Download or read book Prisoner of Japan written by Sir Harold Atcherley and published by Mereo Books. This book was released on 2013-04-19 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the course of the Second World War, more than a quarter of a million European and American soldiers were taken prisoner by the Japanese in Malaysia, the Dutch East Indies and the Pacific. They went on to suffer years of deprivation and brutality, most of them failing to survive at all. Harold Atcherley was fortunate enough to be one of the survivors. Throughout his time as a prisoner, from the fall of Singapore on 15th February 1942 until 14th September 1945, he kept a diary, which he was able to bring home with him. This book is based on that diary, along with other diaries and official documents. The original diary can now be viewed at The Imperial War Museum, London. He was fortunate enough to count among his friends and comrades the celebrated artist Ronald Searle, whose drawings have been used to illustrate his text; they give a far better impression of what life was like for a POW of the Japanese than mere words can, though neither words nor pictures could ever convey the appalling stench of disease and death on such a massive scale.
Download or read book Diary of Prisoner of War in Japan 1941 1945 written by Georges Verreault and published by Rimouski, Que. : Vero. This book was released on 1996 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prisoners of the Empire written by Sarah Kovner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps, challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire systematically mistreated Allied prisoners. In only five months, from the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to the fall of Corregidor in May 1942, the Japanese Empire took prisoner more than 140,000 Allied servicemen and 130,000 civilians from a dozen different countries. From Manchuria to Java, Burma to New Guinea, the Japanese army hastily set up over seven hundred camps to imprison these unfortunates. In the chaos, 40 percent of American POWs did not survive. More Australians died in captivity than were killed in combat. Sarah Kovner offers the first portrait of detention in the Pacific theater that explains why so many suffered. She follows Allied servicemen in Singapore and the Philippines transported to Japan on “hellships” and singled out for hard labor, but also describes the experience of guards and camp commanders, who were completely unprepared for the task. Much of the worst treatment resulted from a lack of planning, poor training, and bureaucratic incoherence rather than an established policy of debasing and tormenting prisoners. The struggle of POWs tended to be greatest where Tokyo exercised the least control, and many were killed by Allied bombs and torpedoes rather than deliberate mistreatment. By going beyond the horrific accounts of captivity to actually explain why inmates were neglected and abused, Prisoners of the Empire contributes to ongoing debates over POW treatment across myriad war zones, even to the present day.
Download or read book Surrender on Cebu written by William Dilworth Miner and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2002-06 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of accounts from May 1941 to October 1945 describing Bill Miner's service on the island of Cebu and his subsequent capture and imprisonment by Japanese forces.
Download or read book Captured written by Frances B. Cogan and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than five thousand American civilian men, women, and children living in the Philippines during World War II were confined to internment camps following Japan's late December 1941 victories in Manila. Captured tells the story of daily life in five different camps--the crowded housing, mounting familial and international tensions, heavy labor, and increasingly severe malnourishment that made the internees' rescue a race with starvation. Frances B. Cogan explores the events behind this nearly four-year captivity, explaining how and why this little-known internment occurred. A thorough historical account, the book addresses several controversial issues about the internment, including Japanese intentions toward their prisoners and the U.S. State Department's role in allowing the presence of American civilians in the Philippines during wartime. Supported by diaries, memoirs, war crimes transcripts, Japanese soldiers' accounts, medical data, and many other sources, Captured presents a detailed and moving chronicle of the internees' efforts to survive. Cogan compares living conditions within the internment camps with life in POW camps and with the living conditions of Japanese soldiers late in the war. An afterword discusses the experiences of internment survivors after the war, combining medical and legal statistics with personal anecdotes to create a testament to the thousands of Americans whose captivity haunted them long after the war ended.
