Surviving the sword

Now Brian MacArthur has taken a fresh look at the barbarity of Hitler's ally, Japan, during that country's three-and-a-half-year involvement in the conflict. Introducing new material, he recounts a ghastly tale of almost incomprehensible brutality and comes up with some startling conclusions.

But there was a difference between the Germans and Japanese. The main victims of Nazi atrocities were civilians. Germany's military prisoners of war from Western countries were treated tolerably well, though Russian prisoners were largely left to starve to death.

The Japanese, however, treated their military prisoners appallingly, because under their code of Bushido, surrender by a fighting man was considered contemptible. Interned Western civilians were not treated as harshly.

Twenty per cent of Japan's prisoners of war died in captivity, compared with four per cent of Germany's. Twelve thousand prisoners of war died building the Burma-Thailand railway alone, and up to 100,000 native labourers.

When Britain's colony of Malaya and its ''fortress'' of Singapore fell easily to the Japanese in 1942, tens of thousands of Allied soldiers were taken into captivity. Those sent into the hinterland and later to Japan, to carry out slave-labour projects for their captors, suffered most.

If ever a situation was calculated to bring out the worst, and also the best, in human nature, it was the years of captivity suffered by Japan's prisoners-of-war.

Although the terrible events described in these pages often make distressing reading, they are balanced by accounts of awe-inspiring heroism and nobility of spirit shown by so many prisoners.

Published: 01/03/2005