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{{Short description|War crimes committed by Imperial Japan}}
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{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}}
The term '''Japanese war crimes''' refers to events which occurred during the period of ] from the late ] to mid-]. Other names, such as '''Asian Holocaust''' and '''Japanese War Atrocities''', are also used for these war crimes and other incidents. Many of these events are subject to controversy among historians and people of different nationalities.
{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}{{Infobox civilian attack
| title = Japanese war crimes
| location = In and around East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific
| date = 1927–1945<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rigg |first1=Bryan Mark |author-link= Bryan Mark Rigg|title=Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II|publisher=Knox Press|year=2024 |isbn=9781637586884 |pages=13–14, 23, 54, 190–191, 289|language=en}}</ref>
| partof = the ]
| image = Nanking bodies 1937.jpg
| image_upright =
| caption = Bodies of victims along the ], out of ]'s west gate during the ]
| type = ], ], ], and other ]
| fatalities = {{Circa|19,000,000}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Henderson |first=Conway W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AwMovLqKw2oC&pg=PA253 |title=Understanding International Law |date=2010 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=978-1-4443-1825-8 |location= |pages=253 |language=en}}</ref>–{{Circa|30,000,000}}<ref name="The Routledge History of Genocide"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rigg |first1=Bryan Mark |author-link= Bryan Mark Rigg|title=Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II|publisher=Knox Press|year=2024 |isbn=9781637586884 |pages=190–191, 276, 312|language=en}}</ref>
| perpetrator = ''']'''{{bulleted list|]|]}}
| motive = {{hlist|]|]|]|]}}
{{Infobox|child=yes
| label1 = Trials
| data1 = ], and ]}}
}}


During its imperial era, the ] committed numerous ]s and ] across various Asian-Pacific nations, notably during the ] and ]s. These incidents have been referred to as "the Asian ]",<ref name="nyt-1999">{{cite news |last=Blumenthal |first=Ralph |title=The World: Revisiting World War II Atrocities; Comparing the Unspeakable to the Unthinkable |date=7 March 1999 |work=] |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DB153FF934A35750C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink |access-date=26 July 2008 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110321043541/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DB153FF934A35750C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink |archive-date=21 March 2011}}</ref><ref name="latimes-1995">{{cite news |last=Kang |first=K. Connie |title=Breaking Silence: Exhibit on "Forgotten Holocaust" Focuses on Japanese War Crimes |date=4 August 1995 |work=] |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-04-me-31301-story.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220119212048/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-04-me-31301-story.html |archive-date=19 January 2022}}</ref> and "Japan's Holocaust",<ref>{{cite book |last=Rigg |first=Bryan Mark |author-link=Bryan Mark Rigg |title=Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II |publisher=Knox Press |year=2024 |isbn=9781637586884 |pages=13–14, 282, 294 |language=en}}</ref> and also as the "Rape of Asia".<ref>{{cite book |last=Rigg |first=Bryan Mark |author-link=Bryan Mark Rigg |title=Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II |publisher=Knox Press |year=2024 |isbn=9781637586884 |pages=93 |language=en}}</ref> The crimes occurred during the early part of the ], under ]'s reign.
Historians and the governments of many countries officially hold the military of the ], namely the ] and the ], responsible for the deaths and ] of many millions of civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) during the 20th century.


The ] (IJA) and the ] (IJN) were responsible for a multitude of war crimes leading to millions of deaths. War crimes ranged from sexual slavery and massacres to human experimentation, torture, starvation, and forced labor, all either directly committed or condoned by the Japanese military and government.<ref>{{cite web |title=Japanese War Crimes |date=15 August 2016 |publisher=The National Archives (U.S.) |url=https://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111001125321/http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/ |archive-date=1 October 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Pacific Theater Document Archive |publisher=War Crimes Studies Center, University of California, Berkeley |url=http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~warcrime/PT.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090718103739/http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~warcrime/PT.htm |archive-date=18 July 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Bibliography: War Crimes |publisher=Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University |url=http://www.gwu.edu/~memory/research/bibliography/warcrimes.html |access-date=21 April 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190816032304/https://www2.gwu.edu/~memory/research/bibliography/warcrimes.html |archive-date=16 August 2019}}</ref><ref name="Gruhl 2017">{{cite book |last=Gruhl |first=Werner |title=Imperial Japan's World War Two: 1931–1945 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7658-0352-8 |page=85}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Voices of the "Comfort Women": The Power Politics Surrounding the UNESCO Documentary Heritage |website=The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus |date=March 2021 |url=https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Shin.html |access-date=8 May 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230418021604/https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Shin.html |archive-date=18 April 2023}}</ref> Evidence of these crimes, including oral testimonies and written records such as diaries and war journals, has been provided by Japanese veterans.<ref>{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |date=2006 |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi Warcrimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |page=28 |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303190336/http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf |archive-date=3 March 2016}}</ref>
==Definitions==
], ]. An ], Sgt Leonard Siffleet, about to be beheaded with a '']'' sword. Many ] prisoners of war were ] by Japanese forces during the ].]]
There are differences from one country to another regarding the definition of Japanese war crimes.


The Japanese political and military leadership knew of its military's crimes, yet continued to allow it and even support it, with the majority of Japanese troops stationed in Asia either taking part in or supporting the killings.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rigg |first=Bryan Mark |author-link=Bryan Mark Rigg |title=Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II |publisher=Knox Press |year=2024 |isbn=9781637586884 |pages=266 |language=en}}</ref>
===Japanese definitions===
Although the ]s have, from ] onwards, provided the standard definitions of war crimes, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions until after ]. However, many of the alleged crimes committed by Japanese imperial personnel were also violations of the Japanese code of ], which the military either willfully ignored, or failed to enforce.


The ] participated in ] and ] on civilians during the Second Sino-Japanese War and ], violating international agreements that Japan had previously signed, including the ], which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.<ref>{{cite news |title=Japan bombed China with plague-fleas |date=25 January 2001 |work=BBC News |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1135368.stm |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200328163015/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1135368.stm |archive-date=28 March 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Keiichi |first=Tsuneishi |title=Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare Program |website=Japan Focus |date=24 November 2005 |url=http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tsuneishi-Keiichi/2194 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150127222203/http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tsuneishi-Keiichi/2194 |archive-date=27 January 2015}}</ref>
In ], the term "Japanese war crimes" generally refers to cases tried by the ], also known as the '''Tokyo Trials''', following the end of the ]. The tribunal did not prosecute war crimes allegations involving mid-ranking officers or more junior personnel. Those were dealt with separately in other cities throughout the Asia-Pacific region.


Since the 1950s, ] have been issued by senior Japanese government officials; however, apologies issued by Japanese officials have been criticized by some as insincere. Japan's ] has acknowledged the country's role in causing "tremendous damage and suffering" before and during World War II, particularly the ] by the IJA.<ref name="mofa_jp">{{cite web |title=Q8: What is the view of the Government of Japan on the incident known as the "Nanjing Massacre"? |website=Foreign Policy Q&A |publisher=Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan |url=http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/q_a/faq16.html#q8 |access-date=2 October 2011 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141213205234/http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/q_a/faq16.html#q8 |archive-date=13 December 2014}}</ref> However, the issue remains controversial, with some members of the Japanese government, including former prime ministers ] and ], having paid respects at the ], which honors all Japanese war dead, including convicted Class A war criminals. Furthermore, some ] provide only brief references to the war crimes,<ref>{{cite web |last=Kasahara |first=Tokushi |title=Reconciling Narratives of the Nanjing Massacre in Japanese and Chinese Textbooks |publisher=Tsuru Bunka University |url=http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/kasahara.pdf |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131231183120/http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/kasahara.pdf |archive-date=31 December 2013}}</ref> and certain members of the ] have denied some of the atrocities, such as the government's involvement in abducting women to serve as "]", a ] for sex slaves.<ref name="Tabuchi">{{cite news |last=Tabuchi |first=Hiroko |author-link=Hiroko Tabuchi |title=Japan's Abe: No Proof of WWII Sex Slaves |newspaper=The Washington Post |agency=Associated Press |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030100578.html |access-date=1 March 2007 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103190750/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030100578.html |archive-date=3 November 2012}}</ref><ref name="Associated Press">{{cite news |title=Japan's Abe Denies Proof of World War II Sex Slaves |date=1 March 2007 |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Sex-Slaves.html?ref=world |access-date=1 March 2007}}</ref>
====Position of the Japanese government====
The Japanese government takes the position that as Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, it violated no ]. For the same reason, the Japanese government also takes the view that Allied forces did not violate the Geneva Convention in acts committed against Japanese personnel and civilians.


==Definitions==
The Japanese government did sign the ] in ], thereby rendering its actions in 1937-45 liable to charges of ], a charge which was introduced at the Tokyo Trials to prosecute '''Class-A War Criminals'''. (Class-B War Criminals are those found guilty of war crimes ''per se'', and Class-C War Criminals are those guilty of ].) However, any convictions for such crimes are not recognised by the Japanese government, as the Kellogg-Briand Pact did not have any enforcement clause stipulating penalties in the event of violation.
{{Main|Definitions of Japanese war crimes}}
The ] defines ]s as "violations of the ],"<ref>{{cite web |title=International Military Tribunal for the Far East Charter (IMTFE Charter) – The Faculty of Law |website=jus.uio.no |language=en |url=https://www.jus.uio.no/english/services/library/treaties/04/4-06/military-tribunal-far-east.xml |access-date=28 January 2020 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190529083141/https://www.jus.uio.no/english/services/library/treaties/04/4-06/military-tribunal-far-east.xml |archive-date=29 May 2019}}</ref> which involves acts using prohibited weapons, violating ]field norms while engaging in ] with the enemy ]s, or against ],<ref>{{cite web |title="Defining International Aggression: The Search for World Peace". |website=derechos.org |url=http://www.derechos.org/peace/dia/doc/dia48.html |access-date=28 January 2020 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131213032227/http://www.derechos.org/peace/dia/doc/dia48.html |archive-date=13 December 2013}}</ref> including enemy civilians and ] and ] of ] as in the case of the ].<ref>{{cite book |last=Gilbert |first=Geoff |title=Responding to International Crime (International Studies in Human Rights) |date=30 September 2006 |isbn=90-04-15276-8 |page=358 |publisher=Martinus Nijhoff Publishers}}</ref>


Military personnel from the ] have been convicted of committing many such acts during the period of ] from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Japanese military soldiers conducted a series of ]s against civilians and prisoners of war throughout East Asia and the western ] region. These events reached their height during the ] of 1937–45 and the ] (1941–45).<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=MacKenzie |first=S. P. |date=September 1994 |title=The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/244883?journalCode=jmh |journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=66 |issue=3 |pages=487–520 |doi=10.1086/244883 |issn=0022-2801}}</ref>
The Japanese government accepted the terms set by the ] (1945) after the end of the war. The declaration alluded, in Article 10, to two kinds of war crime: one was the violation of international laws, such as the abuse of ] (POWs); the other was obstructing "] tendencies among the Japanese people" and ] within Japan.


===International and Japanese law===
Japanese law does not recognise those convicted in the Tokyo Trials and other trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan's governments have accepted the judgments made in the trials, and in the ] (1952). This is because the treaty does not mention the legal validity of the tribunal. In the Japanese text, the word used for "accept" is ''judaku'' (which may also be translated as "to receive"), as opposed to the stronger ''shounin'' ("to certify"). Therefore the position of the Japanese government is that it accepts the judgment and sentences set by the trials as demands, but it does not accept the legal validity of the tribunal. This means, among other things that those convicted have had no ability, under Japanese law, to appeal, as the Tokyo Tribunal and other war crimes courts have no standing in Japanese law. Under normal circumstances it violates a number of fundamental principles of modern legal procedure to punish someone whose crime and penalty were defined only after the fact. Had Japan certified the legal validity of the war crimes tribunals in the San Francisco Treaty, this might have resulted in Japanese courts reversing such verdicts. Any such outcomes would have created domestic political crises and would have been unacceptable in international diplomatic circles.
] Chinese civilians]]
Japan signed the ] and the ],<ref name="icrc.org">{{cite web |title=Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field. Geneva, 27 July 1929. |publisher=] |url=http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewStates=XPages_NORMStatesParties&xp_treatySelected=300 |access-date=6 July 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131023011215/http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewStates=XPages_NORMStatesParties&xp_treatySelected=300 |archive-date=23 October 2013}}</ref> but the Japanese government declined to ratify the POW Convention. In 1942, the Japanese government stated that it would abide by the terms of the Convention '']'' ('changing what has to be changed').<ref>{{cite web |title=World War Two – Geneva Convention |date=25 February 2013 |publisher=Historyonthenet.com |url=http://historyonthenet.com/WW2/geneva_convention.htm |access-date=21 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130718091123/http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/geneva_convention.htm |archive-date=18 July 2013}}</ref> The crimes committed also fall under other aspects of international and Japanese law. For example, many of the crimes committed by Japanese personnel during World War II broke Japanese ], and were subject to ], as required by that law.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070614140107/http://yale.edu/gsp/publications/WaiKeng.doc |date=14 June 2007}} (Genocide Studies Program Working Paper No. 18, Yale University), p. 27. Access date: 23 April 2007.</ref> The Empire also violated international agreements signed by Japan, including provisions of the ] such as protections for ] and a ban on the use of ], the ] which prohibited ], the ] which prohibited ], and other agreements.<ref name="chang-barker-2003">{{cite book |last1=Chang |first1=Maria Hsia |title=Japanese War Crimes: The Search for Justice |last2=Barker |first2=Robert P. |publisher=Transaction Publishers |year=2003 |isbn=0-7658-0890-0 |editor-last=Peter |editor-first=Li |page=44 |chapter=Victor's Justice and Japan's Amnesia}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II |date=August 2001 |publisher=] |isbn=0-7656-0543-0 |editor-last=Stetz |editor-first=Margaret |pages=154–156 |editor-last2=Bonnie BC Oh}}</ref> The Japanese government also signed the ] (1929), thereby rendering its actions in 1937–45 liable to charges of ],<ref name="lippman-2004">{{cite journal |last=Lippman |first=Matthew |title=The history, development, and decline of crimes against peace |date=1 January 2004 |journal=George Washington International Law Review |volume=36 |issue=5 |page=25 |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5433/is_200401/ai_n21362456/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1 |access-date=26 July 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081001004334/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5433/is_200401/ai_n21362456/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1 |archive-date=1 October 2008}}</ref> a charge that was introduced at the ] to prosecute "Class A" war criminals. "Class B" war criminals were those found guilty of war crimes ''per se'', and "Class C" war criminals were those guilty of ]. The Japanese government also accepted the terms set by the ] (1945) after the end of the war, including the provision in Article 10 of punishment for "all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners". Japanese law does not define those convicted in the post-1945 trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan's governments have accepted the judgments made in the trials, and in the ] (1952).{{clarify|reason=This seems to have been cut off mid-sentence – "in the Treaty of San Francisco... what?"|date=October 2020}} Former Prime Minister ] had advocated the position that Japan accepted the Tokyo tribunal and its judgements as a condition for ending the war, but that its verdicts have no relation to domestic law. According to Abe, those convicted of war crimes are not criminals under Japanese law.<ref name="japan-times-2006">{{cite news |title=Under Japanese law, 14 at Yasukuni not criminals: Abe |date=7 October 2006 |work=] |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20061007a4.html |access-date=26 July 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216084244/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20061007a4.html |archive-date=16 December 2008}}</ref>


===Historical and geographical extent===
The current Japanese jurists' consensus regarding the legal standing of the Tokyo tribunal is that, as a condition of ending the war, the Allies demanded a number of conditions including the execution and/or incarceration of those whom they deemed to be responsible for the war. These people were defined as guilty by a tribunal organized by the Allies. The Japanese government accepted these demands in the Potsdam Declaration and then accepted the actual sentencing in the San Francisco Treaty, which officially ended the state of war between Japan and the Allies. Although the penalties for the convicted, including execution, can be regarded as a violation of their technical legal rights, the constitution allowed such violations if proper legal procedure was followed, in the general public interest. Therefore, any such execution and/or incarceration is constitutionally valid, but has no relationship to Japanese criminal law. Hence those convicted as war criminals are not defined as criminals in Japan, although their execution and incarceration is regarded as legally valid.
]
Outside Japan, different societies use widely different timeframes when they define Japanese war crimes.{{Citation needed|date=July 2008}} For example, ] was enforced by the Japanese military, and the Society of ] was switched to the political system of the ]. Thus, ] and ] both refer to "Japanese war crimes" as events which occurred during the period of ].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Zhao |first=Yali |year=2006 |title=Countering Textbook Distortion: War Atrocities in Asia, 1937–1945 |journal=National Council for the Social Studies |volume=7 |pages=424–430 |url=https://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/articles/se_700706424.pdf |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230322174118/https://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/articles/se_700706424.pdf |archive-date=22 March 2023}}</ref>


By comparison, the ] did not come into a military conflict with Japan until 1941, and ], Australians, ]ns and Europeans may consider "Japanese war crimes" to be events that occurred from 1942 to 1945.<ref>See, for example: {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004230225/http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1979/nov-dec/symonds.html |date=4 October 2006}} (Access date: 15 February 2007): "most American historians, date the war from December 1941". See also {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303000000/http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf |date=3 March 2016}} (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C.; p. 15): "The atrocities at Nanjing occurred four years before the United States entered the war. At that time, the U.S. government did not have a large military or diplomatic intelligence network in China. A handful of trained military or embassy personnel reported on events, sometimes second-hand; compared with the sensational press coverage, the official U.S. documentation was scant. As a result, with the exception of the records produced during the postwar Class A war crimes trial of the commanding general of Japanese forces deemed responsible for the Rape of Nanking, there are few materials on this subject at the National Archives." See also, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060928210616/http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/shillonyBA.html |date=28 September 2006}} (Access date: 15 February 2007); Grant K. Goodman, "Review 'The Kempei Tai in the Philippines: 1941–1945' by Ma. Felisa A. Syjuco" ''Pacific Affairs'', v. 64, no. 2 (Summer 1991), pp.&nbsp;282–83 (Access date: 15 February 2007); {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140521031910/http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/undocs/html/IDEC601.HTM |date=21 May 2014}} (Access date: 15 February 2007); {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111214144911/http://www.house.gov/bordallo/gwcrc/RL30606.pdf |date=14 December 2011}} Access date: 15 February 2007.</ref>
===International definitions===


Japanese war crimes were not always carried out by ]<ref name="The Korea Times">{{cite web |last=Shin |first=Hee-seok |title=Korean War criminals tried as Japanese |date=10 February 2017 |work=] |language=ko |url=http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=103587 |access-date=10 February 2017 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181227230607/http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=103587 |archive-date=27 December 2018}}</ref> personnel. A small minority of people in every Asian and Pacific country invaded or occupied by Japan ] with the Japanese military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other ] powers.<ref>{{cite book |last=de Jong |first=Louis |title=The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War |publisher=KITLV Press |others=translation J. Kilian, C. Kist, and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman |year=2002 |isbn=90-6718-203-6 |series=Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206 |location=Leiden, The Netherlands |pages=40, 42, 45, 203–04, 305–07, 311–12, 328, 373–74, 386, 391, 393, 429, 488 |author-link=Loe de Jong}}</ref> In addition to Japanese civil and military personnel, Chinese (including ]), Koreans, and Taiwanese who were forced to serve in the military of the Empire of Japan were also found to have committed war crimes as part of the Japanese Imperial Army.<ref name="Harmsen, Peter 2012, p. 4">Harmsen, Peter, ], "Taiwanese seeks payback for brutal service in Imperial Army", '']'', 26 September 2012, p. 4</ref><ref name="Breen">{{cite web |last=Breen |first=Michael |title=Truth Commission Should Be Truthful |website=] |url=http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200611/kt2006111619251454330.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070216020355/http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200611/kt2006111619251454330.htm |archive-date=16 February 2007 |quote=The Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under the Japanese Imperialism (sic) announced on Monday that 83 of the 148 Koreans convicted of war crimes were victims of Japan and should not be blamed. A ruling on three more is pending, and families have requested a review of the 23 Koreans who were executed.}} (<!--Keep this!; the webarchive link for the original article is an error page-->)</ref><ref name="The Korea Times"/><ref>{{cite news |last=Ryall |first=Julian |title=British ex-POW in Japanese camp "disgusted" by guard demands for compensation |date=11 November 2014 |language=en |work=The Daily Telegraph |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11220761/British-ex-POW-in-Japanese-camp-disgusted-by-guard-demands-for-compensation.html |url-access=subscription |access-date=10 February 2017 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11220761/British-ex-POW-in-Japanese-camp-disgusted-by-guard-demands-for-compensation.html |archive-date=11 January 2022}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
] may be broadly defined as unconscionable behavior by a government or military personnel against either enemy civilians or enemy combatants. Military personnel from the ] have been accused and/or convicted of committing many such acts during the period of ] from the late ] to mid-]. They have been accused of conducting a series of ]s against ]s and ] (POWs) throughout ] and the western ] region. These events reached their height during the ] of ]&ndash;] and the ] (]-45).


Both South Korea and North Korea have stated that the ], which lead to the annexation of Korea by Japan, was concluded illegally.<ref name="Kawasaki-1996"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190216011130/http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v3n2/kawasaki.html |date=16 February 2019}}.</ref>
Different societies use widely different timeframes in defining Japanese war crimes. For example, the annexation of ] by ] in ] was followed by the widespread use of violence and deprivation of civil liberties against the Korean people. Millions of Koreans may have been killed during the occupation. Thus, some Koreans refer to "Japanese war crimes" as events occurring during a period from 1910 to 1945. By comparison, the ] did not come into military conflict with Japan until 1941, and thus Americans may consider "Japanese war crimes" as encompassing only those events that occurred from 1941 to 1945.{{fact}}


==Background==
A complicating factor is that a small minority of people in every Asian and Pacific country conquered by Japan collaborated with the Japanese military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other ] powers. The ] is perhaps the best-known example of a movement opposed to ]an imperialism which served as part of the Japanese military. Prominent individual nationalists in other countries, such as the later ] president, ], also served with Japanese forces. In some cases such non-Japanese personnel were also responsible for war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan. For political reasons, many of these people were never investigated or tried and brought to justice after 1945. In South Korea especially, it is alleged that such people were often able to acquire wealth by serving Japan. It is further alleged in South Korea that some former collaborators have covered up "Japanese" war crimes in order to avoid their own prosecution and/or exposure.


===Japanese militarism, nationalism, imperialism, and racism===
The issue of Japan's '']'' ] over countries such as ] and Korea, prior to 1945, is a matter of controversy. Japanese control was accepted and recognised internationally and was justified by instruments such as the ] (], which included China's ceding of Taiwan) and the ] (]). It has been argued that acts committed against people subject to Japanese sovereignty cannot be considered "war crimes". However, the native populations were not consulted on the changes in sovereignty, nor was there universal acceptance of such annexations. There was ongoing resistance to Japanese rule and &mdash; in any case &mdash; war crimes may also be committed during ]s. (See ] and ] for further details.){{fact}}
{{Main|Bushido|Statism in Shōwa Japan|Japanese militarism|Japanese nationalism|Eugenics in Japan|Fascism in Asia#Japan|Racism in Asia#Japan|Racism in Japan}}


] of Chinese captives during the ] of 1894–1895]]
==Background==
===Japanese military culture and imperialism===


], ], and ], especially during Japan's imperialist expansion, had great bearings on the conduct of the Japanese armed forces both before and during the ]. After the ] and the collapse of the ], the ] became the focus of military loyalty, nationalism, and racism. During the so-called "Age of Imperialism" in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers by establishing a colonial empire, an objective which it aggressively pursued.
]—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings"]]
Military culture, especially during ] had great bearing on the conduct of the Japanese military before and during ].


Unlike many other major powers, Japan never ratified the ]—also known as the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva 27 July 1929—which was the version of the Geneva Convention that covered the treatment of prisoners of war during World War II.<ref>{{cite web |title=ICRC databases on international humanitarian law |publisher=Cicr.org |url=http://www.cicr.org/ihl.nsf/WebSign?ReadForm&id=305&ps=P |access-date=21 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205211218/http://www.cicr.org/ihl.nsf/WebSign?ReadForm&id=305&ps=P |archive-date=5 February 2012}}</ref> Nevertheless, Japan ratified the ] which contained provisions regarding prisoners of war<ref>{{cite book |title=Forgotten Captives in Japanese-Occupied Asia (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia) |date=13 October 2011 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-415-69005-8 |editor-last=Blackburn |editor-first=Kevin |page=12 |editor-last2=Hack |editor-first2=Karl}}</ref> and an Imperial Proclamation in 1894 stated that Japanese soldiers should make every effort to win the war without violating international laws. According to Japanese historian ], Japanese forces during the First Sino-Japanese War released 1,790 Chinese prisoners without harm, once they signed an agreement not to take up arms against Japan if they were released.<ref name="Tanaka Hidden Horrors pp72-73">Tanaka ''Hidden Horrors'' pp.&nbsp;72–73</ref> After the ] of 1904–1905, all of the 79,367 ] prisoners who were held by the Japanese were released and they were also paid for the labor which they performed for the Japanese, in accordance with the Hague Convention.<ref name="Tanaka Hidden Horrors pp72-73"/> Similarly, the behavior of the Japanese military in ] was at least as humane as that of other militaries which fought during the war,<ref name=":2" /> with some ] prisoners of the Japanese finding life in Japan so agreeable that they stayed and settled in Japan after the war.<ref>{{cite news |title=German-POW camp reveals little-known history of Japan |date=31 January 2000 |agency=] |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_/ai_59198009 |access-date=20 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216075736/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_/ai_59198009 |archive-date=16 December 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Japanese POW camp was a little slice of home |date=23 March 2004 |agency=] |url=http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/03/23/2003107480 |access-date=20 October 2008 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190825100420/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/03/23/2003107480 |archive-date=25 August 2019}}</ref>
Centuries previously, the ] of Japan had been taught unquestioning obedience to their ], as well as to be fearless in battle. After the ] and the collapse of the ], the ] became the focus of military loyalty. During the so-called "Age of Empire" in the late ], Japan followed the lead of other world powers in developing an empire, pursuing that objective aggressively.
])—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings".]]


{{Blockquote|As Japan continued its modernization in the early 20th century, her armed forces became convinced that success in battle would be assured if Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen had the "spirit" of '']''. ... The result was that the ''Bushido'' code of behavior "was inculcated into the Japanese soldier as part of his basic training." Each soldier was indoctrinated to accept that it was the greatest honor to die for the Emperor and it was cowardly to surrender to the enemy. ... ''Bushido'' therefore explains why the Japanese soldiers who were stationed in the ] so mistreated POWs in their custody. Those who had surrendered to the Japanese—regardless of how courageously or honorably they had fought—merited nothing but contempt; they had forfeited all honor and literally deserved nothing. Consequently, when the Japanese murdered POWs by shooting, beheading, and drowning, these acts were excused since they involved the killing of men who had forfeited all rights to be treated with dignity or respect. While civilian internees were certainly in a different category from POWs, it is reasonable to think that there was a "spill-over" effect from the tenets of ''Bushido''.| ], ''Military Trials of War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies 1946–1949''<ref>{{cite book |last=Borch |first=Fred |title=Military Trials of War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies 1946–1949 |date=2017 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0191082955 |pages=31–32 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sn8yDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA31 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019132936/https://books.google.com/books?id=sn8yDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref>}}Propaganda depictions of the Japanese military as superior and of others such as the Chinese or Koreans as cowards, pigs, rats, or mice occurred in the use of woodcuts produced for wide consumption which were intended to provide a cruel amusement. The Myrdal-Kessle woodcut cartoon collection donated to the ], Stockholm, Sweden, was the subject of a catalogued exhibition in 2011 and includes examples of this type of material from the Meiji period.<ref>''De hundra skratten, Japanska träsnitt som maktens bildspråk'' (The hundred laughs, Japanese woodcuts as an imagery of power), edited Lars Vargö. Carlssons in cooperation with the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (2011) ISBN 978 919790371 4</ref>
As with other imperial powers, Japanese popular culture became increasingly ] through the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. The rise of ] was seen partly in the adoption of ] as a ] from ], including its entrenchment in the education system. Shinto held the ] to be divine because he was deemed to be a descendant of the sun goddess ]. This provided justification for the requirement that the emperor and his representatives to be obeyed without question. In addition, many Japanese believed that Japan was a special place created by gods, rather than part of the ordinary world and that the Japanese people had a divine mission to expand their culture, including by the conquest of other countries. This was similar to other contemporaneous philosophies and ideologies, such as the U.S. "]", or the European idea of ''la mission civilatrice'' ("the civilising mission"), that supported the imperialism of other countries.


===Events of the 1930s and 1940s===
Victory in the ] (1894-95) signified Japan's rise to the status of a world power. Unlike the other major powers, Japan did not sign the ] &mdash; which stipulates the humane treatment of civilians and POWs &mdash; until after World War II. Nevertheless, the treatment of prisoners by the Japanese military in wars such as the ] (1904-05) and ] (1914-18), was at least as humane as that of other militaries.
By the late 1930s, the rise of militarism in Japan created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of ]. Japan also had a military ] force within the ], known as the '']'', which resembled the Nazi '']'' in its role in annexed and occupied countries, but which had existed for nearly a decade before ] own birth.<ref>Lamong-Brown, Raymond. "Kempeitai: Japan's Dreaded Military Police". Sutton Publishing, 1998.</ref>


Perceived failure or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind.<ref name="toland301">], '']''. p. 301. Random House. New York. 1970</ref> In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating all the way down on to the lowest ranks. In ], this meant that prisoners of war received the worst beatings of all,<ref>{{cite book |last=de Jong |first=Louis |title=The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War |publisher=KITLV Press |others=translation J. Kilian, C. Kist, and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman |year=2002 |isbn=90-6718-203-6 |series=Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206 |location=Leiden, The Netherlands |pages=289, 311, 417 |author-link=Loe de Jong |orig-date=2002}}</ref> partly in the belief that such punishments were merely the proper technique to deal with disobedience.<ref name="toland301"/>
===The events of the 1930s and 1940s===
By the late ], the practices of Japan's ] created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of ]'s elite military personnel, such as those in the '']''. Japan also had a military ] force, known as the '']'', which resembled the Nazi '']'' in its role in annexed and occupied countries.


The phenomenon of '']'' (下克上) which involves lower-ranking officers overthrowing or assassinating their superiors, as evidenced by the multiple coups and assassinations carried out on the mainland, also allowed for the proliferation of war crimes because if commanders tried to restrict atrocities they would either face mutiny or reassignment. Historians have also attributed war crimes to the lack of supervision and disorganization within the military which without stronger control over units and effective court martial procedures allowed for war crimes to go unpunished and therefore continue.<ref>{{cite web |last=Smith |first=Noah |title=High-level disorganization still hobbles Japan |date=2014-12-09 |website=The Japan Times |language=en |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/12/09/commentary/japan-commentary/high-level-disorganization-still-hobbles-japan/ |access-date=2024-07-06}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Toland |first=John |title=The rising sun: the decline and fall of the Japanese empire, 1936-1945 |date=2003 |publisher=Modern Library |isbn=978-0-8129-6858-3 |edition=Modern Library pbk |series=Modern Library war |location=New York |pages=23–24}}</ref>
As in other dictatorships, irrational brutality, hatred and fear became commonplace. Perceived failure, or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating on to lower ranks, all the way down. In POW camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all.


Compared to the German '']'', which carried out mass shootings on the ] in Europe and who suffered from psychological issues as a result, no such problems occurred with Japanese soldiers, as the vast majority of soldiers participated in murder and rape and seemingly enjoyed it.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rigg |first=Bryan Mark |author-link=Bryan Mark Rigg |title=Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II |publisher=Knox Press |year=2024 |isbn=9781637586884 |pages=15 |language=en}}</ref>
The traditional severity of ] and the ethnocentrism of Japan's modern imperial phase often coalesced into brutality towards civilians and POWs. After the launching of a full-scale military campaign against China in 1937, instances of murder, torture and rape committed by Japanese soldiers seemed to be overlooked by their commanding officers and generally went unpunished. Such acts were repeated throughout the Pacific War.


==War crimes== ==War crimes==
], Sgt. ], captured in New Guinea, about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer

with a ], 1943.]]

Much of the controversy regarding Japan's role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. Historian ] has written that:

{{Blockquote|Arriving at a probable number of Japan's war victims who died is difficult for several interesting reasons, which have to do with Western perceptions. Both Americans and Europeans fell into the unfortunate habit of seeing ] and ] as separate wars, failing to comprehend that they were interlaced in a multitude of ways (not merely that one was the consequence of the other, or of the rash behavior of the victors after WW1). Wholly aside from this basic misconception, most Americans think of WW2 in Asia as having begun with ], the British with the ], and so forth. The Chinese would correct this by identifying the ] as the start, or the earlier ]. It really began in 1895 with Japan's ], and invasion of Korea, resulting in its absorption into Japan, followed quickly by Japan's seizure of southern Manchuria, etc. – establishing that Japan was at war from 1895 to 1945. Prior to 1895, ], long before the ], and the invasion failed. Therefore, ]'s estimate of 6-million to 10-million dead between 1937 (the ]) and 1945, may be roughly corollary to the time-frame of the ], but it falls far short of the actual numbers killed by the Japanese war machine. If you add, say, 2-million Koreans, 2-million Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, many ] (both ] and ]), and others killed by Japan between 1895 and 1937 (conservative figures), the total of Japanese victims is more like 10-million to 14-million. Of these, I would suggest that between 6-million and 8-million were ethnic Chinese, regardless of where they were resident.<ref name="sterling">{{cite news |title=Sterling and Peggy Seagrave: Gold Warriors |url=http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9196 |access-date=15 April 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080613202437/http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9196 |archive-date=13 June 2008}}</ref>}}

In 1943, ], the younger brother of Hirohito and a member of the ], served as an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army stationed in China. <ref name="scmp.com">{{cite web |title=Japan's Prince Mikasa, who fought war in China under a fake name, dies at 100 |date=27 October 2016 |url=http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2040559/japans-prince-mikasa-who-fought-war-china-under-fake-name-dies}}</ref> He authored a book published in 1984, in which he revealed his shock at the atrocities carried out by the Japanese military during his one-year deployment in China.<ref name="scmp.com"/> In 1994, the Japanese newspaper outlet ] conducted an interview with him.<ref name="auto3">{{cite web |title=Hirohito's Brother Assailed Japan's WW II 'Aggression': Asia: Late emperor's sibling confirms a bold 1944 speech to troops condemning military policy, atrocities in China |website=] |date=7 July 1994 |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-07-mn-12990-story.html}}</ref> He provided an account of Japanese atrocities committed against the Chinese, and verified that he had denounced the aggression in a speech addressed to Japanese soldiers in China during World War II.<ref name="auto3"/> He discovered that military officers utilized Chinese prisoners of war for bayonet drills to bolster the resolve of Japanese soldiers.<ref name="auto3"/> Additionally, he noted that POWs were asphyxiated and shot in large numbers while being restrained to posts.<ref name="auto3"/> He emphasized that killing POWs in a gruesome manner constitutes a massacre, affirming without doubt that Japanese soldiers indeed committed such atrocious acts.<ref name="auto3"/>

According to Werner Gruhl, approximately eight million Chinese civilian deaths were attributable directly to Japanese aggression.<ref name="Gruhl 2017"/>

According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among prisoners of war from Asian countries held by Japan was 27.1%.<ref name="Tanaka">Tanaka ''Hidden Horrors'' pp&nbsp;2–3</ref> The death rate of Chinese prisoners of war were much higher because—under a directive ratified on 5 August 1937, by Emperor ]—the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed.<ref>Akira Fujiwara, ''Nitchû Sensô ni Okeru Horyo Gyakusatsu'', Kikan Sensô Sekinin Kenkyû 9, 1995, p. 22</ref> Only 56 Chinese prisoners of war were released after the ].<ref>Herbert Bix, ''Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan'', 2001, p. 360</ref> After 20 March 1943, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered and encouraged the Navy to execute all prisoners taken at sea.

According to British historian ], "officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention." At least 12,500 British sailors and 7,500 Australians were murdered. The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered the survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats. During Naval landing parties, the Japanese Navy rounded up, raped, then massacred civilians. Some of the victims were fed to sharks, others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, crucifixion, drowning, hanging, and beheading.<ref name="standard.co.uk">{{cite web |title=Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 |date=12 April 2012 |url=https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/alive-and-safe-the-brutal-japanese-soldiers-who-butchered-20-000-allied-seamen-in-cold-blood-6636703.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720134320/https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/alive-and-safe-the-brutal-japanese-soldiers-who-butchered-20-000-allied-seamen-in-cold-blood-6636703.html |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref><ref>Mark Felton, ''Slaughter at Sea: The Story of Japan's Naval War Crimes'' (2007).</ref>

===Attacks on neutral powers===
{{Main|Attack on Pearl Harbor}}
] burning during the Japanese ]]]

Article 1 of the ] ''III – The Opening of Hostilities'' prohibited the initiation of hostilities against neutral powers "without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a reasoned ] or of an ] with conditional declaration of war" and Article 2 further stated that "he existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without delay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of a notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph." Japanese diplomats intended to deliver the notice to the United States thirty minutes before the ] occurred on 7 December 1941, but it was delivered to the ] an hour after the attack was over. Tokyo transmitted the 5,000-word notification (commonly called the "14-Part Message") in two blocks to the ], but transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese ambassador to deliver it in time.<ref>Toland, ''Infamy''</ref>

The 14-Part Message was not moreover a declaration of war, but was instead about sending a message to U.S. officials that peace negotiations between Japan and the U.S. were likely to be terminated. Japanese officials were well aware that the 14-Part Message was not a proper declaration of war as required by the 1907 Hague Convention ''III – The Opening of Hostilities''. They decided not to issue a proper declaration of war anyway as they feared that doing so would expose their secret attack on Pearl Harbor to the Americans.<ref>{{cite web |title=Japan's Military Stopped Warning of Pearl Harbor Attack, Says Iguchi |url=http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2006_fall/iguchi.htm |access-date=22 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140201191435/http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2006_fall/iguchi.htm |archive-date=1 February 2014}}</ref><ref name="Pearl Harbor">{{cite web |title=Pearl Harbor and The Tokyo Trials |url=http://faculty.virginia.edu/setear/students/japanwc/Home.html |access-date=22 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170109155834/http://faculty.virginia.edu/setear/students/japanwc/Home.html |archive-date=9 January 2017}}</ref>

Some ] and ] charge that President ] willingly allowed the attack to happen to create a pretext for war, but no credible evidence exists to support the claim.<ref>Martin V. Melosi, ''The Shadow of Pearl Harbor: Political controversy over the Surprise Attack, 1941–1946'', 1977</ref><ref>Gordon W. Prange, etc. al, ''At Dawn We Slept'', 1991</ref><ref>Gordon W. Prange, etc. al, ''Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History'', 1991</ref> The diary of ], Roosevelt's ], showed that Roosevelt believed in late November 1941 that a Japanese attack on British or Dutch soil was "likely," but was "confident that the Japanese would not dare to start hostilities against the United States."<ref>], ''Secretary Stimson: A Study in Statecraft'', , ], 1954, quoting ''Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack'', , ], 1946.</ref> The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, ] and the U.S. likewise ].