Download or read book Long Night s Journey into Day written by Charles G. Roland and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sickness, starvation, brutality, and forced labour plagued the existence of tens of thousands of Allied POWs in World War II. More than a quarter of these POWs died in captivity. Long Night’s Journey into Day centres on the lives of Canadian, British, Indian, and Hong Kong POWs captured at Hong Kong in December 1941 and incarcerated in camps in Hong Kong and the Japanese Home Islands. Experiences of American POWs in the Philippines, and British and Australians POWs in Singapore, are interwoven throughout the book. Starvation and diseases such as diphtheria, beriberi, dysentery, and tuberculosis afflicted all these unfortunate men, affecting their lives not only in the camps during the war but after they returned home. Yet despite the dispiriting circumstances of their captivity, these men found ways to improve their existence, keeping up their morale with such events as musical concerts and entertainments created entirely within the various camps. Based largely on hundreds of interviews with former POWs, as well as material culled from archives around the world, Professor Roland details the extremes the prisoners endured — from having to eat fattened maggots in order to live to choosing starvation by trading away their skimpy rations for cigarettes. No previous book has shown the essential relationship between almost universal ill health and POW life and death, or provides such a complete and unbiased account of POW life in the Far East in the 1940s.
Download or read book The Anguish of Surrender written by Ulrich A. Straus and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On December 6, 1941, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki was one of a handful of men selected to skipper midget subs on a suicide mission to breach Pearl Harbor’s defenses. When his equipment malfunctioned, he couldn’t find the entrance to the harbor. He hit several reefs, eventually splitting the sub, and swam to shore some miles from Pearl Harbor. In the early dawn of December 8, he was picked up on the beach by two Japanese American MPs on patrol. Sakamaki became Prisoner No. 1 of the Pacific War. Japan’s no-surrender policy did not permit becoming a POW. Sakamaki and his fellow soldiers and sailors had been indoctrinated to choose between victory and a heroic death. While his comrades had perished, he had survived. By becoming a prisoner of war, Sakamaki believed he had brought shame and dishonor on himself, his family, his community, and his nation, in effect relinquishing his citizenship. Sakamaki fell into despair and, like so many Japanese POWs, begged his captors to kill him. Based on the author’s interviews with dozens of former Japanese POWs along with memoirs only recently coming to light, The Anguish of Surrender tells one of the great unknown stories of World War II. Beginning with an examination of Japan’s prewar ultranationalist climate and the harsh code that precluded the possibility of capture, the author investigates the circumstances of surrender and capture of men like Sakamaki and their experiences in POW camps. Many POWs, ill and starving after days wandering in the jungles or hiding out in caves, were astonished at the superior quality of food and medical treatment they received. Contrary to expectations, most Japanese POWs, psychologically unprepared to deal with interrogations, provided information to their captors. Trained Allied linguists, especially Japanese Americans, learned how to extract intelligence by treating the POWs humanely. Allied intelligence personnel took advantage of lax Japanese security precautions to gain extensive information from captured documents. A few POWs, recognizing Japan’s certain defeat, even assisted the Allied war effort to shorten the war. Far larger numbers staged uprisings in an effort to commit suicide. Most sought to survive, suffered mental anguish, and feared what awaited them in their homeland. These deeply human stories follow Japanese prisoners through their camp experiences to their return to their welcoming families and reintegration into postwar society. These stories are told here for the first time in English.
Download or read book Lost Childhood written by Annelex Hofstra Layson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author recounts her childhood experiences as a Japanese prisoner during World War II.
Download or read book 1000 Days on the River Kwai written by Cary Owtram and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A British officer recounts his harrowing years as a POW in Thailand, including his time as the camp commandant, in this WWII memoir. Colonel Cary Owtram served with the 137th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, and the 11th Indian Infantry Division in Malaysia. After being captured by the Japanese in Singapore, he was transported to the infamous Burma railway. He went on to spend the next three and a half years in grueling captivity in Thailand, first in Ban Pong Camp and then Chungkai Camp—one of the largest POW camps in the region. Owtram was appointed the British Camp Commandant at Chungkai, making him responsible for his fellow prisoners—a heavy responsibility added to the general deprivation and hardship suffered by all. During that time, Owtram kept a secret diary in which he recorded the brutal experience of surviving day to day and attempting to deal with their harsh and unpredictable Japanese captors. It is not only the prisoners who suffered, but also their families at home. The postscript by Owtram’s daughters vividly demonstrates the agonies of doubt and worry that loved ones went through and the effect of the experience on all.
