Rare shocking pictures of the Second World War. A photo. Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union Japanese atrocities during the war

Japan did not support the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, and cruel jailers were free to do anything with prisoners: starve them, torture and mock them, turning people into emaciated half-corpses

When, after the surrender of Japan in September 1945, Allied forces began to free prisoners of war from Japanese concentration camps, a horrific sight met their eyes.

The Japanese, who did not support the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, mocked the captured soldiers, turning them into living skeletons covered with leather.

The emaciated prisoners were constantly tortured and humiliated by the Japanese.

The inhabitants of the camps with horror pronounced the names of the guards, who became famous for their special sadism. Some of them were subsequently arrested and executed as war criminals.

The prisoners in the Japanese camps were fed extremely poorly, they were constantly starving, most of the survivors by the time of liberation were in an extreme state of exhaustion.

Tens of thousands of starving prisoners of war were constantly subjected to abuse and torture. The picture shows torture devices found in one of the prisoner of war camps by the Allied troops who liberated the camp.

The tortures were numerous and inventive. For example, “water torture” was very popular: the guards first poured a large volume of water into the prisoner’s stomach through a hose, and then jumped on his swollen stomach.

Some of the guards were especially notorious for their sadism. The picture shows Lieutenant Usuki, known among the prisoners as the "Black Prince".

He was an overseer at the construction of the railway, which the prisoners of war called the "road of death." Usuki beat people for the slightest offense or even without any guilt. And when one of the prisoners decided to run away, Usuki personally cut off his head in front of the rest of the prisoners.

Another brutal overseer - a Korean nicknamed "Mad Half-Blood" - also became famous for brutal beatings.

He literally beat people to death. He was subsequently arrested and executed as a war criminal.

Very many British prisoners of war in captivity were subjected to amputation of the legs - both because of the brutal torture, and because of the numerous inflammations that could be caused by any wound in a humid warm climate, and in the absence of adequate medical care, the inflammation quickly developed into gangrene.

The picture shows a large group of amputee prisoners after being released from the camp.

Many prisoners by the time of release literally turned into living skeletons and could no longer stand up on their own.

The horrifying pictures were taken by officers of the allied forces who liberated the death camps: they were supposed to be evidence of Japanese war crimes during World War II.

During the war, more than 140 thousand soldiers of the allied forces were captured by the Japanese, including representatives from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, India and the United States.

The Japanese used the labor of prisoners in the construction of highways, railways, airfields, to work in mines and factories. The working conditions were unbearable and the amount of food was minimal.

Particularly terrible fame was enjoyed by the "road of death" - a railway line built on the territory of modern Burma.

More than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war were involved in its construction, about 12,000 of them died during construction from starvation, disease and abuse.

The Japanese overseers abused the prisoners as best they could.

The captives were loaded with work that was clearly beyond the power of emaciated people, and severely punished for failing to comply with the norm.

In such wrecked huts, in constant dampness, crowding and crowding, prisoners of war lived in Japanese camps.

Speaking about the crimes of Nazism during the Second World War, many often lose sight of the allies of the Nazis. Meanwhile, they became famous for their cruelty no less. Some of them - for example, the Romanian troops - actively participated in the Jewish pogroms. And Japan, which was an ally of Germany until the last day of the war, sullied itself with such cruelties, before which even some of the crimes of German fascism pale.

Cannibalism
Chinese and American prisoners of war repeatedly claimed that Japanese soldiers ate the bodies of prisoners and, worse, cut off pieces of flesh to eat from people who were still alive. Often the guards of the POW camps were malnourished, and they resorted to such methods to solve the problem of food. There are testimonies of those who saw the remains of prisoners with flesh removed from the bones for food, but not everyone still believes in this nightmarish story.

Experiments on pregnant women
At a Japanese military research center called Part 731, captured Chinese women were raped to get pregnant and subjected to cruel experiments. Women were infected with infectious diseases, including syphilis, and monitored to see if the disease would pass to the child. Women sometimes had a pelvicectomy to see how the disease affected the unborn child. At the same time, no anesthesia was used during these operations: women simply died as a result of the experiment.

brutal torture
There are many cases when the Japanese mocked prisoners not for the sake of obtaining information, but for the sake of cruel entertainment. In one case, a wounded Marine taken prisoner had his genitals cut off and, after putting them in the soldier's mouth, they let him go to his own. This senseless cruelty of the Japanese shocked their opponents more than once.

sadistic curiosity
Japanese military doctors during the war not only carried out sadistic experiments on prisoners, but often did it without any, even pseudo-scientific purpose, but out of pure curiosity. These were the centrifuge experiments. The Japanese were interested in what would happen to the human body if it was rotated for hours in a centrifuge at great speed. Dozens and hundreds of prisoners fell victim to these experiments: people died from open bleeding, and sometimes their bodies were simply torn apart.

Amputations
The Japanese mocked not only prisoners of war, but also civilians and even their own citizens suspected of espionage. A popular punishment for espionage was the cutting off of some part of the body - most often the legs, fingers or ears. The amputation was carried out without anesthesia, but at the same time they carefully monitored so that the punished survived - and suffered until the end of his days.

Drowning
To immerse the interrogated person in water until he begins to choke is a well-known torture. But the Japanese went further. They simply poured streams of water into the captive's mouth and nostrils, which went straight into his lungs. If the prisoner resisted for a long time, he simply choked - with this method of torture, the score went literally for minutes.

Fire and Ice
In the Japanese army, experiments on freezing people were widely practiced. The limbs of the prisoners were frozen to a solid state, and then skin and muscles were cut from living people without anesthesia in order to study the effect of cold on tissue. In the same way, the effects of burns were studied: people were burned alive with skin and muscles on their arms and legs with burning torches, carefully observing the change in tissues.

Radiation
All in the same infamous part, 731 Chinese prisoners were driven into special chambers and subjected to powerful X-rays, observing what changes subsequently occurred in their bodies. Such procedures were repeated several times until the person died.

Buried alive
One of the most cruel punishments for American prisoners of war for rebellion and disobedience was burial alive. A person was placed vertically in a pit and covered with a pile of earth or stones, leaving him to suffocate. The bodies of the allied troops punished in such a cruel way were discovered more than once.

Decapitation
Beheading an enemy was a common execution in the Middle Ages. But in Japan, this custom survived until the twentieth century and was applied to prisoners during the Second World War. But the worst thing was that by no means all the executioners were experienced in their craft. Often the soldier did not bring the blow with the sword to the end, or even hit the sword on the shoulder of the executed. This only prolonged the torment of the victim, whom the executioner stabbed with a sword until he reached his goal.

Death in the waves
This type of execution, quite typical for ancient Japan, was also used during the Second World War. The victim was tied to a pole dug in the tide zone. The waves slowly rose until the person began to choke, so that finally, after much torment, he would drown completely.