Simultaneously with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (Honolulu time), Japan ], ], and began ], without a declaration of war or an ultimatum. Both the United States and United Kingdom were neutral when Japan attacked their territories without explicit warning of a state of war.<ref>{{cite book |last=Best |first=Antony |title=Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbour: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936–1941 |date=1 August 1995 |publisher=] |isbn=0-415-11171-4 |page=1}}</ref>

The U.S. officially classified all 3,649 military and civilian casualties and destruction of military property at Pearl Harbor as ]s as there was no state of war between the U.S. and Japan when the attack occurred.<ref>{{cite book |last=Totani |first=Yuma |title=The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II |date=1 April 2009 |publisher=] |page=57}}</ref>{{failed verification|date=October 2020}}<ref>{{cite book |last=McCaffrey |first=Stephen C. |title=Understanding International Law |date=22 September 2004 |publisher=] |pages=210–29 |author-link=Stephen McCaffrey}}</ref>{{page range too broad|date=October 2020}}{{self-published inline|date=October 2020|certain=yes}} ], the chief prosecutor in the Tokyo Trials, says that the attack on Pearl Harbor not only happened without a declaration of war but was also a "] and ] act". In fact, Japan and the U.S. were still negotiating for a possible peace agreement which kept U.S. officials distracted up to the point that Japanese planes launched their attack on Pearl Harbor. Keenan explained the definition of a war of aggression and the criminality of the attack on Pearl Harbor:

{{Blockquote|The concept of aggressive war may not be expressed with the precision of a scientific formula, or described like the objective data of the physical sciences. Aggressive War is not entirely a physical fact to be observed and defined like the operation of the laws of matter. It is rather an activity involving injustice between nations, rising to the level of criminality because of its disastrous effects upon the common good of international society. The injustice of a war of aggression is criminal of its extreme grosses, considered both from the point of view of the will of the aggressor to inflict injury and from the evil effects which ensue&nbsp;... Unjust war are plainly crimes and not simply torts or breaches of contracts. The act comprises the willful, intentional, and unreasonable destruction of life, limb, and property, subject matter which has been regarded as criminal by the laws of all civilized peoples&nbsp;... The Pearl Harbor attack breached the Kellogg–Briand Pact and the Hague Convention III. In addition, it violated Article 23 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, of October 1907&nbsp;... But the attack of Pearl Harbor did not alone result in murder and the slaughter of thousands of human beings. It did not eventuate only in the destruction of property. It was an outright act of undermining and destroying the hope of a world for peace. When a nation employs a deceit and treachery, using periods of negotiations and the negotiations themselves as a cloak to screen a ] attack, then there is a prime example of the crime of all crimes.<ref>Keenan, Joseph Berry and Brown, Brendan Francis, ''Crimes against International Law'', Public Affairs Press, Washington, 1950, pp.&nbsp;57–87</ref><ref>''Tokyo Transcript'', May 13, 1946, p.491</ref>}}

Admiral ], who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, was fully aware that if Japan lost the war, he would be tried as a war criminal for that attack; {{citation needed|date=May 2018}} as it turned out, he was killed by the ] in ] in 1943. At the Tokyo Trials, Prime Minister ], ], then ], ], the ], and ], ], were charged with ] (charges 1 to 36) and murder (charges 37 to 52) in connection with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Along with ] and ] (charges 53 to 55), Tojo was among the seven Japanese leaders sentenced to death and executed by ] in 1948, Shigenori Tōgō received a 20-year sentence, Shimada received a ], and Nagano died of natural causes during the Trial in 1947.<ref name="Pearl Harbor"/><ref>{{cite web |title=Judgment International Military Tribunal for the Far East Indictment |url=http://werle.rewi.hu-berlin.de/tokyo.anklageschrift.pdf |access-date=8 May 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160910152748/http://werle.rewi.hu-berlin.de/tokyo.anklageschrift.pdf |archive-date=10 September 2016}}</ref>

Over the years, many ] argued that the attack on Pearl Harbor was justified as an act of self-defense in response to the ] imposed by the United States. Most historians and scholars agree that the oil embargo cannot be used as justification for using military force against a foreign nation imposing the embargo because there is a clear distinction between a perception of something being essential to the welfare of the nation-state and a threat sufficiently serious to warrant an act of force in response, which Japan had failed to consider. Japanese scholar and diplomat Takeo Iguchi states that it is "ard to say from the perspective of international law that exercising the right of self-defense against economic pressures is considered valid." While Japan felt that its dreams of further expansion would be brought to a halt by the American embargo, this "need" cannot be considered ] with the destruction suffered by the ] at Pearl Harbor, intended by Japanese military planners to be as devastating as possible.<ref name="Pearl Harbor"/>

===Mass killings=== ===Mass killings===
{{Multiple image
Because of the sheer number of deaths caused by the Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s, the killings are often compared to the contemporaneous suffering imposed by ] during 1933&ndash;45. The historian ] has written that:
| direction = vertical
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| footer = Japanese soldiers shooting blindfolded Sikh prisoners and then bayonetting them. Photos discovered after the ].
| image1 = Japanese shooting blindfolded Sikh prisoners.jpg
| alt1 =
| caption1 =
| image2 = Japanese atrocities imperial war museum K9923.jpg
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], China, 1938. A mass grave filled with bodies of Chinese civilians, murdered by Japanese soldiers.<ref>{{cite web |title=''China Weekly Review'', October 22, 1938. |url=http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Esus/crime%81@q.htm |access-date=22 October 2006}}{{dead link|date=July 2022|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref>]]
], showing the body of a Chinese woman who was raped and killed by Japanese soldiers]]
The estimated number of people killed by Japanese troops varies. ], a professor of political science at the ], estimates that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly three to over ten million people, most likely six million Chinese, Indians, ], ], ], ], and ], among others, including European, American, and Australian prisoners of war. According to Rummel, "This ] was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."<ref name="rummel">{{cite web |title=Rummell, ''Statistics'' |publisher=Hawaii.edu |url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM |access-date=21 July 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100323044733/http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM |archive-date=23 March 2010}}</ref> According to Rummel, in China alone, from 1937 to 1945, approximately 3.9&nbsp;million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and a total of 10.2&nbsp;million Chinese were killed in the course of the war.<ref>{{cite web |title=China's Bloody Century |publisher=University of Hawaii |url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM |access-date=21 July 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190724104631/http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM |archive-date=24 July 2019}}</ref> According to the British historian ], civilian deaths were between 10 million and 20 million.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Oxford Companion to World War II |publisher=] |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-19-860446-4 |editor-last=Dear |editor-first=I. C. B. |editor-link=I. C. B. Dear |location=Oxford |page=182 |editor-last2=Foot |editor-first2=M. R. D. |editor-link2=M. R. D. Foot |orig-date=1995}}</ref> British historian ] claims that up to 30 million people were killed, most of them civilians.:<ref name="The Routledge History of Genocide">{{cite book |last1=Carmichael |first1=Cathie |title=The Routledge History of Genocide |last2=Maguire |first2=Richard |publisher=Routledge |year=2015 |isbn=9780367867065 |page=105}}</ref>


{{Blockquote|The Japanese murdered 30 million civilians while "liberating" what it called the ] from colonial rule. About 23 million of these were ethnic Chinese. It is a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning.<ref>{{cite news |title=Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood |date=12 April 2012 |work=Evening Standard |url=https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/alive-and-safe-the-brutal-japanese-soldiers-who-butchered-20-000-allied-seamen-in-cold-blood-6636703.html |access-date=2022-07-24 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720134320/https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/alive-and-safe-the-brutal-japanese-soldiers-who-butchered-20-000-allied-seamen-in-cold-blood-6636703.html |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref><ref>Mark Felton, ''Japan's Gestapo: Murder, Mayhem and Torture in Wartime Asia'' (Casemate Publishers, 2009).</ref><ref>Mark Felton, "The Perfect Storm: Japanese military brutality during World War Two." ''The Routledge History of Genocide'' (Routledge, 2015) pp. 105-121.</ref>}}
:''It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two ] aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million ] and 20 million Russians ]]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million ], ], ]ese, ]ns, ]ns and ], at least 23 million of them ]. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as ]ers &mdash; and, in the case of the Japanese, as ]s for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from ], ], ], ] or ] (but not Russia) you faced a 4 % chance of not surviving the war; the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30 %.''


One of the major atrocities committed during this period was the ] of 1937–38, when, according to the findings of the ], the Japanese Army massacred as many as 260,000 civilians and prisoners of war, though some{{who|date=February 2024}} have placed the figure as high as 350,000.<ref>{{cite book |title=Shanghai and Nanjing 1937: Massacre on the Yangtze |publisher=Osprey |year=2017 |page=4}}</ref> The ] has the death figure of 300,000 inscribed on its entrance.<ref>{{cite book |title=Shanghai and Nanjing 1937: Massacre on the Yangtze |publisher=Osprey Publishing |year=2017 |page=269}}</ref>
], a political scientist at the ], states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military "murdered between three million and 10 million people."


In the early 1980s, after conducting extensive interviews with Chinese survivors and reviewing existing Japanese records, Japanese journalist Honda Katsuichi concluded that the violence perpetrated by Japanese troops in the ] was not an isolated event. Instead, it was part of a broader pattern of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in the Lower Yangtze region since the ].<ref>{{cite book |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |last=Yang |first=Yang |page=x |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf}}</ref> Hosaka Akira was an army physician, and his infantry battalion was stationed in China. In his diary, he admitted to following an order to murder civilians in the Chinese city of Changzhou.<ref>{{cite book |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |last=Yang |first=Yang |page=x |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf}}</ref>
In ] alone, during 1937&ndash;45, there are said to have been 8.4 million "non-military casualties", not including civilians killed accidentally during battle. (See ].) The most infamous incident during this period was the ] of ]-38, when, according to the findings of the ], the Japanese Army massacred 260,000 civilians (Chang, pg 102)
Hosaka's diary documenting the Japanese atrocities in Changzhou has been supported by various Japanese sources. In 1987, his squad leader, Kitayama, confessed to killing civilians in Changzhou.<ref>{{cite book |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |last=Yang |first=Yang |page=x}}</ref> Makihara Nobuo was part of a infantry platoon that entered a Chinese town. In Makihara's diary, he recorded that his Machine Gun ] followed orders to indiscriminately kill all civilians in the town.<ref>{{cite book |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |last=Yang |first=Yang |page=x |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf}}</ref>


During the ], the Japanese followed what has been called a "killing policy", including killings committed against minorities such as ] in China. According to Wan Lei, "In a Hui clustered village in ] of ], the Japanese captured twenty Hui men among whom they only set two younger men free through "redemption", and ] the other eighteen Hui men. In ] village of Hebei, the Japanese killed more than 1,300 Hui people within three years of their occupation of that area." The Japanese also desecrated and destroyed mosques, and destroyed Hui cemeteries. After the Nanjing Massacre, mosques in ] were found filled with dead bodies.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lei |first=Wan |title=The Chinese Islamic 'Goodwill Mission to the Middle East' During the Anti-Japanese War |date=February 2010 |journal=Dîvân Disiplinlerarasi Çalismalar Dergisi |volume=cilt 15 |issue=sayi 29 |pages=139–141 |url=https://www.academia.edu/4427135 |access-date=19 June 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140318035752/http://www.academia.edu/4427135/The_Chinese_Islamic_Goodwill_Mission_to_the_Middle_East_-_Japonyaya_Karsi_Savasta_Cinli_Muslumanlarin_Orta_Dogu_iyi_Niyet_Heyeti_-_Wan_LEI |archive-date=18 March 2014}}</ref> Many Hui Muslims in the Second Sino-Japanese War ] the Japanese military.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}
===Preventable famine===
Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to the Japanese military in occupied countries are also regarded as war crimes by many people. Millions of civilians in ] &mdash; especially ] and the ] (Indonesia), both of which were major ]-growing countries &mdash; died during a preventable ] in ]&ndash;45. (See, for example, the article on the ].){{fact}}


In addition, ] was subjected to massacres by the Japanese military.<ref>{{cite journal |title=China's Islamic Communities Generate Local Histories: The Case of Dachang |date=March 2006 |journal=China Heritage Newsletter |publisher=China Heritage Project, The Australian National University |issn=1833-8461 |number=5 |url=http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=005_dachang.inc&issue=005 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161016193006/http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=005_dachang.inc&issue=005 |archive-date=16 October 2016}}</ref>
===The treatment of prisoners of war===
The Japanese military's use of ], by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths &mdash; more than 100,000 in the case of the ] alone. The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of ] rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. During World War II such rules were largely respected in German POW camps, except in the case of Soviet POWs. However, Japan was not a signatory at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention.{{fact}}


Another massacre during this period was the ] in ], when, according to the findings of the ], the ] massacred approximately five hundred prisoners of war, although higher estimates exist.{{citation needed |date=April 2017}} A similar crime committed was the ] in China. Back in Southeast Asia, the ] resulted in the deaths of {{formatnum: 705}} prisoners of war on ]'s Ambon Island, and in ]'s ], Japanese soldiers murdered hundreds of wounded Allied soldiers, innocent citizens, and medical staff. {{citation needed |date=April 2017}}
===Experiments on human beings===
Special military units conducted physiological experiments on civilians and POWs. One of the most infamous units was ]. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, amputations, and were used to test biological weapons, among other experiments.


In Southeast Asia, the ] of February 1945 resulted in the death of 100,000 civilians in the ]. It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hands of the Japanese during the occupation.<ref>Schmidt 1982, p. 36.</ref><ref>Ramsey 1990, pp. 329–330.</ref> In Singapore during February and March 1942, the ] was a systematic ] of "anti-Japanese" elements among the ]; however, Japanese soldiers did not try to identify who was "anti-Japanese". As a result, the Japanese soldiers engaged in indiscriminate killing.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Blackburn |first=Kevin |year=2000 |title=The Collective Memory of the Sook Ching Massacre and the Creation of the Civilian War Memorial of Singapore |journal=Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society |volume=2 |issue=279 |page=75 |jstor=41493428}}</ref> Former ] ], who was almost a victim of the Sook Ching Massacre, has stated that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties.<ref>{{cite web |title=Transcript of the interview with Lee Yuan Kew |publisher=News.gov.sg |url=http://www.news.gov.sg/public/sgpc/en/media_releases/agencies/pmo/transcript/T-20091228-1 |access-date=21 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130608160130/http://www.news.gov.sg/public/sgpc/en/media_releases/agencies/pmo/transcript/T-20091228-1 |archive-date=8 June 2013}}</ref> According to Lieutenant Colonel Hishakari Takafumi, a newspaper correspondent at the time, the plan was to ultimately kill about 50,000 Chinese, and 25,000 had already been murdered when the order was received to scale down the operation.<ref>{{cite web |last=Ho |first=Stephanie |title=Operation Sook Ching |date=17 June 2013 |website=Singapore Infopedia |publisher=National Library Board Singapore |url=https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_40_2005-01-24.html |access-date=17 June 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210601044222/https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_40_2005-01-24.html |archive-date=1 June 2021}}</ref>
:''To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim’s upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.''


There were other massacres of civilians, such as the ]. In wartime Southeast Asia, the ] and ] were particular targets of Japanese abuse; in the former case, this was motivated by a ] resentment of the historic expanse and influence of ], and in the latter, by a ] ] and a desire to show former colonial subjects the impotence of their former rulers.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hotta |first=Eri |title=Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2007 |page=201}}</ref> The Japanese executed all the Malay Sultans on Kalimantan and wiped out the Malay elite in the ]. In the ], the Japanese killed thousands of native civilians during the ] and nearly wiped out the entire ] population of the coastal islands. During the ], when a ] ] ] launched a suicide attack against the Japanese, the Japanese would massacre the man's entire family or village.{{Citation needed|date=November 2016}} However, Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia were sometimes spared if they supported the war effort, whether sincerely or not. This also applied to other ethnicities.<ref name=":3">{{cite journal |last=W. Giles |first=Nathaniel |title=The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: The Failure of Japan's 'Monroe Doctrine' for Asia |date=2015 |journal=Undergraduate Honors Theses |issue=295 |pages=2–34 |via=East Tennessee State University Digital Commons |url=https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1265&context=honors}}</ref>
===Comfort women===
{{main|Comfort Women}}
Women from all over Asia and the Pacific were forced to work as prostitutes, known as Comfort Women, during the 15 Years War (1931-45). However the extent to which this practice existed has been disputed, with some saying there were women who consented to the prostitution and/or were paid. In addition the validity of claims for compensation have been disputed, with questions arising as to whether claimants really were forced into prostitution. A general lack of primary source evidence has led to this being a hotly contested topic.


50 Moros were vivisected by a Japanese unit, the 33rd coast guard squad in Zamboanga in Mindanao in which Akira Makino served in. Moro guerillas armed with spears were the main enemies of the Japanese in the area.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Ichimura |first=Anri |title=In WWII, Japanese Soldiers Forced Filipinos to Dig Their Own Graves—Before Dissecting Them Alive |date=23 July 2020 |magazine=Esquire Philippines |url=https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/vivisection-japan-philippines-a00304-20200723-lfrm |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230417221737/https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/vivisection-japan-philippines-a00304-20200723-lfrm |archive-date=17 April 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Vivisection on Filipinos admitted |date=27 November 2006 |work=] |location=Osaka (Kyodo) |url=http://www2.gvsu.edu/walll/Soldier%20admits%20to%20torture%20of%20POWS.htm |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231010074058/https://www2.gvsu.edu/walll/Soldier%20admits%20to%20torture%20of%20POWS.htm?fbclid=IwAR3ZispAR4xiXf1bU8vClDHShVFVi0Zpf9SlE2Gi8oZsAWgedBXqAxMlANs |archive-date=10 October 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Ozawa |first=Harumi |title=Japanese war veteran speaks of atrocities in the Philippines |date=6 November 2007 |page=9 |work=Taipei Times |location=Osaka, Japan |url=https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/11/06/2003386494 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231009062209/https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/11/06/2003386494?fbclid=IwAR10in7t37pTqpMyrssfDX6ev6GXYpJfyt0BrD2fjN8lAMtocpVUT__Vv3k |archive-date=9 October 2023}}</ref>
===Looting and pillaging===
Many historians state that violence by Japanese personnel was closely tied to ]ing. For example, ] and ], in a ] book on "]" &mdash; secret repositories of loot from across ], in the ] &mdash; argued that the theft was organised on a massive scale, either by '']'' ]s such as ], or by officials at the behest of ], who wanted to ensure that as many of the proceeds as possible went to the government. The Seagraves allege that Hirohito appointed his brother, ], to head a secret organisation called '']'' (Golden Lily) for this purpose.


Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "]" ({{lang|ja|Sankō Sakusen}}) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians.<ref name="Stich-WW2">{{cite book |last1=Stich |first1=Rodney |title=Japanese and U.S. World War II Plunder and Intrigue |date=2010 |publisher=Silverpeak Enterprises |isbn=978-0-932438-70-6 |page=16 |language=en |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d-44dpgvU0YC&q=PA16 |access-date=9 July 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231005004433/https://books.google.com/books?id=d-44dpgvU0YC&q=PA16 |archive-date=5 October 2023}}</ref> This ] strategy, sanctioned by ] himself,<ref name="Stich-WW2"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Tai |first1=Michael |title=China and Her Neighbours: Asian Diplomacy from Ancient History to the Present |date=2019 |publisher=Zed Books |isbn=978-1-786997-79-1 |page=28 |language=en |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=douxDwAAQBAJ&q=PT34 |access-date=9 July 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231005004434/https://books.google.com/books?id=douxDwAAQBAJ&q=PT34 |archive-date=5 October 2023}}</ref> directed Japanese forces to "kill all, burn all, and loot all", which caused many massacres such as the ], where 1,230 Chinese people were killed. Additionally, captured Allied servicemen, and civilians were massacred in various incidents, including the following:
==Post-1945 reactions==
* ]
===The Tokyo Trials===
* ]<ref name="Laha">{{cite web |last=L |first=Klemen |title=The Carnage at Laha, February 1942 |date=1999–2000 |website=Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942 |url=https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/laha_massacre.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217095032/https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/laha_massacre.html |archive-date=17 February 2022}}</ref>
{{main|International Military Tribunal for the Far East}}
* ]<ref name="Bangka">{{cite web |last=L |first=Klemen |title=The Bangka Island Massacre, February 1942 |date=1999–2000 |website=Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942 |url=https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/bangka_massacre.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217095029/https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/bangka_massacre.html |archive-date=17 February 2022}}</ref>
The Tokyo Trials, which were conducted by the ], found many people guilty of such crimes, including three (unelected) ]s: ], ], and ]. Many military leaders were also convicted. Two people convicted as ]s later served as ministers in post-war Japanese governments.
* ]
* ]
* ]
* {{ship|SS|Tjisalak}} massacre perpetrated by {{ship|Japanese submarine|I-8}}
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ] (concurrent with the ])
* ]
* ]
The Japanese massacred Hui Muslims in their mosques in Nanjing and destroyed Hui mosques in other parts of China.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wan |first=Lei |title=The Chinese Islamic "Goodwill Mission to the Middle East" During the Anti-Japanese War |date=February 2010 |journal=Dîvân Dısıplınlerarasi Çalişmalar Dergısi |volume=15 |issue=29 |pages=133–170 |url=https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/254594}} archive url=https://isamveri.org/pdfdrg/D01525/2010_29/2010_29_LEIW.pdf http://ktp.isam.org.tr/detayilhmklzt.php?navdil=eng</ref> Shen Xi'en and his father Shen Decheng witnessed the corpses of Hui Muslims slaughtered by the Japanese in Nanjing, when he was asked by Hui people to help bury their relatives. The Hui security maintenance leader Sun Shurong and Hui Imams Zhang Zihui, Ma Zihe, Ge Changfa, Wang Shouren, Ma Changfa were involved in collecting Hui corpses and burying them after the Nanjing massacre. The Ji'e lane Mosque caretaker father Zhang was in his 60s when killed by the Japanese and his decomposing corpse was the first to be washed in accordance to Islamic custom and buried. They buried the Hui corpses in Jiuhua mountain, Dongguashi, Hongtu Bridge (where Guangzhou road is now located), Wutai mountain, Donguashi (where Nanjing Normal University is located). Shen Xi'en helped bury 400 Hui bodies including children, women, and men. Shen recalled burying a 7 or 8 year old boy in addition to his mother among the Hui bodies.<ref>{{cite web |title=Testimony of Shen Xi'enpublisher=The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders |location=Add: No. 418, Shui Simen street, Nanjing |url=https://www.19371213.com.cn/en/venerating/testimonies/201811/t20181107_2231834.html}}</ref>


Japanese used machine guns to massacre Muslim Suluk children and women at a mosque in the aftermath of the ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Oct 19, 1943: Chinese and Suluks revolt against Japanese in North Borneo |website=History.com |url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/chinese-and-suluks-revolt-against-japanese-in-north-borneo |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100308023941/https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/chinese-and-suluks-revolt-against-japanese-in-north-borneo |archive-date=8 March 2010}}</ref>
* ] served as foreign minister both during the war and in the post-war ].


In the ], the Japanese justified their mass execution of the twelve Arab and Malay Muslim Sultans by claiming they were planning to rebel and that the Arabs, Sultans, and Chinese were all working to "massacre Japanese". The Japanese report on the incident noted that there were anti-Dutch Chinese independence movements before and linked them to the anti-Japanese conspiracy. On 28 June 1944 the Japanese executed the Sultans of West Kalimantan including Pontianak after a naval court martial. The accusations against the Sultans were printed in Borneo Shimbun on 1 July 1944.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maekawa |first1=Kaori |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NZWqvMBu80kC&dq=%22trials+took+place+only+for+selected+cases%2C+and+many+people+were+killed+without+trial%22&pg=PA160 |title=Southeast Asian Minorities in the Wartime Japanese Empire |date=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1136125065 |editor1-last=Kratoska |editor1-first=Paul H. |page=160 |chapter=Chapter Ten The Pontianak Incidents and the Ethnic Chinese in Wartime Western Borneo}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4t95DwAAQBAJ&dq=%22victims+of+the+killings+had+varying+ethnic+backgrounds%3A+Dutch%2C+Eurasian%2C+Malay%2C+bugis%22&pg=PA212 |title=The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation |date=2009 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004190177 |editor1-last=Post |editor1-first=Peter |series=Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia |page=212 |chapter=4. Occupation: Coercion and Control}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Tanasaldy |first1=Taufiq |title=Regime Change and Ethnic Politics in Indonesia: Dayak Politics of West Kalimantan |date=2012 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004253483 |edition=reprint |others=JSTOR Open Access monographs, Online access: Brill Brill Open e-Books, Online access: OAPEN Open Research Library |volume=278 |series=Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Land- en Volkenkunde.Leiden Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal- |pages=74, 75 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PbFiAAAAQBAJ&dq=%22many+Malay+aristocrats%2C+political+activists%2C+community+leaders%2C+and%22&pg=PA74}}</ref> The Japanese slaughter of the Malay sultans of west Kalimantan led to Dayaks ascending to the political scene after the violent destruction of the Malay nobility at the hands of Japan.<ref>{{cite book |last=Tanasaldy |first=Taufiq |title=Regime Change and Ethnic Politics in Indonesia: Dayak Politics of West Kalimantan |date=2012 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-25348-3 |series=Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde |volume=278 |location=Leiden |page=50, 60 |chapter=3 Dayaks prior to independence (up to 1945) |url=https://brill.com/downloadpdf/book/9789004253483/B9789004253483-s004.xml}}</ref><ref>https://brill.com/downloadpdf/book/9789004253483/B9789004253483-s004.pdf?pdfJsInlineViewToken=1557905106&inlineView=true</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Tanasaldy |first=Taufiq |title=Regime Change and Ethnic Politics in Indonesia: Dayak Politics of West Kalimantan |date=2012 |publisher=Brill |volume=278 |pages=49–78 |chapter=Dayaks Prior to Independence (up to 1945) |jstor=10.1163/j.ctvbnm4q8.6 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvbnm4q8.6}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=OAPEN Home |url=https://oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=421239 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722214245/https://oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=421239 |archive-date=22 July 2017 |access-date=6 October 2024 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/34518/421239.pdf;jsessionid=3308DABDA03F3C3463F28D25B3E59B73?sequence=1</ref><ref>https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/34518/421239.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y</ref><ref>https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/e1c244f1-fb1e-4589-998b-4109a1b53578/421239.pdf</ref><ref>https://openresearchlibrary.org/ext/api/media/1daf0c0e-c572-4afc-9ef9-2c33a40d5c13/assets/external_content.pdfhttp://library.um.edu.mo/ebooks/b28022294.pdf</ref><ref>https://library.um.edu.mo/ebooks/b28022294.pdfhttp://www.groove-war.com/bitstream/id/e1c244f1-fb1e-4589-998b-4109a1b53578/421239.pdf</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Regime change and ethnic politics in Indonesia: Dayak politics of West Kalimantan |last1=Tanasaldy |first1=Taufiq |url=https://www.academia.edu/15049509}}</ref>
* ] was finance minister during the war and later served as justice minister in the government of ].


===Human experimentation and biological warfare===
However, these two had no direct connection to alleged war crimes committed by Japanese forces, and foreign governments never raised the issue when they were appointed.
{{Main|Unit 731|Japan and weapons of mass destruction#Bioweapons}}
] experiment, using Chinese prisoners as ] under surveillance by Japanese soldiers in 731]]
], commander of ]]]
Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. The purpose of experimentation was to develop biological weapons that could be used for aggression. Biological agents and gases developed from these experiments were used against the Chinese Army and civilian population.<ref name="Gruhl 2017"/> These included ] under ]. Victims were subjected to experiments including but not limited to ], amputations without anesthesia, testing of ], horse blood transfusions, and injection of animal blood into their corpses.<ref>{{cite book |last=Barenblatt |first=Daniel |title=A Plague upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-06-018625-8 |pages=78–79}}</ref> Anesthesia was not used because it was believed that anesthetics would adversely affect the results of the experiments.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110317115032/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE2D71630F934A25750C0A963958260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=print |date=17 March 2011}}. Nicholas D. Kristof (17 March 1995) New York Times. A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity</ref>

{{Blockquote|To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.<ref>Byrd, Gregory Dean, ''''. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060618072831/http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0403105-134542/unrestricted/ByrdG042805f.pdf |date=2006-06-18}}, p. 33.</ref>}}

A former unit 731 member testified:

<blockquote>As soon as the symptoms were observed, the prisoner was taken from the cell and into the dissection room...he was strapped down, still screaming frightfully. One of the doctors stuffed a towel into his mouth, then with one quick slice of the scalpel he was opened up." Witnesses at vivisections report that the victim usually lets out a horrible scream when the cut is made, and the voice stops soon after.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gruhl |first1=Werner |title=Imperial Japan's World War Two: 1931-1945 |date=2017 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-351-51324-1 |pages=82 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>
Furthermore, according to the 2002 ''International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare'', the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000.<ref>Daniel Barenblatt, ''A Plague upon Humanity'', 2004, pp. xii, 173.</ref> Top officers of Unit 731 were not prosecuted for war crimes after the war, in exchange for turning over the results of their research to the Allies. They were also reportedly given responsible positions in Japan's pharmaceutical industry, medical schools, and health ministry.<ref>{{cite news |title=Japan digs up site linked to WWII human experiments |date=21 February 2011 |work=The Telegraph |location=London |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8338842/Japan-digs-up-site-linked-to-World-War-2-human-experiments.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8338842/Japan-digs-up-site-linked-to-World-War-2-human-experiments.html |archive-date=11 January 2022}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=McNeill |first=David |title=Japan confronts truth about its germ warfare tests on prisoners of war |date=22 February 2011 |work=The Independent |location=London |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-confronts-truth-about-its-germ-warfare-tests-on-prisoners-of-war-2221715.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217095028/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-confronts-truth-about-its-germ-warfare-tests-on-prisoners-of-war-2221715.html |archive-date=17 February 2022}}</ref>

While Unit 731 is the most infamous facility, scholars have shown that Japanese biological and chemical warfare units stationed in Beijing (Unit 1855), Nanjing (Unit 1644) and Canton (Unit 1688) also experimented on human subjects.<ref>{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes Records |date=2006 |page=37 |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303190336/http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf |archive-date=3 March 2016}}</ref>

] members spraying a noxious substance onto a victim as part of their research]]
One case of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine of 11 members of Lt.{{nbsp}}Marvin Watkins' 29th Bomb Group crew (of the 6th Bomb Squadron) survived the crash of their ] ] ] on ], on 5 May 1945.<ref>{{cite web |title=Pacific Wrecks |website=pacificwrecks.com |url=http://pacificwrecks.com/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200629123105/https://pacificwrecks.com/ |archive-date=29 June 2020}}</ref> The bomber's commander was separated from his crew and sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of ], at ], where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.<ref>{{cite web |title=''The Denver Post'', June 1, 1995, cited by Gary K. Reynolds, 2002, "U.S. Prisoners of War and Civilian American Citizens Captured and Interned by Japan in World War II: The Issue of Compensation by Japan" (Library of Congress) |url=http://www.house.gov/bordallo/gwcrc/RL30606.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111214144911/http://www.house.gov/bordallo/gwcrc/RL30606.pdf |archive-date=14 December 2011}}</ref><ref>Landas, Marc, ''The Fallen: A True Story of American POWs and Japanese Wartime Atrocities'', Hoboken John Wiley 2004 {{ISBN|0-471-42119-7}}</ref>

In 1939, Unit 731 launched 100 periodic biological attacks on military and civilian targets. Attacks include contaminating wells with intestinal pathogens, distribution of microbe-laced foods, air drops of plague inflected fleas, and aerial spray of contaminants.<ref name="auto1">{{cite book |last=Tóth |first=Tibor |title=The Implementation of Legally Binding Measures to Strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, held in Budapest, Hungary, 2001 |date=2006 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |isbn=1402020988 |edition=illustrated |volume=150 of NATO Science Series II: Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry |page=19 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NAzlBwAAQBAJ&dq=When+the+Japanese+army+advanced+again+into+contaminated+territory,+an+outbreak+of+intestinal+disease+caused+up+to+10,000&pg=PA19 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231005004434/https://books.google.com/books?id=NAzlBwAAQBAJ&dq=When+the+Japanese+army+advanced+again+into+contaminated+territory,+an+outbreak+of+intestinal+disease+caused+up+to+10,000&pg=PA19 |archive-date=5 October 2023}}</ref> Although the effectiveness of the biological attacks is hard to assess, civilian casualties are estimated to be high, with several hundred thousand killed.<ref name="auto1"/>

Some Japanese physicians killed their victims with ] before dissecting them, while others used ]. Yoshio Onodera, who conducted human experiments within Unit 1644, testified that his group conducted experiments on roughly 100-150 people. They would then murder their victims by injecting them with chloroform.<ref>{{cite book |last1=LaFleur | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gGQYOvo9-AsC&q=Yoshimura+ |first1=William |last2=Böhme |first2=Gernot |last3=Shimazono |first3=Susumu |title=Dark medicine: rationalizing unethical medical research |date=2007 |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=75 |location=US | isbn=978-0-253-22041-7}}</ref>

On 11 March 1948, 30 people, including several doctors and one female nurse, were brought to trial by American military tribunal. Fukujiro Ishiyama, the doctor most responsible for the experimentation, killed himself before the trial started. Charges of cannibalism were dropped, but 23 people were found guilty of vivisection or wrongful removal of body parts. Five were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, and the rest to shorter terms. In 1950, the military governor of Japan, General ], commuted all of the death sentences and significantly reduced most of the prison terms. All of those involved in relation to the university vivisection, with the exception of ], the general most responsible for allowing the experimentation to happen, walked free no later than 1958. Yokoyama died in prison in 1952. In 1980, an author found that one of the doctors who was supposed to be executed was still alive and practicing medicine.<ref>Landas p.255</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Tanabe |first=Kunio Francis |title=Facts and Fiction of a Japanese War Crime |date=1980-10-12 |language=en-US |newspaper=Washington Post |issn=0190-8286 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1980/10/12/facts-and-fiction-of-a-japanese-war-crime/f459239a-2511-4b61-83d2-aa0d3205c394/ |access-date=2023-06-19 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170828154025/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1980/10/12/facts-and-fiction-of-a-japanese-war-crime/f459239a-2511-4b61-83d2-aa0d3205c394/ |archive-date=28 August 2017}}</ref>

In China, the Japanese waged ruthless biological warfare against Chinese civilians and soldiers. Japanese aviators sprayed fleas carrying plague germs over metropolitan areas, creating ] epidemics.<ref name="ciadoc">{{cite web |title=CIA Special Collection ISHII, SHIRO_0005 |url=https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/ISHII%2C%20SHIRO_0005.pdf |access-date=5 June 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210531174750/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/ISHII%2C%20SHIRO_0005.pdf |archive-date=31 May 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Barenblatt |first=Daniel |title=A Plague upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-06-018625-8 |pages=32–33}}</ref> Japanese soldiers used flasks of diseases-causing microbes, which included ], ], ], ], and ], to contaminate rivers, wells, reservoirs, and houses; mixed food with deadly bacteria to infect hungry Chinese civilians; and even passed out chocolate filled with anthrax bacteria to the local children.<ref>Sheldon H. Harris, ''Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45, and the American Cover-up'', 1994, p. 77–78</ref>

During the final months of World War II, Japan had planned to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in ], during ], hoping that the plague would spread terror to the American population, and thereby dissuade America from attacking Japan. The plan was set to launch at night on 22 September 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.<ref>Naomi Baumslag, ''Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus'', 2005, p. 207</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Stewart |first=Amy |title=Where To Find The World's Most 'Wicked Bugs': Fleas |date=25 April 2011 |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/135638924/where-to-find-the-worlds-most-wicked-bugs |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190421145109/https://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/135638924/where-to-find-the-worlds-most-wicked-bugs |archive-date=21 April 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Working |first=Russell |title=The trial of Unit 731 |date=5 June 2001 |work=] |url=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2001/06/05/commentary/world-commentary/the-trial-of-unit-731/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170726065251/http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2001/06/05/commentary/world-commentary/the-trial-of-unit-731/ |archive-date=26 July 2017}}</ref>

In July 1989, a mass grave of more than one hundred skeletons was unearthed at a construction site in Tokyo, which was the former location of the Army Medical College from 1929 to 1945. Investigators determined that the bones belonged to various ethnic Asian groups of foreign origin, as indicated by the skulls.<ref name="Indiana University Press">{{cite book |last1=LaFleur | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gGQYOvo9-AsC&q=Yoshimura+ |first1=William |last2=Böhme |first2=Gernot |last3=Shimazono |first3=Susumu |title=Dark medicine: rationalizing unethical medical research |date=2007 |publisher=Indiana University Press |pages=77–78 |location=US | isbn=978-0-253-22041-7}}</ref> Investigators also discovered skulls that were marked with scalpels, cut by a sword, or pierced by bullets from a pistol.<ref name="Indiana University Press"/> From these findings, it's inferred that Japanese military physicians conducted experiments on the brains of individuals on the battlefield, and that the evidence was subsequently disposed of and buried at that location.<ref name="Indiana University Press"/>

