The Ient Family: Family History

The Japanese were not well known for their benevolent treatment of prisoners during the war. The Japanese bushido code of honour – even if there was no longer a ruling samurai-warrior class – was still revered by many Japanese, and thus anyone who would willingly surrendered was beneath contempt. At the time, the Japanese viewed themselves in largely the same way the Germans under the Nazis – they were told they were a superior race. The prisoner of war camps were perhaps a few steps above legitimate death camps. Guards would beat and shoot prisoners at will, there were always food shortages and dismal sanitation systems, and often the prisoners were forced to perform heavy and gruelling labour.

There were more than 140,000 white prisoners in Japanese Prisoner of War (POW) camps. Of these, one in three died from starvation, work, and punishments or from diseases for which there were no medicines to treat.

The most striking commentary on the treatment of the FEPOWs[1] is provided by their death rate in Japanese POW camps: 27% of Japanese prisoners died in captivity. Prisoners of the Japanese found themselves in camps in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and other Japanese-occupied countries. POW camps in Japan housed both captured military personnel and civilians who had been in the East before the outbreak of war.

The terms of the Geneva Convention were ignored by the Japanese who made up rules and inflicted punishments at the whim of the camp commandant. Escape attempts were rare because of the remoteness from Allied positions.

The majority of prisoners were put to work in mines, fields, shipyards and factories on a diet of about 600 calories a day. A typical day was 12 hours at work. A typical diet would be soya beans and seaweed. Prisoners were rarely given fat in their diet and all were continuously hungry. The majority survived on barley, green stew, meat or fish once a month and seaweed stew. Red Cross parcels were often not distributed or arrived two years into their captivity.

Those that suffered the worst conditions and hardships were the POWs on the Burma-Thailand railway. Prisoners suffered from malnutrition, ulcers and cholera. Around 61,000 white and Asian prisoners were put to work on the railroad. Of those, 13,000 died.

For further reading see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
http://www.cofepow.org.uk/
http://www.mansell.com/pow-index.html
http://www.fepow-community.org.uk/