The most painful execution
Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world, it can grow by 10-15 centimeters per day. The Japanese have long used this property for an ancient and terrible execution. A man was chained with his back to the ground, from which fresh bamboo shoots sprouted. For several days, the plants tore the body of the sufferer, dooming him to terrible torment. It would seem that this horror should have remained in history, but no: it is known for certain that the Japanese used this execution for prisoners during the Second World War.

Welded from the inside
Another section of the experiments carried out in part 731 is experiments with electricity. Japanese doctors shocked prisoners by attaching electrodes to the head or to the body, immediately giving a large voltage or exposing the unfortunate to a lower voltage for a long time ... They say that with such an impact, a person had the feeling that he was being roasted alive, and this was not far from the truth : Some organs of the victims were literally boiled.

Forced labor and death marches
The Japanese POW camps were no better than the Nazi death camps. Thousands of prisoners who ended up in Japanese camps worked from dawn to dusk, while, according to stories, they were provided with food very poorly, sometimes without food for several days. And if slave power was required in another part of the country, hungry, emaciated prisoners were driven, sometimes for a couple of thousand kilometers, on foot under the scorching sun. Few prisoners managed to survive the Japanese camps.

The prisoners were forced to kill their friends
The Japanese were masters of psychological torture. They often forced prisoners, under threat of death, to beat and even kill their comrades, compatriots, even friends. Regardless of how this psychological torture ended, the will and soul of a person were forever broken.

We know very little about the Soviet-Japanese war during World War II. Almost nothing about Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the factories built by the captured Japanese are still working, the houses they built are still standing, thousands of Soviet Japanese children are still alive. Occasionally, in the expanses of the former Soviet Union, there are quite unexpected places, modest monuments to dead Japanese prisoners. Over the years, there is no more information about this. Therefore, in order to preserve the memory of the fate of a long-gone generation, we will try to briefly restore the forgotten pages of history.

History of captivity

On July 26, 1945, within the framework of the Potsdam Conference, a joint declaration was issued on behalf of the governments of Great Britain, the United States and China demanding and conditions for the surrender of Japan. On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially joined the declaration. Its ninth paragraph read "The Japanese armed forces, after they are disarmed, will be allowed to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead a peaceful and working life ...". Fulfilling its obligations to the allies, the USSR on August 8, 1945, an hour after the official declaration of war on Japan, launched the offensive of the Red Army in Manchuria. And already on August 15, 1945, an imperial rescript was announced on the surrender of Japan on the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.

At the time of the surrender of the 7 millionth armed forces of Japan, most of them were outside the metropolis. Therefore, most of the army was disarmed by the Americans and Kuomintang China and by 1946 was sent to Japan. Approximately 600 servicemen were convicted of crimes (in accordance with paragraph 10 of the Potsdam Declaration) committed against prisoners or civilians in the occupied territories. About 200 of those convicted were executed in various countries.

On August 16, 1945, Japanese troops in Manchuria, North Korea, South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands began to surrender to the Red Army. But the fighting on individual islands lasted until September 5, where due to the ignorance of the Japanese about the surrender, and where due to the stubbornness of individual commanders. In total, more than 600 thousand soldiers of the Japanese army fell into Soviet captivity. Captured units of the Kwantung Army were sent to collection and reception points, filtration points and front-line prisoner-of-war camps created by the Soviet military authorities. The sick and wounded were taken to front-line hospitals. In these institutions, prisoners of war were interrogated, the relevant documents were filed for them, and those who were suspected of committing military crimes, including those against the Chinese and Mongols, were filtered and screened out here.

The command of the Red Army and the leadership of the NKVD assumed the arrival of Japanese prisoners of war as a result of the offensive, but they did not count on such a number, and even that appeared in a very short time. As a result, army commanders were forced to allocate army units to equip additional reception camps, create their administrations, and ensure the protection and livelihoods of prisoners of war. Naturally, building materials, fuel, food, medicines and other means were not prepared in advance for their arrangement. Therefore, adapted premises and tents were used for the camps. Often they were located in the open air. Sanitary and temperature conditions were not respected. Some of the prisoners of war got colds, and infectious diseases became more frequent on this basis. Typhus raged. Part of the field hospitals, medical battalions and companies was withdrawn from the Soviet military units and sent for the needs of prisoners of war. In the camps, the prisoners were divided into units, and Japanese officers and non-commissioned officers maintained discipline and adherence to camp procedures. There were daily morning and evening checks on the presence of people. Records were kept of the sick and the dead.

Note that the Japanese themselves did not consider themselves prisoners of war, but considered them to have laid down their arms in accordance with the terms of surrender and were waiting to be sent to Japan. Moreover, they believed that the Soviet camps provide protection for them from the Chinese, who suffered a lot from the Japanese during the occupation, and at every opportunity did not miss the opportunity to take revenge.

However, contrary to the Potsdam Declaration, the State Defense Committee adopted Decree No. 9898-ss on the transfer of "about 500 thousand Japanese prisoners of war" to the territory of the USSR. It was prescribed “before the removal of Japanese prisoners of war to the territory of the USSR, to organize work battalions of 1000 prisoners of war each. The performance of the duties of commanders of battalions and companies shall be entrusted to the lower officers of the Japanese army. The reasons for this decision are still unknown, although one can find in them both political and economic, as well as Stalin's personal ambitious motives. In any case, the Soviet ideologists and their current followers have still not been able to find an intelligible explanation.

Sending prisoners to the USSR was carried out from front-line camps, where battalion stages of prisoners of war were formed.

Thus, out of 639,635 prisoners, 62,245 people were released at the battlefield, 15,986 people died of wounds, hunger and cold in front-line hospitals, 12,318 people were transferred to the government of Mongolia. The remaining 549,086 people were taken to the territory of the USSR in the fall of 1945. Another 6,345 people died on the way for various reasons. Among the prisoners were 163 generals and 26,573 officers.

And although the USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention, the deported Japanese were considered prisoners of war and selectively applied its provisions to them. The Japanese, on the other hand, considered themselves to be illegally interned. The same position was held by the Japanese government then, and today. Since then, this issue has remained controversial and unresolved.

POW camps

Japanese prisoners of war were placed in special camps of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees ((GUPVI) of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was formed back in 1939. About 70 thousand prisoners were sent to separate work battalions (ORB), subordinate to the Ministry of the armed forces.

The geography of the distribution of Japanese prisoners of war in the USSR was extremely wide. 71 camp administrations were created for Japanese prisoners in 30 regions of the Soviet Union. So, for example, the first parties of the Japanese were distributed as follows. 75,000 people were sent to Primorsky Krai, 65,000 to Khabarovsk Krai, 40,000 to Chita Oblast, 200,000 to Irkutsk Oblast, and 16,000 to Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. people, to the Krasnoyarsk Territory - 20 thousand people, to the Altai Territory - 14 thousand people, to the Kazakh SSR - 50 thousand people, to the Uzbek SSR - 20 thousand people. There were Japanese in the Moscow region, and in Norilsk, and in Kharkov, and in Ufa, and in Kazan, and in Omsk, and in Vladimir, and in Ivanovo, and in Tbilisi.