In 2006, former IJN medical officer ] stated that he was ordered—as part of his training—to carry out vivisection on about 30 civilian prisoners in the Philippines between December 1944 and February 1945.<ref>BBC {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217105938/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6185442.stm |date=17 February 2022}}. ''BBC News''. Accessed 26 November 2006.</ref> The surgery included amputations.<ref>Kyodo News Agency, , ''Yahoo! Asia News''{{dead link|date=June 2016|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> Most of Makino's victims were ].<ref>{{cite web |title=A life haunted by WWII surgical killings: BT News |url=http://www.bt.com.bn/focus/2007/10/31/a_life_haunted_by_wwii_surgical_killings |access-date=8 May 2023 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141213021214/http://www.bt.com.bn/focus/2007/10/31/a_life_haunted_by_wwii_surgical_killings |archive-date=13 December 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=AFP: Japanese veteran haunted by WWII surgical killings |work=Google News |date=17 March 2014 |url=https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ht5P8U54dLa7dH9mqjKyurq0zQMw?hl=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140317024425/https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ht5P8U54dLa7dH9mqjKyurq0zQMw?hl=en |archive-date=17 March 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Japanese war veteran speaks of atrocities in the Philippines |date=6 November 2007 |website=Taipei Times |url=https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/11/06/2003386494 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217095028/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/11/06/2003386494 |archive-date=17 February 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Parry |work=The Australian |title=Dissect them alive: chilling Imperial that order could not be disobeyed |year=2007 |url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/dissect-them-alive-chilling-imperial-that-order-could-not-be-di/story-e6frg6so-1111113061584 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150214145048/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/dissect-them-alive-chilling-imperial-that-order-could-not-be-di/story-e6frg6so-1111113061584 |archive-date=14 February 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Parry |first=Richard Lloyd |title=Dissect them alive: order not to be disobeyed |date=25 February 2007 |work=] |url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article2606909.ece |access-date=19 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070228095300/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1438491.ece |archive-date=28 February 2007}}</ref> ], a former military doctor in China, has also admitted to similar incidents in which he was aggressively performing live vivisections on live Chinese victims, blaming the nationalistic indoctrination of his schooling for his conduct and lack of remorse.<ref>"Vivisectionist recalls his day of reckoning". ''The Japan Times''. 24 October 2007. p. 3.</ref> Yuasa admitted to killing Chinese captives while training others in surgery.<ref name="books.google.ca">{{cite book |last1=LaFleur | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gGQYOvo9-AsC&q=Yoshimura+ |first1=William |last2=Böhme |first2=Gernot |last3=Shimazono |first3=Susumu |title=Dark medicine: rationalizing unethical medical research |date=2007 |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=78 |location=US | isbn=978-0-253-22041-7}}</ref> He further added that in order to quickly train military physicians for the battlefield, physicians would gather every few months to perform "surgery drills" in China.<ref name="books.google.ca"/> Surgery drills involved capturing local citizens, shooting them in the thigh with a bullet, and monitoring the amount of time it would take to extract the bullet.<ref name="books.google.ca"/> The drills were widespread in China, with most instances involving the abduction of local citizens by the military and their subsequent delivery to the Army's medical division.<ref name="books.google.ca"/>

The ] was responsible for the human experimentation programs, as members of the imperial family, including ], ], ], and ], participated in the programs in various ways, which included authorizing, funding, supplying, and inspecting biomedical facilities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Harris |first=Sheldon |title=Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45, and the American Cover-Up |publisher=Routledge |year=1995 |isbn=978-0415932141}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Large |first=Stephen |title=Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan, A Political Biography |publisher=Routledge |year=1995 |isbn=9781-138009110 |pages=67–68, 134, 117–119, 144–145}}</ref>

Shiro Ishii was demoted after the cholera attack he directed in 1942 against Chinese civilians accidentally infected and killed Japanese soldiers and he did not direct anymore bioglocial attacks for the rest of the war.<ref>{{cite book |last=Guillemin |first=Jeanne |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8UpCNpAJanIC&dq=general+ishii+demoted&pg=PA257 |title=Mirrors of Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era |date=2010 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521195379 |page=257 |chapter=12 National Security, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Selective Pursuit of Justice at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, 1946-1948}}</ref> Ishii boasted about his role in the 1940-1941 biological disease attacks and boasted to the Japanese army in the 1942 attacks that he would kill even more, until he accidentally killed Japanese troops with his own weapons, causing a disaster among Japanese ranks and he was forced out and replaced.<ref>{{cite book |last=Guillemin |first=Jeanne |title=Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial |date=2017 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0231544986 |page=194 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iUs1DwAAQBAJ&dq=general+ishii+demoted&pg=PT201}}</ref>

===Use of chemical weapons===
{{See also|Changde chemical weapon attack|Japan and weapons of mass destruction#Chemical weapons}}

While obtaining precise numbers is difficult, recent studies indicate that the number of Chinese killed by Japanese chemical warfare may have been in excess of 500,000 people.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-057/h-057-2.html | title=H-057-2: Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night }}</ref>

Throughout the war with China from 1937 to 1945, Japan deployed chemical weapons, including poisonous and irritating gases, against both Chinese military personnel and civilians. This action was denounced by the League of Nations in May 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes Introductory Essay |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |isbn=1-880875-28-4 |page=142 |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf}}</ref>

According to Walter E. Grunden, history professor at ], the Japanese incorporated ] into many aspects of their army's war against China because they concluded that Chinese forces were unable to retaliate in kind.<ref name="auto">{{cite book |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6_14 |chapter=No Retaliation in Kind: Japanese Chemical Warfare Policy in World War II |last=Grunden |first=Walter E. |title=One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences |editor-last1=Friedrich |editor-first1=Bretislav |editor-last2=Hoffmann |editor-first2=Dieter |editor-last3=Renn |editor-first3=Jürgen |editor-last4=Schmaltz |editor-first4=Florian |editor-last5=Wolf |editor-first5=Martin |date=22 June 2017 |publisher=Springer International Publishing |pages=259–271 |via=Springer Link |isbn=978-3-319-51663-9 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6_14 |s2cid=158528688 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221016161215/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6_14 |archive-date=16 October 2022}}</ref> Their utilization of gas warfare involved deploying specialized gas troops, as well as infantry, artillery, engineers, and air force units.<ref>{{cite book |author=United States. War Department. Military Intelligence Division |issue=24 of Special series, United States War Dept |title=Enemy Tactics in Chemical Warfare |date=1944 |publisher=War Department |page=69 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gq1BAAAAIAAJ&dq=japanese+gas+hand+to+hand+combat&pg=PA81}}</ref> Grunden further added that "from 1937 to 1945, the military services of Japan used chemical weapons on over 2000 occasions, primarily in the ]."<ref name="auto"/>

The Narashino Military Academy near Tokyo had assembled a compilation of fifty-six case studies detailing the use of chemical weapons by Japan in China during World War II. This collection included information on lethal agents like Yperite, commonly known as mustard gas.<ref name="auto2">{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes Introductory Essay |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |isbn=1-880875-28-4 |page=38 |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf}}</ref> The document was discovered at the ] by a Japanese historian.<ref name="auto2"/>

According to historians ] and Kentaro Awaya, during the ], ], such as ], were sporadically used in 1937, but in early 1938, the ] resorted to the full-scale use of ], ], ], and ] (red), and from mid-1939, ] (yellow) was used against both ] and ] troops.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Tanaka |first=Yuki |year=2015 |title=Poison Gas: The Story Japan Would Like to Forget |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |volume=44 |issue=8 |pages=10–9 |bibcode=1988BuAtS..44h..10T |doi=10.1080/00963402.1988.11456210}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Report documenting how Japan used chemical weapons during Second Sino-Japanese War found for first time |date=8 July 2019 |website=] |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/08/national/history/detailed-report-documents-japans-use-nerve-agents-second-sino-japanese-war/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217095034/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/08/national/history/detailed-report-documents-japans-use-nerve-agents-second-sino-japanese-war/ |archive-date=17 February 2022}}</ref>

In 2004, Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka discovered documents in the Australian National Archives which state that ] gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 on ] (Indonesia).<ref>. ''Japan Times''.</ref>

According to Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, ] signed orders which specified the use of chemical weapons in China.<ref>Yoshimi and Matsuno, ''Dokugasusen kankei shiryô II, Kaisetsu'' 1997</ref> For example, during the ] from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite the ] ''IV, 2 – Declaration on the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases''<ref>{{cite web |title=Laws of War: Declaration on the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases; July 29, 1899 |publisher=Avalon.law.yale.edu |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/dec99-02.asp |access-date=21 July 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810224600/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/dec99-02.asp |archive-date=10 August 2011}}</ref> and Article 23 (a) of the ] ''IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land''.<ref name="chang-barker-2003"/><ref>{{cite web |title=Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907. |publisher=] |url=http://www.icrc.org/ihl/385ec082b509e76c41256739003e636d/1d1726425f6955aec125641e0038bfd6?OpenDocument |access-date=4 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130926100946/http://www.icrc.org/ihl/385ec082b509e76c41256739003e636d/1d1726425f6955aec125641e0038bfd6?OpenDocument |archive-date=26 September 2013}}</ref> A resolution adopted by the ] on 14 May condemned the use of poison gas by Japan.

According to ], a member of the imperial family of Japan, he watched an army film that showed Japanese troops gassing Chinese prisoners who were tied to stakes.<ref>{{cite news |title=Hirohito's Brother Says Japan Was Brutal Aggressor in War |date=6 July 1994 |work=Associated Press News |url=https://apnews.com/article/54751e3cfe7e286626e76b7fd43fb757 |access-date=27 April 2022 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220427214026/https://apnews.com/article/54751e3cfe7e286626e76b7fd43fb757 |archive-date=27 April 2022}}</ref>

Another incident of chemical warfare occurred during the ] in October 1941, during which the 19th Artillery Regiment helped the 13th Brigade of the ] by launching 1,000 yellow gas shells and 1,500 red gas shells at the Chinese ]. The area was crowded with Chinese civilians unable to evacuate. Some 3,000 Chinese soldiers were in the area and 1,600 were affected. The Japanese report stated that "the effect of gas seems considerable".<ref>Yuki Tanaka, "Poison Gas, the Story Japan Would Like to Forget", ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'', October 1988, p. 17</ref>

In 2004, Yoshimi Yoshiaki published the most comprehensive study of Japan's military use of poisonous gases in China and Southeast Asia. Yoshimi discovered a battle report by a Japanese Infantry Brigade that detailed its use of mustard gas in a major operation against the Communist-led ] in ] in the winter of 1942. The unit which carried out the operation noted the severity of the mustard gas attack, and it also commented about the anti-Japanese sentiment which existed among the members of the civilian population who were affected by the mustard gas.<ref>{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes Introductory Essay |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |isbn=1-880875-28-4 |page=38}}</ref>

===Torture of prisoners of war===
{{See also|Bamboo torture|Effectiveness of torture for interrogation}}
] killed during the ], 1942]]

Japanese imperial forces employed widespread use of ] on prisoners of war, usually in an effort to gather military intelligence quickly.<ref>{{cite book |last=de Jong |first=Louis |title=The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War |publisher=KITLV Press |translator1-first=J. |translator1-last=Kilian |translator2-first=C. |translator2-last=Kist |translator3-first=J. |translator3-last=Rudge |others=introduction by J. Kemperman |year=2002 |isbn=90-6718-203-6 |series=Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206 |location=Leiden, The Netherlands |pages=167, 170–73, 181–84, 196, 204–25, 309–14, 323–25, 337–38, 34, 1 343, 345–46, 380, 407 |author-link=Loe de Jong |orig-date=2002}}</ref> Tortured POWs were often later executed. A former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:

{{Blockquote|The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the ] was superior.<ref>Haruko Taya Cook & Theodore F. Cook, ''Japan at War'', 1993, {{ISBN|1-56584-039-9}}, p. 153</ref>}}

After the ] during World War II, the ] tortured a captured American ] ] named ] to discover how many ]s the ] had and what the future targets were. McDilda, who had originally told his captors he knew nothing about the atomic bomb (and who indeed knew nothing about ]), "confessed" under further torture that the US had 100 atomic bombs and that Tokyo and ] were the next targets:
{{Blockquote|text=As you know, when atoms are split, there are a lot of ] released. Well, we've taken these and put them in a huge container and separated them from each other with a lead shield. When the box is dropped out of a plane, we melt the lead shield and the pluses and minuses come together. When that happens, it causes a tremendous bolt of lightning and all the atmosphere over a city is pushed back! Then when the atmosphere rolls back, it brings about a tremendous thunderclap, which knocks down everything beneath it.|author=Marcus McDilda|source=<ref name="Jerome T. Hagen 1996">{{cite book |last=Hagen |first=Jerome T. |title=War in the Pacific, Chapter 25 "The Lie of Marcus McDilda" |publisher=Hawaii Pacific University |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-9653927-0-9 |pages=159–160 |url=https://archive.org/details/warinpacific0000hage_o9h7 |url-access=registration}}</ref>}}

According to many historians, one of the favorite techniques of Japanese torturers was "]", in which water was poured over the immobilized victim's head, until they suffocated and lost consciousness. They were then resuscitated brutally (usually with the torturer jumping on their abdomen to expel the water) and then subjected to a new session of torture. The entire process could be repeated for about twenty minutes.{{efn|"Interestingly, although the United States condemned these practices, notably during the ], its ] used the same technique several times in the context of the ]. They then proceeded to deny that simulated drowning was torture, an opinion shared by at least ] which, on 12 November 2005, commenting on the torture of alleged terrorists of ], published an editorial denying that the technique had "any proximity to torture".<ref>{{cite web |title=Law of War Home Page |website=lawofwar.org |url=http://lawofwar.org/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211155426/http://lawofwar.org/ |archive-date=11 February 2021}}</ref>

During the ], these interpretations were the subject of controversy, with candidates ] and ]<ref>{{cite web |last=Greg Sargent |title=Obama: 'I Cannot Support' Mukasey Without Clarity On Waterboarding |date=October 2007 |publisher=Election Central |url=http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/10/obama.php |access-date=3 September 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090804143234/http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/10/obama.php |archive-date=4 August 2009}}</ref> considering the practice as torture, as opposed to other ] candidates.<ref>{{cite news |last=Michael Cooper and Marc Santora |title=McCain Rebukes Giuliani on Waterboarding Remark |date=October 2007 |work=] |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/politics/26giuliani.html |access-date=3 September 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090425031627/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/politics/26giuliani.html |archive-date=25 April 2009}}</ref>}}

===Execution and killing of captured Allied airmen===
]er taken captive in 1942]]

Many Allied airmen captured by the Japanese on land or at sea were executed in accordance with official Japanese policy. During the ] in June 1942, three American airmen who were shot down and landed at sea were spotted and captured by ] warships. After being tortured, machinist mate first class ] and his pilot Ensign Frank O'Flaherty were tied to five-gallon kerosene cans filled with water and dumped overboard from the {{ship|Japanese destroyer|Makigumo|1941|6}};<ref>{{cite web |title=Toughness—Aviation Machinist Mate 1st Class Bruno Peter Gaido |website=] |url=https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-004/h-004-5.html |access-date=7 December 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211207060539/https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-004/h-004-5.html |archive-date=7 December 2021}}</ref> a third airman, Ensign Wesley Osmus, was fatally wounded with an axe before being pushed into the sea from the stern of the '']''.<ref>{{cite web |last=Chūichi Nagumo |title=CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report no. 6 |date=June 1942 |url=http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/Nagumo/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060526093630/http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/Nagumo/ |archive-date=26 May 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Cressman |first=Robert |title=The Official Chronology of the U.S. Navy in World War II |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=1999 |isbn=1-55750-149-1 |page= |url=https://archive.org/details/TheOfficialChronologyOfTheUSNavyInWorldWarII}}</ref>

On 13 August 1942, Japan passed the ], which stated that Allied pilots who bombed non-military targets in the ] and were captured by Japanese forces were subject to trial and punishment, despite the absence of any international law containing provisions regarding ].<ref name="ICRC">{{cite journal |last=Javier Guisández Gómez |title=The Law of Air Warfare |date=30 June 1998 |journal=International Review of the Red Cross |pages=347–63 |number=323 |url=http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jpcl.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130425044944/http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jpcl.htm |archive-date=25 April 2013}}</ref> This legislation was passed in response to the ] on 18 April 1942, in which American ] bombers under the command of ] ] bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities. According to the ] (the only convention Japan had ratified regarding the treatment of prisoners of war), any military personnel captured on land or at sea by enemy troops were to be treated as prisoners of war and not punished for simply being lawful combatants. Eight Doolittle Raiders captured upon landing in China (four months before the passage of the Act) were the first Allied aircrew to be brought before a ] in Shanghai under the act, charged with strafing of Japanese civilians during the Doolittle Raid. The eight aircrew were forbidden to present any defense and, despite the lack of legitimate evidence, were found guilty of participating in aerial military operations against Japan. Five of the eight sentences were commuted to life imprisonment; the other three airmen were taken to a cemetery outside Shanghai, where they were ] on 14 October 1942.<ref>{{cite book |last=Chun |first=Clayton |title=The Doolittle Raid 1942: America's first strike back at Japan (Campaign) |date=31 January 2006 |publisher=] |isbn=1-84176-918-5 |page= |url=https://archive.org/details/doolittleraid19400chun/page/85}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Stewart Halsey Ross |title=Strategic Bombing by the United States in World War II: The Myths and the Facts |date=13 December 2002 |publisher=] |isbn=0-7864-1412-X |page=59}}</ref>

The Enemy Airmen's Act contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Allied airmen throughout the Pacific War. An estimated 132 Allied airmen shot down during the ] in 1944–1945 were ] after short kangaroo trials or ]. Imperial Japanese military personnel deliberately killed 33 American airmen at ], including fifteen who were beheaded shortly after the Japanese Government's intention to surrender was announced on 15 August 1945.<ref>Francis (1997), pp. 471–72</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=November 2013}} Mobs of civilians also killed several Allied airmen before the Japanese military arrived to take the airmen into custody.<ref>Tillman (2010), p. 170</ref> Another 94 airmen died from other causes while in Japanese custody, including 52 who were killed when they were deliberately abandoned in a prison during the ] on 24–25 May 1945.<ref name="Takai_Sakaida_114">Takai and Sakaida (2001), p. 114</ref><ref>Tillman (2010), pp. 171–72</ref>

===Execution and killing of captured Allied seamen===
*Rear Admiral Takero Kouta, commander of the Japanese First Submarine Force at Truk, on 20 March 1943 sent out to subs under his command an order to kill ] crewman after the ship was sunk.<ref>{{cite web |title=War crimes of the Imperial Japanese Navy |website=pacificwar.org.au |url=https://www.pacificwar.org.au/JapWarCrimes/TenWarCrimes/WarCrimes_Jap_Navy.html |access-date=8 May 2023 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210307092639/http://pacificwar.org.au/JapWarCrimes/TenWarCrimes/WarCrimes_Jap_Navy.html |archive-date=7 March 2021}}</ref>{{full citation needed|date=May 2023}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Red Cross, The duty to rescue at sea, in peacetime and in war |url=https://library.icrc.org/library/docs/DOC/irrc-902-papanicolopulu.pdf |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230315215644/https://library.icrc.org/library/docs/DOC/irrc-902-papanicolopulu.pdf |archive-date=15 March 2023}}</ref>{{full citation needed|date=May 2023}}
*The ] ship ], torpedoed by {{ship|Japanese submarine|I-8}} on 2 July 1944, off ] at {{coord|03|28|S|074|30|E|display=inline}}. All of the crew and passengers made it into the ] safely. The I-8 forced the 100 onto the deck of the submarine and then killed most of them. The ''I-8'' crew shot at both the crew and the lifeboats. The submarine crew took the crew's valuables. Those not shot, about 30 crew members, were hit and stabbed on the deck. Seeing a plane, the submarine crew tossed overboard the remaining crew and dived. A ] flying boat spotted the crew in the water and sent ] ] {{HMS|Hoxa|T16|6}} rescued the men. After over 30 hours in the water the crew was rescued on 4 July 1944.<ref name="combinedfleetI8">{{cite web |last1=Hackett |first1=Bob |last2=Kingsepp |first2=Sander |title=IJN Submarine I-8: Tabular Record of Movement |date=1 July 2016 |website=combinedfleet.com |url=http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-8.htm |access-date=20 December 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211123180859/http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-8.htm |archive-date=23 November 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Bridgland |first=Tony |title=Waves of Hate |publisher=Pen & Sword |year=2002 |isbn=0-85052-822-4}}</ref><ref name="ijnsubsiteI8">{{cite web |title=I_8 |url=http://www.ijnsubsite.info/I-Sub%20Details/I-8.htm |access-date=8 May 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405012945/http://www.ijnsubsite.info/I-Sub%20Details/I-8.htm |archive-date=5 April 2023}}</ref><ref name="armedguard">{{cite web |title=Moore |website=armed-guard.com |url=http://www.armed-guard.com/ag87.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720134546/http://www.armed-guard.com/ag87.html |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref>
*Merchant Navy ] sank on 6 March 1944, in the ], seventy-two merchant seamen made it into lifeboats. They were taken aboard the ] and the crew's valuables taken. The crew was roped up in painful positions, beaten, and locked in an extremely hot store room. By order of Vice Admiral Sakonju, the crew, men and women, were killed. Sakonju was executed for his war crimes in 1947.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lamont-Brown |first=Raymond |title=Ships From Hell: Japanese War Crimes on the High Seas |publisher=Sutton |year=2002 |isbn=0-7509-2719-4 |location=Stroud, Gloucestershire}}</ref>
*], after sinking the merchant ship SS ''Richard Hovey'' in the ], shot at the crew in their three lifeboats and a two ]s. ''I-26'' rammed one lifeboats ] it. ''I-26'' took the captain and three crew POWs.<ref>{{cite web |title=SS Richard Hovey: a Tale of Japanese Atrocities and Survival by Bruce Felknor |website=usmm.org |url=http://www.usmm.org/felknorhovey.html |access-date=8 May 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210329232541/http://www.usmm.org/felknorhovey.html |archive-date=29 March 2021}}</ref> The four survived and were repatriated after the end of the war.
* Planes from the ] sank and killed crew and passengers in the {{SS|Poelau Bras}}'s lifeboats, sinking six of the nine boats off ].<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230607190326/https://muntokpeacemuseum.org/?page_id=27 |date=7 June 2023}}. Muntok Peace Museum.</ref>
*] on 27 November 1943 shot and killed eight crewmen in the MV ''Scotia'' lifeboats. On 22 February 1944 shot at {{SS|British Chivalry}}'s lifeboats, 13 were killed. On 29 February 1944 SS ''Ascot''{{'s}} lifeboats were shot at, leaving only seven survivors.<ref name=combinedfleetI8/>
*] on 18 March 1944 shot at {{SS|Nancy Moller}}'s lifeboats, killing 23.<ref>{{cite book |last=Edwards |first=Bernard |title=Blood and Bushido: Japanese Atrocities at Sea 1941–1945 |publisher=Brick Tower Press |year=1997 |isbn=1-883283-18-3 |location=New York |page=162}}</ref>
*] on 28 October 1944 shot at the lifeboats of the SS ''John A. Johnson'', killing eleven.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720134155/https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/n/naval-armed-guard-service-in-world-war-ii/japanese-atrocities.html |date=20 July 2023}}. US Navy.</ref>
* One survivor, ], a 21-year-old radio operator, of the crew of the {{SS|Tjisalak}}, lived to tell of the torture and execution of the lifeboat crew by submarine ''I-8''. How many other lifeboat crews did not have survivors is not known.<ref name="Ben-Yehuda2013">{{cite book |last=Ben-Yehuda |first=Nachman |title=Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare: Norms and Practices During the World Wars |date=15 July 2013 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0-472-11889-2 |page=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AapQAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019132939/https://books.google.com/books?id=AapQAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref><ref name="EastWatt1985">{{cite book |last=Watt |first=Donald Cameron |title=The Tokyo war crimes trial: index and guide |publisher=Garland |year=1985 |isbn=978-0-8240-4774-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iMFWAAAAYAAJ}}</ref>
*] ''I-158'' on 3 January 1942 sank the Dutch cargo ship {{SS|Langkoeas}} and subsequently attacked its lifeboats with machine guns. After interrogating the crew under threat of torture, its commander threw them back into the sea without their lifeboats.
*Tanker Augustina massacre, in the Western Java Sea, 1942, lifeboats machine-gunned, only 2 survived.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326032224/https://www.cnooks.nl/Jubileum/2%20%20Other%20documents/2%20%20History/WW%20I%20%26%20WWII/Augustina%201942.pdf |date=26 March 2023}}''cnooks.nl''</ref>

===Using Allied nationals as human shields===
The prohibition of using enemy nationals as ]s is based on Article 23 under Section II of the 1907 Fourth Hague Convention, which states: "A belligerent is forbidden to compel the nationals of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country".<ref>{{cite web |title=The Avalon Prject - Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907 |website=avalon.law.yale.edu |url=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp}}</ref> A ]-era 1915 Belgian report stated "f it be not permissible to compel a man to fire on his fellow citizens, neither can he be forced to protect the enemy and to serve as a living screen."<ref>{{cite journal |title=Legality of Attacks Against Human Shields in Armed Conflict |author=Eduard Hovsepyan |pages=170–171 |date=2017 |journal=UCL Discovery |doi=10.14324/111.2052-1871.083 |url=https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1553304/1/7.%20Hovsepyan%20FINAL.pdf#page=3}}</ref>

The application is limited to only enemy nationals and it does not apply to the same persons exposed to dangers from ] and ] since the Fourth Hague Convention only governs ]. The 1949 ] prohibits parties to the international conflict from using protected persons regardless of nationality as human shields against any type of enemy attacks,<ref>{{cite web |title=Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.: Article 28 - Treatment II. Danger zones |publisher=] |url=https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-28?activeTab=undefined}}</ref> closing the gaps mentioned in the preceding sentence.<ref>{{cite web |title=Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.: Commentary of 1958: Article 28 - Treatment II. Danger zones |publisher=] |url=https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-28/commentary/1958?activeTab=undefined}}</ref>

====Battle of Manila (1945)====
During the ] in 1945, Japanese forces used Filipino civilians as human shields to protect their positions against the liberating American troops.<ref>{{cite web |title=MacArthur's Battle to Liberate Manila Amid Murder & Mayhem |date=2019 |website=Warfare History Network |url=https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/macarthurs-battle-to-liberate-manila-amid-murder-mayhem/}}</ref> Author ] wrote "The Japanese defenders had taken thousand of Filipinos–men, females, and children alike–hostage, and were holding them as human shields. Many died in the bombardment and subsequent battles that followed, as the walled city was cleared in bitter street-to-street fighting."<ref>{{cite book |title=Smoky the Brave: How a Feisty Yorkshire Terrier Mascot Became a Comrade-in-Arms During World War II |author=] |pages=196–197 |date=December 4, 2018 |publisher=] |isbn=9-7803-0692-2565}}</ref> Alec Wahlman wrote:<ref>{{cite book |title=Storming the City: U.S. Military Performance in Urban Warfare from World War II to Vietnam |author=Alec Wahlman |pages=113–114 |date=2015 |publisher=] |isbn=9-7815-7441-6190 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6dG5CgAAQBAJ&dq=Filipino+civilians+human+shields+Manila+Japanese&pg=PA113}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|Unlike US forces, the Japanese in Manila did not allow the presence of the civilian population to interfere with their operations. In fact, they actively used the population as both shields and targets ... On one occasion, an American ] spotted some Japanese moving supplies, while twenty Filipinos were held at gunpoint nearby, including a Filipino girl tied naked to a tree, to avoid drawing American artillery fire.}}

An American WWII veteran who fought in the 1945 Battle of Manila stated "the Japanese would use Philippine civilians as human shields when they were trying to get away. The Japs would grab them and drag them in front of them. We couldn't shoot at the Japanese when they had the civilians in front of them."<ref>{{cite book |title=Pacific War Stories: In the Words of Those Who Survived |editor=Gerald A. Meehl, Rex Alan Smith |date=September 27, 2011 |publisher=] |isbn=9-7807-8926-0109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=syBZEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1025}}</ref> When American forces reached ], they realized 4,000 Filipino civilians were held hostage within the wall, most of whom were rounded up by the Japanese and used as human shields. U.S. commanders demanded the Japanese soldiers to surrender or release the hostages but were met in response with silence. American artillery and infantry assaults on the wall began as a result, killing over 1,000 Japanese and taking 25 prisoners, but the ensuing fight with the Japanese defenders also caused considerable and ] along the way.<ref name="HGXB">{{cite web |title=Chapter XVI: Manila: The Last Resistance |author=Robert Ross Smith |website=ibiblio.org/hyperwar |url=https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Triumph/USA-P-Triumph-16.html%7C}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Manila's utter destruction during World War II |author=Dennis Edward Flake |date=November 25, 2022 |website=Inquirer.net |url=https://usa.inquirer.net/117307/manilas-utter-destruction-during-world-war-ii}}</ref>

The American assault on Intramuros weakened Japanese defenses, and the Japanese decided to release 3,000 hostages, most of them females and children, because most of the men under Japanese captivity were murdered. At the end, the use of human shields along with the Manila massacre by the Japanese resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians in the battle.<ref name="HGXB"/>

===Cannibalism===

Many written reports and testimonies which were collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor ] (the tribunal's future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel committed acts of ] against Allied prisoners of war in many parts of Asia and the Pacific. In many cases, these acts of cannibalism were inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel which resulted from hunger. According to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity which was conducted by whole squads which were under the command of officers".<ref>Tanaka, ''Hidden Horrors'', p. 127</ref> This frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies. For example, an ] POW, '']'' Changdi Ram, testified that " the Kempeitai beheaded pilot. I saw this from behind a tree and watched some of the Japanese cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, buttocks and carry it off to their quarters&nbsp;... They cut it small pieces and fried it."<ref>] (Edward Russell), ''The Knights of Bushido, a short history of Japanese War Crimes'', Greenhill books, 2002, p. 236.</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Ten of Japan's worst War Crimes |website=pacificwar.org.au |url=https://www.pacificwar.org.au/JapWarCrimes/Cross-section_JapWarCrimes.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200930055258/https://www.pacificwar.org.au/JapWarCrimes/Cross-section_JapWarCrimes.html |archive-date=30 September 2020}}</ref>

In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian POW, '']'' Hatam Ali (later a citizen of ]), testified in ] and stated:

{{Blockquote|...&nbsp;the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot {{convert|50|mi|km|disp=sqbr}} away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died.<ref>] (Edward Russell), ''The Knights of Bushido, a short history of Japanese War Crimes'', Greenhill books, 2002, p. 121.</ref>}}

According to another account by Jemadar Abdul Latif of 4/9 Jat Regiment of the Indian Army who was rescued by the ] at the Sepik Bay in 1945:

{{Blockquote|At the village of Suaid, a Japanese medical officer periodically visited the Indian compound and selected each time the healthiest men. These men were taken away ostensibly for carrying out duties, but they never reappeared.<ref>{{cite news |title=Japanese ate Indian PoWs, used them as live targets in WWII |work=The Times of India |date=11 August 2014 |url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Japanese-ate-Indian-PoWs-used-them-as-live-targets-in-WWII/articleshow/40017577.cms |access-date=March 6, 2017 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230713165214/https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Japanese-ate-Indian-PoWs-used-them-as-live-targets-in-WWII/articleshow/40017577.cms |archive-date=13 July 2023}}</ref>}}

Perhaps the most senior officer convicted of cannibalism was Lt Gen. ] (立花芳夫,''Tachibana Yoshio''), who with 11 other Japanese personnel was tried in August 1946 in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, during August 1944, on ], in the ]. The airmen were beheaded on Tachibana's orders. Because military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". Tachibana was sentenced to death, and hanged.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208093731/http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/yamashita6.htm|date=8 December 2006}} ''Case No. 21 Trial Of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, United States Military Commission, Manila, (8 October-7 December 1945), and the Supreme Court of the United States (Judgments Delivered On 4 February 1946). Part VI'' (Retrieved on 18 December 2006); {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191103132545/http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/welch_naval_MCs.pdf|date=3 November 2019}}</ref>

===Avoidable hunger===
] in Thailand, 1943]]

Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to Japanese troops in occupied countries were also considered war crimes,<ref>Marcel Junod, International Red Cross</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303190336/http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf |date=3 March 2016}} January 28, 2015, '' National Archives''</ref> because Article 52 under Section III of the 1907 Fourth Hague Convention states that "Requisitions in kind and services ... shall be in proportion to the resources of the country".<ref>{{cite book |title=Use of Force · War and Neutrality Peace Treaties (N-Z) |author=Rudolf Bernhardt |page=186 |date=May 12, 2014 |publisher=] |isbn=9-7814-8325-7006 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wDW0BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA186 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019132940/https://www.google.com/books/edition/Use_of_Force_War_and_Neutrality_Peace_Tr/wDW0BQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=&pg=PA186&printsec=frontcover |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref> Millions of civilians in Southeast Asia – especially in ] and ], which were major producers of rice – died during the avoidable hunger in 1944–45.<ref>{{cite book |last=de Jong |first=Louis |title=The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War |publisher=KITLV Press |others=translation by J. Kilian, C. Kist and J. Rudge, introduction by J. Kemperman |year=2002 |isbn=90-6718-203-6 |series=Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206 |location=Leiden, Netherlands |pages=227–281 |chapter=III Starvation in the Indies}}</ref>

In the ] one to two million Vietnamese starved to death in the Red River delta of northern Vietnam due to the Japanese, as the Japanese seized Vietnamese rice without paying for it. In Phat Diem the Vietnamese farmer Di Ho was one of the few survivors who saw the Japanese steal grain.<ref>{{cite web |last=Gunn |first=Geoffrey |title=The great Vietnam famine |date=17 August 2015 |url=https://www.endofempire.asia/0817-6-the-great-vietnam-famine-4/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220617211855/https://www.endofempire.asia/0817-6-the-great-vietnam-famine-4/ |archive-date=17 June 2022}}</ref> The North Vietnamese government accused both France and Japan of the famine and said 1–2 million Vietnamese died.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Gunn |first=Geoffrey |title=The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1944–45 Revisited 1944–45年ヴィエトナム大飢饉再訪 |date=24 January 2011 |journal=The Asia-Pacific Journal |volume=9 |issue=5 Number 4 |url=https://apjjf.org/2011/9/5/Geoffrey-Gunn/3483/article.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190107131837/https://apjjf.org/2011/9/5/Geoffrey-Gunn/3483/article.html |archive-date=7 January 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Dũng |first=Bùi Minh |year=1995 |title=Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944–45 |journal=Modern Asian Studies |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=573–618 |doi=10.1017/S0026749X00014001 |s2cid=145374444 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/japans-role-in-the-vietnamese-starvation-of-194445/8A5205371AAECFB6D6CBE8AD7F70C41F |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180610045032/https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/japans-role-in-the-vietnamese-starvation-of-194445/8A5205371AAECFB6D6CBE8AD7F70C41F |archive-date=10 June 2018}}</ref> Võ An Ninh took photographs of dead and dying Vietnamese during the great famine.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hien |first=Nina |title=The Good, the Bad, and the Not Beautiful: In the Street and on the Ground in Vietnam |date=Spring 2013 |journal=Local Culture/Global Photography |volume=3 |issue=2 |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0003.202/--good-the-bad-and-the-not-beautiful-in-the-street?rgn=main;view=fulltext |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210421041425/https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0003.202/--good-the-bad-and-the-not-beautiful-in-the-street?rgn=main;view=fulltext |archive-date=21 April 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |title=Vietnam: Corpses in a mass grave following the 1944–45 famine during the Japanese occupation. Up to 2 million Vietnamese died of starvation. |id=AKG3807269 |url=https://www.akg-images.com/archive/-2UMEBM2Y85NV.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220622003638/https://www.akg-images.com/archive/-2UMEBM2Y85NV.html |archive-date=22 June 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Vietnamese Famine of 1945 |website=Japanese Occupation of Vietnam |url=https://japanesevietnam.weebly.com/vietnamese-famine-of-1945.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220617211855/https://japanesevietnam.weebly.com/vietnamese-famine-of-1945.html |archive-date=17 June 2022}}</ref> Starving Vietnamese were dying throughout northern Vietnam in 1945 due to the Japanese seizure of their crops. By the time the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese forces, Vietnamese corpses were on the streets of Hanoi and had to be cleaned up by students.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bui |first1=Diem |title=In the Jaws of History |last2=Chanoff |first2=David |date=1999 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=0253335396 |edition=illustrated, reprint |series=Vietnam war era classics series |pages=39, 40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Opb_14GLdXcC&pg=PA40 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019132938/https://books.google.com/books?id=Opb_14GLdXcC&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref>

===Forced labor===
{{Main|Slavery in Japan}}
{{Koreans in Japan|Anti-Korean tropes}}
]
The Japanese military's use of ], by Asian civilians and POWs, also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo, and ], more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilised by the '']'' (Japanese Asia Development Board) to perform forced labour.<ref>Zhifen Ju, ''Japan's atrocities of conscripting and abusing north China draftees after the outbreak of the Pacific War'', 2002</ref> More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the ].<ref>{{cite web |title=links for research, Allied POWs under the Japanese |publisher=Mansell.com |url=http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/links.html |access-date=21 July 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130601205859/http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/links.html |archive-date=1 June 2013}}</ref>

The ] estimates that in ] the Japanese military forced between four and ten million '']'' (Japanese: "manual laborers") to work.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181203205042/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID%20id0029) |date=3 December 2018}} Access date: 9 February 2007.</ref> About 270 000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia, but only 52 000 were repatriated to Java, likely indicating an eighty percent death rate.

