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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.