Each camp administration included numerous camp departments. In addition, there were so-called "business trips" - small groups of prisoners of war working separately from the main camp departments. Each camp administration included an operational-chekist department with an anti-fascist department, departments for security, regime, accounting, a political department, etc. In turn, in the camp departments there were instructors for anti-fascist work, inspectors for personnel records. Japanese translators also worked in the camp administration. They were used mainly in operational and investigative work, and those who did not know the language well were used in accounting departments. Accounting departments monitored the movement of prisoners of war, kept records of the dead, which was regularly reported to the regional, regional and republican departments of internal affairs. The system of camps also included special hospitals, infirmaries and health departments for prisoners of war. The camp departments, for various reasons, moved: some for a new construction site or a road under construction, and some as a result of extinction or repatriation of the contingent.

It should be noted that there were not enough camps ready to receive Japanese prisoners. About a third of them were created in a hurry from scratch. Often the prisoners themselves built their own dwelling, first dugouts, and then barracks.

To meet prisoners of war from trains, the regional departments of the NKVD allocated special groups of authorized operatives who prevented the looting of the convoy, opposed the sale and exchange of uniforms by the Japanese for food and tobacco. Due to the fact that the Japanese uniform was not designed for a cold climate, prisoners of war distributed in such areas were practically naked. So, of the Japanese who arrived in the Khabarovsk Territory, 71% were wearing overcoats, 50% did not have sweaters or padded jackets, 78% wore fur boots that were not adapted to the snow cover. Therefore, the leadership of the camps requested to send 75,000 sheepskin coats, 75,000 felt boots, 50,000 padded jackets, 50,000 cotton trousers to provide prisoners of war.

High-ranking Japanese military men were immediately separated from the bulk, they were not sent to chores, but kept separately, like war criminals. At the same time, specialists in the development of weapons and those who were engaged in research in the field of weapons of mass destruction were selected to continue their scientific activities in "sharashkas" (scientific institutions in the Gulag system).

The vast majority of prisoners of war were between the ages of 20 and 40. About 40% of them were peasants by origin, the percentage of workers reached 30%. People of various civilian professions were captured - teachers, salesmen, railway workers, clerks, priests, agronomists, cooks, builders, signalmen, mechanics, welders, drivers, topographers, accountants, doctors, fishermen, bank employees, gardeners, pharmacists, hairdressers, lumberjacks, miners, sailors, etc.

Most of the Japanese prisoners of war were employed in the forestry industry - 26.1%, about 23.5% of the total number of prisoners of war worked in the mining industry, 12.2% in agriculture, 8.3% in engineering, 8.3% in industrial and civilian construction - 8.3%, about 0.07% of prisoners of war worked in the branches of the defense complex.

Poor rations, squalid dwellings, lack of medicines, exhausting and unproductive manual labor - all this led to increased mortality of the "contingent" in the winter of 1945-1946. 80% of the Japanese who died in captivity fell on this winter.

Life and work of prisoners of war in camps, medical care, etc. regulated the normative documents of the NKVD, providing for almost "paradise" conditions for the Japanese. However, there was simply no real opportunity to implement most of them on the ground.

The daily routine of the camp department was as follows.

1. Rise – 6.00
2. Roll call - 6.30
3. Breakfast – 7.00
4. Conclusion to work - 7.30
5. Lunch break – 14.00 –15.00
6. End of work and dinner 19.00 – 20.00
7. Evening verification - 21.00
8. End to bed – 22.00

However, this was in most cases only on paper. Almost everywhere, the working day was 12 hours, with rare days off, and meals were taken twice a day - in the morning and in the evening.

Food supply standards were determined by the corresponding order of the NKVD of the USSR of September 28, 1945. The daily food set according to norm No. 1 looked like this: bread - 300 g, rice - 300 g, cereals or flour - 100 g, meat - 50 g, fish - 100 g , vegetable fats - 10 g, fresh or salted vegetables - 600 g, miso (bean seasoning) - 30 g, sugar - 15 g, salt - 15 g, tea - 3 g, laundry soap - 300 g per month. For prisoners of war engaged in heavy physical work in economic bodies and camps, the norms for sugar and vegetables increased by 25%. Additional norms of bread and rice were issued to them depending on the fulfillment of production standards. The issuance of bread and rice increased in equal quantities: with the production of 50% of the established norm - by 25 grams, with the production of 50 to 80% of the established norm - by 50 grams, with the production of 101% and above the established norm - by 100 grams. Of course, food packages for patients in the hospital, as well as for officers and generals, were higher.

Again, this was on paper. Moreover, it is so good and so much everything that 90% of the population of the Soviet Union at that time did not see such a diet in their eyes. Yes, and the soldier's ration was more modest. The approved norms were supposed to provide 3,500 thousand calories per eater per day. In fact, even up to 2500 thousand did not always reach. Naturally, it is not necessary to talk about compliance with the entire range of products approved by the standards. The same rice in the USSR were crumbs. But the main problem lay elsewhere. Not always prisoners of war received even the products due to them in the required quantity. Firstly, the products were delivered extremely irregularly and not in full. Secondly, the camp authorities stole. And only by the middle of 1947, the supply of food to the camps began to improve. And even then, mainly due to the creation of subsidiary farms in the camps, where vegetables were grown or cattle were bred.

According to the norms, one person was supposed to have 2 square meters. m. of living space. The officers lived in separate barracks (if conditions allowed), senior officers had separate rooms. In the barracks in the middle of the aisle there were iron barrels-stoves for heating, and along the aisle there were solid two-story pairs. Each prisoner of war was entitled to a complete set of winter and summer clothes and shoes, linen, bedding. There are cases when captured Japanese were given captured German uniforms and only during repatriation were they changed into Japanese ones. Old-timers from the places of Japanese camps say that the Japanese went in winter in worn-out sheepskin coats and cloth Red Army Budyonovkas. During the summer, the samurai preferred to walk around in their uniforms and canvas slippers with wooden soles. Some flaunted tarpaulin boots, bartering them from guards or local residents. The Japanese were especially fond of Russian quilted jackets and jerseys: the camp authorities even awarded them to especially distinguished prisoners.

The internal organizational structure of the contingent of Japanese prisoners of war was established as follows: battalion, platoon, company, squad. As a rule, these were old army units and their own officers commanded them. In the barracks, prisoners of war were placed in platoons or companies. The camps secretly had their own Japanese headquarters and strictly observed the hierarchy adopted in the Japanese army. Such "liberties" were deliberately allowed by the camp authorities, since the concerns of maintaining discipline and order were shifted to the prisoners of war themselves, the camp administration only carried out general supervision. It seems that this system was successfully borrowed from the Gulag camp system.