According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor ] personally ratified the decision to remove the constraints of international law (]) on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of 5 August 1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war".<ref>Fujiwara, ''Nitchū sensō ni okeru horyo gyakusatsu'', 1995</ref> The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of ] rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. Japan was not a signatory to the ] at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention, although they ratified the ].<ref name="icrc.org"/><ref>{{cite web |title=US Prisoners of War and Civilian American Citizens Captured |website=NHHC |url=https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/u/us-prisoners-war-civilian-american-citizens-captured.html |access-date=8 May 2023}}</ref>

Shortly after the war, Japan's Foreign Ministry wrote a comprehensive report about Chinese laborers. The report estimated that of some 40,000 Chinese laborers taken to Japan, nearly 7,000 had died by the end of the war. The Japanese burned all copies except for one for the fear of that it might become incriminating evidence at the war crimes trials.<ref name="Drea 2006 33">{{cite book |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi Warcrimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |date=2006 |page=33 |last=Drea |first=Edward}}</ref> In 1958, a Chinese man was discovered hiding in the mountains of ]. The man did not know that the war was over, and he was one of thousands of laborers who were taken to Japan. This specific event brought attention to Japan's use of forced Asian labor during the war.<ref>{{cite book |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi Warcrimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |date=2006 |page=33 |last=Drea |first=Edward}}{{Source-attribution}}</ref>

Korean men and women were the largest group forced into labor in wartime Japan, and many were not able to return to Korea afterwards.<ref name="Drea 2006 33"/>

In the 1930s and 1940s the Japanese in Manchukuo forced all members of the indigenous Hezhen ethnic minority into forced labour camps where entire Hezhen clans died, and only 300 Hezhen survived at the end of World War II. The Hezhen population later regrew to 5,000. Hezhen culture was damaged and only a few Hezhen retained traditional knowledge like making fish skin clothing, like the mother of You Wenfeng.<ref>{{cite news |last=Woo |first=Ryan |title=Keeping fish-leather tradition alive China's 'mermaid descendants' weave final garments from skin of fish |date=January 23, 2020 |agency=Reuters |location=TONGJIANG, China |url=https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2020/01/23/2003729717}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Bryant |first=Alice |title=Fish Skin Clothing Tradition at Risk of Dying Out |date=January 29, 2020 |work=Reuters, Voice of America |url=https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/fish-skin-clothing-tradition-at-risk-of-dying-out/5255747.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Fish Skin Clothing Tradition at Risk of Dying Out |date=January 24, 2020 |work=Voice of America |url=https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/5259090.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Bryant |first=Alice |title=2020-01-29 Fish Skin Clothing Tradition at Risk of Dying Out |date=January 29, 2020 |work=Reuters, Voice of America |url=https://voa-story.com/2020-01-29-fish-skin-clothing-tradition-at-risk-of-dying-out/}}</ref>

===Rape===
{{See also|Comfort women}}

The expressions ''ianfu'' (慰安婦, {{lang|en|"]"}}) or ''jūgun ianfu'' (従軍慰安婦, {{lang|en|"women of military comfort"}}) are ]s for women used in military ]s in occupied countries, many of whom were forcefully recruited or recruited through fraud, and who are considered victims of ] and/or ].<ref>{{cite news |title=Japanese comfort women ruling overturned |date=29 March 2001 |work=CNN |url=http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/29/japan.comfort.women.02/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216122655/http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/29/japan.comfort.women.02/ |archive-date=16 December 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Sheridan |first=Michael |title=Black museum of Japan's war crimes |date=31 July 2005 |work=The Times |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article549954.ece |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080727011159/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article549954.ece |archive-date=27 July 2008}}</ref>

In addition to the systematic use of comfort women, Japanese troops engaged in wholesale rape in Nanjing, China. ], the leader of a Safety Zone in ], ], kept a diary during the ], and wrote about the Japanese atrocities committed against the people in the Safety Zone.<ref>{{cite book |last=Woods |first=John E. |title=The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe |year=1998 |page=77 |quote=Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital ... Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at ]&nbsp;... alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they're shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers.}}<!--ISSN/ISBN needed--></ref>

Japanese soldiers committed mass rapes in ] in the Philippines. Japanese soldiers in Bayview Hotel, Manila, raped hundreds of Italian, Russian, Spanish, British, American, and Filipino women.<ref>{{cite book |last=Min |first=Pyong Gap |title=Korean "Comfort Women": Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement |date=2021 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-1978814981 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j5QdEAAAQBAJ&dq=russian+italian+bayview+raped&pg=PT70 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231005004433/https://books.google.com/books?id=j5QdEAAAQBAJ&dq=russian+italian+bayview+raped&pg=PT70 |archive-date=5 October 2023}}</ref>

In 1992, historian ] published material based on his research in archives at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial institutions such as the ] and "comfort stations". When Yoshimi's findings were published in the ] on 12 January 1993, they caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary ], to acknowledge some of the facts that same day. On 17 January, Prime Minister ] presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in South Korea. On 6 July and 4 August, the Japanese government issued two statements by which it recognised that "Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military of the day", "The Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women", and that the women were "recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion".<ref>Yoshiaki Yoshimi, 2001–02, ''Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II''. Columbia University Press</ref>

Japanese veteran ] admitted to '']'' that the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."<ref name="Tabuchi"/>

The ] in the Philippines was an example of a military-operated garrison where local women were raped.<ref>{{cite news |last=McMullen |first=Jane |title=The Philippines' forgotten "comfort women" |date=17 June 2016 |language=en-GB |work=BBC News |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36537605 |access-date=29 January 2020 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414040646/https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36537605 |archive-date=14 April 2021}}</ref>

On 17 April 2007, Yoshimi and another historian, Hirofumi Hayashi, announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the '']'' (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina, and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to ''Tokkeitai'' members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.<ref>{{cite news |last=Yoshida |first=Reiji |title=Evidence documenting sex-slave coercion revealed |date=18 April 2007 |work=] |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070418a5.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071119022533/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070418a5.html |archive-date=19 November 2007}}</ref>

On 12 May 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Dutch government documents submitted to the ] as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in ].<ref>{{cite news |title=Files: Females forced into sexual servitude in wartime Indonesia |date=12 May 2007 |work=] |url=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2007/05/12/news/files-females-forced-into-sexual-servitude-in-wartime-indonesia/ |access-date=28 December 2016 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171112185516/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2007/05/12/news/files-females-forced-into-sexual-servitude-in-wartime-indonesia/ |archive-date=12 November 2017}}</ref>

In other cases, some victims from ] testified they were dragged from their homes and forced into prostitution at military brothels even when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers "night after night".<ref>{{cite news |last=Hirano |first=Keiji |title=East Timor former sex slaves speak out |date=28 April 2007 |work=] |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070428f1.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081201095546/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070428f1.html |archive-date=1 December 2008}}</ref>

A Dutch-Indonesian comfort woman, ] (who later lived in Australia until her death), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims, and that it wanted to rewrite history. Ruff O'Herne said that she had been raped "day and night" for three months by Japanese soldiers when she was 21.<ref>{{cite news |last=Cardy |first=Todd |title=Japanese PM's denial upsets 'comfort woman' |date=5 March 2007 |url=http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21327548-2,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071015164728/http://news.com.au/story/0%2C23599%2C21327548-2%2C00.html |archive-date=15 October 2007}}</ref>

On 26 June 2007, the ] passed a resolution asking that Japan "should acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its military's coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war".<ref name="Japan Times: U.S. panel OKs sex slave resolution">{{cite news |title=U.S. panel OKs sex slave resolution |date=28 June 2007 |work=] |url=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2007/06/28/national/u-s-panel-oks-sex-slave-resolution/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406095439/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2007/06/28/national/u-s-panel-oks-sex-slave-resolution/ |archive-date=6 April 2023}}</ref> On 30 July 2007, the House of Representatives passed the resolution. Japanese Prime Minister ] said this decision was "regrettable".<ref name="Japan Times: U.S. panel OKs sex slave resolution"/>

Scholars have stated that there were as many as 200,000 comfort women, mostly from Korea,<ref>{{cite book |last=Min |first=Pyong Gap |title=Korean 'Comfort Women': Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement |date=2021 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-1978814981 |series=Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j5QdEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22Filipino%2C+Vietnamese%2C+Thai%2C+Indonesian+and+Burmese+women+collectively+also+seem+to+have+made+up+a+significant+proportion+of+the+ACW.%22&pg=PT70 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019132937/https://books.google.com/books?id=j5QdEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22Filipino%2C+Vietnamese%2C+Thai%2C+Indonesian+and+Burmese+women+collectively+also+seem+to+have+made+up+a+significant+proportion+of+the+ACW.%22&pg=PT70#v=onepage&q=%22Filipino%2C%20Vietnamese%2C%20Thai%2C%20Indonesian%20and%20Burmese%20women%20collectively%20also%20seem%20to%20have%20made%20up%20a%20significant%20proportion%20of%20the%20ACW.%22&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref> and some other countries such as China, Philippines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Narayanan |first1=Arujunan |title=Japanese war crimes and Allied crimes trials in Borneo during World War II |date=2002 |journal=JEBAT |volume=29 |pages=10, 11 |url=http://journalarticle.ukm.my/404/1/1.pdf |access-date=10 April 2023 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404043656/http://journalarticle.ukm.my/404/1/1.pdf |archive-date=4 April 2023}}</ref><ref name=AtmotE>{{cite journal |title=At the Mercy of the Enemy: the Record of a Japanese War Criminal |date=2020-12-15 |journal=教育学論究 |volume=29 |issue=12 |pages=29–40 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/364935212.pdf |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230512001213/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/364935212.pdf |archive-date=12 May 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author1=Salbiah bt Mohamed Salleh |author2=Jamil bin Ahmad |author3=Mohd Aderi bin Che Noh |author4=Aminudin bin Hehsan |title=Profil Akhlak Guru Pendidikan Islam Di Malaysia |date=2018 |journal=UMRAN - International Journal of Islamic and Civilizational Studies |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=80–93 |doi=10.11113/umran2018.5n2.187 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Krausse |first1=Gerald H. |title=Indonesia |last2=Krausse |first2=Sylvia Engelen |last3=Krausse |first3=Sylvia C. Engelen |date=1994 |publisher=Clio Press |isbn=1851091270 |edition=2 |series=Volume 170 of World bibliographical series |volume=170 of ABC-CLIO World Bibliographical |page=xxviii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7KoUAQAAIAAJ&q=%22had+to+wear+identification+tags+.+Some+270%2C000+Indonesians+were+conscripted+to+work+in+Burma+%2C+but+only+7%2C000+returned+%3B+many+thousands+were+kept+in+Japan+as+prisoners+of+war+and+never+came+back+.+Indonesian+women+were+routinely+rounded+up+to+serve+as+prostitutes+in+Japanese+army+camps+.%22 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230531003241/https://books.google.com/books?id=7KoUAQAAIAAJ&q=%22had+to+wear+identification+tags+.+Some+270,000+Indonesians+were+conscripted+to+work+in+Burma+,+but+only+7,000+returned+;+many+thousands+were+kept+in+Japan+as+prisoners+of+war+and+never+came+back+.+Indonesian+women+were+routinely+rounded+up+to+serve+as+prostitutes+in+Japanese+army+camps+.%22 |archive-date=31 May 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=O'Neill |first=Claire |title=Comfort Women: Untold Stories Of Wartime Abuse |date=June 4, 2017 |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/06/04/134271795/comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720135519/https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/06/04/134271795/comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Geerken |first=Horst H. |title=A Gecko for Luck: 18 years in Indonesia |date=2015 |publisher=BoD – Books on Demand |isbn=978-3839152485 |edition=2 |page=145 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YqhUdrlRDFUC&dq=%22women+were+forced+into+prostitution+and+often+kept+for+months+in+the+barracks+of+the%22&pg=PA145 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720135615/https://books.google.com/books?id=YqhUdrlRDFUC&dq=%22women+were+forced+into+prostitution+and+often+kept+for+months+in+the+barracks+of+the%22&pg=PA145 |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref> Netherlands,<ref>{{cite news |title=Comfort Women Were 'Raped': U.S. Ambassador to Japan |date=19 March 2007 |publisher=] & Chosun |url=http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/03/19/2007031961023.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217095038/http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/03/19/2007031961023.html |archive-date=17 February 2022}}</ref> and Australia<ref>{{cite news |last=Moynihan |first=Stephen |title=Abe ignores evidence, say Australia's comfort women |date=3 March 2007 |publisher=The Age |location=Melbourne |url=http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/abe-ignores-evidence-say-australias-comfort-women/2007/03/02/1172338881441.html |access-date=21 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013150327/http://theage.com.au/news/world/abe-ignores-evidence-say-australias-comfort-women/2007/03/02/1172338881441.html |archive-date=13 October 2007}}</ref> were forced to engage in sexual activity.<ref>{{cite web |last=McCormack |first=Gavan |title=How the History Wars in Japan Left a Black Mark on NHK TV (Their BBC) |date=6 February 2005 |publisher=History News Network |url=http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/9954 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405211354/http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/9954 |archive-date=5 April 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Soh |first=C. Sarah |title=Japan's Responsibility Toward Comfort Women Survivors |date=May 2001 |publisher=Japan Policy Research Institute |url=http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp77.html |access-date=8 October 2006 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120628222046/http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp77.html |archive-date=28 June 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Nozaki |first=Yoshiko |title=The Horrible History of the 'Comfort Women' and the Fight to Suppress Their Story |date=3 September 2005 |publisher=History News Network |url=http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/13533 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720135538/http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/13533 |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Dudden |first=Alexis |title=US Congressional Resolution Calls on Japan to Accept Responsibility for Wartime Comfort Women |date=25 April 2006 |publisher=ZNet |url=http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10155 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060430130545/http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10155 |archive-date=30 April 2006}}</ref>

Japanese use of Malays, Javanese<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stetz |first1=Margaret D. |title=Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II |last2=Oh |first2=Bonnie B. C. |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317466253 |edition=illustrated |pages=61–64 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=%22fifty+Javanese+girls+were+strictly+supervised+by+a+Japanese+woman%22&pg=PA62 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720135754/https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=%22fifty+Javanese+girls+were+strictly+supervised+by+a+Japanese+woman%22&pg=PA62 |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref> Thai, Burmese, Filipino, and Vietnamese women as comfort women was corroborated by testimonies. As a result of the rape, many women were infected with sexually transmitted diseases.<ref>{{cite book |last=Tanaka |first=Yuki |title=Japan's Comfort Women |date=2003 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=1134650124 |page=60 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&dq=%22verify+that+other+Asian+women,+such+as+Vietnamese+and+Malaysians,+were+also+exploited+for+the+same+purpose+by+the+Japanese%22&pg=PA60 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220722182502/https://dokumen.pub/japans-comfort-women-asias-transformations-1nbsped-0415194008-9780415194006.html |archive-date=2022-07-22}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Stetz |first1=Margaret D. |title=Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II |last2=Oh |first2=Bonnie B. C. |date=12 February 2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317466253 |edition=illustrated |page=126 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA126 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019132937/https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA126#v=onepage&q=tanaka%20comfort%20vietnamese%20burmese&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Min |first=Pyong Gap |title=Korean 'Comfort Women': Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement |date=2021 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-1978814981 |series=Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j5QdEAAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PT70 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019133429/https://books.google.com/books?id=j5QdEAAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PT70#v=onepage&q=tanaka%20comfort%20vietnamese%20burmese&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and Culture |date=2005 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=0804751862 |page=209 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nIeBYY-TpMsC&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA209 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019133523/https://books.google.com/books?id=nIeBYY-TpMsC&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA209#v=onepage&q=tanaka%20comfort%20vietnamese%20burmese&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Thoma |first=Pamela |title=Asian American Women: The Frontiers Reader |date=2004 |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |isbn=0803296274 |editor-last=Vo |editor-first=Linda Trinh |edition=illustrated, reprinted |page=175 |chapter=Cultural Autobiography, Testimonial, and Asian American Transnational Feminist Coalition in the 'Comfort Women of World War II' Conference |editor-last2=Sciachitano |editor-first2=Marian |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CNZ-DsVg5T8C&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA175 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019133437/https://books.google.com/books?id=CNZ-DsVg5T8C&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA175#v=onepage&q=tanaka%20comfort%20vietnamese%20burmese&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref> There were comfort women stations in Malaya, Indonesia, Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Korea.<ref>{{cite book |last=Yoon |first=Bang-Soon L. |title=Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Interactions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage |date=2015 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004292932 |editor-last=Kowner |editor-first=Rotem |edition=reprint |series=Brill's Series on Modern East Asia in a Global Historical Perspective |page=464 |chapter=Chapter 20: Sexualized Racism, Gender and Nationalism: The Case of Japan's Sexual Enslavement of Korean 'Comfort Women' |editor-last2=Demel |editor-first2=Walter |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6Tq2CAAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA464 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019133951/https://books.google.com/books?id=6Tq2CAAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA464#v=onepage&q=tanaka%20comfort%20vietnamese%20burmese&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Qiu |first1=Peipei |title=Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves |last2=Su |first2=Zhiliang |last3=Chen |first3=Lifei |date=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0199373895 |edition=illustrated |series=Oxford oral history series |page=215 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HDyFAwAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA215 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019133948/https://books.google.com/books?id=HDyFAwAAQBAJ&dq=tanaka+comfort+vietnamese+burmese&pg=PA215#v=onepage&q=tanaka%20comfort%20vietnamese%20burmese&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref>

After the defeat of Japan, some of the non-European victims received no compensation or apology<ref>{{cite news |last=O'Neill |first=Claire |title=Comfort Women: Untold Stories of Wartime Abuse |date=June 4, 2011 |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/06/04/134271795/comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720135519/https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/06/04/134271795/comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref> and the exploitation of them was ignored.<ref>{{cite book |last=Tanaka |first=Yuki |title=Japan's Comfort Women |date=2003 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=1134650124 |pages=78–82, 85, 86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&dq=%22Dutch+were+equally+indifferent+to+victims+who+were+not+white+and+Dutch%22&pg=PA78 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230423140214/https://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&dq=%22Dutch+were+equally+indifferent+to+victims+who+were+not+white+and+Dutch%22&pg=PA78 |archive-date=23 April 2023 |quote=As much as the Japanese were unconcerned about the exploitation of non-Europeans, the Dutch were equally indifferent to victims who were not white and Dutch. However, there were at least two exceptional cases brought by the Dutch ...}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Japan's Comfort Women (Asia's Transformations) |edition=1st |isbn=9780415194006 |last1=Tanaka |first1=Toshiyuki |year=2002 |publisher=Psychology Press |url=https://dokumen.pub/japans-comfort-women-asias-transformations-1nbsped-0415194008-9780415194006.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220725051737/https://dokumen.pub/japans-comfort-women-asias-transformations-1nbsped-0415194008-9780415194006.html |archive-date=25 July 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Stetz |first1=Margaret D. |title=Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II |last2=Oh |first2=Bonnie B. C. |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317466253 |edition=illustrated |pages=61–68 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=%22Dutch+were+equally+indifferent+to+victims+who+were+not+white+and+Dutch%22&pg=PA61 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230423140212/https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=%22Dutch+were+equally+indifferent+to+victims+who+were+not+white+and+Dutch%22&pg=PA61 |archive-date=23 April 2023 |quote=Japanese were unconcerned about the non-Europeans, so too the Dutch were equally indifferent to non-European victims who were not white and Dutch.}}</ref>

As the Dutch implemented a war of attrition and scorched earth, they forced Chinese on Java to flee inland, and the Dutch destroyed all important assets, including Chinese factories and property. Local Indonesians joined in on the Dutch violence against the Chinese, looting Chinese property and trying to attack Chinese citizens. However, when the Japanese troops landed and seized control of Java from the Dutch, to people's surprise, the Japanese forced the native Indonesians to stop looting and attacking Chinese and warned the Indonesians they would not tolerate anti-Chinese violence in Java. The Japanese viewed the Chinese in Java and their economic power specifically as important and vital to the Japanese war effort, so they did not physically harm the Chinese of Java, and no known execution or torture of Chinese citizens took place (unlike in other places). There was no violent confrontation between Japanese and Chinese on Java, unlike in British Malaya. The Japanese also allowed Chinese of Java in the Federation of Overseas-Chinese Associations (Hua Chiao Tsung Hui) to form the Keibotai, their own armed Chinese defence corps for protection with Japanese military instructors training them how to shoot and use spears. The Chinese viewed this as important to defending themselves from local Indonesians. The majority of Chinese of Java did not die in the war. It was only after the war ended when Japanese control fell and then the native Indonesians again started attacks against the Chinese of Java when the Japanese were unable to protect them.<ref>{{cite book |last=Touwen-Bouwsma |first=Elly |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NZWqvMBu80kC&pg=PA57 |title=Southeast Asian Minorities in the Wartime Japanese Empire |date=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1136125065 |editor-last=Kratoska |editor-first=Paul H. |pages=57–61 |chapter=Four: Japanese Policy towards the Chinese on Java, 1942-1945: A Preliminary Outline}}</ref>

In Java, the Japanese heavily recruited Javanese girls as comfort women and brought them to New Guinea, Malaya, Thailand, and other areas foreign to Indonesia besides using them in Java itself. The Japanese brought Javanese women as comfort women to Buru island, and Kalimantan. The Japanese recruited help from local collaborator police of all ethnicities to recruit Javanese girls, with one account accusing Chinese recruiters of tricking a Javanese regent into sending good Javanese girls into prostitution for the Japanese in May 1942. The Japanese also lied to the Javanese telling them that their girls would become waitresses and actresses when recruiting them.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation |date=2009 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004190177 |editor-last=Post |editor-first=Peter |volume=19 of Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4t95DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA191}}</ref> The Japanese brought Javanese women as comfort women prostitutes to Kupang in Timor while in East Timor the Japanese took local women in Dili. In Bali, the Japanese sexually harassed Balinese women when they came and started forcing Balinese women into brothels for prostitution, with Balinese men and Chinese men used as recruiters for the Balinese women. All of the brothels in Bali were staffed by Balinese women.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation |date=2009 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004190177 |editor-last=Post |editor-first=Peter |volume=19 of Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia |page=193 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4t95DwAAQBAJ&dq=chinese+men+and+a+couple+of+balinese+men&pg=PA192}}</ref> In brothels in Kalimantan, native Indonesian women made up 80% of the prostitutes.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation |date=2009 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004190177 |editor-last=Post |editor-first=Peter |volume=19 of Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia |page=193}}</ref> Javanese girls and local girls were used in a Japanese brothel in Ambon in Batu Gantung. European Dutch women were overrepresented in documents on Dutch East Indies comfort women which did not reflect the actual reality because the Dutch did not care about native Indonesian women being victimised by Japan, refusing to prosecute cases against them since Indonesia was not a UN member at the time.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation |date=2009 |isbn=978-9004190177 |editor-last=Post |editor-first=Peter |volume=19 of Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asiapublisher=BRILL |page=195 |publisher=BRILL}}</ref> Javanese comfort women who were taken by Japanese to islands outside Java were treated differently depending on whether they stayed on those islands or returned to Java. Since Javanese society was sexually permissive and they kept it secret from other Javanese, the Javanese women who returned to Java fared better, but the Javanese women who stayed on the islands like Buru were treated harsher by their hosts since they locals in Buru were more patriarchal.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation |date=2009 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-9004190177 |editor-last=Post |editor-first=Peter |volume=19 of Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia |page=196 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4t95DwAAQBAJ&dq=relatively+permissive+javanese&pg=PA196}}</ref> The Japanese murdered Christians and forced girls into prostitution in Timor and Sumba, desecrating sacred vessels and vestments in churches and using the churches as brothels. Javanese girls were brought as prostitutes by the Japanese to Flores and Buru.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Hului |first=Patricia |title=The influence of Catholicism on Flores island during WWII |date=July 19, 2021 |magazine=Kajo Mag |url=https://kajomag.com/the-influence-of-catholicism-on-flores-island-during-wwii/}}</ref> Eurasians, Indians, Chinese, Dutch, Menadonese, Bataks, Bugis, Dayaks, Javanese, Arabs, and Malays were arrested and massacred in the Mandor affair.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Hului |first=Patricia |title=The Mandor Affair, the massacres in West Kalimantan during WWII |date=September 18, 2019 |magazine=Kajo Mag |url=https://kajomag.com/the-mandor-affair-the-massacres-in-west-kalimantan-during-wwii/}}</ref>

The Japanese brought Indonesian Javanese girls to British Borneo as comfort women to be raped by Japanese officers at the Ridge road school and Basel Mission Church, and the Telecommunication Center Station (former rectory of the All Saints Church) in Kota Kinabalu as well as ones in Balikpapan and Beaufort. Japanese soldiers raped Indonesian women and Dutch women in the Netherlands East Indies. Many of the women were infected with STDs as a result.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Narayanan |first1=Arujunan |title=Japanese war crimes and Allied crimes trials in Borneo during World War II |date=2002 |journal=JEBAT |volume=29 |pages=10, 11 |url=http://journalarticle.ukm.my/404/1/1.pdf |access-date=8 April 2023 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404043656/http://journalarticle.ukm.my/404/1/1.pdf |archive-date=4 April 2023}}</ref><ref name=AtmotE/> Sukarno prostituted Indonesian girls from ethnic groups like Minangkabau to the Japanese.<ref>{{cite book |last=Penders |first=Christian Lambert Maria |title=The Life and Times of Sukarno |date=1974 |publisher=Sidgwick & Jackson |isbn=0283484144 |edition=illustrated |page=64 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WswLAAAAIAAJ&q=%22This+impression+is+reinforced+by+Sukarno%27s+own+glowing+reports26+of+how+he+was+successful+in+regulating+rice+supplies+in+Padang+and+in+procuring+prostitutes+for+the+Japanese+soldiers+,+activities+which+cannot+exactly+be+described+as+...%22 |quote=This impression is reinforced by Sukarno's own glowing reports26 of how he was successful in regulating rice supplies in Padang and in procuring prostitutes for the Japanese soldiers , activities which cannot exactly be described as ...}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Friend |first=Theodore |title=Indonesian Destinies |date=2009 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0674037359 |edition=unabridged |page=27 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_w6Mn4xRLt8C&dq=sukarno+prostitution+japanese&pg=PA27 |quote=Sukarno's first administrative act, he acknowledges, was to gather 120 prostitutes as "volunteers" to be penned in a special camp for service to Japanese soldiers. He congratulated himself on simultaneously enhancing the women's income, sating the lust of the invaders, and thereby protecting virtuous Minangkabau maidens.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Levenda |first=Peter |title=Tantric Temples: Eros and Magic in Java |date=2011 |publisher=Nicolas-Hays, Inc. |isbn=978-0892546015 |page=52 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UsyhkoJTqzYC&dq=sukarno+prostitution+japanese&pg=PA52}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Geerken |first=Horst H. |title=A Gecko for Luck: 18 years in Indonesia |date=2015 |publisher=BoD – Books on Demand |isbn=978-3839152485 |edition=2 |page=145 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YqhUdrlRDFUC&dq=peta+prostitutes+japanese+indonesian&pg=PA145}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Krausse |first1=Gerald H. |title=Indonesia |last2=Krausse |first2=Sylvia C. Engelen |date=1994 |publisher=Clio Press |isbn=1851091270 |edition=2nd |page=xxviii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7KoUAQAAIAAJ&q=%22had+to+wear+identification+tags+.+Some+270,000+Indonesians+were+conscripted+to+work+in+Burma+,+but+only+7,000+returned+;+many+thousands+were+kept+in+Japan+as+prisoners+of+war+and+never+came+back+.+Indonesian+women+were+routinely+rounded+up+to+serve+as+prostitutes+in+Japanese+army+camps+.%22 |quote=had to wear identification tags. Some 270,000 Indonesians were conscripted to work in Burma, but only 7,000 returned; many thousands were kept in Japan as prisoners of war and never came back. Indonesian women were routinely rounded up to serve as prostitutes in Japanese army camps.}}</ref> The Japanese destroyed many documents related to their rape of Indonesian Javanese girls at the end of the war so the true extent of the mass rape is uncountable, but testimony witnesses records the names and accounts of Indonesian Javanese comfort women.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stetz |first1=Margaret D. |title=Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II |last2=Oh |first2=Bonnie B. C. |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317466253 |edition=illustrated |pages=61–64 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=%22fifty+Javanese+girls+were+strictly+supervised+by+a+Japanese+woman%22&pg=PA62}}</ref>

Japanese in one instance tried to disguise the Javanese comfort girls they were raping as red cross nurses with red cross armbands when they surrendered to Australian soldiers in Kupang, Timor.<ref>{{cite AV media |title=Koepang, Timor 1945-10-02. Timforce. Twenty Six Javanese Girls Who Were Liberated at Koepang From Japanese Brothels. Just Prior to Their Release the Japanese Issued Them With Red Cross Arm Bands in an Attempt to Camouflage the Foul Manner in Which These Girls Had Been Used. Young Lady in Chief of the Girls Is Komoriah. She is Holding the Doll She Kept Throughout Her Enforced Stay in Japanese Hands. (Photographer K. B. Davis) |date=2 October 1945 |publisher=Australian War Memorial |id=120083 |people=comfort women |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/120083}}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |title=Koepang, Timor 1945-10-02. Timforce. Twenty Six Javanese Girls Who Were Liberated at Koepang From Japanese Brothels. Just Prior to Their Release the Japanese Issued Them With Red Cross Arm Bands in an Attempt to Camouflage the Foul Manner in Which These Girls Had Been Used. These Girls Will Now Be Cared For By The Netherlands Indies Civil Administration. (Photographer K. B. Davis) |date=2 October 1945 |publisher=Australian War Memorial |id=120087 |people=comfort women |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/120087}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Tanaka |first=Yuki |title=Japan's Comfort Women |date=2003 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=1134650124 |page=81 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&dq=They+were+living+in+the+ruins+of+the+Japanese+comfort+station+at+Beaufort+(presently+Weston)+on+the+Padas+River+in+...+The+Japanese+tried+to+camouflage+this+by+making+them+wear+Red+Cross+armbands.63+The+Australian+forces+apparently+had+...&pg=PA81}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Stetz |first1=Margaret D. |title=Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II |last2=Oh |first2=Bonnie B. C. |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317466253 |edition=illustrated |page=63 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=The+Japanese+tried+to+camouflage+this+by+making+them+wear+Red+Cross+armbands.%22+It+seems+that+the+Australian+forces+had+no+intention+of+finding+out+which+Japanese+were+responsible+for+crimes+against+these+Indonesian+women.&pg=PA63}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=JPRI Critique: A Publication of the Japan Policy Research Institute, Volume 9 |publisher=Japan Policy Research Institute |page=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B1u7AAAAIAAJ&q=Japan%27s+Comfort+Women+,+Theirs+and+Ours+by+Murray+Sayle+Late+in+August+1944+,+Australian+troops+securing+the+island+of+Timor+after+Japan%27s+surrender+came+across+a+group+of+40+young+Javanese+women+wearing+Red+Cross+armbands+,+although}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Post |first=Peter |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4t95DwAAQBAJ&dq=Twenty-six+Javanese+girls,+liberated+from+Japanese+brothels+in+Kupang+(Timor).+Just+before+their+release,+the+Japanese+issued+them+with+Red+Cross+arm+bands+in+an+attempt+to+camouflage+the+fact+that+they+had+been+used+Because+r%C5%8Dmusha+...&pg=PA194 |title=The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation |date=2009 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-9004190177 |editor1-last=Post |editor1-first=Peter |chapter=4. Occupation: Coercion and Control |at=p. 194; column 19; van Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia}}</ref>

In addition to disguising the Java girls with Red Cross armbands some Dutch girls were also brought to Kupang and native girls from Kupang were also kidnapped by the Japanese while the native men were forced into hard labour.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mackie |first=Vera |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tiUlDwAAQBAJ&dq=A+native+who+worked+in+a+Koepang+cafe+before+the+war+said+that+the+Japanese+forfeited+co-operation+of+the+natives+by+...+japanese+returned+them+to+bima+dressed+in+the+red+cross+uniforms+they+originally+wore+to+timor+break+the+japanese+...&pg=PA140 |title=Sources and Methods in Histories of Colonialism: Approaching the Imperial Archive |date=2017 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1351986632 |editor1-last=Reid |editor1-first=Kirsty |edition=illustrated |series=Routledge Guides to Using Historical Sources |page=140 |chapter=Gender, geopolitics and gaps in the records |editor2-last=Paisley |editor2-first=Fiona}}</ref>

Indian and Javanese captives in Biak were freed from Japanese control by Allied forces.<ref>{{cite book |last=Boyer |first=Allen D |title=Rocky Boyer's War: An Unvarnished History of the Air Blitz that Won the War in the Southwest Pacific |date=2017 |publisher=Naval Institute Press |isbn=978-1682470978 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4QylDgAAQBAJ&dq=...+lumber+and+sawmills;+officers%27+clubs;+pornography;+proposed+Red+Cross+post+clubs;+PX+(post+exchange)+operations;+...+improvements+and+comforts;+infantry+fighting;+Japanese+resistance;+Javanese+and+Indian+prisoners+liberated;+...&pg=PT227}}</ref>

Only 70,000 Javanese survived out of 260,000 Javanese forced to labour on the death railway between Burma and Thailand.<ref>{{cite book |last=Trevor |first=Malcolm |title=Japan: Restless Competitor: the Pursuit of Economic Nationalism |date=2001 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=1903350026 |edition=illustrated |page=124 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PrAoHzoP1QkC&dq=...+260,000+Javanese+sent+to+the+railway+and+else-+where+,+only+70,000+returned+home+.+Those+working+on+the+railway+included+Burmese+,+Chinese+,+Indians+,+Malays+,+Thais+and+Vietnamese+.+Acting+for+the+Red+Cross+,+the+British+government+...&pg=PA124}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Trevor |first=Malcolm |title=Japan - Restless Competitor: The Pursuit of Economic Nationalism |date=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1134278411 |page=124 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=arldAgAAQBAJ&dq=...+260,000+Javanese+sent+to+the+railway+and+else-+where+,+only+70,000+returned+home+.+Those+working+on+the+railway+included+Burmese+,+Chinese+,+Indians+,+Malays+,+Thais+and+Vietnamese+.+Acting+for+the+Red+Cross+,+the+British+government+...&pg=PA124}}</ref>

In August 1945, the Japanese were getting ready to execute female European internees by shooting in the Dutch East Indies and their plans were only stopped by the atomic bomb with the plans and list of detainees already written down.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jennings |first1=Captain Mick |title=Escape to Japanese Captivity: A Couple's Tragic Ordeal in Sumatra, 1942–1945 |last2=Jennings |first2=Margery |date=2021 |publisher=Pen and Sword Military |isbn=978-1526783127 |page=168 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FhMZEAAAQBAJ&dq=The+Javanese+nationalist+movement+who+wanted+to+take+back+Indonesia+from+the+Dutch+were+on+the+rampage.+...+The+Japanese,+afraid+of+retribution+from+the+Allies,+started+handing+out+Red+Cross+parcels+and+mail+and+even+gave+a+concert+for+...&pg=PA168}}</ref>

Francis Stanley (Frank) Terry, an Australian sailor on a naval vessel, participated in the repatriation of Indonesian Javanese comfort women from islands across Indonesia back to their home.<ref>{{cite AV media |title=F3781 Francis Stanley Terry as a cook; minesweeper HMAS Mercedes and corvette HMAS Warrnambool; Australian western approaches and northern and eastern waters; 1941-1946; interviewed by John Roberts |date=27 July 1995 |time=! Hour Australian War Memorial |format=TDK D60 Cassette |id=S01794 |people=Terry, Francis Stanley (Frank) Roberts, Niall John |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/S01794}}</ref><ref>https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/awm-media/collection/S01794/document/1866247.PDF {{bare URL inline|date=March 2024}}</ref><ref>Francis Stanley Terry (cook; minesweeper HMAS Mercedes and corvette HMAS Warrnambool; Australian western approaches and northern and eastern waters; 1941-1946), oral history interview, 27 July 1995, AWM, S01794.</ref>

The Dutch royal family and government seized the money from Japanese comfort women prostitution in the Dutch East Indies territory for itself instead of compensating the women.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Molemans |first1=Griselda |last2=Park |first2=Hee Seok |title=Both the State and the royal family benefited from the earnings of Dutch East Indies 'comfort women' |date=August 15, 2022 |website=Follow The Money |url=https://www.pabst-science-publishers.com/current/news-archiv/details-archive/both-the-state-and-the-royal-family-benefited-from-the-earnings-of-dutch-east-indies-comfort-women.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Molemans |first1=Griselda |last2=Park |first2=Hee Seok |title=Both the State and the royal family benefited from the earnings of Dutch East Indies 'comfort women' |date=August 15, 2022 |website=Follow The Money |url=https://www.ftm.eu/articles/dutch-state-and-royal-family-profited-from-money-comfort-women?share=oGtVAb11Rh%2BAGTmJxQgR9t2033uPclbxiZiOALN1ovwnfKYlf3MPVNkKTcbf1zc%3D}}</ref>

The Japanese forced Javanese women to work in brothels and Javanese men to become forced labour at airstrips in Labuan, Borneo. The Javanese men were worked to starvation, resembling skeletons, barely able to move and were sick with beri beri by the time they were freed in June 1945 by Australians.<ref>{{cite AV media |title=Javanese slaves in native compound sick ward |date=1945 |publisher=Australian War Memorial |id=C170219 |people=slaves, Friend, Donald |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C170219}}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |title=Javanese slaves in native compound sick ward |date=1945 |publisher=Australian War Memorial |id=C170216 |people=slaves, Friend, Donald |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C170216}}</ref> The Japanese reserved a house as a brothel and officer's club on Fox Road in Labuan.<ref>{{cite AV media |title=Labuan. September 1945. A private house in Fox Road used by the Japanese as an Officer's club and brothel. (Donor R. Fullford) |date=1945 |publisher=Australian War Memorial |id=C375607 |people=brothel |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C375607}}</ref>

On 28 August 1945, the British and Australians gave medical treatment to 300 Javanese and Malay men slaves of the Japanese who were malnourished and starving from forced labour.<ref>{{cite AV media |title=Miri, Borneo. 1945-08-28. Over 300 Natives, Malay and Javanese, Escaped From the Japanese and are Now in the British Borneo Civil Administration Compound. Shown Above, a Group of Men Typical of the Malnutrition Cases Being Treated at the Compound. |date=28 August 1945 |publisher=Australian War Memorial |id=115185 |people=Malay and Javanese |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/115185}}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |title=Miri, Borneo. 1945-08-28. Some of the 300 Natives, Malay and Japanese, Who Escaped From the Japanese and Are Now in the British Borneo Civil Administration Compound. |date=28 August 1945 |publisher=Australian War Memorial |id=115187 |people=Malay and Javanese |url=https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/115187}}</ref>

