Here is a short column that recalls the bestial treatment that was meted out to the American and Filipino prisoners of war by their Japanese masters.
"For example, in August of last year, some 300 Japs attacked an unarmed litter train on the Munda Trail. They hacked twenty of the wounded to death..." A well illustrated magazine article which relays the tale of two Marines who were captured at the fall of Corregidor in 1941 and spent the remainder of the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp on the island of Honshu, Japan. The two men told Yank correspondent Bill Lindau all about their various hardships and the atrocities they witnessed as well as the manner in which their lot improved when their guards were told that Japan had surrendered.
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War. Click here if you would like to read about a World War One German P.O.W. camp. Assorted yarns told by liberated Allied soldiers as to the types of games played in Japanese prison camps between bouts of malaria, dysentery and gangrene: "We had a big fellow with us in camp, a guy named Chris Bell, who was 6 feet 2 and the rocky sort. The Jap guards were having a wrestling tournament at the guardhouse and they wanted Bell to come down and wrestle one of those huge sumo men. These sumo wrestlers weigh about 300 pounds and are very agile..."
This was NOT the first time that a Japanese baseball team had faced Americans.
Click here to read about that game.
Suggested Reading:
POW Baseball in World War II: The National Pastime Behind Barbed Wire
An article in which Bataan Death March survivor Dean Sherry, tells the tale of his jailer, a kindly school teacher known only as Captain Uemumra, and remembers him with a tremendous sense of gratitude. An unusual story during a horrible time. A quick read, which begins with the story of how the British Army of occupation in Germany managed to detain and identify Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900 – 1945) when he was disguised in the Wehrmacht uniform of a sergeant. The remaining paragraphs are devoted to instructing the reader as to how similar ploys could be managed to identify other German war crimes suspects when they are in captivity.
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