The punishments applied to prisoners of war were regulated by the disciplinary charter of the Red Army. The head of the camp had the right: to announce a reprimand before the line for verification; to announce a reprimand in an order, subject to simple arrest with detention in a guardhouse for up to 20 days and strict arrest for up to 10 days. In addition, he could deprive a prisoner of war who committed a misdemeanor of the right to correspond for up to two months or the right to use money for the same period. Prisoners of war who regularly violated the regime, "had a tendency to escape" or spoke unfavorably about the Soviet system, were sent to the penal battalion. Penitentiaries were sent to the most difficult areas of work, deprived of additional food and correspondence rations. For the most malicious violators of the regime, there was a punishment cell in the penal divisions. And with systematic refusals from work, prisoners of war could also be brought to criminal responsibility. All cases of crimes committed by prisoners of war were considered by a military tribunal according to Soviet laws.

As a rule, prisoner-of-war camps were surrounded by a fence with barbed wire, guards were placed on watchtowers and checkpoints. Initially, prisoners of war were guarded with the strictness adopted in the Gulag. Depending on the working conditions and the possibility of escape, guards were also posted at the objects of work of prisoners of war. For example, at logging sites, a detachment of prisoners of war of 50-70 people, two guards drove to work. There was nowhere to run. Over time, the regime of detention of the Japanese began to soften, they were able to move relatively freely around the villages, communicate with the local population. Although the protection was never completely removed.

Work and life in the camps

The main purpose of the army of thousands of Japanese prisoners of war was to use it as a cheap labor force. The prisoner of war was obliged not only to compensate by his labor the cost of keeping in the camp, but also to bring income to the state. The forced or forced nature of the labor of prisoners of war was determined by the fact that:

a) forced to work;

b) working conditions and pay (or lack thereof) were undividedly determined by the forcing person;

c) leaving or refusing to work was not allowed by measures of physical coercion and the threat of punishment under Soviet law.

Articles 50 and 52 of the Geneva Convention prohibit the use of prisoners of war in work of a military nature or purpose; endangering health or dangerous. However, these articles fell into the category of ignored in the USSR. Therefore, prisoners of war worked mainly in such prohibited jobs. In particular, in Khakassia they worked at the Montenegrin coal mines, taiga logging sites.

The performance of work by prisoners was regulated by the “Regulations on the Labor Use of Prisoners of War” adopted by the NKVD on September 29, 1945. Labor was an obligation for all privates and non-commissioned officers, who thus reimbursed the costs of their maintenance. In turn, the administration of the camps had to ensure the most efficient use of the contingent in order to compensate the state for the cost of maintaining the camp. The medical labor commissions created in each camp determined the category of the prisoner of war's ability to work on the basis of his state of health. Those assigned to the 1st and 2nd categories (suited for heavy and moderate physical work) were involved in labor at industrial facilities and construction, while the 3rd category contingent performed the duties of camp servants.

In fact, the daily life of the Japanese did not always look as smooth as on paper, which was explained by financial difficulties and the lack of facilities in the camps, especially in 1945-1946. Already in 1947, the working conditions of Japanese prisoners of war were close to the conditions in which Soviet citizens also worked.

The above Regulation determined both the amount of monetary rewards and other ways to encourage prisoners of war (better living conditions, priority provision of clothing, etc.), as well as penalties for failure to meet production standards, negligent attitude to work or its disruption (from reprimanding to transfer, guilty military tribunal). Employees of the production and planning departments of the camps completed the work teams, provided them with tools, were responsible for the use of workers in accordance with their qualifications, provided information on labor output to the accounting department, monitored the results of meeting planned targets, etc. According to the Regulations, wages were limited to 150– 200 rubles a month, and there were no restrictions on payment for coal mining. This made it possible to improve nutrition through the purchase of food by prisoners of war at Kooptorg points at the camps. Illegally bought products with clothes from the local population.

At first, the organization of labor processes was at an extremely low level - there were no normal production conditions, with the onset of winter heating points were not created, prisoners of war did not have clothes and tools, and non-compliance with safety requirements led to high injuries.

The high mortality rate of Japanese prisoners of war on the territory of the USSR was due to various factors, among which were the poor-quality and meager food mentioned above, the harsh climate, hard work away from their homeland without any hope for the best. The Japanese also died as a result of accidents at work and at home. The percentage of deaths from injuries ranged from 2.7% to 8%, depending on the danger of production. On average, 5.1% of prisoners of war died from injuries. Suicides accounted for a small proportion of deaths - about one suicide per 100 dead people, i.e. 0.7-1.1%. Their surge came at the beginning of 1946, when it became clear to many that they would not survive. The Japanese also died during unfortunate escapes.

In the percentage of mortality, forestry "excelled" - 30% of all Japanese who died in the USSR fell on this industry. In the mining industry, 23.2% of prisoners of war died, in agriculture - 15.1%, in engineering - 9.6%. High mortality among prisoners of war was in the energy sector, where every sixth Japanese died, in oil production and in the defense industry - every fifth. The lowest mortality was among those who worked on the repair of railway equipment and mechanisms - only every ninety-eighth prisoner of war died here, on the construction of shipping and irrigation canals - every forty-second.

For all the time in the camps, 39,738 Japanese died, or 7.2% of the total number that ended up in the Soviet Union. This figure is half the death rate of prisoners from the Eastern Front, which was 15%. And this was determined not only by hatred for the Germans, but by a more loyal attitude towards the Japanese. Firstly, the indicator was greatly let down by the mortality of Germans, immigrants from the Stalingrad cauldron, of which about 7% survived. Secondly, the food of one Japanese prisoner of war cost the budget almost twice as much as the food of a prisoner of war of a German soldier. So the Japanese prisoner until September 1946 ate at 4.06 rubles, and the German at 2.94 rubles. From September 1946 to December 1947, a Japanese received food for 11.33 rubles, and a German for 6.49 rubles. From December 1947, the Japanese were fed for 11.27 rubles, and the Germans for 6.35 rubles.

Oddly enough, the Japanese prisoners of war who were in the ORB (separate worker battalions) of the Ministry of the Armed Forces turned out to be in the most difficult situation. It did not recognize the directives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued in relation to the prisoners and "ruined" them mercilessly. As can be seen from the surviving acts of inspections, in the spring of 1946 the working day in the ORB was 10-14 hours, prisoners of war of the III group of working capacity worked full time. Breaks between meals were up to 12 hours or more. None of the GULAG camps so picturesquely described by modern liberals could afford such a thing. Already the very next day, all the camp management would have been exterminated, if not for cruel treatment, then for failure to fulfill production plans. And here the Red Army is victorious, you can’t even think badly about it, even today.

The USSR, as if recognizing the Geneva Convention of June 27, 1929, considered the Japanese prisoners of war only when, when it was beneficial to it. Therefore, the norm of the convention, that every prisoner of war had the right to send a message to his family about his captivity and state of health within a week after arriving at the camp, began to be fulfilled only from October 1946, a year after captivity. According to special instructions for sending postal items by Japanese prisoners of war from the USSR, a special standard “prisoner of war postal card” was installed with a place for a return reply. Letters sent not on forms and to other countries were not accepted. Each prisoner of war was allowed to send one letter to his relatives in three months, prisoners of war who overfulfilled the norm in production were allowed to send two letters in three months.