Many Indonesian comfort females were reluctant to talk about their experiences due to shame. A 10-year-old Indonesian girl named Niyem from Karamangmojo in Yogyakarta was repeatedly raped for two months by Japanese soldiers along with other Indonesian girls in West Java. She did not tell her parents what the Japanese did to her when she managed to flee.<ref>{{cite news |last=O'Neill |first=Claire |title=Comfort Women: Untold Stories Of Wartime Abuse |date=June 4, 2011 |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/06/04/134271795/comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Hirano |first=Keiji |title=Photo exhibition shows pain of Indonesian former 'comfort women' |date=Oct 19, 2015 |work=] |location=Kyodo |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/10/19/arts/photo-exhibition-shows-pain-indonesian-former-comfort-women/}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=O'Neill |first=Claire |title=Comfort Women: Untold Stories Of Wartime Abuse |date=June 4, 2011 |work=wbur |url=https://www.wbur.org/npr/134271795/comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse}}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |title=Comfort Women |publisher=panos pictures |location=Karangmojo, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia |format=picture |id=JBA00738INN |people=Niyem (born 1933), Jan Banning |url=https://library.panos.co.uk/stock-photo-niyem-born-1933-was-one-of-tens-of-thousands-of-comfort-women-forced-panos-image00117720.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |title=Comfort Women |publisher=panos pictures |location=Karangmojo, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia |format=picture |id=JBA00738INN |people=Niyem (born 1933), Jan Banning |url=https://library.panos.co.uk/features/stories/comfort-women.html#0_00117720}}</ref>

The Japanese killed four million Indonesians.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Baird |first1=J. Kevin |title=War Crimes in Japan-Occupied Indonesia: Unraveling the Persecution of Achmad Mochtar |date=January 1, 2016 |journal=Japan Focus: The Asia-Pacific Journal |volume=14 |issue=1 |url=https://apjjf.org/2016/01/4-Baird.html}}</ref> After the defeat of Japan, the Dutch generally did not care about Japanese rape of non-white, native Indonesian Muslim girls and most of the time they only charged Japanese war criminals for rape of white Dutch women.<ref>{{cite book |last=Tanaka |first=Yuki |title=Japan's Comfort Women |date=2003 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=1134650124 |pages=78–82, 85, 86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&dq=%22Dutch+were+equally+indifferent+to+victims+who+were+not+white+and+Dutch%22&pg=PA78 |quote=As much as the Japanese were unconcerned about the exploitation of non-Europeans, the Dutch were equally indifferent to victims who were not white and Dutch. However, there were at least two exceptional cases brought by the Dutch ...}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Japan's Comfort Women (Asia's Transformations) &#91;1 ed.&#93; 0415194008, 9780415194006 |url=https://dokumen.pub/japans-comfort-women-asias-transformations-1nbsped-0415194008-9780415194006.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Stetz |first1=Margaret D. |title=Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II |last2=Oh |first2=Bonnie B. C. |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317466253 |edition=illustrated |pages=61–68 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RW2mBgAAQBAJ&dq=%22Dutch+were+equally+indifferent+to+victims+who+were+not+white+and+Dutch%22&pg=PA61 |quote=... Japanese were unconcerned about the exploitation of non-Europeans, so too the Dutch were equally indifferent to victims who were not white and Dutch.}}</ref>

Suharto silenced public discussion in Indonesian on Japanese war crimes in Indonesia in order to stop anti-Japanese sentiment building up but it happened regardless when the movie Romusha came out in 1973 and the Peristiwa Malari (Malari affair) riots broke out in Indonesia in 1974 against Japan. Suharto also sought to silence discussion on Japanese war crimes due to Indonesia's own war crimes in East Timor after 1975, but Indonesians started talking about Indonesian comfort women in the 1990s following the example of Korea. Mardyiem, a Javanese Indonesian comfort woman talked about what happened to her after Indonesian comfort women were interviewed by Japanese lawyers, after decades of being forced to stay silent.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rickum |first=Boryano |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m5QCBQAAQBAJ&dq=japanese+mardyiem&pg=PA184 |title=Feelings at the Margins: Dealing with Violence, Stigma and Isolation in Indonesia |date=2014 |publisher=Campus Verlag |isbn=978-3593500058 |editor1-last=Stodulka |editor1-first=Thomas |edition=illustrated |page=184 |chapter=Marginalized by Silence- Victims of Japanese Occupation in Indonesia's Political Memory |editor2-last=Röttger-Rössler |editor2-first=Birgitt}}</ref>

Three major revolts happened against Japan by Indonesians in Java. Japanese forced Indonesians of West Java in Cirebon to hand over a massive quota of rice to the Japanese military with Japanese officers using brutality to extract even more than the official quota. The Indonesians in Cirebon rebelled twice and targeted Indonesian collaborator bureaucrats and Japanese officers in 1944. Japan killed a lot of Indonesian rebels while crushing them with deadly force. In Sukmana, Singapurna, the Tasikmalaya regency, the conservative religious teacher Kiai Zainal Mustafa told his followers that in the month when Muhammad was born they would gain divine protection when he gave a sign. In February 1943, Japanese Kempeitai caught wind of what was happening and came to the area but the roads were blocked to stop them. The Indonesian villagers and students began to fight the Japanese and seized the sabre of the Japanese chief to kill him. More Japanese arrived and 86 Japanese and 153 Indonesian villagers died in the fighting. The Japanese then arrested Zainal and 22 others for execution. Supriyadi lead a Peta mutiny against the Japanese in February 1945.<ref>{{cite book |last=Friend |first=Theodore |title=The Blue-Eyed Enemy: Japan against the West in Java and Luzon, 1942-1945 |date=2014 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1400859467 |page=175,176 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UQMABAAAQBAJ&dq=kenpeitai+executed&pg=RA1-PA176}}</ref>

Japanese raped Malay comfort women but UMNO leader Najib Razak blocked all attempts by other UMNO members like Mustapha Yakub at asking Japan for compensation and apologies.<ref>{{cite news |last=Nanda |first=Akshita |title=Stirring look at comfort women in Singapore |date=January 23, 2017 |work=The Straits Times |url=https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/stirring-look-at-comfort-women-in-singapore}}</ref>

The threat of Japanese rape against Chitty girls led Chitty families to let Eurasians, Chinese, and full-blooded Indians to marry Chitty girls and stop practicing endogamy.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pillai |first=Patrick |title=Yearning to Belong |date=2016 |publisher=Flipside Digital Content Company Inc. |isbn=978-9814762007 |page=47 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Uh1qDwAAQBAJ&dq="Chitty+girls+being+hastily"&pg=PP66}}</ref>

Japanese soldiers gang raped Indian Tamil girls and women they forced to work on the Burma railway and made them dance naked.<ref>{{cite book |last=Russell |first=Edward Frederick Langley |title=The Knights of Bushido: A History of Japanese War Crimes during World War II |date=2016 |publisher=Frontline Books |isbn=978-1473887596 |page=93 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cRw_DwAAQBAJ&dq=%22young+Tamil+women+were+forced+to+dance%22&pg=PA93}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Russell |first=Edward Frederick Langley |title=The Knights of Bushido: A History of Japanese War Crimes During World War II |date=2016 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1510710375 |edition=reprint |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LiL_DQAAQBAJ&dq="young+Tamil+women+were+forced+to+dance"&pg=PT107}}</ref> 150,000 Tamils were killed on the railway by Japanese brutality.<ref>{{cite news |title=The real Kwai killed over 1.50 lakh Tamils |date=August 27, 2016 |work=The Hindu |location=Chennai |url=https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/The-real-Kwai-killed-over-1.50-lakh-Tamils/article14593113.ece}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=KOLAPPAN |first=B. |title=The real Kwai killed over 1.50 lakh Tamils |date=August 27, 2016 |work=The Hindu |location=Chennai |url=http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/the-real-kwai-killed-over-150-lakh-tamils/article9037199.ece}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Remembering Death Railway labourers |date=30 Jun 2023 |work=Tamil Murasu |url=https://www.tamilmurasu.com.sg/tabla/india/remembering-death-railway-labourers}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Notes on the Thai-Burma Railway Part VII: Tamil Workers on the Railway |journal=Journal of Kyoto Seika University |pages=2–22 |number=25 |url=http://www.kyoto-seika.ac.jp/researchlab/wp/wp-content/uploads/kiyo/pdf-data/no25/david.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222004455/http://www.kyoto-seika.ac.jp/researchlab/wp/wp-content/uploads/kiyo/pdf-data/no25/david.pdf |archive-date=22 December 2019}}</ref> Tamils who got sick from cholera were executed by the Japanese.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lomax |first=Eric |title=The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions) |date=2014 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-0393344073 |edition=reprint |page=158 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GnY-AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA158}}</ref> As Tamil women got raped by Japanese, the Japanese soldiers contracted venereal diseases like soft sore, syphilis, and gonorrhoea, and Thai women also spread those diseases to coolies on the railroad.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Thailand-Burma Railway, 1942-1946: Asian labour |date=2006 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=0415309549 |editor-last=Kratoska |editor-first=Paul H. |edition=illustrated |volume=4 |page=161 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jKOWt4jYW34C&pg=PA161}}</ref>

===Looting and destruction of heritage===
Several scholars have claimed that the Japanese government, along with Japanese military personnel, engaged in widespread ] during the period of 1895 to 1945.<ref>Kenneth B. Lee, 1997, ''Korea and East Asia: The Story of a Phoenix'', Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group</ref><ref>Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, 2003, ''Gold warriors: America's secret recovery of Yamashita's gold'', London: Verso Books ({{ISBN|1-85984-542-8}})</ref> The stolen property included private land, as well as many different kinds of valuable goods looted from banks, depositories, ], temples, churches, mosques, art galleries, commercial offices, libraries (including Buddhist monasteries), museums and other commercial premises, and private homes.<ref>{{cite news |last=Johnson |first=Chalmers |title=The Looting of Asia |date=20 November 2003 |pages=3–6 |work=London Review of Books |issn=0260-9592 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/chalmers-johnson/the-looting-of-asia |access-date=7 April 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190407185616/https://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/chalmers-johnson/the-looting-of-asia |archive-date=7 April 2019}}</ref>

In China, an eyewitness, journalist F. Tillman of '']'', sent an article to his newspaper where he described the ]'s entry into ] in December 1937: "The plunder carried out by the Japanese reached almost the entire city. Almost all buildings were entered by Japanese soldiers, often in the sight of their officers, and the men took whatever they wanted. Japanese soldiers often forced Chinese to carry the loot."<ref>{{cite web |title=Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History |website=sourcebooks.fordham.edu |url=https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/nanking.asp |access-date=8 May 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230508201620/https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/nanking.asp |archive-date=8 May 2023}}</ref>{{full citation needed|date=May 2023}}

In Korea, it is estimated that about 100,000 priceless artifacts and cultural goods were looted by Japanese colonial authorities and private collectors during the nearly ]. The Administration claims that there are 41,109 cultural objects which are located in Japan but remain unreported by the Japanese authorities. Unlike the ] by ] in Europe, the return of property to its rightful owners, or even the discussion of financial reparations in the post-war period, met with strong resistance from the ], particularly General ].<ref name="Time">{{cite magazine |title=A Legacy Lost |magazine=Time |last=Macintyre |first=Donald |date=4 February 2002 |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,197704,00.html |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720135513/https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,197704,00.html |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref>{{full citation needed|date=May 2023}}

According to several historians, MacArthur's disagreement was not based on issues of rights, ethics, or morals, but on ]. He spoke on the topic in a radio message to the ] in May 1948, the transcript of which was found by the magazine '']'' in the ]. In it, MacArthur states: "I am completely at odds with the minority view of replacing lost or destroyed cultural property as a result of military action and occupation". With the advent of the ], the general feared "embittering the Japanese people towards us and making Japan vulnerable to ideological pressures and a fertile ground for subversive action".<ref name="Time"/>

Kyoichi Arimitsu, one of the last living survivors of the Japanese ] missions which operated on the Korean peninsula, which started early in the twentieth century, agrees that the plunder in the 1930s was out of control, but that researchers and ], such as himself, had nothing to do with it. However, he recognizes that the excavated pieces which were deemed to be most historically significant were sent to the Japanese governor-general, who then decided what would be sent to Emperor ].<ref name="Time"/>

In 1965, when Japan and South Korea negotiated a treaty to reestablish diplomatic relations the issue of returning the cultural artifacts was raised. However, the then South Korean dictator, ], preferred to receive cash compensation that would allow him to build highways and ]; works of art and cultural goods were not a priority. As a result, at the time the Koreans had to settle for the return of only 1,326 items, including 852 rare books and 438 ceramic pieces. The Japanese claim that this put an end to any Korean claim regarding reparation for cultural goods (or of any other nature).<ref name="Time"/><ref name="Glosserman">{{cite web |last=Glosserman |first=Brad |title=Japan slams the door on stolen artwork |date=4 December 2002 |work=] |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2002/12/04/commentary/japan-slams-the-door-on-stolen-artwork/ |access-date=13 September 2020 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201212141735/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2002/12/04/commentary/japan-slams-the-door-on-stolen-artwork/ |archive-date=12 December 2020}}</ref> American journalist Brad Glosserman has stated that an increasing number of South Koreans are raising the issue of the ] of stolen cultural artifacts from Japan due to rising affluence among the general populace as well as increased national confidence.<ref name="Glosserman"/>

Hundreds of ] Muslim houses and mosques in Sanya, Hainan were destroyed by the Japanese in order to build an airport.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thurgood |first1=Graham |title=A Grammatical Sketch of Hainan Cham: History, Contact, and Phonology |last2=Thurgood |first2=Ela |last3=Li |first3=Fengxiang |date=2014 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |isbn=978-1614516040 |edition=reprint |volume=643 of Pacific Linguistics |page=20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xzDnBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA20 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231005004433/https://books.google.com/books?id=xzDnBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA20 |archive-date=5 October 2023}}</ref>

===Perfidy===

Throughout the Pacific War, Japanese soldiers often ] to lure approaching American forces before attacking them. An alleged example of this was the "]" during the early days of the ] in August 1942. After the patrol believed they saw a ] displayed on the west bank of ], ] Lieutenant Colonel ] assembled 25 men, primarily consisting of ] personnel, to search the area. Unknown to the patrol, the white flag was actually a ] with the '']'' disc insignia obscured. A ] was plied with alcohol and in his drunken state mistakenly revealed that there were a number of Japanese soldiers west of the ] who wanted to surrender.<ref name="EARNED">{{cite book |last=Miller |first=Thurman |title=Earned in Blood: My Journey from Old-Breed Marine to the Most Dangerous Job in America |date=21 May 2013 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-250-00499-4 |page= |url=https://archive.org/details/earnedinbloodmyj0000mill/page/80}}</ref> The Goettge Patrol landed by boat west of the ] perimeter, between ] and the Matanikau River, on a ] mission to contact a group of Japanese troops that American forces thought was willing to surrender. The Japanese soldiers were not in fact about to surrender and soon after the patrol landed the group of Japanese naval troops ambushed and almost completely wiped out the patrol. Goettge was among the dead. Only three Americans made it back to American lines in the Lunga Point perimeter alive.

News of the killing and supposed treachery by the Japanese outraged the American Marines:

{{Blockquote|This was the first mass killing of the Marines on Guadalcanal. We were shocked. Shocked&nbsp;... because headquarters had believed anything a Jap had to say&nbsp;... The loss of this patrol and the particularly cruel way in which they had met death, hardened our hearts toward the Japanese. The idea of taking prisoners was swept from our minds. It was too dangerous.<ref>{{cite book |last=Thomas Gallant Grady |title=On Valor's Side |publisher=] |year=1963 |page=297}}</ref>}}

Second Lieutenant D. A. Clark of the ] told a similar story while patrolling Guadalcanal:

{{Blockquote|I was on my first patrol here, and we were moving up a dry stream bed. We saw 3 Japs come down the river bed out of the jungle. The one in front was carrying a white flag. We thought they were surrendering. When they got up to us they dropped the white flag and then all 3 threw hand grenades. We killed 2 of these Japs, but 1 got away. Apparently they do not mind a sacrifice to get information.<ref name="EARNED"/>}}

], in his book, ''The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War'', wrote:

{{Blockquote|There were innumerable incidents such as a wounded Japanese soldier at Guadalcanal seizing a ] and burying it in the back of a surgeon who was about to save his life by an operation; and a survivor of the ], rescued by ''PT-163'', pulling a gun and killing a bluejacket in the act of giving a Japanese sailor a cup of coffee.<ref>{{cite book |last=Samuel Eliot Morison |title=The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War |date=March 1, 2007 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-59114-524-0 |page=273}}</ref>}}

These incidents, along with many other perfidious actions of the Japanese throughout the Pacific War, led to an American tendency to shoot dead or wounded Japanese soldiers and those attempting to surrender and not readily take them as prisoners of war. Two Marines of ] told cautionary tales. One confided:

{{Blockquote|They always told you take prisoners but we had some bad experiences on ] taking prisoners. You take them and then as soon as they get behind the lines they drop grenades and you lose a few more people. You get a little bit leery of taking prisoners when they are fighting to the death and so are you.}}

Another reported,

{{Blockquote|Very few of them came out on their own; when they did, why, usually one in the front he'd come out with his hands up and one behind him, he'd come out with a grenade.<ref>Ulrich-Straus-116> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230411065225/https://books.google.com/books?id=x1dQwuiEU3UC&dq=%22japanese+pows%22+american+hands&pg=PA206 |date=11 April 2023}} Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003 {{ISBN|978-0-295-98336-3}}, p. 116</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Galen Roger Perras |title=Stepping Stones to Nowhere: The Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and American Military Strategy, 1867–1945 |date=March 2003 |publisher=] |page=232}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Rose |first=Kenneth |title=Myth and the Greatest Generation: A Social History of Americans in World War II |date=10 October 2007 |publisher=] |page=264}}</ref>}}

===Attacks on hospital ships===

]s are painted white with large ] to show they are not combat ships but vessels carrying wounded people and medical staff. Japan had signed the ] that stated attacking a hospital ship is a war crime.<ref name="hague10">{{cite web |title=Convention for the adaptation to maritime war of the principles of the Geneva Convention |date=18 October 1907 |publisher=] |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague10.asp |access-date=2 August 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151102180248/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague10.asp |archive-date=2 November 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Convention for the adaptation to maritime warfare of the principles of the Geneva Convention |date=16 June 2013 |publisher=Ministry of Foreign Affairs |location=Netherlands |url=http://www.minbuza.nl/en/key-topics/treaties/search-the-treaty-database/1899/7/002339.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130616131847/http://www.minbuza.nl/en/key-topics/treaties/search-the-treaty-database/1899/7/002339.html |archive-date=16 June 2013}}</ref>
* On 23 April 1945, {{USS|Comfort|AH-6|6}} was struck by a ].{{sfn|DANFS: ''Comfort''}} The plane crashed through three decks, exploding in surgery, which was filled with medical personnel and patients.{{sfn|Condon-Rall|Cowdrey|1998|p=392}} Casualties were 28 killed (including six nurses) and 48 wounded, with considerable damage done to the ship.{{sfn|DANFS: ''Comfort''}}<ref>{{cite AV media |title=Video U.S. Turns To Japan After German Defeat (1945) |publisher=Universal Newsreels |year=1945 |url=https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.39062 |access-date=20 February 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |title=Video: Funeral Pyres of Nazidom, 1945/05/10 (1945) |publisher=Universal Newsreels |date=10 May 1945 |url=https://archive.org/details/1945-05-10_Funeral_Pyres_of_Nazidom |access-date=20 February 2012}}</ref>
* {{USS|Hope|AH-7}} was attacked and damaged during the ] and the ].<ref>{{DANFS|http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/h7/hope.htm}}{{dead link|date=May 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Condon-Rall |first1=Mary Ellen |title=The Technical Services—The Medical Department: Medical Service In The War Against Japan |last2=Cowdrey |first2=Albert E. |publisher=Center Of Military History, United States Army |year=1998 |series=United States Army in World War II |location=Washington, DC |lccn=97022644}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Clarence McKittrick |title=The Technical Services—The Medical Department: Hospitalization And Evacuation, Zone Of Interior |publisher=Center Of Military History, United States Army |year=1956 |series=United States Army in World War II |location=Washington, DC |lccn=55060005}}</ref>
* ] was attacked and damaged at ] on 2 April 1945.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230530202743/https://books.google.com/books?id=ICoDAAAAMBAJ&dq=true&pg=-PA35 |date=30 May 2023}}. ''Popular Science Monthly'', August 1927, p. 35.</ref>
* On 19 February 1942, the Australian ] was ] during the ]; twelve crew and hospital staff were killed and nineteen others were seriously wounded.<ref>{{cite web |title=Bombing of 2/1st Australian Hospital Ship Manunda in Darwin |website=battleforaustralia.asn.au |url=https://www.battleforaustralia.asn.au/Hospital_Ship.php |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230720135246/https://www.battleforaustralia.asn.au/Hospital_Ship.php |archive-date=20 July 2023}}</ref>
* On 14 May 1943, the Australian {{ship|AHS|Centaur}} was sunk by {{ship|Japanese submarine|I-177}} off ] with 268 lives lost.<ref name="ozatwar.Centaur">{{cite web |year=2010 |title=Sinking of the 2/3 hospital ship A.H.S. Centaur |publisher=ozatwar.com |url=http://www.ozatwar.com/ozatwar/centaur.htm |access-date=8 November 2011 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151129065702/http://www.ozatwar.com/ozatwar/centaur.htm |archive-date=29 November 2015}}</ref>
* The ] hospital ship {{SS|Op Ten Noort}} was bombed on 21 February 1942, in the ]. One surgeon and three nurses were killed, and eleven were badly wounded. After repairs, on 28 February 1942, she was commandeered by the {{ship|Japanese destroyer|Amatsukaze|1939|6}} near ]. The Japanese forced her to transport their ]s. On 20 December 1942, she became the ''Tenno Maru'', a Japanese hospital ship, and the Dutch crew became POWs. As the war came to an end, the ship was first modified and later sunk to cover up the crime.<ref>{{cite web |title=KPN SS Op Ten Noort an 6,000 ton 1927 Dutch Passenger-Cargo liner based in Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) |website=ssmaritime.com |url=http://ssmaritime.com/SS-Op-Ten-Noort.htm |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230607055933/http://ssmaritime.com/SS-Op-Ten-Noort.htm |archive-date=7 June 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Op ten Noort, hospitalship |website=netherlandsnavy.nl |url=https://www.netherlandsnavy.nl/Noort.htm |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405012946/https://www.netherlandsnavy.nl/Noort.htm |archive-date=5 April 2023}}</ref>

===War crimes in Vietnam===

The ] had begun fighting the ] in 1944, then began attacking the Japanese in early 1945 after Japan replaced the French government on 9 March 1945.<ref>{{cite book |last=Truong |first=Chinh |title=Translations on North Vietnam, Volume 17 |date=1971 |publisher=U.S. Joint Publications Research Service. |others=Contributor United States. Joint Publications Research Service |series=JPRS (Series) |pages=14–16 |chapter=Revolution or Coup d'Etat, JPRS 53169 19 May 1971 Translations on North Vietnam No. 940 Documents on the August Revolution |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sTrcAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22The+Japanese+were+disarmed+in+many+places%22&pg=RA2-PA13 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019133949/https://books.google.com/books?id=sTrcAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22The+Japanese+were+disarmed+in+many+places%22&pg=RA2-PA13#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Japanese%20were%20disarmed%20in%20many%20places%22&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref><ref>Aruong Chinh (chairman of the National Assembly). "Revolution or Coup d'Etat". Hanoi, Nhan Dan, Vietnamese, 16 August 1970, pp. 1, 3]. ''Co Giai Phong'' , No. 16, 12 September 1945.</ref>{{full citation needed|reason=Unclear what this source is. It's important for ] that a reader is able to find it in principle|date=May 2023}} After the Viet Minh rejected Japanese demands to cease fighting and support Japan, the Japanese implemented the ] policy (San Kuang) against the Vietnamese, pillaging, burning, killing, torturing, and raping Vietnamese women.

Japanese officers ordered their soldiers to behead and burn Vietnamese. Some claimed that Taiwanese and Manchurian soldiers in the Japanese army were participating in atrocities against the Vietnamese.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}

The Japanese on occasion attacked Vietnamese while masquerading as Viet Minh. They also tried to play the Vietnamese against the French by spreading false rumours that the French were massacring Vietnamese at the time to distract the Vietnamese from Japanese atrocities. Similarly, they attempted to play the Laotians against the Vietnamese by inciting Lao people to kill Vietnamese, as Lao murdered seven Vietnamese officials in Luang Prabang and Lao youths were recruited to an anti-Vietnam organization by the Japanese when they took over Luang Prabang.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}

The Japanese also started openly looting the Vietnamese. In addition to taking French-owned properties Japanese soldiers stole watches, pencils, bicycles, money, and clothing.

Vietnam was in the grip of a famine in 1945 caused in part by Japanese requisition of food without payment; the Japanese beheaded Vietnamese who stole bread and corn while they were starving.<ref>{{cite book |last=Truong |first=Chinh |title=Translations on North Vietnam |volume=17 |date=19 May 1971 |publisher=U.S. Joint Publications Research Service. |others=Contributor United States. Joint Publications Research Service |series=JPRS (Series) |pages=8–13 |chapter=Policy of the Japanese Pirates Towards Our people, JPRS 53169 19 May 1971 Translations on North Vietnam No. 940 Documents on the August Revolution |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sTrcAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Wherever+they+went%2C+the+Japanese+forces+burned+down+homes%2C+murdered+law-abiding+citizens%2C+raped+women%2C+and+stole+possessions.%22&pg=RA2-PA9 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019133953/https://books.google.com/books?id=sTrcAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Wherever+they+went%2C+the+Japanese+forces+burned+down+homes%2C+murdered+law-abiding+citizens%2C+raped+women%2C+and+stole+possessions.%22&pg=RA2-PA9#v=onepage&q=%22Wherever%20they%20went%2C%20the%20Japanese%20forces%20burned%20down%20homes%2C%20murdered%20law-abiding%20citizens%2C%20raped%20women%2C%20and%20stole%20possessions.%22&f=false |archive-date=19 October 2023}}</ref><ref>Truong Chinh (chairman of the National Assembly). "Policy of the Japanese Pirates Towards Our people". Hanoi, Nhan Dan, Vietnamese, 17 August 1970, pp. 1, 3</ref>{{full citation needed|reason=Unclear what this source is. It's important for ] that a reader is able to find it in principle|date=May 2023}} The Vietnamese professor Văn Tạo and Japanese professor Furuta Moto both conducted a study in the field on the Japanese induced famine of 1945 admitting that Japan killed two million Vietnamese by starvation.

On 25 March 2000, the Vietnamese journalist Trần Khuê wrote an article {{lang|vi|italic=no|"Dân chủ: Vấn đề của dân tộc và thời đại"}}({{translation|Democracy: A problem of the nation and the times}}) in which he harshly criticized ethnographers and historians in Ho Chi Minh City's Institute of Social Sciences such as Dr. Đinh Văn Liên and Professor Mạc Đường for trying to whitewash Japan's atrocities against the Vietnamese by, among other things, changing the death toll of two million Vietnamese dead at the hands of the Japanese famine to one million, calling the Japanese invasion as a presence and calling Japanese fascists as simply Japanese at the Vietnam-Japan international conference.<ref>{{cite web |title=Dân chủ: Vấn đề của dân tộc và thời đại |date=25 March 2000 |website=Hưng Việt: TRANG CHÁNH - Trang 1 |publisher=Đối Thoại Năm 2000 |url=https://hung-viet.org/a5222/doi-thoai-nam-2000 |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200928222053/https://hung-viet.org/a5222/doi-thoai-nam-2000 |archive-date=28 September 2020}}</ref>

==War crimes trials==

] (2nd right) on trial in 1945 by a U.S. ] for the ] and other violations in Singapore. He was sentenced to death. The case set a precedent (the "]") on the responsibility of commanders for war crimes.]]

Soon after the war, the Allied powers indicted 25 persons as ], and 5,700 persons were indicted as Class-B or Class-C war criminals by Allied criminal courts. Of these, 984 were initially condemned to death, 920 were actually executed, 475 received life sentences, 2,944 received prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were not sentenced or not brought to trial. These indicted war criminals included 178 ethnic Taiwanese and 148 ethnic Korean people.<ref>Dower, John (2000). ''Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II'', p. 447</ref> Class A criminals were all tried by the ], also known as "the Tokyo Trials". Other courts were held in numerous places across Asia and the Pacific.

===Tokyo Trials===
{{Main|International Military Tribunal for the Far East}}

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was formed to try accused people in Japan itself.

High-ranking officers who were tried included ] and ]. Three former (unelected) ]: ], ], and ] were convicted of Class-A war crimes. Many military leaders were also convicted. Two people convicted as Class-A war criminals later served as ministers in post-war Japanese governments.
* ] served as ] both during the war and in the post-war ].
* ] was ] during the war and later served as ] in the government of ]. These two had no direct connection to alleged war crimes committed by Japanese forces, and foreign governments never raised the issue when they were appointed.

] and all members of the ] implicated in the war such as ], ], ] and ] were exonerated from criminal prosecutions by ], with the help of ] who allowed the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperor would be spared from indictment.<ref>Kumao Toyoda, ''Senso saiban yoroku'', 1986, p.170–172, H. Bix, ''Hirohito and the making of modern Japan'', 2000, p.583, 584</ref>

Some historians criticize this decision. According to John Dower, "with the full support of ], the prosecution functioned, in effect, as a defense team for the emperor"<ref>Dower,''Embracing defeat'', 1999, p.326</ref> and even Japanese activists who endorse the ideals of the Nuremberg and Tokyo charters, and who have labored to document and publicize the atrocities of the ] "cannot defend the American decision to exonerate the emperor of war responsibility and then, in the chill of the ], release and soon afterwards openly embrace accused right-winged war criminals like the later prime minister ]."<ref>Dower, ''Hirohito'', p.562.</ref> For Herbert Bix, "MacArthur's truly extraordinary measures to save Hirohito from trial as a war criminal had a lasting and profoundly distorting impact on Japanese understanding of the lost war."<ref>Bix, ''Hirohito'', p.585, 583</ref>

MacArthur's reasoning was that if the emperor were executed or sentenced to life imprisonment, there would be a violent backlash and revolution from the Japanese from all social classes, which would interfere with his primary goal to change Japan from a militarist, semi-feudal society to a pro-Western modern democracy. In a cable sent to General ] in February 1946, MacArthur said executing or imprisoning the emperor would require the use of one million occupation soldiers to keep the peace.<ref>{{cite web |last=Sebestyen |first=Victor |title=How the Emperor Became Human (and MacArthur Became Divine) |date=11 November 2015 |website=Longreads |language=en |url=https://longreads.com/2015/11/11/how-the-emperor-became-human-and-macarthur-became-divine/ |access-date=21 April 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210417041935/https://longreads.com/2015/11/11/how-the-emperor-became-human-and-macarthur-became-divine/ |archive-date=17 April 2021}}</ref>


===Other trials=== ===Other trials===
{{Main|Khabarovsk War Crime Trials|Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal|Yokohama War Crimes Trials}}
Besides the Tokyo Trials, other prosecutions of Japanese personnel for war crimes were also held in many other cities throughout Asia and the Pacific, during ]&ndash;]. Some 5,600 Japanese personnel were prosecuted in more than 2,200 trials. The ]s presiding came from the ], China, the ], ], the ], ], the ], ], ] and the ]. More than 4,400 Japanese personnel were convicted and about 1,000 were sentenced to death. The largest single trial was that of 93 Japanese personnel charged with the ] of more than 300 Allied POWs, in the ] (1942).


] unit at Sandakan (]), is interrogated on 26 October 1945, by ] F.G. Birchall of the Royal Australian Air Force, and Sergeant Mamo (a ] interpreter). Naoji confessed to shooting two Australian POWs and five ethnic Chinese civilians.]]
===Official apologies===
{{main|list of war apology statements issued by Japan}}


] on the ], March 1946.]]
The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in regard to war crimes are separate. Therefore, while maintaining that Japan violated no international law or treaties, Japanese governments have officially recognised the suffering which the Japanese military caused, and numerous apologies have been issued by the Japanese government. For example, Prime Minister ], in August 1995, stated that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology".


Between 1945 and 1956, the Chinese, Americans, British, Australians, Dutch, French, and Filipinos held trials at forty-nine locations.<ref>{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |pages=6–7 |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf}}</ref> Australian prosecutors collaborated with British and American courts to hold Japanese individuals accountable, conducting trials for numerous individuals in Amboina, Dutch East Indies, and Rabaul, New Britain. China prosecuted at least 800 individuals, including some linked to the Nanjing massacre, while France and the Netherlands tried several hundred others. The French prosecuted a Japanese civilian in Java for forcing many women into military prostitution, and the Dutch sentenced Japanese individuals to death for murdering local residents and Dutch prisoners. In late 1949, the Soviet Union also put twelve Japanese on trial in Khabarovsk for biological warfare offenses—six were from Unit 731, two from ], and four from other groups. Later, several hundred Japanese people suspected of war crimes were handed over to the People's Republic of China, where they faced trials in the mid-1950s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |pages=6–7}}</ref>
However, the official apologies are widely viewed as inadequate by many of the survivors of such crimes and/or the families of dead victims. The subject of official apologies is controversial as many people aggrieved by alleged Japanese war crimes maintain that no apology has been issued for particular acts and/or that the Japanese government has merely expressed "regret" or "remorse".. However, according to the ], an apology is "a formal, public statement of regret", and moreover, the Japanese word for "apology" itself has also been used on several occasions.


Approximately 4,300 of the 5,379 Japanese, 173 Taiwanese, and 148 Koreans tried as Class B and C war criminals were convicted of conventional crimes, such as rape, murder, violations of the rules of war, and mistreatment of prisoners of war. Hundreds were given life sentences, while nearly 1,000 were given death sentences.<ref>{{cite book |last=Drea |first=Edward |title=Researching Japanese War Crimes |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group |year=2006 |pages=6–7 |url=https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf}}</ref>
There is a counter-claim that the media in some countries plays down or never mentions Japanese government statements on war crimes. It is also alleged that in countries where media outlets are under formal or ] state control, many people &mdash; especially young people &mdash; are unaware of Japanese government statements which include the word "apology". It is further alleged that this reflects ]. Some people in Japan, especially the ], assert that what is being demanded is that the Japanese Prime Minister and/or the Emperor perform '']'', in which an individual kneels and bows his head to the ground &mdash; the highest form of apology in ]n societies. Such an act would be widely viewed as humiliating to Japan as a whole. However, a precedent exists in an act by ] ], who ], in ]. However, no German Chancellor has ever performed such an act in regard to non-Jewish civilians, or Allied military personnel who were victims of Nazi war crimes.


The largest single trial was that of 93 Japanese personnel charged with the ] of more than 300 Allied POWs in the ] (1942). The most prominent ethnic Korean convicted was Lieutenant General ], who orchestrated the organisation of prisoner of war camps in Southeast Asia. In 2006, the South Korean government "]ed" 83 of the 148 convicted Korean war criminals.<ref name="Breen"/> One hundred-sixty Taiwanese who had served in the forces of the Empire of Japan were convicted of war crimes; 11 were executed.<ref name="Harmsen, Peter 2012, p. 4"/>
===Compensation===


While ] and their crimes made public, the U.S. kept details of Japanese biological warfare experiments hidden and granted immunity to those responsible. In contrast to the immunity given to those involved with Unit 731, the U.S. conducted a tribunal in ] in 1948, where nine Japanese physician professors and medical students were charged with vivisecting captured American pilots. Two professors received death sentences, and the others were sentenced to 15–20 years in prison.<ref name="experimentation220">{{cite journal |year=2014 |last1=Brody |first1=H. |last2=Leonard |first2=S. E. |last3=Nie |first3=J. B. |last4=Weindling |first4=P. |title=United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency |journal=] |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=220–230 |pmid=24534743 |doi=10.1017/S0963180113000753 |pmc=4487829}}</ref>
There is a widespread perception that the Japanese government has not accepted the legal responsibility for compensation and, as a direct consequence of this denial, it has failed to compensate the individual victims of Japanese atrocities. In particular, a number of prominent ] and ] organisations insist that Japan still has a moral and/or legal responsibility to compensate individual victims, especially the ]s conscripted by the Japanese military in occupied countries and known as ].


==Post-war events and reactions==
However, the assertion that Japan has not yet accepted the legal responsibility for its conduct during the war or provided compensation is not true, even if the amount given is still the subject of criticism by those who argue that more assistance needs to be provided.


===The parole-for-war-criminals movement===
The Japanese government officially accepted the requirement for monetary compensation to victims of war crimes, as specified by the ]. The details of this compensation have been left to bilateral treaties with individual countries, except ], because Japan recognises ] as the sole legitimate government of the ]. In the case of POWs from the ], compensation was paid to the victims through the ]. The total amount Japan paid was ]4,500,000. However, in a number of Asian countries, claims for compensation were either: abandoned for political reasons, or; paid by Japan, under the specific understanding that it would be used for individual compensation, but was not paid out to the victims by the governments concerned. Therefore a large number of individual victims in Asia received no compensation.


The British authorities lacked the resources and will to fully commit themselves to pursuing Japanese war criminals.<ref name="standard.co.uk"/>
Therefore, the Japanese government's position is that the proper avenues for further claims are the governments of the respective claimants. As a result, every individual compensation claim brought to Japanese court has failed. Such was the case in regard to a British POW who was unsuccessful in an attempt to sue the Japanese government for additional money for compensation. As a result, the UK Government later paid additional compensation to all British POWs. There were complaints in Japan that the international media simply stated that the former POW was demanding compensation and failed to clarify that he was seeking ''further'' compensation, in addition to that paid previously by the Japanese government.


On 4 September 1952, President ] issued Executive Order 10393, establishing a Clemency and Parole Board for War Criminals to advise the President with respect to recommendations by the Government of Japan for clemency, reduction of sentence, or parole, with respect to sentences imposed on Japanese war criminals by military tribunals.<ref>{{cite web |title=Harry S. Truman – Executive Order 10393 – Establishment of the Clemency and Parole Board for War Criminals |url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=78495 |access-date=13 April 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090529013643/http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=78495 |archive-date=29 May 2009}}</ref>
A small number of claims have also been brought in US courts, though these have also been rejected.


On 26 May 1954, Secretary of State ] rejected a proposed amnesty for the imprisoned war criminals but instead agreed to "change the ground rules" by reducing the period required for eligibility for parole from 15 years to 10.<ref>{{cite book |last=Maguire |first=Peter H. |title=Law and War |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-231-12051-7 |page= |url=https://archive.org/details/lawwaramerican00magu |url-access=registration |quote=parole war criminals.}}</ref>
During the treaty negotiation with South Korea, the Japanese government proposed that it pay monetary compensation to individual Korean victims, in line with the payments to western POWs. The Korean government instead insisted that Japan pay money collectively to the Korean government, and that is what occurred. The South Korean government then used the funds for economic development. The content of the negotiations was not released by the Korean government until 2004, although it was public knowledge in Japan.


