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The article provides an analysis of studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs for the rehabilitation of Canadian prisoners of war captured in Hong Kong. Topics include the bad treatment of soldiers and airmen by the Japanese, how surviving members of 'C' force, Canadian military forces, spent the duration of the war in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and how the publication of the stories of the First World War veterans by the Laurier Military History Archive influenced the treatment of World War II veterans.

Katō Tetsutarō was a suspected Japanese war criminal tried by US military commissions in Yokohama after the Second World War. He was convicted of murdering an escaped American prisoner of war, and was originally sentenced to death. In a highly unusual move, however, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, ordered a retrial, in which Katō received a sentence of 30 years. He was ultimately released in March 1958. Katō’s case provides an especially effective illustration of the tension in Allied thinking about war crimes trials between a desire for justice or vengeance, on the one hand, and recognition of the political pressures of the Cold War on the other, and of the varied forms this tension took as prosecutions progressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the mid-1990s the Japanese government has pursued reconciliation initiatives aimed at fostering understanding between Japan and former POWs. Nevertheless, the POW issue remains relatively unknown in Japan. This article describes the profile and activities of the POW Research Network Japan (POW kenkyūkai), a civil society group consisting of professional and shimin (citizen/non-professional) researchers as well as concerned citizens investigating the subject of Allied POWs in Japan. The article explores how POWRNJ participated in and contributed to the contestation of memory of the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945) during the last decade. It describes the manner in which the group promoted its views and strived to achieve its goals. On the basis of these findings, the article identifies the kind of roles the group played, and how it mattered in the debates on Japan's wartime past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the involvement of British officials at the Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong in the perpetuation of imperial ideals during the Second World War, as well as in the eventual restoration of British rule to the territory. It highlights the debates that were conducted within the camp on issues of post-war reconstruction, as well as the strategies that were devised by the internees in anticipation of the new social, economic and political orders of the post-war colonial world. The paper also highlights similar discussions that transpired within the Changi Camp in Singapore and the Lintang Camp in Sarawak (Borneo) as supplementary case studies. Remarkably, many of these ideas ran in parallel with secret planning in London, where Hong Kong and Malayan governments-in-exile conceived revamped colonial administrations following the envisaged defeat of the Japanese. A number of these wartime schemes were even implemented after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, with significant impact on the phase of post-war British imperial revival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Mas malupit ang mga Koreano kaysa mga Hapon’ is a rumour about Koreans in Second World War Philippines that has persisted to this day. A comparative, quantitative statement, it is roughly translated as ‘The Koreans committed more atrocities than the Japanese in Second World War Philippines’. This is a half-true memory: true, there were Koreans in the Philippines; false, they could not have committed more atrocities than the Japanese because there were very few of them, as archival evidence discussed in this article proves. If only the Koreans and their role in the war were properly discussed in Philippine textbooks, this rumour would not have persisted to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The similarities and differences between the experiences of prisoners of war and civilian internees of the Japanese have largely been overlooked by studies of Japanese-held prisoners. This article aims to provide this critical comparative perspective by examining the experiences of prisoners of war and civilians in four key theatres of the war in British Asia: Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Borneo. It draws largely, however, on the intriguing case study of the Lintang Camp in Borneo (Sarawak) where prisoners of war were imprisoned alongside civilian internees during the war. It argues that there were overarching similarities and constraints to both sets of experiences, but key differences in Japanese wartime policies and a variety of other factors such as combatant status, class, rank, active agency, leadership, and gender also contributed to how captivity was experienced during this tumultuous period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bataan Death March has entered historical consciousness as one of the four great Japanese atrocities during WWII. Along with the Rape of Nanjing, the Burma-Siam Death Railway, and the Rape of Manila, it stands as one of the ultimate measures of twentieth-century wartime barbarity. Both primary and secondary sources share a central preoccupation with Japanese behaviour and therefore assume American prisoners were little more than a passive presence during this episode. In this essay I examine the Bataan Death March from a new vantage point, asking salient questions that lead to modified understanding: who were these Americans, and what kind of soldiers, at war's dawn for the US, did they make? What features of their cultural make-up help explain their behaviour? What were the fault lines in the allied, Filipino-American force that faced the Japanese Army? This article explores the numerous problems the American forces in the Philippines faced: the hybrid nature of the army, the tension between career soldiers and recent draftees and poor training and leadership. These problems, American soldiers' cultural predisposition, and military inexperience all combined to render them significantly more vulnerable to Japanese cruelty on the Death March than they otherwise would have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important minorities in the British colonial empire in Asia consisted of those of mixed European and Asian parentage and/or ancestry, or Eurasians, as they were widely known. It is perhaps surprising that despite the voluminous literature written about British colonial communities in the East, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Eurasians and their histories. A closer examination of the members of this marginalised colonial category is nevertheless crucial as they stood at the problematic boundaries of racial politics and identity, and are therefore vital to our understanding of the tensions of empire. The few existing studies of Eurasians in British Asia have tended to focus on the experiences of Eurasians either before or after the Second World War, neglecting the period of Japanese occupation as a significant epoch in the evolution of these communities. In reality, if we intend to unravel the multi-layered history of Eurasians in this region, we must examine the critical position of these colonial communities during this tumultuous period. The nuances of their intriguing wartime relationships with both the British and the Japanese also merit serious attention. With these aims in mind, this article will investigate the compelling experiences of Eurasian communities in Japanese-occupied British Asia, with an especial focus on those who were incarcerated by the Japanese in civilian internment camps in Hong Kong and Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The great majority of Japanese war criminals served part or all of their sentences in Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, either because they had been tried in Japan, or after repatriation from overseas. Once convicted, they tended to be invisible in historical accounts of the post-war period, but in fact they were not cut off from Japanese society or politics in the 1950s. Rather, Sugamo's inmates worked hard to win public sympathy, also exerting considerable pressure on the government in an attempt to hasten their own release and to have Japanese prisoners repatriated from overseas gaols. The early 1950s were crucial, not least because the 1952 peace treaty stipulated that the countries that had originally prosecuted them retained the right to decide on prisoners' fates even after Japan regained its sovereignty. Moreover, convicted war criminals were increasingly concentrated in Sugamo, allowing many opportunities for political activity and other campaigning. Though the last war criminals were not freed until 1958, prisoners' activities in the early 1950s played an important part in changing the terms in which discussion of war criminals took place and thus in making it more and more difficult for foreign governments to maintain their original stance on war criminals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a manuscript entitled "Hatred, Limited" written by U.S. politician Monroe Sweetland while working with the American National Red Cross in the South Pacific during World War II. The manuscript details Sweetland's work with released U.S., British, Dutch, and Australian prisoners of war (POWs) previously held by Japanese forces. A brief biography of Sweetland is provided. The brutal treatment received by these POWs is described, as is Sweetland's experience of the Battle of Okinawa.