Japanese prisoners of war worked in logging, in the construction of residential and industrial buildings, in the construction of roads. So, in Khabarovsk, the Japanese built the Higher Party School, the Dynamo stadium, a large number of residential two-story brick buildings in the working areas of the city. A textile factory, buildings of the Central Telegraph Office and the Ministry of Culture, theaters named after A. Navoi, them. Mukimi. And in the city of Chirchik - the Khimmash and Selmash factories. They laid a high-voltage power line from Bekabad to Tashkent, which to this day provides electricity to a significant part of Tashkent. The Farhad hydroelectric power station located in Bekabad was also built with the participation of three thousand Japanese prisoners of war. In the Primorsky Territory, their forces built the Nakhodka commercial port and the Sedankinsky hydroelectric complex in Vladivostok, and entire residential areas were erected in cities. The Japanese also worked on the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, on the mines of the Khakaszoloto trust, on the construction of the Abakan irrigation canal, and at various industrial enterprises. The Japanese restored the mines of Donbass and the enterprises of Kharkov and Zaporozhye. You can still list thousands and thousands of objects where Japanese prisoners of war worked. But, despite the huge volume of various works performed, their activities, like the cheaper Germans in the GUPVI system, have been unprofitable throughout the years of their existence. Probably the Soviet leadership, quoting the classics of Marxism-Leninism everywhere, did not understand the essence of their works, where it was proved that slave labor was low-productive.

According to the memoirs of old-timers, the civilian population treated the prisoners kindly, in winter the Japanese warmed themselves in private houses, the hostesses gave them hot tea, often shared poor post-war food, surrounding them with the human warmth that they needed so much. The Japanese willingly talked about their homeland, taught Russian children the Japanese language, sculpted figurines, carved pipes and made dolls for local children. Most of the population of the Soviet Union understood that the Japanese did not attack the USSR and did not conduct military operations on its territory. It should be noted that the sympathy of the local population for the Japanese prisoners of war was also a derivative of the quick victory of the Soviet Army in the Far East with relatively small losses.

Deep sensual relations arose between the Japanese and Soviet girls, although then they had to part. But on the other hand, many children of Russian-Japanese origin remained. Often Russian women married Japanese for other reasons - they had money and did not drink bitter. Some Japanese were able to stay with new families, some maintained relations in absentia, helped their children financially, some from the beginning of the 90s began to regularly come to visit "Russian" families. Some Japanese, having retired in their homeland, returned, live in the same city with their adult children, work, teach Japanese, teach children to play national instruments at a music school.

In the camps, starting from the later time of their stay in the USSR, the national customs and holidays of Japan were observed, self-government and self-service were practiced, amateur art activities worked, interest clubs were created, and even concerts were given. During their leisure hours, the Japanese put on performances, learned Russian songs, which, in their melodiousness, very much reminded them of their own, painted pictures, and also went in for sports. But it was not everywhere, and not always on a voluntary basis. Behind all this, the exhausted system of the Gulag is clearly visible.

In Japan, a large number of memoirs of prisoners of war came out, most of which describe in detail life in the camp, the difficulties that the Japanese had to face. As a rule, they boiled down to the following: the difficulty of acclimatization - unusual cold for the inhabitants of the country, where in most of the territory the temperature rarely drops below zero degrees; unusual and low-quality food, the basis of which was potatoes, cabbage, bread, the absence of rice, a product so necessary for every Japanese; the absolute lack of rights of a prisoner of war in the camp; the cruel treatment meted out in some camps by the escorts and camp staff; the impossibility in the initial period of captivity to contact relatives and friends, the lack of information about them among prisoners of war; complete lack of information about the future fate of prisoners of war, etc.

brainwashing

The USSR would not be like itself, even if flies accidentally flown across the border were not brainwashed by Soviet ideology. Therefore, political departments operated in the camps. They organized anti-fascist schools, oversaw the publication of newspapers and leaflets, kept records of prisoners of war loyal to the Soviet system, and supplied the camps with propaganda and educational literature. Employees of the political department regularly lectured on social and political issues, identified prisoners of war who were friendly towards the socialist system, in order to use them as political instructors in the camps in the future. Also, the Japanese were actively involved as translators during group classes. Some prisoners of war were sincerely imbued with socialist ideas, others only pretended to cooperate with the camp administration in order to replace hard physical labor with “educational” work among prisoners. In addition, active participation in public life could speed up the return home - loyalty to the Soviet state was one of the priority criteria when sending to Japan.

Groups of activists were formed from the most loyal prisoners of war, who were trained in ideological training centers in Moscow, Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk and other large cities. Then they dispersed to the camps, where they already worked as political instructors. For the sake of truth, it should be noted that many "activists" during their return to Japan ended up overboard ships at sea, and those who sailed - in the dungeons of the special services.

According to reports, up to 70% of all prisoners were involved in the activities of "democratic circles" and "prisoner of war schools". One of the educational levers was the Stakhanov movement organized in all camps - the brigades recognized as the best received challenge banners. Clubs, libraries, which were equipped with ideologically correct literature in different languages, as well as anti-fascist rooms worked on the ground. All common areas were supplied with visual propaganda - wall newspapers, portraits of communist leaders, etc. The camps received episodes translated into Japanese from the biography of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, articles and excerpts from the collected works of Lenin in an adaptive format for the Japanese.

Another propaganda tool was the newspaper "Nippon Shimbun" (Japanese newspaper), which was published in camp No. 16 in the Khabarovsk Territory, and from there it was distributed to other GUPVI camps. In addition to political articles aimed at promoting the ideas of socialism, works of art were also published here, which also had a political connotation. Many prisoners of war did not take this newspaper seriously - just because of its deep politicization. But for Soviet ideologists, the process itself was important, and not its result.

In general, the majority of Japanese prisoners of war were rather indifferent to communist propaganda - attending political classes and ostentatious loyalty made camp life easier. However, there are cases when repatriates arriving in Japan, standing on board the ship, sang the Internationale with might and main.

Viewings of Soviet films were also a form of propaganda. Before the session, an instructor-translator spoke with an explanation of the content of the picture, embellishing it with anti-militarist agitation. There are cases when both circus performers and Soviet artists came to the prisoners. But these are rather one-time, exceptional events.

In order to show the effectiveness of their hard work, the political departments established an order: before leaving for their homeland, prisoners of war had to write a collective gratitude to the Soviet leadership and, of course, to Stalin. Such messages to the leader were made in the form of a gift offering in beautifully decorated cases or even on special stands. The Russian State Military Archive still holds more than 200 albums in which the Japanese thanked Stalin and praised life in the USSR. By the way, there are not only albums, but also a huge banner with gratitude and signatures of Japanese prisoners. All letters are embroidered with gold threads, which were pulled out of the shoulder straps of Japanese officers.