===Official apologies===
There are those that insist that because the governments of ] and ] abandoned their claims for monetary compensation, then the moral and/or legal responsibility for compensation belongs with these governments. Such critics also point out that even though these governments abandoned their claims, they signed treaties that recognised the transfer of Japanese colonial assets to the respective governments. Therefore, to claim that these governments received no compensation from Japan is incorrect, and they could have compensated individual victims from the proceeds of such transfers.
{{Further|List of war apology statements issued by Japan}}
{{Synthesis|section|date=October 2008}}


Several Japanese government officials and former Japanese emperors have acknowledged Japanese war atrocities committed in China.<ref>{{cite web |title=Japan's Apologies for World War II |date=13 August 2015 |via=NYTimes.com |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/13/world/asia/japan-ww2-shinzo-abe.html,%20https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/13/world/asia/japan-ww2-shinzo-abe.html}}</ref>
The Japanese government, while admitting no legal responsibility for the so-called "comfort women", set up the ] in ], which gives money to people who claim to have been forced into prostitution during the war. Though the organisation was established by the government, legally, it has been created such that it is an independent charity. The activities of the fund have been controversial in Japan, as well as with international organisations supporting the women concerned.
The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in regard to war crimes are separate. Therefore, while maintaining that Japan violated no international law or treaties, Japanese governments have officially recognised the suffering which the Japanese military caused, and numerous apologies have been issued by the Japanese government. For example, Prime Minister ], in August 1995, ] that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology". Also, on 29 September 1972, Japanese Prime Minister ] stated: "he Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself."<ref>Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (quoted on the Taiwan Documents Project), ''Joint Communiqué of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China'', {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160702141131/http://www.taiwandocuments.org/japan01.htm|date=2 July 2016}}</ref>
Some argue that such a fund is part of an ongoing refusal by the Japanese government to face up to its responsibilities, while others say that the Japanese government has long since finalised its responsibility to individual victims and is merely correcting the failures of the victims' own governments.


However, apologizes made by Japanese officials have been criticized as insincere.<ref name="tandfonline.com">{{cite journal |title=Themes of the "comfort women" and "we" in K. Min's ''Herstory'' |date=2022 |last1=Lee |first1=Hyunsuk |journal=Asian Journal of Women's Studies |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=131–142 |doi=10.1080/12259276.2021.2025324 |doi-access=free}}</ref> For example, in the ], while Japanese officials acknowledge the japanese military's involvement in the comfort women system, they denied the coercion and forced transportation of the woman and refused to offer compensation to the victims.<ref name="tandfonline.com"/>
====Intermediate compensation====

The term "intermediate compensation" (or intermediary compensation) was applied to the removal and reallocation of Japanese industrial (particularly military-industrial) assets to Allied countries. It was conducted under the supervision of ]. This reallocation was referred to as "intermediate" because it did not amount to a final settlement by means of bilateral treaties, which settled all existing issues of compensation. By 1950, the assets reallocated amounted to 43,918 items of machinery, valued at ]165,158,839 (in 1950 prices). The proportions in which the assets were distributed were: China, 54.1%; the Netherlands, 11.5%; the Philippines 19% , and; the United Kingdom, 15.4%.
The official apologies are widely viewed as inadequate or only a symbolic exchange by many of the survivors of such crimes or the families of dead victims. In October 2006, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed an apology for the damage caused by its colonial rule and aggression, more than 80 Japanese lawmakers from the ruling ] paid visits to the ]. Many people aggrieved by Japanese war crimes also maintain that no apology has been issued for particular acts or that the Japanese government has merely expressed "regret" or "remorse".<ref>{{cite web |title=PBS. Online NewsHour: I'm Sorry – December 1, 1998 |publisher=] |url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec98/china_12-1.html |access-date=1 September 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080222005155/http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec98/china_12-1.html |archive-date=22 February 2008}}</ref> On 2 March 2007, the issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister ], in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion." Before he spoke, a group of LDP lawmakers also sought to revise the Kono Statement.<ref name="Tabuchi"/><ref name="Associated Press"/> This provoked negative reaction from Asian and Western countries.

] initiated an official boycott of the Yasukuni Shrine after learning that Class-A war criminals had been covertly enshrined there after the war. This boycott remained in place from 1978 until his death and has been upheld by his successors, ] and ].<ref>https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/why-yasukuni-shrine-is-controversial-symbol-japans-war-legacy-2021-08-13/ {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}</ref>

On 31 October 2008, the ] of Japan's ] ] was dismissed with a 60 million yen allowance<ref name="Tamogami">{{cite web |title=Tamogami ups Nationalist rhetoric |date=12 November 2008 |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081112a1.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216083653/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081112a1.html |archive-date=16 December 2008}}</ref> due to an essay he published, arguing that Japan was not an aggressor during ], that the war brought prosperity to China, Taiwan, and Korea, that the ]'s conduct was not violent and that the ] is viewed in a positive way by many Asian countries and criticizing the ] which followed the war.<ref>{{cite web |title=Text of original essay |url=http://www.apa.co.jp/book_report/images/2008jyusyou_saiyuusyu_english.pdf |access-date=21 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130513223146/http://www.apa.co.jp/book_report/images/2008jyusyou_saiyuusyu_english.pdf |archive-date=13 May 2013}}</ref> On 11 November, Tamogami added before the Diet that the personal apology made in 1995 by former prime minister ] was "a tool to suppress free speech".<ref name="Tamogami"/>

Some in Japan have asserted that what is being demanded is that the ] or the ] perform '']'', in which an individual kneels and bows his head to the ground—a high form of apology in East Asian societies that Japan appears unwilling to do.<ref>Freeman, Laurie A., "Japan's Press Clubs as Information Cartels," ''Japan Policy Research Institute'', (April 1996), {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170317055305/http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp18.html|date=17 March 2017}}. Discusses impending visit in 1990 to Japan by Korean president Roh Tae Woo in which Japanese cabinet secretary Ozawa Ichiro reportedly said, "it is because we have reflected on the past that we cooperate with Korea economically. Is it really necessary to grovel on our hands and knees and prostrate ourselves any more than we already have?". This alleged remark is called the ''dogeza hatsugen'' (prostration comment).</ref> Some point to an act by ] ], who ] at a monument to the Jewish victims of the ], in 1970, as an example of a powerful and effective act of apology and reconciliation similar to dogeza.<ref>Facing History and Ourselves, ''Willy Brandt's Silent Apology'', {{cite web |title=Archived copy |url=http://www.facinghistory.org/Campus/Memorials.nsf/0/DC396F572BD4D99F85256FA80055E9B1 |access-date=30 July 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060722112121/http://www.facinghistory.org/Campus/Memorials.nsf/0/DC396F572BD4D99F85256FA80055E9B1 |archive-date=22 July 2006}}</ref>

On 13 September 2010, Japanese Foreign Minister ] met in Tokyo with six former American POWs of the Japanese and apologized for their treatment during World War II. Okada said: "You have all been through hardships during World War II, being taken prisoner by the Japanese military, and suffered extremely inhumane treatment. On behalf of the Japanese government and as the foreign minister, I would like to offer you my heartfelt apology."<ref>Ito, Masami, " {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100916050041/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100914a3.html |date=16 September 2010}}", '']'', 14 September 2010, p. 2.</ref>

On 29 November 2011, Japanese Foreign Minister ] apologized to former Australian POWs on behalf of the Japanese government for pain and suffering inflicted on them during the war.<ref>Martin, Alex, " {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111080834/http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111217f1.html |date=11 January 2012}}", '']'', 17 December 2011, p. 3.</ref>

===Compensation===
The Japanese government, while admitting no legal responsibility for ], set up the ] in 1995, which gives money to people who were forced into prostitution during the war. Though the organisation was established by the government, legally, it has been created such that it is an independent charity. The activities of the fund have been controversial in Japan, as well as with international organisations supporting the women concerned.{{Citation needed|date=June 2011}}

Some argue that such a fund is part of an ongoing refusal by the Japanese government to face up to its responsibilities, while others say that the Japanese government has long since finalised its responsibility to individual victims and is merely correcting the failures of the victims' own governments. California ] ], speaking before U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of the women, said that "without a sincere and unequivocal apology from the government of Japan, the majority of surviving Comfort Women refused to accept these funds. In fact, as you will hear today, many Comfort Women returned the Prime Minister's letter of apology accompanying the monetary compensation, saying they felt the apology was artificial and disingenuous."<ref>{{cite web |last=Honda |first=Mike |title=Honda Testifies in Support of Comfort Women |date=15 February 2007 |publisher=U.S. House of Representative |url=http://honda.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=205 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130419123818/http://www.honda.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=205 |archive-date=19 April 2013}}</ref>


====Compensation under the San Francisco Treaty==== ====Compensation under the San Francisco Treaty====
{{main|Treaty of San Francisco}} {{Main|Treaty of San Francisco}}
=====Compensation from Japanese overseas assets=====
Japanese overseas assets refers to all assets owned by the Japanese government, firms, organisation and private citizens, in colonised or occupied countries. In accordance with Clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty, Allied forces confiscated all Japanese overseas assets, except those in China, which were dealt with under Clause 21. It is considered that Korea was also entitled to the rights provided by Clause 21.


=====Compensation from Japanese overseas assets=====
<blockquote>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" {| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right; float: right; margin: 1em;"
|-
! colspan="10"| Japanese overseas assets in 1945 ! colspan="10"| Japanese overseas assets in 1945
|- |-
! Country/region!! Value (1945, ]15=US$1) ! Country/region!! Value (1945, ]15=US$1) !! {{CURRENTYEAR}} US dollars{{inflation/fn|US}}
|- |-
| North East China || 146,532,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|9768800000|1945}}}}
| Korea || 70,256,000,000
|- |-
| Korea || 70,256,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|4683733333.33|1945}}}}
| Taiwan || 42,542,000,000
|- |-
| North East China || 146,532,000,000 | North China || 55,437,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|3695800000|1945}}}}
|- |-
| Taiwan || 42,542,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|2836133333.33|1945}}}}
| North China || 55,437,000,000
|- |-
| Central South China || 36,718,000,000 | Central South China || 36,718,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|2447866666.67|1945}}}}
|- |-
| Others || 28,014,000,000 | Others || 28,014,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|1867600000|1945}}}}
|-
| '''Total''' || '''¥379,499,000,000'''
|- |-
| '''Total''' || '''¥379,499,000,000''' || '''${{format price|{{Inflation|US|25299933333.33|1945}}}}'''
|} |}


"Japanese overseas assets" refers to all assets which were owned by the Japanese government, firms, organizations, and private citizens, in colonized or occupied countries. In accordance with Clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty, Allied forces confiscated all Japanese overseas assets, except those in China, which were dealt with under Clause 21.
</blockquote>


=====Compensation to Allied POWs===== =====Compensation to Allied POWs=====
According to historian Linda Goetz Holmes, many funds used by the government of Japan were not Japanese funds but relief funds contributed by the governments of the US, the UK, and the Netherlands and sequestered in the ] during the final year of the war.<ref>{{cite web |title=Compensation to Allied POWs |date=4 June 2012 |website=archive.ph |url=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/rc20090222a4.html |access-date=29 January 2020 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120604102422/http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/rc20090222a4.html |archive-date=4 June 2012}}</ref>
Clause 16 of the San Francisco Treaty stated that Japan would transfer its assets and those of its citizens in countries which were at war with any of the Allied Powers or which were neutral, or equivalents, to the Red Cross, which would sell them and distribute the funds to former prisoners of war and their families. Accordingly, the Japanese government and private citizens paid out £4,500,000 to the Red Cross.


=====Allied territories occupied by Japan===== =====Allied territories occupied by Japan=====
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right; float: right; margin: 1em;"
Clause 14 of the treaty stated that Japan would enter into negotiations with Allied powers whose territories were occupied by Japan and suffered damage by Japanese forces, with a view to Japan compensating those countries for the damage.

Accordingly, the Philippines and South Vietnam received compensation in 1956 and 1959 respectively. Burma and Indonesia were not original signatories, but they later signed bilateral treaties in accordance with clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty.

<blockquote>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"
! colspan="10"| Japanese compensation to countries occupied during 1941-45
|- |-
! colspan="10"| Japanese compensation to countries occupied during 1941–45
! Country !! Amount in ] !! Amount in ] !! Date of treaty
|- |-
! Country !! Amount in Yen !! Amount in US$ !! {{CURRENTYEAR}} US dollars{{inflation/fn|US}} !! Date of treaty
| Burma || 72,000,000,000 || 200,000,000 || November 5, 1955
|- |-
| Philippines || 198,000,000,000 || 550,000,000 || May 9, 1956 | Burma || 72,000,000,000 || 200,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|200000000|1955}}}} || 5 November 1955
|- |-
| Indonesia || 80,388,000,000 || 223,080,000 || January 20, 1958 | Philippines || 198,000,000,000 || 550,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|550000000|1956}}}} || 9 May 1956
|- |-
| Vietnam || 14,400,000,000 || 38,000,000 || May 13, 1959 | Indonesia || 80,388,000,000 || 223,080,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|223080000|1958}}}} || 20 January 1958
|- |-
| South Vietnam || 14,400,000,000 || 38,000,000 || ${{format price|{{Inflation|US|38000000|1959}}}} || 13 May 1959
| '''Total''' || '''¥364,348,800,000''' || US$1,012,080,000
|- |-
| '''Total''' || '''¥364,348,800,000''' || US$1,012,080,000 || ||
|} |}


Clause 14 of the treaty stated that Japan would enter into negotiations with the Allied nations whose territories were occupied and suffered damage by Japanese forces, with a view to Japan compensating those countries for the damage.
</blockquote>


===Historical negationism and denialism in Japan===
The last payment was made to the Philippines on ], ].
In numerous historical debates within the region, Japan has been criticized for its failure to adequately address its imperial past.<ref name="jstor.org">{{cite journal |title=The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian Perspective |journal=The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |volume=617 |pages=107–122 |jstor=25098016 |last1=Schneider |first1=Claudia |date=2008 |issue=1 |doi=10.1177/0002716208314359 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25098016}}</ref> Key issues include the visits of Japanese prime ministers to the contentious Yasukuni Shrine, ongoing denials of state involvement in the system of forced wartime prostitution, efforts to justify the Asia-Pacific War, legal rulings rejecting state compensation for forced labor, and the positive assessments of Japan's colonial period.<ref name="jstor.org"/> These issues have periodically strained Japan's relations with its crucial neighbors, particularly the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea.<ref name="jstor.org"/>


] is an influential ultra-right-wing lobby group that wields considerable power in shaping Japanese politics. As of 2015, its membership boasts prominent figures such as former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, approximately 80% of the cabinet, and nearly half of the country's parliamentarians.<ref name="abc.net.au">{{cite news |title=Ultra-nationalistic group trying to restore the might of the Japanese Empire |newspaper=ABC News |date=2 December 2015 |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/nippon-kaigi-and-the-rise-of-nationalism-in-japan/6994560}}</ref> This organization is infamous for its ] and denial of certain war crimes<ref name="abc.net.au"/> The organization denies the Nanjing Massacre, labelling it as exaggerated or fabricated.<ref>{{cite news |title=Opinion &#124; Tea Party Politics in Japan |work=The New York Times |date=12 September 2014 |last1=Kato |first1=Norihiro |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/opinion/tea-party-politics-in-japan.html}}</ref>
===Debate in Japan===
Historical negationism concerning the comfort women issue has been predominantly led by the Nippon Kaigi since the mid-1990s, with significant efforts notably observed during both the initial and second Abe administration.<ref name="divinity.uchicago.edu">{{cite web |title=Japanese Religions and the Issue of "Comfort Women" - the University of Chicago Divinity School |url=https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/japanese-religions-and-issue-comfort-women}}</ref>
There is a widespread perception, outside Japan, that there is a reluctance inside Japan to discuss such events and/or admit that they were war crimes. However, the controversial events of the Japanese imperial era are openly debated in the media, with the various political parties and ideological groups taking quite different positions. What differentiates Japan from Germany and Austria is that in Japan, there is no restriction to the freedom of speech in regard to this matter, while in Germany, Austria and some other European countries, ] is a criminal offence.


Following a Cabinet meeting during Shinzo Abe's initial tenure as prime minister in 2007, the administration said that there was no documented evidence supporting the coerced recruitment of comfort women. This stance was the official position of the administration and is reinforced through collaboration with Japanese right-wing media outlets.<ref name="divinity.uchicago.edu"/>
Until the ], such debates were considered a fringe topic in the media. In the Japanese media, the opinions of the political centre and left tends to dominate the ]s of newspapers, while the right tend to dominate magazines. Debates regarding war crimes were confined largely to the editorials of ] magazines where calls for the overthrow of "]" and revived veneration of the Emperor coexisted with pornography. In 1972, to commemorate the normalisation of relationship with China, ''],'' a major ] newspaper, ran a series on Japanese war crimes in China including the ]. This opened the floodgates to debates which have continued ever since. The ] are generally considered to be the period in which such issues become truly mainstream, and incidents such as the Nanking Massacre, ], comfort women, the accuracy of school history textbooks, and the validity of the Tokyo Trials were debated, even on television.


====Textbook controversy====
As the consensus of Japanese jurists is that Japanese forces did not technically commit violations of international law, many right wing elements in Japan have taken this to mean that war crimes trials were examples of ]. They see those convicted of war crimes as {{Nihongo|"Martyrs of Shōwa"|昭和殉難者|Shōwa Junnansha}}, Shōwa being the name given to the rule of Hirohito. This interpretation is vigorously contested by Japanese peace groups and the political left. In the past, these groups have tended to argue that the trials hold some validity, either under the Geneva Convention (even though Japan hadn't signed it), or under an undefined concept of international law or consensus. Alternatively, they have argued that, although the trials may not have been technically ''valid'', they were still ''just'', somewhat in line with popular opinion in the West and in the rest of Asia. However, the peace groups and the left also generally consider the bombing of Japanese civilians by the Allies, particularly the ], to be unjust and/or a violation of the international law. The left is also accused of being soft on Soviet atrocities.


The existing regulations regarding textbooks grant the government absolute authority to determine which textbooks should be adopted by local schools.<ref name="thediplomat.com">{{cite web |title=Why Japan's Textbook Controversy is Getting Worse |url=https://thediplomat.com/2015/04/why-japans-textbook-controversy-is-getting-worse/}}</ref> School boards, teacher unions, and local citizens, traditionally more left-leaning groups that have opposed government-approved books, have experienced a significant erosion of their autonomy in selecting textbooks, compelling them to adopt government-censored textbooks.<ref name="thediplomat.com"/>
By the early 21st century, the revived interest in Japan's imperial past had brought new interpretations from a group which has been labelled both "new right" and "new left". This group points out that many acts committed by Japanese forces, including the Nanjing Incident (they generally do not use the word "massacre"), were violations of the Japanese military code. It is suggested that had war crimes tribunals been conducted by the post-war Japanese government, in strict accordance with Japanese military law, many of those who were accused would still have been convicted and executed. Therefore, the moral and legal failures in question were the fault of the Japanese military and the government, for not executing their constitutionally-defined duty.


In 1952, the Japanese government instructed Japanese historian ] to eliminate information and references from his textbook regarding Unit 731, despite having his claims corroborated by other scholars.<ref>{{cite news |title=Saburo Ienaga |newspaper=The Guardian |date=3 December 2002 |last1=Watts |first1=Jonathan |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/03/guardianobituaries.japan}}</ref> While Ienaga's legal action against the Japanese government initially compelled them to publish his textbooks detailing Japanese war crimes, the Japanese Supreme Court overturned this decision in 1993.<ref name="nytimes.com">{{cite news |title=Saburo Ienaga, Who Insisted Japan Disclose Atrocities, Dies at 89 |work=The New York Times |date=8 December 2002 |last1=Lewis |first1=Paul |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/obituaries/saburo-ienaga-who-insisted-japan-disclose-atrocities-dies-at-89.html}}</ref> The Supreme Court's 1993 ruling affirmed the government's authority to compel Mr. Ienaga to remove unsettling specifics concerning the Japanese invasions of Manchuria and Korea, as well as the rapes and killings committed by Japanese military personnel during their occupation of East and Southeast Asia.<ref name="nytimes.com"/>
The new right/new left also takes the view that the Allies committed no war crimes against Japan, because Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and as a victors, the Allies had every right to demand some form of retribution, to which Japan consented in various treaties.


Textbooks approved for junior high schools in 1997 typically presented relatively high estimates of the number of victims, but those published in 2005 often refrained from providing specific numbers altogether. Similarly, the term "massacre" was largely replaced with the term "incident."<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian Perspective |journal=The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |volume=617 |pages=116 |jstor=25098016 |last1=Schneider |first1=Claudia |date=2008 |issue=1 |doi=10.1177/0002716208314359 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25098016}}</ref>
However, under the same logic, the new right/new left considers the killing of Chinese who were suspected of guerilla activity to be perfectly legal and valid, including some of those killed at Nanjing, for example. They also take the view that many Chinese civilian casualties resulted from the ] tactics of the ]. Though such tactics are arguably legal, the new right/new left takes the position that some of the civilian deaths caused by these scorched earth tactics are wrongly attributed to the Japanese military.


In 2014, the Japanese government attempted to pressure ], an American publishing company, to remove two paragraphs addressing the issue of comfort women from one of their textbooks. McGraw Hill rejected the demands from the Japanese government, and American historians condemned Japan's attempt to alter the historical account of comfort women.<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/american-academics-condemn-japanese-efforts-to-revise-history-of-comfort-women/2015/02/09/e795fc1c-38f0-408f-954a-7f989779770a_story.html {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}</ref>
Similarly, they take the position that those who have attempted to sue the Japanese government for compensation have no legal and/or moral case.


In 2015, other alterations involve six out of seven textbooks reducing the criticism of the Japanese military's role in mass suicides among Okinawans in 1945. Additionally, only one textbook addressed the topic of comfort women.<ref name="thediplomat.com"/>
The new right/new left also takes a less sympathetic view of Korean claims of victimhood, because prior to annexation by Japan, Korea was a ] of the ] and, according to them, the Japanese colonisation, though undoubtedly harsh, was better than the previous rule in terms of human rights and economic development.


In 2022, the Japanese government made changes to 14 textbooks covering Japanese and world history. The ministry replaced the words "forced arrest" and "forced conscription" with "mobilization" and "conscription" when recounting the history of forced laborers in Japan, including Koreans during the period of Japanese annexation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.<ref>{{cite web |title=Tokyo tweaks history books again, Seoul protests |date=31 March 2022 |url=https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2022/03/31/national/diplomacy/korea-japan-comfort/20220331142935505.html}}</ref>
They also argue that, the '']'' (also known as the Kwantung Army) was at least partly culpable. Although the ''Kantōgun'' was nominally subordinate to the Japanese high command at the time, its leadership demonstrated significant self-determination, as shown by its involvement in the plot to assassinate ] in 1928, and the ] of 1931, which led to the foundation of ] in 1932. Moreover, at that time, it was the official policy of the Japanese high command to confine the conflict to Manchuria. But in defiance of the high command, the ''Kantōgun'' invaded China proper, under the pretext of the ]. However, the Japanese government not only failed to court martial the officers responsible for these incidents, but it also accepted the war against China, and many of those who were involved were even promoted. (Some of the officers involved in the ] were also promoted.) Therefore, claims that the government was held hostage by soldiers on the field hold little weight.


===Later investigations===
Whether or not Hirohito himself bears any responsibility for such failures is a sticking point between the new right and new left. Though both sides agree that constitutionally, he was exempt from any legal responsibility, some insist that he was ultimately responsible both politically and morally. They cite the fact that, after the war, the Emperor consulted Prime Minister ] regarding his possible abdication, a course of action that Yoshida advised against. Others argue that Hirohito deliberately styled his rule in the manner of the British ], and he always accepted the decisions and consenses reached by the high command. Accordingly, the moral and political failure rests primarily with the Japanese High Command and the Cabinet, most of whom were later convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal as class-A war criminals.


As with investigations of ], official investigations and inquiries are still ongoing.{{As of?|date=April 2021}} During the 1990s, the South Korean government started investigating some people who had allegedly become wealthy while ].<ref>{{cite web |title=List of Japanese Collaborators Released |website=] |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=23332&categoryCode=117 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004181952/https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=23332&categoryCode=117 |archive-date=4 October 2012}}</ref><ref name="koreatimes.co.kr">{{cite web |title=Government to Seize Assets of Collaborators in Colonial Era |website=] |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=2202&categoryCode=117 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004182014/https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=2202&categoryCode=117 |archive-date=4 October 2012}}</ref> In South Korea, it is also alleged that during the political climate of the ], many such people or their associates or relatives were able to acquire influence with the wealth they had acquired collaborating with the Japanese and assisted in the covering-up, or non-investigation, of war crimes in order not to incriminate themselves. With the wealth they had amassed during the years of collaboration, they were able to further benefit their families by obtaining higher education for their relatives.<ref name="koreatimes.co.kr"/>
===Controversial reinterpretations outside Japan===
Some activists outside Japan are also attempting controversial reinterpretations of Japanese imperialism. For example, the views of a ]n ex-military officer and right wing commentator, Ji Man-Won, have caused controversy in Korea and further abroad. Ji has praised Japan for "]" Korea, and has said of women forced to become sex slaves: "most of the old women claiming to be former ], or sex slaves to the Japanese military during World War II, are fakes." In Korea, such views are widely regarded as being offensive, ]lous of the women concerned, and as representing ] but are born out of political tensions within nations such as Korea and China between democratic and establishmentary movements in which the use of Japanese history, or contrived Japanese hate, is a useful tool for both sides.


Further evidence has been discovered as a result of these investigations. It has been claimed that the Japanese government intentionally destroyed the reports on Korean comfort women.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite news |last=Horsley |first=William |title=World {{pipe}} Asia-Pacific {{pipe}} Korean WWII sex slaves fight on |date=9 August 2005 |work=BBC News |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4749467.stm |access-date=21 July 2013 |archive-date=15 January 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070115032249/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4749467.stm |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="autogenerated2">{{cite web |title=Ex-sex slave narrates: "Japan Boiled Comfort Woman to Make Soup". Japanese Army Ran "Comfort Woman System" |website=The Seoul Times |url=http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=%2FST%2Fdb%2Fread.php%3Fidx%3D1846 |access-date=21 July 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928041645/http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=%2FST%2Fdb%2Fread.php%3Fidx%3D1846 |archive-date=28 September 2007}}</ref> Some have cited Japanese inventory logs and employee sheets on the battlefield as evidence for this claim. For example, one of the names on the list was of a comfort woman who stated she was forced to be a prostitute by the Japanese. She was classified as a nurse along with at least a dozen other verified comfort women who were not nurses or secretaries. Currently, the South Korean government is looking into the hundreds of other names on these lists.<ref>{{cite web |title=Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition): Daily News in English About Korea. ''Military Record of "Comfort Woman" Unearthed'' |url=http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200501/200501110028.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090825083558/http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200501/200501110028.html |archive-date=25 August 2009}}</ref>
===Later investigations===
As with investigations of Nazi war criminals, official investigations and enquiries are still ongoing. During the ], the ]n government started investigating some individuals who had allegedly become wealthy while collaborating with the Japanese military. In South Korea, it is also alleged that, during the political climate of the ], many such individuals and/or their associates or relatives were able to acquire influence and to assist in the covering-up, or non-investigation, of war crimes in order not to incriminate themselves.


In 2011, it was alleged in an article published in the '']'' newspaper by Jason Coskrey that the ] covered up a Japanese massacre of British and Dutch ]s to avoid straining the ], along with their belief that Japan needed to be a post-war bulwark against the spread of ].<ref>{{cite web |last=Coskrey |first=Jason |title=Britain covered up Japan massacre of POWs |website=] |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081017a3.html |access-date=21 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606151927/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081017a3.html |archive-date=6 June 2011}}</ref>
Non-government bodies and individuals have also undertaken their own investigations. For example, in ], a South Korean freelance journalist, Jung Soo-woong, located in Japan some descendants of people involved in the ] ] of ] (Queen Min), the last Empress of ]. The assassination was conducted by the ], perhaps under the auspices of the Japanese government, because of the Empress's involvement in attempts to reduce Japanese influence in Korea. Jung recorded the apologies of the individuals.


]'s 2009 documentary '']'' includes interviews with Japanese ]s who admit to raping and killing Chinese civilians.<ref>{{cite news |last=Lee, Min |title=New film has Japan vets confessing to Nanjing rape |date=31 March 2010 |work=Salon |url=http://www.salon.com/2010/03/31/as_film_japan_massacre_documentary/ |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170401212422/http://www.salon.com/2010/03/31/as_film_japan_massacre_documentary/ |archive-date=1 April 2017}}</ref>
==Major incidents==

===Concerns of the Japanese imperial family===

Potentially in contrast to Prime Minister Abe's example of his Yasukuni Shrine visits, by February 2015, some concern within the ] — which normally does not issue such statements – over the issue was voiced by then-],<ref>{{cite web |last=Yamamoto |first=Arata |title=Japan's Experiments on U.S. POWs: Exhibit Highlights Horrific History |date=9 April 2015 |publisher=NBC News |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/japanese-experiments-u-s-pows-exhibit-shows-brutal-history-n338231 |access-date=9 April 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150409090613/http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/japanese-experiments-u-s-pows-exhibit-shows-brutal-history-n338231 |archive-date=9 April 2015}}</ref> who succeeded ] ]. Naruhito stated on his 55th birthday (23 February 2015) that it was "important to look back on the past humbly and correctly", in reference to Japan's role in World War II-era war crimes, and that he was concerned about the ongoing need to "correctly pass down tragic experiences and the history behind Japan to the generations who have no direct knowledge of the war, at the time memories of the war are about to fade".<ref>{{cite web |last=Itasaka |first=Kiko |title=World War II Should Not Be Forgotten, Japan's Prince Naruhito Says |date=24 February 2015 |publisher=NBC News |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-war-ii-should-not-be-forgotten-japans-prince-naruhito-n311561 |access-date=9 April 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150409090612/http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-war-ii-should-not-be-forgotten-japans-prince-naruhito-n311561 |archive-date=9 April 2015}}</ref> Two visits to the ] in the second half of 2016 by Japan's former foreign minister, ], were again followed by controversy that still showed potential for concern over how Japan's World War II history may be remembered by its citizens<ref>" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190107220848/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/11/national/politics-diplomacy/reconstruction-minister-visits-war-linked-yasukuni-shrine/ |date=7 January 2019}}" (Japan Times – 11 August 2016)</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180615135303/http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2057841/japan-defence-minister-visits-yasukuni-war-shrine-one-day-after |date=15 June 2018}}, ] via '']'', 29 December 2016. Retrieved 28 December 2016.</ref> as it entered the ] era.

] upheld an official boycott of Yasukuni Shrine after he discovered that Class-A war criminals had been secretly enshrined after the war. This boycott lasted from 1978 until his death, and his successors, ] and ], have continued the boycott.<ref>{{cite news |title=Explainer: Why Yasukuni shrine is a controversial symbol of Japan's war legacy |publisher=Reuters |date=15 August 2021 |url=https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/why-yasukuni-shrine-is-controversial-symbol-japans-war-legacy-2021-08-13/ |access-date=11 July 2023}}</ref>

==List of major crimes==
<!-- PLEASE LEAVE LINKS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER --> <!-- PLEASE LEAVE LINKS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER -->
* ]
* ]
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{{Col-begin}}
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{{Col-break}}
*]
'''Massacres'''
*]
*] * ]
* ]
*]
* ]
*]
* ]
*] (Construction of the Burma-Siam Railway)
* ]
*]
*] * ]<ref name="Bangka"/>
*] * ]
*] * ]
*] * ]
* ]
*]
*] * ]
*] * ]
* ]<ref name="Laha"/>
*]
*] * ]
* ]
*]
*] * ]
*] * ]
*] * ]
* ]
*]
*] * ]
*] * ]
* ]
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*]
'''Units'''
* ]
* ]
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* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
{{Col-break}}
'''War crimes'''
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]s
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
{{Col-end}}


==See also== ==See also==<!-- Please leave in alphabetical order -->
* ]
<!-- Please leave in alphabetical order -->
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* '']'', historical film
* ]
* ]
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==Notes==
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{{Notelist}}
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==References== ==References==
{{Reflist|colwidth=30em}}
* Barnaby, Wendy. ''The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare'', Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1883319854 ISBN 0756756987 ISBN 0826412580 ISBN 082641415X

* Bayly, C.A. & Harper T. ''Forgotten Armies. The Fall of British Asia 1941-5'' (London: Allen Lane) 2004
==Sources==
* Chang, Iris. ''The Rape of Nanking'', Perseus books LLC, 1997. ISBN 0465068359
{{Refbegin|30em}}
*{{cite book
* {{cite news |agency=Agence France-Presse |title=A life haunted by WWII surgical killings |date=31 October 2007 |work=The Brunei Times |url=http://www.bt.com.bn/focus/2007/10/31/a_life_haunted_by_wwii_surgical_killings |access-date=16 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141213021214/http://www.bt.com.bn/focus/2007/10/31/a_life_haunted_by_wwii_surgical_killings |archive-date=13 December 2014}}
| last = Dower
* {{cite news |title=Japanese veteran haunted by WWII surgical killings |date=28 October 2007 |agency=Agence France-Presse |url=https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ht5P8U54dLa7dH9mqjKyurq0zQMw?hl=en |access-date=16 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140317024425/https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ht5P8U54dLa7dH9mqjKyurq0zQMw?hl=en |archive-date=17 March 2014}}
| first = John W.
* {{cite web |last=Borneman |first=John |title=Can Public Apologies Contribute to Peace? An Argument for Retribution |website=Cornell University |url=http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/v17n1/Borneman.pdf |access-date=29 July 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060824134052/http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/v17n1/Borneman.pdf |archive-date=24 August 2006}}
| authorlink =
* ]. '']''. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
| coauthors =
*{{cite web |ref={{sfnRef|DANFS: ''Comfort''}} |url=http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/c11/comfort-ii.htm |title=Comfort |author=Naval History And Heritage Command |work=Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships |publisher=Naval History And Heritage Command |access-date=9 July 2013 |archive-date=13 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131013235948/http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/c11/comfort-ii.htm |url-status=live}}
| year = 1987
* {{cite book |last1=Cook |first1=Haruko Taya |title=Japan at War: An Oral History |last2=Cook |first2=Theodore F. |publisher=New Press |year=1993 |isbn=1-56584-039-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/japanatwaroralhi00cook_0}}- Compilation of interviews with Japanese survivors of World War II, including several who describe war crimes that they were involved with.
| chapter =
* {{cite web |last=Chalmers |first=Johnson |title=The Looting of Asia |date=20 November 2003 |website=London Review of Books |author-link=Chalmers Johnson |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/john04_.html |access-date=25 April 2005 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031119071557/http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/john04_.html |archive-date=19 November 2003}}
| title = War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
* {{cite book |last=De Jong |first=Louis |title=The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War |publisher=KITLV Press |others=translation J. Kilian, C. Kist and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman |year=2002 |isbn=90-6718-203-6 |series=Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206 |location=Leiden, The Netherlands}}
| publisher = ]
* Dower, John W. '']''. New York: New Press, 1999.
| location = New York
* Felton, Mark. ''Japan's Gestapo: Murder, Mayhem and Torture in Wartime Asia'' (Casemate Publishers, 2009).
| id = ISBN 0394751728
* Felton, Mark. ''Slaughter at Sea: The Story of Japan's Naval War Crimes'' (Casemate Publishers, 2007).
}}
* Felton, Mark. "The Perfect Storm: Japanese military brutality during World War Two." ''The Routledge History of Genocide'' (Routledge, 2015) pp.&nbsp;105–121.
* Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. ''The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea'', Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0253334721
* {{cite news |last=Fields |first=Liz |title=South Korean Comfort Women Threaten to Sue Japan for $20 Million in the U.S |url=https://news.vice.com/article/south-korean-comfort-women-threaten-to-sue-japan-for-20-million-in-the-us |access-date=20 August 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180819234510/https://news.vice.com/article/south-korean-comfort-women-threaten-to-sue-japan-for-20-million-in-the-us |archive-date=19 August 2018}}
* Gold, Hal. ''Unit 731 Testimony'', Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 4900737399
* {{cite web |title=Forive but Never Forget |website=GSBC |url=http://en.gsbc.or.kr/category/sub3/sub3_2_view.asp?sn=152 |access-date=20 August 2015}}{{dead link|date=May 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}
* Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. ''Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It'', Random House, 1999. ISBN 0375502319 ISBN 0385334966
* {{cite web |last=L |first=Klemen |title=Massacres of POWs, Dutch East Indies, 1941–1942 |date=1999–2000 |website=Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942 |url=https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/massacres.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110919092423/http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/massacres.html |archive-date=19 September 2011}}
*{{cite book
* {{cite book |last=Landas |first=Wiley |title=The Fallen A True Story of American POWs and Japanese Wartime Atrocities |publisher=John Wiley |year=2004 |isbn=0-471-42119-7 |location=Hoboken}}
| last = Harries
* {{cite journal |last1=Legault |first1=Barbara |last2=Prescott |first2=John F. |year=2009 |title='The arch agitator:' Dr. Frank W. Schofield and the Korean independence movement |journal=The Canadian Veterinary Journal |volume=50 |issue=8 |pages=865–72 |pmid=19881928 |pmc=2711476}}
| first = Meirion
* {{cite news |last=McCurry |first=Justin |title=Japanese PM Shinzo Abe Stops Short of New Apology in War Anniversary Speech |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/14/shinzo-abe-japan-no-new-apology-second-world-war-anniversary-speech |access-date=20 August 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200128204645/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/14/shinzo-abe-japan-no-new-apology-second-world-war-anniversary-speech |archive-date=28 January 2020}}
| authorlink =
* {{cite news |last=Noh |first=Jooeun |title=The Great Kantō Earthquake |newspaper=Harvard-Yenching Institute |url=http://www.harvard-yenching.org/the-great-kanto-earthquake |access-date=20 August 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200128210031/https://harvard-yenching.org/the-great-kanto-earthquake |archive-date=28 January 2020}}
| coauthors = Susie Harries
* {{cite news |last=Ozawa |first=Harumi |title=Japanese war veteran speaks of atrocities in the Philippines |date=6 November 2007 |page=9 |work=Taipei Times |url=http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/11/06/2003386494 |access-date=16 May 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190820144936/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/11/06/2003386494 |archive-date=20 August 2019}}
| year = 1994
* {{cite news |last=Parry |first=Richard Lloyd |title=Dissect them alive: chilling Imperial that order could not be disobeyed |date=26 February 2007 |work=The Australian |url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/dissect-them-alive-chilling-imperial-that-order-could-not-be-di/story-e6frg6so-1111113061584 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150214145048/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/dissect-them-alive-chilling-imperial-that-order-could-not-be-di/story-e6frg6so-1111113061584 |archive-date=14 February 2015}}{{pb}}{{cite news |last=Parry |first=Richard Lloyd |title=Dissect them alive: order not to be disobeyed |date=25 February 2007 |work=The Times |url=http://www.forties.net/japconfession.html |access-date=16 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130101040816/http://www.forties.net/japconfession.html |archive-date=1 January 2013}}{{pb}}{{cite news |last=Parry |first=Richard Lloyd |title=Dissect them alive: order not to be disobeyed |date=25 February 2007 |work=The Times |url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article2606909.ece |access-date=16 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070228095300/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1438491.ece |archive-date=28 February 2007}}{{pb}}{{cite news |last=Richard Lloyd Parry |title=Dissect them alive: order not to be disobeyed |date=25 February 2007 |work=The Times |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1438491.ece |access-date=10 December 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110523225449/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1438491.ece |archive-date=23 May 2011}}
| chapter =
* Ramsey, Edwin, and Stephen Rivele. (1990). Lieutenant Ramsey's War. Knightsbridge Publishing Co., New York. ASIN: B000IC3PDE
| title = Soldiers of the Sun : The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army
* Schmidt, Larry. (1982). . (PDF). M.S. Thesis. U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. 274 pp.
| publisher = ]
* {{cite book |last1=Takai |first1=Kōji |title=B-29 Hunters of the JAAF |last2=Sakaida, Henry |publisher=Osprey Publishing |year=2001 |isbn=1-84176-161-3 |series=Aviation Elite Units |location=Oxford |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4p1pDSXzZZUC&q=Raid+on+Yawata}}{{Dead link|date=June 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}
| location = New York
* {{cite book |last=Tanaka |first=Yuki |title=Hidden Horrors |publisher=Westview press |year=1996}}
| id = ISBN 0679753036
* {{cite journal |last=Tanaka |first=Yuki |title=Poison Gas, the Story Japan Would Like to Forget |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |date=October 1988 |volume=44 |issue=8 |page=10 |bibcode=1988BuAtS..44h..10T |doi=10.1080/00963402.1988.11456210}}
}}
* {{cite book |title=The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes |publisher=Greenhill Books |year=2006 |isbn=1-85367-651-9}}
* Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. ''A Higher Form of Killing : The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare'', Random House, 2002. ISBN 0812966538
* Cheung, Raymond. ''OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES 126: Aces of the Republic of China Air Force''. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2015. {{ISBN|978 14728 05614}}.
* Harris, Sheldon H. ''Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up'', Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0415091055 ISBN 0415932149
* {{cite book |last=Tillman |first=Barrett |title=Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan 1942–1945 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-4165-8440-7 |location=New York City |author-link=Barrett Tillman |url=https://archive.org/details/whirlwindairwara00till}}
* {{cite book |last=Sissons |first=D. C. S. |title=The Australian War Crimes Trials and Investigations 1942–51 |url=http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~changmin/documents/Sissons%20Final%20War%20Crimes%20Text%2018-3-06.pdf |access-date=19 October 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190817235704/https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~changmin/documents/Sissons%20Final%20War%20Crimes%20Text%2018-3-06.pdf |archive-date=17 August 2019}}
* {{cite web |title=Wartime Cabinet Document Discloses Conscription of 290,000 Koreans in 1944 |website=The People's Korea |url=http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/033rd_issue/98031103.htm |access-date=20 August 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160413200013/http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/033rd_issue/98031103.htm |archive-date=13 April 2016}}
{{Refend}}