This study is about the prisoner of war experiences of generals and senior officers who surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore in February 1942. It sheds further light on solve of the salient issues that emerge from their experiences including nationality-inspired differences between senior officer POWs (vividly seen when British, American, and Dutch generals and senior colonial officials are imprisoned together in Taiwan and, later, Manchukuo) and how the stress of captivity brings out personality traits that tell us something about these officers as military leaders. Differing combinations of character, circumstances, priorities, and possibilities influenced their responses to prison camp life, but certain traits, such as staff officer mentality, the appeasement reflex, and self-imposed pressure to restore personal reputations, stand out among leading figures including Lt. General A. E. Percival whose surrender of the naval base at Singapore remains one of the major controversies of the Second World War in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article examines the operations of Great Britain's Hong Kong Dockyard Defence Corps (HKDDC) in Hong Kong, China during the early years of World War II. The author explains Great Britain's preparations for a possible attack of the island by Japan, as well as the subsequent Japanese invasion of 1941, with emphasis given to the shelling of the dockyard. The HKDDC's military tactics during the conflict are described in detail as well. The experiences of HKDDC prisoners of war (POWs), along with Royal Marines and Royal Naval Yard Police (RNYP), following a Japanese victory in the Battle of Hong Kong are then discussed.

This article examines the homecoming of Western women from Japanese internment camps at the end of the Second World War. It focuses on British women returning to the United Kingdom, but makes reference to women from other Allied nations such as the United States, Australia and the Netherlands. The paper argues that interned women posed contradictions to gendered understandings of wartime experience and that homecoming further exacerbated this ambiguity. Return from imprisonment exposed the dual meaning of home as the natural realm for women and a national space. Women internees had been away from both and were subjected to control by non-white men; responses to their liberation reflected these tensions. Homecoming prompted questions about released women's femininity and sexual integrity, but they faced even more difficulty having their war experiences recognised as part of a national story about war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When history has taken an interest in the Australian POW experience in the Second World War, the focus has been largely on those in Japanese captivity, where suffering was immense and mortality rates high. Popular culture has reinforced the perception that those who fell into German hands had it easy, living fairly comfortable existences punctuated with adventurous episodes, typically in the form of escape attempts. This essay seeks to correct the misperceptions arising from the “Colditz myth” by examining the Australian experience of captivity in Germany, drawing on both Australian and German sources. Two aspects of that experience are highlighted, namely the experience of work, as it was required of the vast majority of POW, and that of the strange phenomenon of “holiday camps”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the need to historicize the use and reception of photographs taken of Allied POWs upon release from Japanese prison camps at the end of World War Two. Photographs of semi-naked, emaciated POWs at the time of their liberation were extremely unusual images of white men in a state of almost complete abjection. They provide an opportunity to explore the links between masculinity and war with particular reference to the way visual images—in this case photography—inform and shape that relationship. The images convey contradictory messages to the viewer. They undermine the hegemonic masculinity of the virile male warrior yet unmistakably invoke the power of a quite singular cultural referent: the suffering body of Christ. The argument to be explored here is that this duality of transgression and redemption has contributed to the images' iconic status in collective memories of Australian participation in the Pacific War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data were obtained from 41 survivors of imprisonment by the Japanese during World War II. Interview data suggested that these individuals, despite the 40 years that had passed since their prisoner of war experiences, showed manifestations of posttraumatic stress disorder, notably a sleep disturbance marked by recurrent nightmares. MMPI data suggested significant pathology, characterized as an anxiety state, in this group. Half of the subjects met the full set of DSM-III criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]