And the pinnacle of insanity was the desire of political workers to get written commitments from the Japanese that those in Japan would praise the way of life in the USSR and join the Communist Party of Japan. MGB operatives were harnessed to them, trying in every possible way to get a subscription from the Japanese for cooperation with Soviet intelligence after returning home.

It is natural that people from the lower classes of Japanese society were more susceptible to propaganda and recruitment, while the officer corps usually retained their monarchical views. However, the desire of Soviet ideologists to launch the virus of communism and agents into Japan through repatriated prisoners of war turned out to be a failure.

Repatriation

According to the Geneva (1929) and The Hague (1907) conventions, prisoners are supposed to be released after the act of ending the war. The USSR and Japan, as you know, concluded an agreement on ending the state of war between themselves only on October 19, 1956. However, as noted above, the USSR did not sign the conventions, and carried out only those of their provisions that it wanted.

Therefore, the repatriation was carried out according to an unknown principle. So in 1946, 18,616 people were sent to Japan; in 1947 - 166,200 people, in 1948 - 175 thousand people, in 1949 - 97 thousand, in 1950 - 1585 people. 2988 people remained in the USSR for various reasons - the convicts were detained until the end of their sentence, the sick who did not want to return. The repatriation process continued until 1956. And only on December 23, 1956, the remaining 1025 Japanese convicted of various military crimes were amnestied in honor of the signing of the Soviet-Japanese agreement to end the war and sent home.

The repatriated Japanese were sent to the Far East in the city of Nakhodka, where the prisoners were met and received by representatives of the allies: the Americans, the British and representatives of the Japanese administration. To ensure the delivery of the repatriated to the port, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a special order that regulated the conditions for transporting prisoners of war, supplying them with clothes and shoes, food, bed linen, blankets. The echelons were provided with medical staff and medicines, the necessary sanitary conditions were maintained in them. For the delivery of the Japanese until the moment they were handed over to the repatriation authorities, the heads of the camps' departments were personally responsible. The prisoners' underwear was disinfected before being loaded into the echelon to prevent the spread of infections. If someone fell ill on the way, he was removed from the train and sent to the nearest special hospital for prisoners of war.

The epic with the "Siberian captivity" did not end there. The Japanese government still had claims against the Soviet side, some of which are still relevant today. Thus, the Soviet authorities did not issue job certificates to repatriates, as is customary in international practice; as a result, the years of captivity to the Japanese were not taken into account when calculating pensions. In addition, the Japanese returning from the Soviet camps did not receive any compensation from the government and were placed in a discriminatory position compared to their other compatriots. Only those who survived until 2009 received payments. It was then that the Law on Compensation came out, the former prisoners received symbolic payments, but the relatives of the already dead prisoners of war were not supposed to do anything.

Many Japanese prisoners of war were already convicted in the camps, mainly under Article 58 - this is anti-Soviet activity. In most cases, the trial was unfair, but the rehabilitation of such prisoners began only in the second half of the 1990s. Not all prisoners in the USSR received wages for forced labor, and this problem also remained a subject of controversy for a long time.

For many years, the Soviet Union did not provide lists of the dead Japanese and their places of burial, did not give the relatives of the dead the opportunity to visit the cemeteries. During the 90s. Some of the problems were solved, but not all.

Those who returned from Soviet captivity were carefully checked by the Japanese authorities for the presence of Soviet spies. In addition, they were subjected to repression in their homeland: it was difficult to get a good job, free treatment, etc. Moreover, almost all their lives, the Japanese who were in Soviet captivity were considered "communists" and, accordingly, they were treated. But are they guilty of it?

On the territory of the USSR, dead Japanese prisoners of war are buried in approximately 700 places. Almost all cemeteries are in a neglected state, most of them have long been destroyed. Until the 1990s, the Soviet Union did not provide lists of dead Japanese and their places of burial. And only in 1991, a special agreement was concluded between the government of Japan and the USSR on the reburial of the remains of Japanese prisoners of war in Japan. To put this action into practice, it was necessary to determine the places of burial and the number of buried prisoners of war. But the Union collapsed, and the treaty remained unfulfilled.

Currently, about 200 thousand people from among those who were in captivity are alive. In Japan, they are united in almost 60 public organizations. Now, on their initiative, groups of Japanese are traveling around the territory of the former Soviet Union and are trying to do what their government did not: they take home the remains, immortalize the memory of the dead with a rare monument. Now several dozen monuments to Japanese prisoners of war, erected by the Japanese to their compatriots, are scattered across the vast expanses of the former USSR.

On the quiet Tashkent street Yakkasarayskaya, there is a house that is included in all reference books and guides to the countries of Central Asia, which are published in Japan. This is the only museum on the territory of the former USSR dedicated to the stay on the territory of Uzbekistan of Japanese prisoners of war during the Second World War. Documents, photographs, household items of those years, exhibited in the museum exhibition, give an idea of ​​​​how the life of twenty-three thousand soldiers and officers of the former Kwantung Army went, unexpectedly finding themselves in a distant Asian republic.

In conclusion. All resolutions of the State Defense Committee of the USSR and the regulations of the executive authorities in relation to Japanese prisoners of war were classified as "top secret". Why do you think it was done?

Based on materials from sites: https://ru.wikipedia.org; http://dailybiysk.ru; https://tvrain.ru/ http://waralbum.ru; http://russian7.ru; https://mikle1.livejournal.com; https://rus.azattyq.org/ https://news.rambler.ru; http://www.warmech.ru; https://www.crimea.kp.ru; http://warspot.ru; http://www.memorial.krsk.ru.

Japanese atrocities - 21+

I present to your attention the photos that were taken by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. Only thanks to quick and tough measures, the Red Army managed to tear out the Japanese army very painfully on Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin Gol River, where the Japanese decided to test our strength

Only thanks to a serious defeat, they put their ears back and postponed the invasion of the USSR until the moment the Germans took Moscow. Only the failure of the Typhoon operation did not allow our dear Japanese friends to arrange a second front for the USSR.

Trophies of the Red Army

Everyone has somehow forgotten about the atrocities of the Germans and their lackeys on our territory. Unfortunately.

Typical example:

I want to show on the example of Japanese photos what a joy it was - the imperial Japanese army. It was a powerful and well-equipped force. And its composition was well prepared, drilled, fanatically devoted to the idea of ​​domination of their country over all other monkeys. They were yellow-skinned Aryans, which was reluctantly recognized by other long-nosed and round-eyed superior people from the Third Reich. Together they were destined to divide the world for the benefit of the smallest.

In the photo - a Japanese officer and soldier. I draw your attention to the fact that all officers in the army had swords without fail. The old samurai clans have katanas, the new ones, without traditions, have an army sword of the 1935 model. Without a sword - not an officer.

In general, the cult of edged weapons among the Japanese was at its best. As the officers were proud of their swords, so the soldiers were proud of their long bayonets and used them where possible.

In the photo - practicing bayonet fighting on prisoners:

It was a good tradition, so it was applied everywhere.