==Further reading==
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* Barnaby, Wendy. ''The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare'', Frog Ltd, 1999. {{ISBN|1-883319-85-4}} {{ISBN|0-7567-5698-7}} {{ISBN|0-8264-1258-0}} {{ISBN|0-8264-1415-X}}
* Bass, Gary Jonathan. ''Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Trials''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
* Bayly, C. A. & Harper T. ''Forgotten Armies. The Fall of British Asia 1941-5'' (London: Allen Lane) 2004
* Bergamini, David. ''Japan's Imperial Conspiracy,'' William Morrow, New York, 1971.
* ]: ''The Other Nuremberg: the Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial''. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987. {{ISBN|0-688-04783-1}}
* {{cite book |last=Dower |first=John W. |title=War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War |publisher=] |year=1987 |isbn=0-394-75172-8 |location=New York |author-link=John W. Dower |url=https://archive.org/details/warwithoutmercy00john_0 |url-access=registration}}
* Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. ''The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea'', Indiana University Press, 1999. {{ISBN|0-253-33472-1}}
* {{cite book |last=Felton |first=Mark |title=Slaughter at Sea: The Story of Japan's Naval War Crimes |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-59114-263-8 |location=Annapolis, Maryland}}
* {{cite book |last=Frank |first=Richard B. |title=Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire |publisher=Penguin Books |year=1999 |location=New York |author-link=Richard B. Frank}}
* Gold, Hal. ''Unit 731 Testimony'', Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. {{ISBN|4-900737-39-9}}
* Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. ''Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It'', Random House, 1999. {{ISBN|0-375-50231-9}} {{ISBN|0-385-33496-6}}
* {{cite book |last1=Harries |first1=Meirion |title=Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army |last2=Harries |first2=Susie |publisher=] |year=1994 |isbn=0-679-75303-6 |location=New York}}
* Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. ''A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare'', Random House, 2002. {{ISBN|0-8129-6653-8}}
* Harris, Sheldon H. ''Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover-Up'', Routledge, 1994. {{ISBN|0-415-09105-5}} {{ISBN|0-415-93214-9}}
* {{cite book |last=Holmes |first=Linda Goetz |title=Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs |publisher=Stackpole Books |year=2001 |location=Mechanicsburg, PA, USA}}
* {{cite book |last=Holmes |first=Linda Goetz |title=Guests of the Emperor: The Secret History of Japan's Mukden POW Camp |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-59114-377-2}}
* Horowitz, Solis. "The Tokyo Trial" ''International Conciliation'' 465 (November 1950), 473–584.
* {{cite book |last=Kratoksa |first=Paul |title=Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories |publisher=M.E. Sharpe and Singapore University Press |year=2005 |isbn=0-7656-1263-1}}
* {{cite book |last=Lael |first=Richard L. |title=The Yamashita Precedent: War Crimes and Command Responsibility |publisher=Scholarly Resources |year=1982 |location=Wilmington, Del, USA}}
* Latimer, Jon, ''Burma: The Forgotten War'', London: John Murray, 2004. {{ISBN|0-7195-6576-6}}
* {{cite book |last=MacArthur |first=Brian |title=Surviving the Sword: Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East, 1942–45 |publisher=Random House |year=2005 |isbn=1-4000-6413-9 |author-link=Brian MacArthur |url=https://archive.org/details/survivingswordpr00maca}}
* Lingen, Kerstin von, ed. ''War Crimes Trials in the Wake of Decolonization and Cold War in Asia, 1945-1956.'' (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2016) {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308143028/https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319827100 |date=8 March 2021}}
* {{cite book |last=Minear |first=Richard H. |title=Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1971 |location=Princeton, NJ, USA |author-link=Richard Minear}}
* {{cite book |last=Maga |first=Timothy P. |title=Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trials |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=2001 |isbn=0-8131-2177-9}}
* Neier, Aryeh. ''War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror and the Struggle for Justice,'' Times Books, Random House, New York, 1998.
* O'Hanlon, Michael E. ''The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes'' (Brookings Institution, 2019) {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217095037/https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55868 |date=17 February 2022}}
* {{cite book |last=Piccigallo |first=Philip R. |title=The Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crimes Operations in the East, 1945–1951 |publisher=University of Texas Press |year=1979 |location=Austin, Texas, USA}}
* Rees, Laurence. ''Horror in the East'', published 2001 by the British Broadcasting Company * Rees, Laurence. ''Horror in the East'', published 2001 by the British Broadcasting Company
* Seagrave, Peggy & Seagrave, Sterling. ''Gold Warriors: The Covert History of Yamashita's Treasure'', Verso Books, 2003. ISBN 1859845428 * Seagrave, Sterling & Peggy. ''Gold Warriors: America's secret recovery of Yamashita's gold''. Verso Books, 2003. {{ISBN|1-85984-542-8}}
* {{cite book |last=Sherman |first=Christine |title=War Crimes: International Military Tribunal |publisher=Turner Publishing Company |year=2001 |isbn=1-56311-728-2}} Detailed account of the ] proceedings in Tokyo
* Williams, Peter. ''Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II'', Free Press, 1989. ISBN 0029353017
* Trefalt, Beatrice . "Japanese War Criminals in Indochina and the French Pursuit of Justice: Local and International Constraints." ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 49.4 (2014): 727–742.
* The History Channel. ''Japanese War Crimes: Murder Under The Sun'', 50 Minutes, DVD & VHS
* {{cite book |last=Tsurumi |first=Kazuko |title=Social Change and the Individual: Japan before and after defeat in World War II |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1970 |isbn=0-691-09347-4 |location=Princeton, USA |url=https://archive.org/details/socialchangeindi0000tsur}}
* Williams, Peter. ''Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II'', Free Press, 1989. {{ISBN|0-02-935301-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Wilson |first=Sandra |title=Japanese War Criminals: The Politics of Justice After the Second World War |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2017 |isbn=9780231179225 |location=New York City |display-authors=etal}}
* {{cite book |last=Yamamoto |first=Masahiro |title=Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity |publisher=Praeger Publishers |year=2000 |isbn=0-275-96904-5}} A rebuttal to Iris Chang's book on the Nanking massacre.
{{Refend}}

===Audio/visual media===
{{Refbegin}}
* Minoru Matsui (2001), ''Japanese Devils'', a documentary which is based on interviews which were conducted with veteran soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army (Japanese ''Devils sheds light on a dark past'') CNN
** {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120506170411/http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/japdevil.shtml |date=6 May 2012}}, Midnight Eye,
* {{cite AV media |title=Japanese War Crimes: Murder Under The Sun |year=2000 |type=Video documentary (DVD & VHS) |publisher=A & E Home Video |people=The History Channel}}
{{Refend}}


==External links== ==External links==
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* in '']'', ]-] * in '']'', 2002-08-29
* ]-] * 1995-08-15
* in '']'' ]-] * {{cite web |title=Steven Butler, "A half century of denial: the hidden truth about Japan's unit 731" |url=http://www.technologyartist.com/unit_731/ |access-date=31 October 2004 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061119053825/http://www.technologyartist.com/unit_731/ |archive-date=19 November 2006}} in '']'' 1995-07-31
*


{{Empire of Japan}}
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{{World War II}}


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Latest revision as of 00:52, 23 December 2024

War crimes committed by Imperial Japan

Japanese war crimes
Part of the territorial conquests of the Empire of Japan
Bodies of victims along the Qinhuai River, out of Nanjing's west gate during the Nanjing Massacre
LocationIn and around East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific
Date1927–1945
Attack typeWar crimes, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and other crimes against humanity
Deathsc. 19,000,000–c. 30,000,000
PerpetratorEmpire of Japan
Motive
TrialsTokyo Trial, and others

During its imperial era, the Empire of Japan committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity across various Asian-Pacific nations, notably during the Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents have been referred to as "the Asian Holocaust", and "Japan's Holocaust", and also as the "Rape of Asia". The crimes occurred during the early part of the Shōwa era, under Hirohito's reign.

The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) were responsible for a multitude of war crimes leading to millions of deaths. War crimes ranged from sexual slavery and massacres to human experimentation, torture, starvation, and forced labor, all either directly committed or condoned by the Japanese military and government. Evidence of these crimes, including oral testimonies and written records such as diaries and war journals, has been provided by Japanese veterans.

The Japanese political and military leadership knew of its military's crimes, yet continued to allow it and even support it, with the majority of Japanese troops stationed in Asia either taking part in or supporting the killings.

The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service participated in chemical and biological attacks on civilians during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, violating international agreements that Japan had previously signed, including the Hague Conventions, which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.

Since the 1950s, numerous apologies for the war crimes have been issued by senior Japanese government officials; however, apologies issued by Japanese officials have been criticized by some as insincere. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acknowledged the country's role in causing "tremendous damage and suffering" before and during World War II, particularly the massacre and rape of civilians in Nanjing by the IJA. However, the issue remains controversial, with some members of the Japanese government, including former prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzō Abe, having paid respects at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors all Japanese war dead, including convicted Class A war criminals. Furthermore, some Japanese history textbooks provide only brief references to the war crimes, and certain members of the Liberal Democratic Party have denied some of the atrocities, such as the government's involvement in abducting women to serve as "comfort women", a euphemism for sex slaves.

Definitions

Main article: Definitions of Japanese war crimes

The Tokyo Charter defines war crimes as "violations of the laws or customs of war," which involves acts using prohibited weapons, violating battlefield norms while engaging in combat with the enemy combatants, or against protected persons, including enemy civilians and citizens and property of neutral states as in the case of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been convicted of committing many such acts during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Japanese military soldiers conducted a series of human rights abuses against civilians and prisoners of war throughout East Asia and the western Pacific region. These events reached their height during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 and the Asian and Pacific campaigns of World War II (1941–45).

International and Japanese law

Japanese troops burying living Chinese civilians

Japan signed the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War and the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Sick and Wounded, but the Japanese government declined to ratify the POW Convention. In 1942, the Japanese government stated that it would abide by the terms of the Convention mutatis mutandis ('changing what has to be changed'). The crimes committed also fall under other aspects of international and Japanese law. For example, many of the crimes committed by Japanese personnel during World War II broke Japanese military law, and were subject to court martial, as required by that law. The Empire also violated international agreements signed by Japan, including provisions of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) such as protections for prisoners of war and a ban on the use of chemical weapons, the 1930 Forced Labour Convention which prohibited forced labor, the 1921 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children which prohibited human trafficking, and other agreements. The Japanese government also signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact (1929), thereby rendering its actions in 1937–45 liable to charges of crimes against peace, a charge that was introduced at the Tokyo Trials to prosecute "Class A" war criminals. "Class B" war criminals were those found guilty of war crimes per se, and "Class C" war criminals were those guilty of crimes against humanity. The Japanese government also accepted the terms set by the Potsdam Declaration (1945) after the end of the war, including the provision in Article 10 of punishment for "all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners". Japanese law does not define those convicted in the post-1945 trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan's governments have accepted the judgments made in the trials, and in the Treaty of San Francisco (1952). Former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe had advocated the position that Japan accepted the Tokyo tribunal and its judgements as a condition for ending the war, but that its verdicts have no relation to domestic law. According to Abe, those convicted of war crimes are not criminals under Japanese law.

Historical and geographical extent

Samurai warriors of the Chosyu clan, during the Boshin War period of the 1860s

Outside Japan, different societies use widely different timeframes when they define Japanese war crimes. For example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 was enforced by the Japanese military, and the Society of Yi Dynasty Korea was switched to the political system of the Empire of Japan. Thus, North and South Korea both refer to "Japanese war crimes" as events which occurred during the period of Korea under Japanese rule.

By comparison, the Western Allies did not come into a military conflict with Japan until 1941, and North Americans, Australians, South East Asians and Europeans may consider "Japanese war crimes" to be events that occurred from 1942 to 1945.

Japanese war crimes were not always carried out by ethnic Japanese personnel. A small minority of people in every Asian and Pacific country invaded or occupied by Japan collaborated with the Japanese military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other imperialist powers. In addition to Japanese civil and military personnel, Chinese (including Manchus), Koreans, and Taiwanese who were forced to serve in the military of the Empire of Japan were also found to have committed war crimes as part of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Both South Korea and North Korea have stated that the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, which lead to the annexation of Korea by Japan, was concluded illegally.

Background

Japanese militarism, nationalism, imperialism, and racism

Main articles: Bushido, Statism in Shōwa Japan, Japanese militarism, Japanese nationalism, Eugenics in Japan, Fascism in Asia § Japan, Racism in Asia § Japan, and Racism in Japan
Japanese illustration depicting the beheading of Chinese captives during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895

Militarism, nationalism, and racism, especially during Japan's imperialist expansion, had great bearings on the conduct of the Japanese armed forces both before and during the Second World War. After the Meiji Restoration and the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Emperor became the focus of military loyalty, nationalism, and racism. During the so-called "Age of Imperialism" in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers by establishing a colonial empire, an objective which it aggressively pursued.

Unlike many other major powers, Japan never ratified the Geneva Convention of 1929—also known as the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva 27 July 1929—which was the version of the Geneva Convention that covered the treatment of prisoners of war during World War II. Nevertheless, Japan ratified the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which contained provisions regarding prisoners of war and an Imperial Proclamation in 1894 stated that Japanese soldiers should make every effort to win the war without violating international laws. According to Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka, Japanese forces during the First Sino-Japanese War released 1,790 Chinese prisoners without harm, once they signed an agreement not to take up arms against Japan if they were released. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, all of the 79,367 Russian prisoners who were held by the Japanese were released and they were also paid for the labor which they performed for the Japanese, in accordance with the Hague Convention. Similarly, the behavior of the Japanese military in World War I was at least as humane as that of other militaries which fought during the war, with some German prisoners of the Japanese finding life in Japan so agreeable that they stayed and settled in Japan after the war.

Two Japanese commanders, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda competing to see who could kill (with a sword) one hundred people first. The headline reads, "'Incredible Record' (in the Contest to Decapitate 100 People)—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings".

As Japan continued its modernization in the early 20th century, her armed forces became convinced that success in battle would be assured if Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen had the "spirit" of Bushido. ... The result was that the Bushido code of behavior "was inculcated into the Japanese soldier as part of his basic training." Each soldier was indoctrinated to accept that it was the greatest honor to die for the Emperor and it was cowardly to surrender to the enemy. ... Bushido therefore explains why the Japanese soldiers who were stationed in the NEI so mistreated POWs in their custody. Those who had surrendered to the Japanese—regardless of how courageously or honorably they had fought—merited nothing but contempt; they had forfeited all honor and literally deserved nothing. Consequently, when the Japanese murdered POWs by shooting, beheading, and drowning, these acts were excused since they involved the killing of men who had forfeited all rights to be treated with dignity or respect. While civilian internees were certainly in a different category from POWs, it is reasonable to think that there was a "spill-over" effect from the tenets of Bushido.

— Fred Borch, Military Trials of War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies 1946–1949

Propaganda depictions of the Japanese military as superior and of others such as the Chinese or Koreans as cowards, pigs, rats, or mice occurred in the use of woodcuts produced for wide consumption which were intended to provide a cruel amusement. The Myrdal-Kessle woodcut cartoon collection donated to the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden, was the subject of a catalogued exhibition in 2011 and includes examples of this type of material from the Meiji period.

Events of the 1930s and 1940s

By the late 1930s, the rise of militarism in Japan created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of Germany. Japan also had a military secret police force within the IJA, known as the Kempeitai, which resembled the Nazi Gestapo in its role in annexed and occupied countries, but which had existed for nearly a decade before Hitler's own birth.

Perceived failure or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating all the way down on to the lowest ranks. In POW camps, this meant that prisoners of war received the worst beatings of all, partly in the belief that such punishments were merely the proper technique to deal with disobedience.

The phenomenon of gekokujō (下克上) which involves lower-ranking officers overthrowing or assassinating their superiors, as evidenced by the multiple coups and assassinations carried out on the mainland, also allowed for the proliferation of war crimes because if commanders tried to restrict atrocities they would either face mutiny or reassignment. Historians have also attributed war crimes to the lack of supervision and disorganization within the military which without stronger control over units and effective court martial procedures allowed for war crimes to go unpunished and therefore continue.

Compared to the German Einsatzgruppen, which carried out mass shootings on the Eastern Front in Europe and who suffered from psychological issues as a result, no such problems occurred with Japanese soldiers, as the vast majority of soldiers participated in murder and rape and seemingly enjoyed it.

War crimes

An Australian POW, Sgt. Leonard Siffleet, captured in New Guinea, about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a guntō, 1943.

Much of the controversy regarding Japan's role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. Historian Sterling Seagrave has written that:

Arriving at a probable number of Japan's war victims who died is difficult for several interesting reasons, which have to do with Western perceptions. Both Americans and Europeans fell into the unfortunate habit of seeing WW1 and WW2 as separate wars, failing to comprehend that they were interlaced in a multitude of ways (not merely that one was the consequence of the other, or of the rash behavior of the victors after WW1). Wholly aside from this basic misconception, most Americans think of WW2 in Asia as having begun with Pearl Harbor, the British with the fall of Singapore, and so forth. The Chinese would correct this by identifying the Marco Polo Bridge incident as the start, or the earlier Japanese seizure of Manchuria. It really began in 1895 with Japan's assassination of Korea's Queen Min, and invasion of Korea, resulting in its absorption into Japan, followed quickly by Japan's seizure of southern Manchuria, etc. – establishing that Japan was at war from 1895 to 1945. Prior to 1895, Japan had only briefly invaded Korea during the Shogunate, long before the Meiji Restoration, and the invasion failed. Therefore, Rummel's estimate of 6-million to 10-million dead between 1937 (the Rape of Nanjing) and 1945, may be roughly corollary to the time-frame of the Nazi Holocaust, but it falls far short of the actual numbers killed by the Japanese war machine. If you add, say, 2-million Koreans, 2-million Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, many East European Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazi), and others killed by Japan between 1895 and 1937 (conservative figures), the total of Japanese victims is more like 10-million to 14-million. Of these, I would suggest that between 6-million and 8-million were ethnic Chinese, regardless of where they were resident.

In 1943, Prince Mikasa, the younger brother of Hirohito and a member of the Imperial House of Japan, served as an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army stationed in China. He authored a book published in 1984, in which he revealed his shock at the atrocities carried out by the Japanese military during his one-year deployment in China. In 1994, the Japanese newspaper outlet Yomiuri Shimbun conducted an interview with him. He provided an account of Japanese atrocities committed against the Chinese, and verified that he had denounced the aggression in a speech addressed to Japanese soldiers in China during World War II. He discovered that military officers utilized Chinese prisoners of war for bayonet drills to bolster the resolve of Japanese soldiers. Additionally, he noted that POWs were asphyxiated and shot in large numbers while being restrained to posts. He emphasized that killing POWs in a gruesome manner constitutes a massacre, affirming without doubt that Japanese soldiers indeed committed such atrocious acts.

According to Werner Gruhl, approximately eight million Chinese civilian deaths were attributable directly to Japanese aggression.

According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among prisoners of war from Asian countries held by Japan was 27.1%. The death rate of Chinese prisoners of war were much higher because—under a directive ratified on 5 August 1937, by Emperor Hirohito—the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed. Only 56 Chinese prisoners of war were released after the surrender of Japan. After 20 March 1943, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered and encouraged the Navy to execute all prisoners taken at sea.

According to British historian Mark Felton, "officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention." At least 12,500 British sailors and 7,500 Australians were murdered. The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered the survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats. During Naval landing parties, the Japanese Navy rounded up, raped, then massacred civilians. Some of the victims were fed to sharks, others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, crucifixion, drowning, hanging, and beheading.

Attacks on neutral powers

Main article: Attack on Pearl Harbor
The USS Arizona burning during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

Article 1 of the 1907 Hague Convention III – The Opening of Hostilities prohibited the initiation of hostilities against neutral powers "without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war" and Article 2 further stated that "he existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without delay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of a notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph." Japanese diplomats intended to deliver the notice to the United States thirty minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on 7 December 1941, but it was delivered to the U.S. government an hour after the attack was over. Tokyo transmitted the 5,000-word notification (commonly called the "14-Part Message") in two blocks to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, but transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese ambassador to deliver it in time.

The 14-Part Message was not moreover a declaration of war, but was instead about sending a message to U.S. officials that peace negotiations between Japan and the U.S. were likely to be terminated. Japanese officials were well aware that the 14-Part Message was not a proper declaration of war as required by the 1907 Hague Convention III – The Opening of Hostilities. They decided not to issue a proper declaration of war anyway as they feared that doing so would expose their secret attack on Pearl Harbor to the Americans.

Some historical negationists and conspiracy theorists charge that President Franklin D. Roosevelt willingly allowed the attack to happen to create a pretext for war, but no credible evidence exists to support the claim. The diary of Henry L. Stimson, Roosevelt's Secretary of War, showed that Roosevelt believed in late November 1941 that a Japanese attack on British or Dutch soil was "likely," but was "confident that the Japanese would not dare to start hostilities against the United States." The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan declared war on the U.S. and the U.S. likewise declared war on Japan.

Simultaneously with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (Honolulu time), Japan invaded the British colony of Malaya, bombed Singapore, and began land actions in Hong Kong, without a declaration of war or an ultimatum. Both the United States and United Kingdom were neutral when Japan attacked their territories without explicit warning of a state of war.

The U.S. officially classified all 3,649 military and civilian casualties and destruction of military property at Pearl Harbor as non-combatants as there was no state of war between the U.S. and Japan when the attack occurred. Joseph B. Keenan, the chief prosecutor in the Tokyo Trials, says that the attack on Pearl Harbor not only happened without a declaration of war but was also a "treacherous and deceitful act". In fact, Japan and the U.S. were still negotiating for a possible peace agreement which kept U.S. officials distracted up to the point that Japanese planes launched their attack on Pearl Harbor. Keenan explained the definition of a war of aggression and the criminality of the attack on Pearl Harbor:

The concept of aggressive war may not be expressed with the precision of a scientific formula, or described like the objective data of the physical sciences. Aggressive War is not entirely a physical fact to be observed and defined like the operation of the laws of matter. It is rather an activity involving injustice between nations, rising to the level of criminality because of its disastrous effects upon the common good of international society. The injustice of a war of aggression is criminal of its extreme grosses, considered both from the point of view of the will of the aggressor to inflict injury and from the evil effects which ensue ... Unjust war are plainly crimes and not simply torts or breaches of contracts. The act comprises the willful, intentional, and unreasonable destruction of life, limb, and property, subject matter which has been regarded as criminal by the laws of all civilized peoples ... The Pearl Harbor attack breached the Kellogg–Briand Pact and the Hague Convention III. In addition, it violated Article 23 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, of October 1907 ... But the attack of Pearl Harbor did not alone result in murder and the slaughter of thousands of human beings. It did not eventuate only in the destruction of property. It was an outright act of undermining and destroying the hope of a world for peace. When a nation employs a deceit and treachery, using periods of negotiations and the negotiations themselves as a cloak to screen a perfidious attack, then there is a prime example of the crime of all crimes.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, was fully aware that if Japan lost the war, he would be tried as a war criminal for that attack; as it turned out, he was killed by the USAAF in Operation Vengeance in 1943. At the Tokyo Trials, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, Shigenori Tōgō, then Foreign Minister, Shigetarō Shimada, the Minister of the Navy, and Osami Nagano, Chief of Naval General Staff, were charged with crimes against peace (charges 1 to 36) and murder (charges 37 to 52) in connection with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Along with war crimes and crimes against humanity (charges 53 to 55), Tojo was among the seven Japanese leaders sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1948, Shigenori Tōgō received a 20-year sentence, Shimada received a life sentence, and Nagano died of natural causes during the Trial in 1947.

Over the years, many Japanese nationalists argued that the attack on Pearl Harbor was justified as an act of self-defense in response to the oil embargo imposed by the United States. Most historians and scholars agree that the oil embargo cannot be used as justification for using military force against a foreign nation imposing the embargo because there is a clear distinction between a perception of something being essential to the welfare of the nation-state and a threat sufficiently serious to warrant an act of force in response, which Japan had failed to consider. Japanese scholar and diplomat Takeo Iguchi states that it is "ard to say from the perspective of international law that exercising the right of self-defense against economic pressures is considered valid." While Japan felt that its dreams of further expansion would be brought to a halt by the American embargo, this "need" cannot be considered proportional with the destruction suffered by the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, intended by Japanese military planners to be as devastating as possible.

Mass killings

Japanese soldiers shooting blindfolded Sikh prisoners and then bayonetting them. Photos discovered after the liberation of Singapore.
Xuzhou, China, 1938. A mass grave filled with bodies of Chinese civilians, murdered by Japanese soldiers.
Photo taken in Xuzhou, showing the body of a Chinese woman who was raped and killed by Japanese soldiers

The estimated number of people killed by Japanese troops varies. R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, estimates that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly three to over ten million people, most likely six million Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Malays, Indonesians, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including European, American, and Australian prisoners of war. According to Rummel, "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture." According to Rummel, in China alone, from 1937 to 1945, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and a total of 10.2 million Chinese were killed in the course of the war. According to the British historian M. R. D. Foot, civilian deaths were between 10 million and 20 million. British historian Mark Felton claims that up to 30 million people were killed, most of them civilians.:

The Japanese murdered 30 million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23 million of these were ethnic Chinese. It is a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning.

One of the major atrocities committed during this period was the Nanjing Massacre of 1937–38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 260,000 civilians and prisoners of war, though some have placed the figure as high as 350,000. The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders has the death figure of 300,000 inscribed on its entrance.

In the early 1980s, after conducting extensive interviews with Chinese survivors and reviewing existing Japanese records, Japanese journalist Honda Katsuichi concluded that the violence perpetrated by Japanese troops in the Nanjing Massacre was not an isolated event. Instead, it was part of a broader pattern of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in the Lower Yangtze region since the Battle of Shanghai. Hosaka Akira was an army physician, and his infantry battalion was stationed in China. In his diary, he admitted to following an order to murder civilians in the Chinese city of Changzhou. Hosaka's diary documenting the Japanese atrocities in Changzhou has been supported by various Japanese sources. In 1987, his squad leader, Kitayama, confessed to killing civilians in Changzhou. Makihara Nobuo was part of a infantry platoon that entered a Chinese town. In Makihara's diary, he recorded that his Machine Gun Company followed orders to indiscriminately kill all civilians in the town.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese followed what has been called a "killing policy", including killings committed against minorities such as Hui Muslims in China. According to Wan Lei, "In a Hui clustered village in Gaocheng county of Hebei, the Japanese captured twenty Hui men among whom they only set two younger men free through "redemption", and buried alive the other eighteen Hui men. In Mengcun village of Hebei, the Japanese killed more than 1,300 Hui people within three years of their occupation of that area." The Japanese also desecrated and destroyed mosques, and destroyed Hui cemeteries. After the Nanjing Massacre, mosques in Nanjing were found filled with dead bodies. Many Hui Muslims in the Second Sino-Japanese War fought against the Japanese military.

In addition, The Hui Muslim county of Dachang was subjected to massacres by the Japanese military.

Another massacre during this period was the Parit Sulong massacre in Japanese-occupied Malaya, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Imperial Japanese Army massacred approximately five hundred prisoners of war, although higher estimates exist. A similar crime committed was the Changjiao massacre in China. Back in Southeast Asia, the Laha massacre resulted in the deaths of 705 prisoners of war on Japanese-occupied Indonesia's Ambon Island, and in Japanese-occupied Singapore's Alexandra Hospital massacre, Japanese soldiers murdered hundreds of wounded Allied soldiers, innocent citizens, and medical staff.

In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre of February 1945 resulted in the death of 100,000 civilians in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hands of the Japanese during the occupation. In Singapore during February and March 1942, the Sook Ching massacre was a systematic extermination of "anti-Japanese" elements among the Chinese population; however, Japanese soldiers did not try to identify who was "anti-Japanese". As a result, the Japanese soldiers engaged in indiscriminate killing. Former Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, who was almost a victim of the Sook Ching Massacre, has stated that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties. According to Lieutenant Colonel Hishakari Takafumi, a newspaper correspondent at the time, the plan was to ultimately kill about 50,000 Chinese, and 25,000 had already been murdered when the order was received to scale down the operation.

There were other massacres of civilians, such as the Kalagon massacre. In wartime Southeast Asia, the Overseas Chinese and European diaspora were particular targets of Japanese abuse; in the former case, this was motivated by a Sinophobic resentment of the historic expanse and influence of Chinese culture, and in the latter, by a racist Pan-Asianism and a desire to show former colonial subjects the impotence of their former rulers. The Japanese executed all the Malay Sultans on Kalimantan and wiped out the Malay elite in the Pontianak incidents. In the Jesselton Revolt, the Japanese killed thousands of native civilians during the Japanese occupation of British Borneo and nearly wiped out the entire Suluk Muslim population of the coastal islands. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, when a Moro Muslim juramentado swordsman launched a suicide attack against the Japanese, the Japanese would massacre the man's entire family or village. However, Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia were sometimes spared if they supported the war effort, whether sincerely or not. This also applied to other ethnicities.

50 Moros were vivisected by a Japanese unit, the 33rd coast guard squad in Zamboanga in Mindanao in which Akira Makino served in. Moro guerillas armed with spears were the main enemies of the Japanese in the area.

Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "kill all, burn all, and loot all", which caused many massacres such as the Panjiayu massacre, where 1,230 Chinese people were killed. Additionally, captured Allied servicemen, and civilians were massacred in various incidents, including the following:

The Japanese massacred Hui Muslims in their mosques in Nanjing and destroyed Hui mosques in other parts of China. Shen Xi'en and his father Shen Decheng witnessed the corpses of Hui Muslims slaughtered by the Japanese in Nanjing, when he was asked by Hui people to help bury their relatives. The Hui security maintenance leader Sun Shurong and Hui Imams Zhang Zihui, Ma Zihe, Ge Changfa, Wang Shouren, Ma Changfa were involved in collecting Hui corpses and burying them after the Nanjing massacre. The Ji'e lane Mosque caretaker father Zhang was in his 60s when killed by the Japanese and his decomposing corpse was the first to be washed in accordance to Islamic custom and buried. They buried the Hui corpses in Jiuhua mountain, Dongguashi, Hongtu Bridge (where Guangzhou road is now located), Wutai mountain, Donguashi (where Nanjing Normal University is located). Shen Xi'en helped bury 400 Hui bodies including children, women, and men. Shen recalled burying a 7 or 8 year old boy in addition to his mother among the Hui bodies.

Japanese used machine guns to massacre Muslim Suluk children and women at a mosque in the aftermath of the Jesselton revolt.

In the Pontianak incidents, the Japanese justified their mass execution of the twelve Arab and Malay Muslim Sultans by claiming they were planning to rebel and that the Arabs, Sultans, and Chinese were all working to "massacre Japanese". The Japanese report on the incident noted that there were anti-Dutch Chinese independence movements before and linked them to the anti-Japanese conspiracy. On 28 June 1944 the Japanese executed the Sultans of West Kalimantan including Pontianak after a naval court martial. The accusations against the Sultans were printed in Borneo Shimbun on 1 July 1944. The Japanese slaughter of the Malay sultans of west Kalimantan led to Dayaks ascending to the political scene after the violent destruction of the Malay nobility at the hands of Japan.

Human experimentation and biological warfare

Main articles: Unit 731 and Japan and weapons of mass destruction § Bioweapons
A hypothermia experiment, using Chinese prisoners as subjects under surveillance by Japanese soldiers in 731
Shirō Ishii, commander of Unit 731

Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. The purpose of experimentation was to develop biological weapons that could be used for aggression. Biological agents and gases developed from these experiments were used against the Chinese Army and civilian population. These included Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii. Victims were subjected to experiments including but not limited to vivisection, amputations without anesthesia, testing of biological weapons, horse blood transfusions, and injection of animal blood into their corpses. Anesthesia was not used because it was believed that anesthetics would adversely affect the results of the experiments.

To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.

A former unit 731 member testified:

As soon as the symptoms were observed, the prisoner was taken from the cell and into the dissection room...he was strapped down, still screaming frightfully. One of the doctors stuffed a towel into his mouth, then with one quick slice of the scalpel he was opened up." Witnesses at vivisections report that the victim usually lets out a horrible scream when the cut is made, and the voice stops soon after.

Furthermore, according to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000. Top officers of Unit 731 were not prosecuted for war crimes after the war, in exchange for turning over the results of their research to the Allies. They were also reportedly given responsible positions in Japan's pharmaceutical industry, medical schools, and health ministry.

While Unit 731 is the most infamous facility, scholars have shown that Japanese biological and chemical warfare units stationed in Beijing (Unit 1855), Nanjing (Unit 1644) and Canton (Unit 1688) also experimented on human subjects.

Unit 731 members spraying a noxious substance onto a victim as part of their research

One case of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine of 11 members of Lt. Marvin Watkins' 29th Bomb Group crew (of the 6th Bomb Squadron) survived the crash of their U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on 5 May 1945. The bomber's commander was separated from his crew and sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.

In 1939, Unit 731 launched 100 periodic biological attacks on military and civilian targets. Attacks include contaminating wells with intestinal pathogens, distribution of microbe-laced foods, air drops of plague inflected fleas, and aerial spray of contaminants. Although the effectiveness of the biological attacks is hard to assess, civilian casualties are estimated to be high, with several hundred thousand killed.

Some Japanese physicians killed their victims with potassium cyanide before dissecting them, while others used chloroform. Yoshio Onodera, who conducted human experiments within Unit 1644, testified that his group conducted experiments on roughly 100-150 people. They would then murder their victims by injecting them with chloroform.

On 11 March 1948, 30 people, including several doctors and one female nurse, were brought to trial by American military tribunal. Fukujiro Ishiyama, the doctor most responsible for the experimentation, killed himself before the trial started. Charges of cannibalism were dropped, but 23 people were found guilty of vivisection or wrongful removal of body parts. Five were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, and the rest to shorter terms. In 1950, the military governor of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, commuted all of the death sentences and significantly reduced most of the prison terms. All of those involved in relation to the university vivisection, with the exception of Isamu Yokoyama, the general most responsible for allowing the experimentation to happen, walked free no later than 1958. Yokoyama died in prison in 1952. In 1980, an author found that one of the doctors who was supposed to be executed was still alive and practicing medicine.

In China, the Japanese waged ruthless biological warfare against Chinese civilians and soldiers. Japanese aviators sprayed fleas carrying plague germs over metropolitan areas, creating bubonic plague epidemics. Japanese soldiers used flasks of diseases-causing microbes, which included cholera, dysentery, typhoid, anthrax, and paratyphoid, to contaminate rivers, wells, reservoirs, and houses; mixed food with deadly bacteria to infect hungry Chinese civilians; and even passed out chocolate filled with anthrax bacteria to the local children.