Download or read book Bataan Survivor written by David L. Hardee and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A forgotten account, written in the immediate aftermath of World War II, which vividly portrays the valor, sacrifice, suffering, and liberation of the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor through the eyes of one survivor. The personal memoir of Colonel David L. Hardee, first drafted at sea from April-May 1945 following his liberation from Japanese captivity, is a thorough treatment of his time in the Philippines. A career infantry officer, Hardee fought during the Battle of Bataan as executive officer of the Provisional Air Corps Regiment. Captured in April 1942 after the American surrender on Bataan, Hardee survived the Bataan Death March and proceeded to endure a series of squalid prison camps. A debilitating hernia left Hardee too ill to travel to Japan in 1944, making him one of the few lieutenant colonels to remain in the Philippines and subsequently survive the war. As a primary account written almost immediately after his liberation, Hardee’s memoir is fresh, vivid, and devoid of decades of faded memories or contemporary influences associated with memoirs written years after an experience. This once-forgotten memoir has been carefully edited, illustrated and annotated to unlock the true depths of Hardee’s experience as a soldier, prisoner, and liberated survivor of the Pacific War.
Download or read book Out of Hitler s Reach written by Michael Luick-Thrams and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tin Hats and Rice written by Barbara Anslow and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I can't visualise us getting out of this, but I want to TRY to believe in a future," wrote 23-year-old Barbara on 8th December 1941, a few hours after Japan attacked Hong Kong. Her 1941-1946 diaries are an invaluable source of information on the civilian experience in Hong Kong during the second world war. They record her thoughts and experiences through the fighting, surrender, years of internment, then liberation and adjustment to normal life.
Download or read book Tears in the Darkness written by Michael Norman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 958 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new work about World War II exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate. "Tears in the Darkness" makes clear, with great literary and human power, that war causes suffering for people on all sides.
Download or read book The Forgotten Highlander written by Alistair Urquhart and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders, captured by the Japanese in Singapore. Forced into manual labor as a POW, he survived 750 days in the jungle working as a slave on the notorious “Death Railway” and building the Bridge on the River Kwai. Subsequently, he moved to work on a Japanese “hellship,” his ship was torpedoed, and nearly everyone on board the ship died. Not Urquhart. After five days adrift on a raft in the South China Sea, he was rescued by a Japanese whaling ship. His luck would only get worse as he was taken to Japan and forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later, he was just ten miles from ground zero when an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. In late August 1945, he was freed by the American Navy—a living skeleton—and had his first wash in three and a half years. This is the extraordinary story of a young man, conscripted at nineteen, who survived not just one, but three encounters with death, any of which should have probably killed him. Silent for over fifty years, this is Urquhart’s inspirational tale in his own words. It is as moving as any memoir and as exciting as any great war movie.
Download or read book American Airpower Comes Of Age General Henry H Hap Arnold s World War II Diaries Vol II Illustrated Edition written by Gen. Henry H. “Hap.” Arnold and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 927 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the Aerial Warfare In Europe During World War II illustrations pack with over 180 maps, plans, and photos. Gen Henry H. “Hap.” Arnold, US Army Air Forces (AAF) Chief of Staff during World War II, maintained diaries for his several journeys to various meetings and conferences throughout the conflict. Volume 1 introduces Hap Arnold, the setting for five of his journeys, the diaries he kept, and evaluations of those journeys and their consequences. General Arnold’s travels brought him into strategy meetings and personal conversations with virtually all leaders of Allied forces as well as many AAF troops around the world. He recorded his impressions, feelings, and expectations in his diaries. Maj Gen John W. Huston, USAF, retired, has captured the essence of Henry H. Hap Arnold—the man, the officer, the AAF chief, and his mission. Volume 2 encompasses General Arnold’s final seven journeys and the diaries he kept therein.