(well, by the way, it also happened in Europe - the brave Poles practiced saber felling and bayonet techniques on captured Red Army soldiers in exactly the same way)

However, shooting was also practiced on prisoners. Training on captured Sikhs from the British Armed Forces:

Of course, the officers also flaunted the ability to use a sword. especially honing his ability to take off human heads with a single blow. Supreme chic.

In the photo - training in Chinese:

Of course, the Unter-Leshes had to know their place. In the photo - the Chinese greet their new masters as expected:

If they show disrespect - in Japan, a samurai could blow his head off any commoner who, as it seemed to the samurai, greeted him disrespectfully. In China it was even worse.

However, low-ranking soldiers also did not lag behind the samurai. In the photo - the soldiers admire the torment of a Chinese peasant flogged with their bayonets:

Of course, they chopped off their heads both for the sake of training and just for fun:

And for selfies:

Because it is beautiful and courageous:

The Japanese army especially developed after the storming of the Chinese capital - the city of Nanjing. Here the soul unfolded accordion. Well, in the Japanese sense, it's probably better to say like a cherry blossom fan. Three months after the assault, the Japanese slaughtered, shot, burned, and in various ways more than 300,000 people. Well, not a person, in their opinion, but the Chinese.

Indiscriminately - women, children or men.

Well, it’s true, it was customary to cut the men first, just in case, so as not to interfere.

And women - after. With violence and entertainment.

Well, children, of course.

The officers even started a competition - who will cut off more heads in a day. Purely like Gimli and Legolas - who will fill more orcs. Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, later renamed Mainichi Shimbun. On December 13, 1937, a photograph of Lieutenants Mukai and Noda appeared on the front page of the newspaper under the headline "Competition to be the first to cut off the heads of 100 Chinese with sabers is over: Mukai has already scored 106 points, and Noda - 105." One point in the "bounty race" meant one victim. But we can say that these Chinese are lucky.

As mentioned in the diary of an eyewitness of those events, the leader of the local Nazi party, John Rabe, "the Japanese military chased the Chinese throughout the city and stabbed them with bayonets or sabers." However, according to a veteran of the Japanese imperial army who participated in the events in Nanjing, Hajime Kondo, for the most part, the Japanese "thought that it was too noble for a Chinese to die from a saber, and therefore they often stoned them to death."

Japanese soldiers began to practice their popular "three clean" policy: "burn clean", "kill everyone clean", "rob clean".

More selfies. The warriors tried to document their bravery. Well, because of the prohibitions, I can’t post photos of more sophisticated fun, such as stuffing a cola into a raped Chinese woman. Because it's softer. The Japanese shows what kind of girl he has.

More selfies

One of the brave athletes with prey ^

And these are just the results of some outsider ^

Then the Chinese could not bury all the corpses for a long time.

The case was long. There are a lot of dead, but there is no one to bury. Everyone has heard about Tamerlane with the pyramids of skulls. Well, the Japanese are not far behind.

White got it too. The Japanese did not chime with the prisoners.

They were lucky - they survived:

But this Australian does not:

So if the brave Japanese crossed our border, one could imagine that they would be worthy comrades-in-arms of the Germans. In the photo - the result of the work of the German Einsatzkommando.

Because - just look at the photo

Comfortable women
During the war in Asia, the Japanese militarists actively used "women for pleasure" - hundreds of thousands of Asian women were kept by violence and deceit with army units, they were forced to accompany the Japanese army. The Japanese soldiers raped these women, committing inhumane crimes against them. Filipika Narissa Claveria, in an interview with British television, recalled how she, 11, was captured by the Japanese with her family. The father was tied to a tree and was slowly flayed with bayonets, while the soldiers raped his wife - to enhance the "effect".

In 1932, Lieutenant General Okamura Yasuji received 223 reports of local women being raped by Japanese soldiers in occupied China. In this regard, the lieutenant general turned to the command with a proposal to create “comfort stations”, justifying this by saying that “the stations are being created to reduce anti-Japanese sentiment that arose in the occupied territories, and also for the need to prevent a decrease in the combat effectiveness of soldiers due to the appearance they have venereal and other diseases.”

Such comfortable stations have existed since the early 1930s. in Manchuria, China, later in Burma, Borneo, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Okinawa. The first station was founded in Shanghai in 1932. According to various estimates, from 50 to 300 thousand young women passed through the “comfort stations”, many of whom were under 18 years old. Until the end of the war, a fourth of them survived. Weekly women underwent a medical examination for sexually transmitted diseases. There were cases when military doctors themselves raped healthy people. In case of infection, they were injected with the drug "number 606" - terramycin - a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Pregnant women were also injected with this drug in order to provoke a miscarriage. The drug has an undesirable side effect, which subsequently excluded the possibility of giving birth to healthy children or giving birth at all.

The number of "comfort stations" grew, covering the entire territory of the Japanese Empire. On September 3, 1942, a report at a meeting of the leaders of the Ministry of the Army indicated that there were 100 "comfort stations" in North China, 140 in Central China, 40 in South China, 100 in Southeast Asia, 10 in the South Seas, Sakhalin - 10.

Subsequently, comfortable stations began to be called "niguichi", i.e. "29 to 1". This was the daily proportion of "comfort women" serving soldiers in brothels in conquered territories. Then, understandably, hunger intensified administratively, the loving Japanese set a new standard for “comfortable women” of 40 men a day.

Japanese historians tend to emphasize the purely private and voluntary nature of prostitution. On March 2, 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated that the organized nature of the mass involvement of women in prostitution has not been proven.

Bacteriological warfare and Unit 731.
In 1935, the so-called "Detachment 731" of the Kwantung Army was founded - the largest special unit for the development of bacteriological weapons, created by the Japanese in China. For 12 years, the detachment developed bacteriological weapons using the bacteria of plague, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, anthrax, tuberculosis, etc., and tested them on living people.

More than 5 thousand prisoners of war and civilians became "experimental objects". Well, the definition of “experimental” is purely ours, European. The Japanese preferred to use the term "logs". The detachment had special cells where people were locked. The cages were so small that the prisoners could not move. They were infected with some kind of infection, and then observed for days on changes in the state of the body. There were also large cells. The sick and healthy were driven there at the same time in order to track how quickly the disease is transmitted from person to person. But no matter how they infected him, no matter how much they watched, the end was the same - a person was dissected alive, pulling out organs and watching how the disease spreads inside. People were kept alive and not sewn up for days on end, so that doctors could observe the process without bothering themselves with a new autopsy.

There were also experiments just for curiosity. Individual organs were cut out from the living body of the experimental subjects; they cut off the arms and legs and sewed them back, swapping the right and left limbs; they poured the blood of horses or monkeys into the human body; put under the most powerful x-rays; left without food or water; scalded various parts of the body with boiling water; tested for sensitivity to electric current. Curious scientists filled the lungs of a person with a large amount of smoke or gas, introduced rotting pieces of tissue into the stomach of a living person.

