stressed out and always wearied.” He remembers working with a friend in Cabot Science Library on Friday afternoons alongside a table of pre-meds, sobbing and breaking down as they worked frantically up until the 5 p.m. problem set deadline.St. Louis ultimately decided to distance himself from the pre-med community: Of his four roommates at Harvard, only one other was pre-med. Because his concentration—Organismic and Evolutionary Biology—and his roommate’s—Mind, Brain, and Behavior—were not the quintessential pre-med concentrations like Molecular and Cellular Biology and Neurobiology, they didn’t have much contact with pre-meds outside the required curriculum.St. Louis says that many of his friends who were devoted to helping people wound up falling off of the pre-med track, whereas those who stuck with it were largely driven by money or parental pressures. “I felt like most of them weren’t really going into medicine for the same reasons that I was,” St. Louis says, referring to his peers who continued on the pre-med track.Hillary ’13, who was granted anonymity because she did not want her comments to affect medical school applications, also expressed discomfort with the motivations of her fellow pre-meds. “You’ve got everyone trying to get A’s in a class where they give out like five to ten percent A’s and the rest B’s and a few Cs,” Hillary says. Although she stayed with the pre-med program, this mindset meant that she “didn’t want to be around pre-meds 24/7.”Although Hillary originally declared MCB as her concentration, she later switched to History and Science, which she says has fewer pre-med students. “I wanted to experience other people, and experience other concentrations,” Hillary explains.For some pre-meds, the fragmented nature of Harvard’s pre-med community causes them to rethink their intent to apply to medical school. “I think I’ve realized, if I really don’t like the pre-med culture, then med school is really just a bunch of pre-meds. That’s all there is...It makes me re-evaluate if that’s a culture I want to be in for the next however many years,” Grace says.For Grace, this lack of camaraderie might be endemic to a program in which few students are fully engaged in their coursework. “I think every concentration has one or two requirements people aren’t thrilled about but have to do. But pretty much every pre-med class, people aren’t excited about.”A For Application“One could argue pre-med students do obsess on the specificities of the grade,” Lue says, referring to his LS1a students. “Because pre-med students are worried about their ability to get into medical school, there may be a little bit more focus on that.”Harvard’s advising staff emphasize that one or two bad grades will not sink a medical school application. According to OCS’s medical school admissions data, Harvard pre-med applicants with a 3.50 GPA or higher had a 93 percent acceptance rate to medical schools in 2012.Ceder says that she sees “many students who come in with a couple of B minuses or a C+ or even a B or a B+ and they’re concerned that this is now going to keep them out of medical school.” Medical schools, she says, are more interested in “the passion vocation piece”—commitment to a sport, for example—than simply straight A’s.But pre-med students are not just concerned about getting into a medical school: They want to get into the best medical schools.As a result, students often choose concentrations and courses based on what will do the most to boost their GPA. “When you’re choosing Gen Ed, you’re choosing them to get A’s. Generally people will be like, ‘I just need the A for medical school,’” says Sasha ’14, who was granted anonymity by The Crimson because she did not want her comments to affect medical school applications.In the lab component for some of her pre-med courses, Hillary encountered lab partners who were driven almost entirely by their medical school aspirations. “If you didn’t do the one extra question on the lab report, you were a bad lab partner and would bring down the whole group and then the whole group wouldn’t get an A and then everybody would be upset,” Hillary says.One consequence of this obsession with good grades is a less intellectually diverse pre-med community. “I think they’re discouraging people who could potentially bring something new to the table in terms of scientific innovation,” Ramirez says.If Not Med School…Harvard students are also pulled away from the pre-med track by the appeal of more lucrative jobs, such as finance or consulting, which hire straight out of college. These career paths offer the dual incentive of high compensation and immediate reward. Students are looking at earning between $50,000 and $100,000 the year after graduation, rather than paying tuition for four years of medical school, followed by a residency of up to seven years.Gamble, who was pre-med until the end of her freshman year, says that the delayed benefits of medical careers played into her decision to pursue an alternate path. In high school, she worked with a reconstructive surgeon. While learning the ropes, Gamble encountered a 35-year-old resident with two children, which “really threw [her] off,” Gamble says. She had trouble imagining herself trying to raise a family while still training for her profession.She is now aiming to get a job in consulting after graduation. “It’s something I discovered that I really, really like a lot,” Gamble says. “I know I obviously want to do something I love, but I also want to make a fair wage.”“I realized that kind of career timeline didn’t align with what I want in a career,” Ramirez says, echoing Gamble. “Time for me is really important, and I don’t want to wait until I’m forty.”For those students who decide to delay applying to medical school—whether to take a break from academics, or to help finance their medical school tuition—the timeline to becoming a doctor is even longer. As a result, many Harvard students decide to get consulting or finance jobs because of the compensation, with the full intent of later applying to medical school.In addition, these companies often don’t have any structured requirements for their entry-level positions. “I know people with no business experience who started consulting after graduating,” says Jen Q. Y. Zhu ’14, who decided to stop being pre-med with one requirement left.Pre-med students have to weigh the cost—in both time and money—of pursuing a medical career against the attractiveness of other careers that can promise larger paychecks immediately.Is it Worth It?Clearly, not all pre-meds who enter Harvard expecting to be pre-med will graduate and go to medical school. According to Ceder, one of the OCS advisors, students must ask themselves, “Do I need the MD to do what I want to do?”For many, the answer is no. Some have become disillusioned, others discouraged, the path to medical school looking less attractive than they had first imagined.This shift away from the pre-med track is already apparent for some at 2:30 p.m., when Robert A. Lue’s LS1a lecture is about to go overtime. A few students quickly pack up their bags and climb over their peers to head elswehere. Most, however, stay to hear the professor’s final thoughts. After all, the concepts might appear on a future exam.After a few moments, Lue wraps up and Science Center B becomes fully alive again. Students huddle afterwards. Some talk about pre-labs. Others admit that they “weren’t paying attention the whole first half.”Most ReadRecord 39,494 Apply to Harvard College Class of 2021Univ. Subcomittee Considers Mimicking Housing at Yale