Download or read book Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies written by Samuel Hideo Yamashita and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2005-09-30 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall of Singapore and the brilliant victories achieved since the start of the war mean we are protected, but I don’t know just how grateful I should be. —Takahashi Aiko, housewife, February 1942 This is my final departure from the home islands. I have paid my respects to those who have helped me. I have no regrets. —Itabashi Yasuo, navy kamikaze pilot, February 1944 We had rice gruel for lunch again. There was no tofu in it, but there were potatoes.... We went through with the closing ceremony and received our report cards. Everyone was there. From now on, I’ll persevere and not fail. —Manabe Ichiro, primary school student, July 1944 This collection of diaries gives readers a powerful, firsthand look at the effects of the Pacific War on eight ordinary Japanese. Immediate, vivid, and at times surprisingly frank, the diaries chronicle the last years of the war and its aftermath as experienced by a navy kamikaze pilot, an army straggler on Okinawa, an elderly Kyoto businessman, a Tokyo housewife, a young working woman in Tokyo, a teenage girl mobilized for war work, and two schoolchildren evacuated to the countryside. Samuel Yamashita’s introduction provides a helpful overview of the historiography on wartime Japan and offers valuable insights into the important, everyday issues that concerned Japanese during a different and disastrously difficult time.
Download or read book Prisoners of War written by Arnold Krammer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-11-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's current War on Terror is causing a readjustment of centuries of POW policies. Prisoners of war are once again in the news as America and Western Europe grapple with a new, faceless enemy and the rules of war and the torture of POWs are open to reconsideration. Until very recently, there has been astonishingly little written on the subject of prisoners of war. Yet, to understand the present, it is critical to look back over history. To that end, Arnold Krammer examines the fate of war prisoners from Biblical and Medieval times through the halting evolution of international law to the current reshuffling of the rules. The issue of prisoners of war is of more immediate concern now than ever before and an examination of the history of their treatment and current status may well influence foreign policy. The fate of war prisoners through history has been cruel and haphazard. The lives of captives hung by a thread. Execution, enslavement, torture, or being held for ransom were equally likely. International agreements developed haltingly through the 19th and 20th centuries to culminate in the Geneva Accords of 1929. America's current War on Terror is causing a readjustment of centuries of POW policies. Prisoners of war are once again in the news as America and Western Europe grapple with a new, faceless enemy and the rules of war and the torture of POWs are open to reconsideration. Until very recently, there has been astonishingly little written on the subject of prisoners of war. Yet, to understand the present, it is critical to look back over history. To that end, Arnold Krammer examines the fate of war prisoners from Biblical and Medieval times through the halting evolution of international law to the current reshuffling of the rules. Since biblical times, war captives have been considered property and counted as booty to be enslaved or killed. Americans were interested in generals and weapons and battles, but not the fate of prisoners of war. The Second World War, when 90,000 Americans fell into enemy hands, began to change that. Concern for our POWs in Germany and Japan, and close contact with enemy camps in America began to change our attitudes. However, it was the Vietnam War, media-driven and polarizing, that caused the American public to truly reevaluate the plight of its sons and brothers, heroic and clearly loyal, as they fell into the hands of an inscrutable and apparently unyielding distant enemy. More recently, during the first Gulf War of 1991 and the current War on Terrorism, the issue of prisoners of war has moved to center stage, involving the clash of ideologies, politics, and expediency. Since 9/11, the rights and safety of prisoners of war caught up in the War on Terror have been debated in Congress and adjudicated on by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whose conclusions were protested by numerous organizations. The issue of prisoners of war is of more immediate concern now than ever before, and an examination of the history of their treatment and current status may well influence foreign policy.