One example of such a "training" is described in the book "The Devil's Kitchen", written by the most famous researcher of the "Squad 731" Seiichi Morimura:
“In 1943, a Chinese boy was brought to the section. According to the employees, he was not one of the “logs”, he was simply kidnapped somewhere and brought to the detachment, but nothing was known for sure. The boy undressed as he was ordered and lay back on the table. Immediately, a mask with chloroform was applied to his face. When the anesthesia finally took effect, the whole body of the boy was wiped with alcohol. One of the experienced members of the Tanabe group who were standing around the table took a scalpel and approached the boy. He plunged a scalpel into his chest and made a Y-shaped incision. A white fat layer was exposed. In the place where the Kocher clamps were immediately applied, blood bubbles boiled up. The autopsy has begun. With dexterous trained hands, employees took out the internal organs from the boy’s body one by one: the stomach, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and intestines. They were dismantled and thrown into buckets standing right there, and from the buckets they were immediately transferred to glass vessels filled with formalin, which were closed with lids. The removed organs in the formalin solution still continued to shrink. After the internal organs were taken out, only the boy's head remained intact. Small, short-cropped head. One of the members of Minato's group secured her to the operating table. Then he made an incision with a scalpel from ear to nose. When the skin was removed from the head, the saw was used. A triangular hole was made in the skull, the brain was exposed. A detachment officer took it with his hand and quickly lowered it into a vessel with formalin. What was left on the operating table was something resembling the body of a boy - a devastated body and limbs.

There were other groups as well. For example, in 1939, the “Togo 1644 Detachment” subordinated to S. Ishii was formed in Nanjing, in October 1939, the “Beiping Chia-di 1855” detachment, etc.

Attack on Pearl Harbor
Many veterans of the Second World War from the USA and Great Britain are indignant at how noble the Japanese warriors were portrayed by the creators of the film "Pearl Harbor". In particular, they were outraged by a scene in which a Japanese pilot warns American children playing baseball so that they have time to hide in a shelter before the attack. In reality, as the participants in the Pacific War assure, the Japanese were head and shoulders above the SS in cruelty. In response, British television released a documentary film "Hell in the Pacific", there is more truth and it is not as artistic, but still worth a look.

By the way, during the hostilities in the Pacific Fleet, the Americans called the orderly not with the standard cry “orderly”, but with the mysterious cry “talullah” (on behalf of the actress Tallulah Bankhead, who was quite popular in those years). This is explained by the fact that the Japanese adopted a vile tactic - to call the orderly, and then shoot him. Well, they were simply not able to pronounce a word with two “l” sounds.

Bataan death march
According to the plan approved by the Japanese General Homma for the evacuation of prisoners from Bataan, on the first day they were to be driven over a distance of 35 km and not given any food, since they still had to have their own. The next day it was planned to deliver them by trucks to the railway station, on the third day - by a freight train - to the concentration camps. The plan provided that there would be about 25 thousand prisoners. The Japanese could not even imagine that the army that had surrendered to them was so much superior to their own. When it turned out that there were three times more prisoners than the winners, they were simply driven along the road under the scorching sun to the north, divided into columns of 300-500 people. No distinction was made between the healthy, the sick and the wounded. Everyone who could walk was expelled from the field hospitals. The rest were stabbed with bayonets.

The 35-kilometer transition of the "first day" stretched for three days. With each passing hour, the guards became more and more irritated and looked for any excuse to pounce on the prisoners. Food was given only on the third day - a handful of rice, and then on the condition that the prisoners give the guards all the valuables that they could hide.
During the Bataan Death March, the guards cut off the heads of prisoners for trying to drink the water of their stream, ripped open their stomachs in order to practice the art of wielding a saber.

The "death march", as it was later called, lasted 10 days. According to the most conservative estimates, over 8 thousand prisoners of war were killed, died of wounds, diseases and exhaustion during these days. When a Japanese liaison officer drove down the road through Bataan a year later, he found that both sides were literally littered with the skeletons of people who had never been buried. The officer was so shocked that he reported this to General Homme, who expressed surprise that he had not been informed about this, well, of course, he lied, you bastard.

In response to all these atrocities, the Americans and the British came to the conclusion that the Japanese soldier was not a man at all, but a rat to be destroyed. The Japanese were killed even when they surrendered with their hands up, because they were afraid that they were holding a grenade somewhere in order to undermine the enemy with it. The samurai, on the other hand, believed that the captured Americans were waste human material. Usually they were used for bayonet training. When the Japanese had food shortages in New Guinea, they decided that eating their worst enemy could not be considered cannibalism. Now it is difficult to calculate how many Americans and Australians were eaten by voracious Japanese cannibals. One veteran from India recalls how the Japanese carefully cut off pieces of meat from people who were still alive.

Australian nurses were considered especially tasty prey among the conquerors. Therefore, the male personnel who worked with them were ordered to kill nurses in hopeless situations so that they would not fall into the hands of the Japanese alive. There was a case when 22 Australian nurses were thrown from a wrecked ship on the shore of an island captured by the Japanese. The Japanese fell on them like flies on honey. Having raped them, they stabbed them with bayonets, and at the end of the orgies they drove them into the sea and shot them. An even sadder fate awaited Asian prisoners, since they were valued even less than the Americans.

When there was an outbreak of cholera in one of the concentration camps, the Japanese did not bother treating themselves, but simply burned the entire camp, along with women and children. When foci of diseases appeared in a particular village, fire became the most effective means of disinfection.

Causes
Still, it is worth recognizing that not one general and not one colonel is guilty of bullying prisoners and civilians - this was a common practice.
War crimes researcher Bertrand Russell explains Japanese mass crimes, in particular, by a certain interpretation of the bushido code - that is, the Japanese code of conduct for a warrior. No mercy for the defeated enemy! Captivity is a shame worse than death. Defeated enemies must be exterminated so that they do not retaliate, and so on.

An original civilization?
Concluding the article, I would like to note the following. It is often said that Japan is a kind of original civilization, that they are supposedly people from another planet and so on. Well, you can agree. Japan has been in self-isolation for quite a long time, so we, brought up in the spirit of Eurocentrism, cannot understand them. This also explains the fact that so far their land is, in fact, scarce for talents. Judge for yourself, they adopted their entire original state system from the Chinese, they also copied the script from Chinese. As already found out, during the Meiji period, social structures were adopted from European ones, as well as the army and navy. Science - almost all was done by Europeans. They are good at copying and adopting. However, they have already learned to create something new. But only recently. Is this progress and "humanization" or will their originality play a trick on them?

By the way, as everyone knows, after the Second World War, Japan was forbidden to have its own armed forces (the same 9th article of the constitution). And all this time in Japan there were only small self-defense forces. However, now this is just a formality, because the size of the army has already reached 250 thousand, and the military budget has grown to 44 billion dollars - one of the largest in the world, by the way. Moreover, in 2006, the Ministry of Defense was established and the self-defense forces were officially transformed into armed forces. Something to think about, yes.