JAPANESE FORCED LABOR

•Forced labor

•In the beginning, interned men were forced to work for the Japanese in some camps. In Cimahi for instance, men were put to work in the airfield. Starting in 1944, internees were forced to work for the Japanese army almost everywhere. The men had to work on the land and in the docks, to help build railway lines, like the Thai-Burma and the Pakanbaru lines, or they were sent to work in Japanese mines. The women had to sew soldiers’ uniforms and make ropes or wooden nails for ships. Starting in 1944, the upkeep of vegetable gardens became compulsory. Not only did the Japanese expect the camps to be as self-supporting as possible, part of the gardens’ yield had to be tuned over to the Japanese on behalf of the army. In some camps, the internees had to breed pigs for the Japanese. They were paid for their work, namely 15 guilder cents a day.

Unit 731

UNIT 731

•For 40 years, the horrific activities of "Unit 731" remained one the most closely guarded secrets of World War II. It was not until 1984 that Japan acknowledged what it had long denied - vile experiments on humans conducted by the unit in preparation for germ warfare.

•Deliberately infected with plague, anthrax, cholera and other pathogens, an estimated 3,000 of enemy soldiers and civilians were used as guinea pigs. **Some of the more horrific experiments included vivisection without anesthesia and pressure chambers to see how much a human could take before his eyes popped out.

•Unit 731 was set up in 1938 in Japanese-occupied China with the aim of developing biological weapons. It also operated a secret research and experimental school in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. Its head was Lieutenant  General Shiro Ishii. His picture and that of the 731 complex is on slide 8   (WON'T PASTE)

•**I have read it is believed our POW officers and military suffered these horrors either at Camp Mukden in Manchuria

•http://unit731.org/

SONS OF NIPPON- BOWING TO GUARDS AND SOLDIERS

•Pre-war xenophobia[edit] Bowing

•Bowing in front of superiors was entirely normal for the Japanese. But the Dutch felt humiliated by the obligation to bow. Moreover, bowing was subjected to clearly defined rules. Those who did not follow the rules were punished.. In fact, bowing in front of a guard meant bowing in front of the emperor, in the eyes of the Japanese

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•Racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual in Imperial Japan, having begun with the start of Japanese colonialism.[41] The Meiji era Japanese showed a contempt for other Asians. The Shōwa regime preached racial superiority and racialist theories, based on nature of Yamato-damashii. According to historian Kurakichi Shiratori, one of EmperorHirohito's teachers :«Therefore nothing in the world compares to the divine nature (shinsei) of the imperial house and likewise the majesty of our national polity (kokutai). Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority.» [42]

•According to the An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, a classified report in 1943 of theMinistry of Health and Welfare completed on July 1, 1943, just as a family has harmony and reciprocity, but with a clear-cut hierarchy, the Japanese, as a racially superior people, were destined to rule Asia “eternally” as the head of the family of Asian nations.[43] The most horrific xenophobia of the pre-Shōwa period was displayed after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, where in the confusion after a massive earthquake, Koreans were wrongly maligned as poisoning the water supply. A vicious pogrom resulted in the deaths of at least 3 000 Koreans, and the imprisonment of 26 000.

•Attacks against Western foreigners and their Japanese friends by nationalist citizens, rose in the 1930s under the influence of Japanese military-political doctrines in the Showa period, after a long build-up starting in the Meiji period when only a fewsamurai die-hards did not accept foreigners in Japan.[44] For an exception, see Jewish settlement in the Japanese Empire.

•Racism was omnipresent in the press during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Greater East Asia War and the media's descriptions of the superiority of the Yamato people was unwaveringly consistent.[45] The first major anti-foreigner publicity campaign, called Bōchō (Guard Against Espionage), was launched in 1940 alongside the proclamation of the Tōa shin Shitsujō (New Order in East Asia) and its first step, the Hakkō ichiu.[46]

Mostly after the launching of the Pacific War, Westerners were detained by official authorities, and on occasion were objects of violent assaults, sent to police jails or military detention centers or suffered bad treatment in the street. This applied particularly to Americans and British; in Manchukuo at the same period xenophobic attacks were carried out against Chinese and other non-Japanese.