During the final months of World War II, Japan had planned to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in San Diego, California, during Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, hoping that the plague would spread terror to the American population, and thereby dissuade America from attacking Japan. The plan was set to launch at night on 22 September 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.

In July 1989, a mass grave of more than one hundred skeletons was unearthed at a construction site in Tokyo, which was the former location of the Army Medical College from 1929 to 1945. Investigators determined that the bones belonged to various ethnic Asian groups of foreign origin, as indicated by the skulls. Investigators also discovered skulls that were marked with scalpels, cut by a sword, or pierced by bullets from a pistol. From these findings, it's inferred that Japanese military physicians conducted experiments on the brains of individuals on the battlefield, and that the evidence was subsequently disposed of and buried at that location.

In 2006, former IJN medical officer Akira Makino stated that he was ordered—as part of his training—to carry out vivisection on about 30 civilian prisoners in the Philippines between December 1944 and February 1945. The surgery included amputations. Most of Makino's victims were Moro Muslims. Ken Yuasa, a former military doctor in China, has also admitted to similar incidents in which he was aggressively performing live vivisections on live Chinese victims, blaming the nationalistic indoctrination of his schooling for his conduct and lack of remorse. Yuasa admitted to killing Chinese captives while training others in surgery. He further added that in order to quickly train military physicians for the battlefield, physicians would gather every few months to perform "surgery drills" in China. Surgery drills involved capturing local citizens, shooting them in the thigh with a bullet, and monitoring the amount of time it would take to extract the bullet. The drills were widespread in China, with most instances involving the abduction of local citizens by the military and their subsequent delivery to the Army's medical division.

The Imperial House of Japan was responsible for the human experimentation programs, as members of the imperial family, including Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, Prince Chichibu, Prince Mikasa, and Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda, participated in the programs in various ways, which included authorizing, funding, supplying, and inspecting biomedical facilities.

Shiro Ishii was demoted after the cholera attack he directed in 1942 against Chinese civilians accidentally infected and killed Japanese soldiers and he did not direct anymore bioglocial attacks for the rest of the war. Ishii boasted about his role in the 1940-1941 biological disease attacks and boasted to the Japanese army in the 1942 attacks that he would kill even more, until he accidentally killed Japanese troops with his own weapons, causing a disaster among Japanese ranks and he was forced out and replaced.

Use of chemical weapons

See also: Changde chemical weapon attack and Japan and weapons of mass destruction § Chemical weapons

While obtaining precise numbers is difficult, recent studies indicate that the number of Chinese killed by Japanese chemical warfare may have been in excess of 500,000 people.

Throughout the war with China from 1937 to 1945, Japan deployed chemical weapons, including poisonous and irritating gases, against both Chinese military personnel and civilians. This action was denounced by the League of Nations in May 1938.

According to Walter E. Grunden, history professor at Bowling Green State University, the Japanese incorporated gas warfare into many aspects of their army's war against China because they concluded that Chinese forces were unable to retaliate in kind. Their utilization of gas warfare involved deploying specialized gas troops, as well as infantry, artillery, engineers, and air force units. Grunden further added that "from 1937 to 1945, the military services of Japan used chemical weapons on over 2000 occasions, primarily in the China Theater of Operations."

The Narashino Military Academy near Tokyo had assembled a compilation of fifty-six case studies detailing the use of chemical weapons by Japan in China during World War II. This collection included information on lethal agents like Yperite, commonly known as mustard gas. The document was discovered at the National Archives and Records Administration by a Japanese historian.

According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were sporadically used in 1937, but in early 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army resorted to the full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite, and nausea gas (red), and from mid-1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communist Chinese troops.

In 2004, Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka discovered documents in the Australian National Archives which state that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 on Kai Islands (Indonesia).

According to Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito signed orders which specified the use of chemical weapons in China. For example, during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite the 1899 Hague Declaration IV, 2 – Declaration on the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases and Article 23 (a) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land. A resolution adopted by the League of Nations on 14 May condemned the use of poison gas by Japan.

According to Prince Mikasa, a member of the imperial family of Japan, he watched an army film that showed Japanese troops gassing Chinese prisoners who were tied to stakes.

Another incident of chemical warfare occurred during the Battle of Yichang in October 1941, during which the 19th Artillery Regiment helped the 13th Brigade of the IJA 11th Army by launching 1,000 yellow gas shells and 1,500 red gas shells at the Chinese National Revolutionary Army. The area was crowded with Chinese civilians unable to evacuate. Some 3,000 Chinese soldiers were in the area and 1,600 were affected. The Japanese report stated that "the effect of gas seems considerable".

In 2004, Yoshimi Yoshiaki published the most comprehensive study of Japan's military use of poisonous gases in China and Southeast Asia. Yoshimi discovered a battle report by a Japanese Infantry Brigade that detailed its use of mustard gas in a major operation against the Communist-led Eighth Route Army in Shanxi Province in the winter of 1942. The unit which carried out the operation noted the severity of the mustard gas attack, and it also commented about the anti-Japanese sentiment which existed among the members of the civilian population who were affected by the mustard gas.

Torture of prisoners of war

See also: Bamboo torture and Effectiveness of torture for interrogation
A burial detail of American and Filipino POWs killed during the Bataan Death March, 1942

Japanese imperial forces employed widespread use of torture on prisoners of war, usually in an effort to gather military intelligence quickly. Tortured POWs were often later executed. A former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:

The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the Yamato [Japanese] race was superior.

After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II, the Japanese secret police tortured a captured American P-51 fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda to discover how many atomic bombs the Allies had and what the future targets were. McDilda, who had originally told his captors he knew nothing about the atomic bomb (and who indeed knew nothing about nuclear fission), "confessed" under further torture that the US had 100 atomic bombs and that Tokyo and Kyoto were the next targets:

As you know, when atoms are split, there are a lot of pluses and minuses released. Well, we've taken these and put them in a huge container and separated them from each other with a lead shield. When the box is dropped out of a plane, we melt the lead shield and the pluses and minuses come together. When that happens, it causes a tremendous bolt of lightning and all the atmosphere over a city is pushed back! Then when the atmosphere rolls back, it brings about a tremendous thunderclap, which knocks down everything beneath it.

— Marcus McDilda,

According to many historians, one of the favorite techniques of Japanese torturers was "simulated drowning", in which water was poured over the immobilized victim's head, until they suffocated and lost consciousness. They were then resuscitated brutally (usually with the torturer jumping on their abdomen to expel the water) and then subjected to a new session of torture. The entire process could be repeated for about twenty minutes.

Execution and killing of captured Allied airmen

A blindfolded Doolittle Raider taken captive in 1942

Many Allied airmen captured by the Japanese on land or at sea were executed in accordance with official Japanese policy. During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, three American airmen who were shot down and landed at sea were spotted and captured by Imperial Japanese Navy warships. After being tortured, machinist mate first class Bruno Gaido and his pilot Ensign Frank O'Flaherty were tied to five-gallon kerosene cans filled with water and dumped overboard from the Japanese destroyer Makigumo; a third airman, Ensign Wesley Osmus, was fatally wounded with an axe before being pushed into the sea from the stern of the Arashi.

On 13 August 1942, Japan passed the Enemy Airmen's Act, which stated that Allied pilots who bombed non-military targets in the Pacific Theater and were captured by Japanese forces were subject to trial and punishment, despite the absence of any international law containing provisions regarding aerial warfare. This legislation was passed in response to the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942, in which American B-25 bombers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities. According to the Hague Convention of 1907 (the only convention Japan had ratified regarding the treatment of prisoners of war), any military personnel captured on land or at sea by enemy troops were to be treated as prisoners of war and not punished for simply being lawful combatants. Eight Doolittle Raiders captured upon landing in China (four months before the passage of the Act) were the first Allied aircrew to be brought before a kangaroo court in Shanghai under the act, charged with strafing of Japanese civilians during the Doolittle Raid. The eight aircrew were forbidden to present any defense and, despite the lack of legitimate evidence, were found guilty of participating in aerial military operations against Japan. Five of the eight sentences were commuted to life imprisonment; the other three airmen were taken to a cemetery outside Shanghai, where they were executed by firing squad on 14 October 1942.

The Enemy Airmen's Act contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Allied airmen throughout the Pacific War. An estimated 132 Allied airmen shot down during the bombing campaign against Japan in 1944–1945 were summarily executed after short kangaroo trials or drumhead courts-martial. Imperial Japanese military personnel deliberately killed 33 American airmen at Fukuoka, including fifteen who were beheaded shortly after the Japanese Government's intention to surrender was announced on 15 August 1945. Mobs of civilians also killed several Allied airmen before the Japanese military arrived to take the airmen into custody. Another 94 airmen died from other causes while in Japanese custody, including 52 who were killed when they were deliberately abandoned in a prison during the bombing of Tokyo on 24–25 May 1945.

Execution and killing of captured Allied seamen

  • Rear Admiral Takero Kouta, commander of the Japanese First Submarine Force at Truk, on 20 March 1943 sent out to subs under his command an order to kill Merchant Navy crewman after the ship was sunk.
  • The United States Merchant Navy ship SS Jean Nicolet, torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-8 on 2 July 1944, off Ceylon at 03°28′S 074°30′E / 3.467°S 74.500°E / -3.467; 74.500. All of the crew and passengers made it into the lifeboats safely. The I-8 forced the 100 onto the deck of the submarine and then killed most of them. The I-8 crew shot at both the crew and the lifeboats. The submarine crew took the crew's valuables. Those not shot, about 30 crew members, were hit and stabbed on the deck. Seeing a plane, the submarine crew tossed overboard the remaining crew and dived. A Catalina flying boat spotted the crew in the water and sent Royal Navy armed trawler HMS Hoxa rescued the men. After over 30 hours in the water the crew was rescued on 4 July 1944.
  • Merchant Navy SS Behar sank on 6 March 1944, in the Indian Ocean, seventy-two merchant seamen made it into lifeboats. They were taken aboard the heavy cruiser Tone and the crew's valuables taken. The crew was roped up in painful positions, beaten, and locked in an extremely hot store room. By order of Vice Admiral Sakonju, the crew, men and women, were killed. Sakonju was executed for his war crimes in 1947.
  • Japanese submarine I-26, after sinking the merchant ship SS Richard Hovey in the Arabian Sea, shot at the crew in their three lifeboats and a two life rafts. I-26 rammed one lifeboats capsizing it. I-26 took the captain and three crew POWs. The four survived and were repatriated after the end of the war.
  • Planes from the Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryū sank and killed crew and passengers in the SS Poelau Bras's lifeboats, sinking six of the nine boats off Sumatra.
  • I-37 on 27 November 1943 shot and killed eight crewmen in the MV Scotia lifeboats. On 22 February 1944 shot at SS British Chivalry's lifeboats, 13 were killed. On 29 February 1944 SS Ascot's lifeboats were shot at, leaving only seven survivors.
  • I-165 on 18 March 1944 shot at SS Nancy Moller's lifeboats, killing 23.
  • I-12 on 28 October 1944 shot at the lifeboats of the SS John A. Johnson, killing eleven.
  • One survivor, James Blears, a 21-year-old radio operator, of the crew of the SS Tjisalak, lived to tell of the torture and execution of the lifeboat crew by submarine I-8. How many other lifeboat crews did not have survivors is not known.
  • Cargo ship Langkoeas lifeboats attacked by I-158 I-158 on 3 January 1942 sank the Dutch cargo ship SS Langkoeas and subsequently attacked its lifeboats with machine guns. After interrogating the crew under threat of torture, its commander threw them back into the sea without their lifeboats.
  • Tanker Augustina massacre, in the Western Java Sea, 1942, lifeboats machine-gunned, only 2 survived.

Using Allied nationals as human shields

The prohibition of using enemy nationals as human shields is based on Article 23 under Section II of the 1907 Fourth Hague Convention, which states: "A belligerent is forbidden to compel the nationals of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country". A World War I-era 1915 Belgian report stated "f it be not permissible to compel a man to fire on his fellow citizens, neither can he be forced to protect the enemy and to serve as a living screen."

The application is limited to only enemy nationals and it does not apply to the same persons exposed to dangers from aerial and naval attack since the Fourth Hague Convention only governs land warfare. The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits parties to the international conflict from using protected persons regardless of nationality as human shields against any type of enemy attacks, closing the gaps mentioned in the preceding sentence.

Battle of Manila (1945)

During the Battle of Manila in 1945, Japanese forces used Filipino civilians as human shields to protect their positions against the liberating American troops. Author Damien Lewis wrote "The Japanese defenders had taken thousand of Filipinos–men, females, and children alike–hostage, and were holding them as human shields. Many died in the bombardment and subsequent battles that followed, as the walled city was cleared in bitter street-to-street fighting." Alec Wahlman wrote:

Unlike US forces, the Japanese in Manila did not allow the presence of the civilian population to interfere with their operations. In fact, they actively used the population as both shields and targets ... On one occasion, an American forward observer spotted some Japanese moving supplies, while twenty Filipinos were held at gunpoint nearby, including a Filipino girl tied naked to a tree, to avoid drawing American artillery fire.

An American WWII veteran who fought in the 1945 Battle of Manila stated "the Japanese would use Philippine civilians as human shields when they were trying to get away. The Japs would grab them and drag them in front of them. We couldn't shoot at the Japanese when they had the civilians in front of them." When American forces reached Intramuros, they realized 4,000 Filipino civilians were held hostage within the wall, most of whom were rounded up by the Japanese and used as human shields. U.S. commanders demanded the Japanese soldiers to surrender or release the hostages but were met in response with silence. American artillery and infantry assaults on the wall began as a result, killing over 1,000 Japanese and taking 25 prisoners, but the ensuing fight with the Japanese defenders also caused considerable and collateral damage along the way.

The American assault on Intramuros weakened Japanese defenses, and the Japanese decided to release 3,000 hostages, most of them females and children, because most of the men under Japanese captivity were murdered. At the end, the use of human shields along with the Manila massacre by the Japanese resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians in the battle.

Cannibalism

Many written reports and testimonies which were collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the tribunal's future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war in many parts of Asia and the Pacific. In many cases, these acts of cannibalism were inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel which resulted from hunger. According to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity which was conducted by whole squads which were under the command of officers". This frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies. For example, an Indian POW, Havildar Changdi Ram, testified that " the Kempeitai beheaded pilot. I saw this from behind a tree and watched some of the Japanese cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, buttocks and carry it off to their quarters ... They cut it small pieces and fried it."

In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified in New Guinea and stated:

... the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died.

According to another account by Jemadar Abdul Latif of 4/9 Jat Regiment of the Indian Army who was rescued by the Australian Army at the Sepik Bay in 1945:

At the village of Suaid, a Japanese medical officer periodically visited the Indian compound and selected each time the healthiest men. These men were taken away ostensibly for carrying out duties, but they never reappeared.

Perhaps the most senior officer convicted of cannibalism was Lt Gen. Yoshio Tachibana (立花芳夫,Tachibana Yoshio), who with 11 other Japanese personnel was tried in August 1946 in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, during August 1944, on Chichijima, in the Bonin Islands. The airmen were beheaded on Tachibana's orders. Because military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". Tachibana was sentenced to death, and hanged.

Avoidable hunger

Australian and Dutch prisoners of war at Tarsau in Thailand, 1943

Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to Japanese troops in occupied countries were also considered war crimes, because Article 52 under Section III of the 1907 Fourth Hague Convention states that "Requisitions in kind and services ... shall be in proportion to the resources of the country". Millions of civilians in Southeast Asia – especially in Vietnam and Dutch East Indies, which were major producers of rice – died during the avoidable hunger in 1944–45.

In the Vietnamese Famine of 1945 one to two million Vietnamese starved to death in the Red River delta of northern Vietnam due to the Japanese, as the Japanese seized Vietnamese rice without paying for it. In Phat Diem the Vietnamese farmer Di Ho was one of the few survivors who saw the Japanese steal grain. The North Vietnamese government accused both France and Japan of the famine and said 1–2 million Vietnamese died. Võ An Ninh took photographs of dead and dying Vietnamese during the great famine. Starving Vietnamese were dying throughout northern Vietnam in 1945 due to the Japanese seizure of their crops. By the time the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese forces, Vietnamese corpses were on the streets of Hanoi and had to be cleaned up by students.

Forced labor

Main article: Slavery in Japan
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Japanese soldiers escorting Chinese forced-labour farm workers, 1937

The Japanese military's use of forced labor, by Asian civilians and POWs, also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo, and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilised by the Kōa-in (Japanese Asia Development Board) to perform forced labour. More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway.

The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java the Japanese military forced between four and ten million rōmusha (Japanese: "manual laborers") to work. About 270 000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia, but only 52 000 were repatriated to Java, likely indicating an eighty percent death rate.

According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor Hirohito personally ratified the decision to remove the constraints of international law (The Hague Conventions) on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of 5 August 1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war". The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. Japan was not a signatory to the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention, although they ratified the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Wounded and Sick.

Shortly after the war, Japan's Foreign Ministry wrote a comprehensive report about Chinese laborers. The report estimated that of some 40,000 Chinese laborers taken to Japan, nearly 7,000 had died by the end of the war. The Japanese burned all copies except for one for the fear of that it might become incriminating evidence at the war crimes trials. In 1958, a Chinese man was discovered hiding in the mountains of Hokkaido. The man did not know that the war was over, and he was one of thousands of laborers who were taken to Japan. This specific event brought attention to Japan's use of forced Asian labor during the war.

Korean men and women were the largest group forced into labor in wartime Japan, and many were not able to return to Korea afterwards.

In the 1930s and 1940s the Japanese in Manchukuo forced all members of the indigenous Hezhen ethnic minority into forced labour camps where entire Hezhen clans died, and only 300 Hezhen survived at the end of World War II. The Hezhen population later regrew to 5,000. Hezhen culture was damaged and only a few Hezhen retained traditional knowledge like making fish skin clothing, like the mother of You Wenfeng.

Rape

See also: Comfort women

The expressions ianfu (慰安婦, "comfort women") or jūgun ianfu (従軍慰安婦, "women of military comfort") are euphemisms for women used in military brothels in occupied countries, many of whom were forcefully recruited or recruited through fraud, and who are considered victims of sexual assault and/or sexual slavery.

In addition to the systematic use of comfort women, Japanese troops engaged in wholesale rape in Nanjing, China. John Rabe, the leader of a Safety Zone in Nanjing, China, kept a diary during the Nanjing Massacre, and wrote about the Japanese atrocities committed against the people in the Safety Zone.

Japanese soldiers committed mass rapes in Manila massacre in the Philippines. Japanese soldiers in Bayview Hotel, Manila, raped hundreds of Italian, Russian, Spanish, British, American, and Filipino women.

In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published material based on his research in archives at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial institutions such as the Kōain and "comfort stations". When Yoshimi's findings were published in the Japanese news media on 12 January 1993, they caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi, to acknowledge some of the facts that same day. On 17 January, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in South Korea. On 6 July and 4 August, the Japanese government issued two statements by which it recognised that "Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military of the day", "The Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women", and that the women were "recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion".

Japanese veteran Yasuji Kaneko admitted to The Washington Post that the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."

The Bahay na Pula in the Philippines was an example of a military-operated garrison where local women were raped.

On 17 April 2007, Yoshimi and another historian, Hirofumi Hayashi, announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokkeitai (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina, and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokkeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.

On 12 May 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Dutch government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.

In other cases, some victims from East Timor testified they were dragged from their homes and forced into prostitution at military brothels even when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers "night after night".

A Dutch-Indonesian comfort woman, Jan Ruff O'Herne (who later lived in Australia until her death), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims, and that it wanted to rewrite history. Ruff O'Herne said that she had been raped "day and night" for three months by Japanese soldiers when she was 21.

On 26 June 2007, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution asking that Japan "should acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its military's coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war". On 30 July 2007, the House of Representatives passed the resolution. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe said this decision was "regrettable".

Scholars have stated that there were as many as 200,000 comfort women, mostly from Korea, and some other countries such as China, Philippines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Netherlands, and Australia were forced to engage in sexual activity.

Japanese use of Malays, Javanese Thai, Burmese, Filipino, and Vietnamese women as comfort women was corroborated by testimonies. As a result of the rape, many women were infected with sexually transmitted diseases. There were comfort women stations in Malaya, Indonesia, Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Korea.

After the defeat of Japan, some of the non-European victims received no compensation or apology and the exploitation of them was ignored.

As the Dutch implemented a war of attrition and scorched earth, they forced Chinese on Java to flee inland, and the Dutch destroyed all important assets, including Chinese factories and property. Local Indonesians joined in on the Dutch violence against the Chinese, looting Chinese property and trying to attack Chinese citizens. However, when the Japanese troops landed and seized control of Java from the Dutch, to people's surprise, the Japanese forced the native Indonesians to stop looting and attacking Chinese and warned the Indonesians they would not tolerate anti-Chinese violence in Java. The Japanese viewed the Chinese in Java and their economic power specifically as important and vital to the Japanese war effort, so they did not physically harm the Chinese of Java, and no known execution or torture of Chinese citizens took place (unlike in other places). There was no violent confrontation between Japanese and Chinese on Java, unlike in British Malaya. The Japanese also allowed Chinese of Java in the Federation of Overseas-Chinese Associations (Hua Chiao Tsung Hui) to form the Keibotai, their own armed Chinese defence corps for protection with Japanese military instructors training them how to shoot and use spears. The Chinese viewed this as important to defending themselves from local Indonesians. The majority of Chinese of Java did not die in the war. It was only after the war ended when Japanese control fell and then the native Indonesians again started attacks against the Chinese of Java when the Japanese were unable to protect them.

In Java, the Japanese heavily recruited Javanese girls as comfort women and brought them to New Guinea, Malaya, Thailand, and other areas foreign to Indonesia besides using them in Java itself. The Japanese brought Javanese women as comfort women to Buru island, and Kalimantan. The Japanese recruited help from local collaborator police of all ethnicities to recruit Javanese girls, with one account accusing Chinese recruiters of tricking a Javanese regent into sending good Javanese girls into prostitution for the Japanese in May 1942. The Japanese also lied to the Javanese telling them that their girls would become waitresses and actresses when recruiting them. The Japanese brought Javanese women as comfort women prostitutes to Kupang in Timor while in East Timor the Japanese took local women in Dili. In Bali, the Japanese sexually harassed Balinese women when they came and started forcing Balinese women into brothels for prostitution, with Balinese men and Chinese men used as recruiters for the Balinese women. All of the brothels in Bali were staffed by Balinese women. In brothels in Kalimantan, native Indonesian women made up 80% of the prostitutes. Javanese girls and local girls were used in a Japanese brothel in Ambon in Batu Gantung. European Dutch women were overrepresented in documents on Dutch East Indies comfort women which did not reflect the actual reality because the Dutch did not care about native Indonesian women being victimised by Japan, refusing to prosecute cases against them since Indonesia was not a UN member at the time. Javanese comfort women who were taken by Japanese to islands outside Java were treated differently depending on whether they stayed on those islands or returned to Java. Since Javanese society was sexually permissive and they kept it secret from other Javanese, the Javanese women who returned to Java fared better, but the Javanese women who stayed on the islands like Buru were treated harsher by their hosts since they locals in Buru were more patriarchal. The Japanese murdered Christians and forced girls into prostitution in Timor and Sumba, desecrating sacred vessels and vestments in churches and using the churches as brothels. Javanese girls were brought as prostitutes by the Japanese to Flores and Buru. Eurasians, Indians, Chinese, Dutch, Menadonese, Bataks, Bugis, Dayaks, Javanese, Arabs, and Malays were arrested and massacred in the Mandor affair.

The Japanese brought Indonesian Javanese girls to British Borneo as comfort women to be raped by Japanese officers at the Ridge road school and Basel Mission Church, and the Telecommunication Center Station (former rectory of the All Saints Church) in Kota Kinabalu as well as ones in Balikpapan and Beaufort. Japanese soldiers raped Indonesian women and Dutch women in the Netherlands East Indies. Many of the women were infected with STDs as a result. Sukarno prostituted Indonesian girls from ethnic groups like Minangkabau to the Japanese. The Japanese destroyed many documents related to their rape of Indonesian Javanese girls at the end of the war so the true extent of the mass rape is uncountable, but testimony witnesses records the names and accounts of Indonesian Javanese comfort women.

Japanese in one instance tried to disguise the Javanese comfort girls they were raping as red cross nurses with red cross armbands when they surrendered to Australian soldiers in Kupang, Timor.

In addition to disguising the Java girls with Red Cross armbands some Dutch girls were also brought to Kupang and native girls from Kupang were also kidnapped by the Japanese while the native men were forced into hard labour.

Indian and Javanese captives in Biak were freed from Japanese control by Allied forces.

Only 70,000 Javanese survived out of 260,000 Javanese forced to labour on the death railway between Burma and Thailand.

In August 1945, the Japanese were getting ready to execute female European internees by shooting in the Dutch East Indies and their plans were only stopped by the atomic bomb with the plans and list of detainees already written down.

Francis Stanley (Frank) Terry, an Australian sailor on a naval vessel, participated in the repatriation of Indonesian Javanese comfort women from islands across Indonesia back to their home.

The Dutch royal family and government seized the money from Japanese comfort women prostitution in the Dutch East Indies territory for itself instead of compensating the women.

The Japanese forced Javanese women to work in brothels and Javanese men to become forced labour at airstrips in Labuan, Borneo. The Javanese men were worked to starvation, resembling skeletons, barely able to move and were sick with beri beri by the time they were freed in June 1945 by Australians. The Japanese reserved a house as a brothel and officer's club on Fox Road in Labuan.

On 28 August 1945, the British and Australians gave medical treatment to 300 Javanese and Malay men slaves of the Japanese who were malnourished and starving from forced labour.

Many Indonesian comfort females were reluctant to talk about their experiences due to shame. A 10-year-old Indonesian girl named Niyem from Karamangmojo in Yogyakarta was repeatedly raped for two months by Japanese soldiers along with other Indonesian girls in West Java. She did not tell her parents what the Japanese did to her when she managed to flee.

The Japanese killed four million Indonesians. After the defeat of Japan, the Dutch generally did not care about Japanese rape of non-white, native Indonesian Muslim girls and most of the time they only charged Japanese war criminals for rape of white Dutch women.

Suharto silenced public discussion in Indonesian on Japanese war crimes in Indonesia in order to stop anti-Japanese sentiment building up but it happened regardless when the movie Romusha came out in 1973 and the Peristiwa Malari (Malari affair) riots broke out in Indonesia in 1974 against Japan. Suharto also sought to silence discussion on Japanese war crimes due to Indonesia's own war crimes in East Timor after 1975, but Indonesians started talking about Indonesian comfort women in the 1990s following the example of Korea. Mardyiem, a Javanese Indonesian comfort woman talked about what happened to her after Indonesian comfort women were interviewed by Japanese lawyers, after decades of being forced to stay silent.

Three major revolts happened against Japan by Indonesians in Java. Japanese forced Indonesians of West Java in Cirebon to hand over a massive quota of rice to the Japanese military with Japanese officers using brutality to extract even more than the official quota. The Indonesians in Cirebon rebelled twice and targeted Indonesian collaborator bureaucrats and Japanese officers in 1944. Japan killed a lot of Indonesian rebels while crushing them with deadly force. In Sukmana, Singapurna, the Tasikmalaya regency, the conservative religious teacher Kiai Zainal Mustafa told his followers that in the month when Muhammad was born they would gain divine protection when he gave a sign. In February 1943, Japanese Kempeitai caught wind of what was happening and came to the area but the roads were blocked to stop them. The Indonesian villagers and students began to fight the Japanese and seized the sabre of the Japanese chief to kill him. More Japanese arrived and 86 Japanese and 153 Indonesian villagers died in the fighting. The Japanese then arrested Zainal and 22 others for execution. Supriyadi lead a Peta mutiny against the Japanese in February 1945.

Japanese raped Malay comfort women but UMNO leader Najib Razak blocked all attempts by other UMNO members like Mustapha Yakub at asking Japan for compensation and apologies.

The threat of Japanese rape against Chitty girls led Chitty families to let Eurasians, Chinese, and full-blooded Indians to marry Chitty girls and stop practicing endogamy.

Japanese soldiers gang raped Indian Tamil girls and women they forced to work on the Burma railway and made them dance naked. 150,000 Tamils were killed on the railway by Japanese brutality. Tamils who got sick from cholera were executed by the Japanese. As Tamil women got raped by Japanese, the Japanese soldiers contracted venereal diseases like soft sore, syphilis, and gonorrhoea, and Thai women also spread those diseases to coolies on the railroad.

Looting and destruction of heritage

Several scholars have claimed that the Japanese government, along with Japanese military personnel, engaged in widespread looting during the period of 1895 to 1945. The stolen property included private land, as well as many different kinds of valuable goods looted from banks, depositories, vaults, temples, churches, mosques, art galleries, commercial offices, libraries (including Buddhist monasteries), museums and other commercial premises, and private homes.

In China, an eyewitness, journalist F. Tillman of The New York Times, sent an article to his newspaper where he described the Imperial Japanese Army's entry into Nanjing in December 1937: "The plunder carried out by the Japanese reached almost the entire city. Almost all buildings were entered by Japanese soldiers, often in the sight of their officers, and the men took whatever they wanted. Japanese soldiers often forced Chinese to carry the loot."

In Korea, it is estimated that about 100,000 priceless artifacts and cultural goods were looted by Japanese colonial authorities and private collectors during the nearly fifty years of military occupation. The Administration claims that there are 41,109 cultural objects which are located in Japan but remain unreported by the Japanese authorities. Unlike the works of art looted by Nazis in Europe, the return of property to its rightful owners, or even the discussion of financial reparations in the post-war period, met with strong resistance from the American government, particularly General Douglas MacArthur.

According to several historians, MacArthur's disagreement was not based on issues of rights, ethics, or morals, but on political convenience. He spoke on the topic in a radio message to the U.S. Army in May 1948, the transcript of which was found by the magazine Time in the U.S. National Archives. In it, MacArthur states: "I am completely at odds with the minority view of replacing lost or destroyed cultural property as a result of military action and occupation". With the advent of the Cold War, the general feared "embittering the Japanese people towards us and making Japan vulnerable to ideological pressures and a fertile ground for subversive action".

Kyoichi Arimitsu, one of the last living survivors of the Japanese archeological missions which operated on the Korean peninsula, which started early in the twentieth century, agrees that the plunder in the 1930s was out of control, but that researchers and academics, such as himself, had nothing to do with it. However, he recognizes that the excavated pieces which were deemed to be most historically significant were sent to the Japanese governor-general, who then decided what would be sent to Emperor Hirohito.

In 1965, when Japan and South Korea negotiated a treaty to reestablish diplomatic relations the issue of returning the cultural artifacts was raised. However, the then South Korean dictator, Park Chung Hee, preferred to receive cash compensation that would allow him to build highways and steelworks; works of art and cultural goods were not a priority. As a result, at the time the Koreans had to settle for the return of only 1,326 items, including 852 rare books and 438 ceramic pieces. The Japanese claim that this put an end to any Korean claim regarding reparation for cultural goods (or of any other nature). American journalist Brad Glosserman has stated that an increasing number of South Koreans are raising the issue of the repatriation of stolen cultural artifacts from Japan due to rising affluence among the general populace as well as increased national confidence.

Hundreds of Utsul Muslim houses and mosques in Sanya, Hainan were destroyed by the Japanese in order to build an airport.

Perfidy

Throughout the Pacific War, Japanese soldiers often feigned injury or surrender to lure approaching American forces before attacking them. An alleged example of this was the "Goettge Patrol" during the early days of the Guadalcanal Campaign in August 1942. After the patrol believed they saw a white flag displayed on the west bank of Matanikau River, Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge assembled 25 men, primarily consisting of intelligence personnel, to search the area. Unknown to the patrol, the white flag was actually a Japanese flag with the Hinomaru disc insignia obscured. A Japanese prisoner was plied with alcohol and in his drunken state mistakenly revealed that there were a number of Japanese soldiers west of the Matanikau River who wanted to surrender. The Goettge Patrol landed by boat west of the Lunga Point perimeter, between Point Cruz and the Matanikau River, on a reconnaissance mission to contact a group of Japanese troops that American forces thought was willing to surrender. The Japanese soldiers were not in fact about to surrender and soon after the patrol landed the group of Japanese naval troops ambushed and almost completely wiped out the patrol. Goettge was among the dead. Only three Americans made it back to American lines in the Lunga Point perimeter alive.

News of the killing and supposed treachery by the Japanese outraged the American Marines:

This was the first mass killing of the Marines on Guadalcanal. We were shocked. Shocked ... because headquarters had believed anything a Jap had to say ... The loss of this patrol and the particularly cruel way in which they had met death, hardened our hearts toward the Japanese. The idea of taking prisoners was swept from our minds. It was too dangerous.

Second Lieutenant D. A. Clark of the 7th Marines told a similar story while patrolling Guadalcanal:

I was on my first patrol here, and we were moving up a dry stream bed. We saw 3 Japs come down the river bed out of the jungle. The one in front was carrying a white flag. We thought they were surrendering. When they got up to us they dropped the white flag and then all 3 threw hand grenades. We killed 2 of these Japs, but 1 got away. Apparently they do not mind a sacrifice to get information.

Samuel Eliot Morison, in his book, The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War, wrote:

There were innumerable incidents such as a wounded Japanese soldier at Guadalcanal seizing a scalpel and burying it in the back of a surgeon who was about to save his life by an operation; and a survivor of the Battle of Vella Lavella, rescued by PT-163, pulling a gun and killing a bluejacket in the act of giving a Japanese sailor a cup of coffee.

These incidents, along with many other perfidious actions of the Japanese throughout the Pacific War, led to an American tendency to shoot dead or wounded Japanese soldiers and those attempting to surrender and not readily take them as prisoners of war. Two Marines of Iwo Jima told cautionary tales. One confided:

They always told you take prisoners but we had some bad experiences on Saipan taking prisoners. You take them and then as soon as they get behind the lines they drop grenades and you lose a few more people. You get a little bit leery of taking prisoners when they are fighting to the death and so are you.

Another reported,

Very few of them came out on their own; when they did, why, usually one in the front he'd come out with his hands up and one behind him, he'd come out with a grenade.

Attacks on hospital ships

Hospital ships are painted white with large red crosses to show they are not combat ships but vessels carrying wounded people and medical staff. Japan had signed the Hague Convention X of 1907 that stated attacking a hospital ship is a war crime.

War crimes in Vietnam

The Viet Minh had begun fighting the Vichy French in 1944, then began attacking the Japanese in early 1945 after Japan replaced the French government on 9 March 1945. After the Viet Minh rejected Japanese demands to cease fighting and support Japan, the Japanese implemented the Three Alls policy (San Kuang) against the Vietnamese, pillaging, burning, killing, torturing, and raping Vietnamese women.

Japanese officers ordered their soldiers to behead and burn Vietnamese. Some claimed that Taiwanese and Manchurian soldiers in the Japanese army were participating in atrocities against the Vietnamese.

The Japanese on occasion attacked Vietnamese while masquerading as Viet Minh. They also tried to play the Vietnamese against the French by spreading false rumours that the French were massacring Vietnamese at the time to distract the Vietnamese from Japanese atrocities. Similarly, they attempted to play the Laotians against the Vietnamese by inciting Lao people to kill Vietnamese, as Lao murdered seven Vietnamese officials in Luang Prabang and Lao youths were recruited to an anti-Vietnam organization by the Japanese when they took over Luang Prabang.

The Japanese also started openly looting the Vietnamese. In addition to taking French-owned properties Japanese soldiers stole watches, pencils, bicycles, money, and clothing.

Vietnam was in the grip of a famine in 1945 caused in part by Japanese requisition of food without payment; the Japanese beheaded Vietnamese who stole bread and corn while they were starving. The Vietnamese professor Văn Tạo and Japanese professor Furuta Moto both conducted a study in the field on the Japanese induced famine of 1945 admitting that Japan killed two million Vietnamese by starvation.

On 25 March 2000, the Vietnamese journalist Trần Khuê wrote an article "Dân chủ: Vấn đề của dân tộc và thời đại"(transl. Democracy: A problem of the nation and the times) in which he harshly criticized ethnographers and historians in Ho Chi Minh City's Institute of Social Sciences such as Dr. Đinh Văn Liên and Professor Mạc Đường for trying to whitewash Japan's atrocities against the Vietnamese by, among other things, changing the death toll of two million Vietnamese dead at the hands of the Japanese famine to one million, calling the Japanese invasion as a presence and calling Japanese fascists as simply Japanese at the Vietnam-Japan international conference.

War crimes trials

General Tomoyuki Yamashita (2nd right) on trial in 1945 by a U.S. military commission for the Manila massacre and other violations in Singapore. He was sentenced to death. The case set a precedent (the "Yamashita Standard") on the responsibility of commanders for war crimes.

Soon after the war, the Allied powers indicted 25 persons as Class-A war criminals, and 5,700 persons were indicted as Class-B or Class-C war criminals by Allied criminal courts. Of these, 984 were initially condemned to death, 920 were actually executed, 475 received life sentences, 2,944 received prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were not sentenced or not brought to trial. These indicted war criminals included 178 ethnic Taiwanese and 148 ethnic Korean people. Class A criminals were all tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as "the Tokyo Trials". Other courts were held in numerous places across Asia and the Pacific.

Tokyo Trials

Main article: International Military Tribunal for the Far East

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was formed to try accused people in Japan itself.

High-ranking officers who were tried included Kōichi Kido and Sadao Araki. Three former (unelected) prime ministers: Kōki Hirota, Hideki Tojo, and Kuniaki Koiso were convicted of Class-A war crimes. Many military leaders were also convicted. Two people convicted as Class-A war criminals later served as ministers in post-war Japanese governments.

Hirohito and all members of the Imperial House of Japan implicated in the war such as Prince Chichibu, Prince Asaka, Prince Takeda and Prince Higashikuni were exonerated from criminal prosecutions by Douglas MacArthur, with the help of Bonner Fellers who allowed the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperor would be spared from indictment.

Some historians criticize this decision. According to John Dower, "with the full support of MacArthur's headquarters, the prosecution functioned, in effect, as a defense team for the emperor" and even Japanese activists who endorse the ideals of the Nuremberg and Tokyo charters, and who have labored to document and publicize the atrocities of the Showa regime "cannot defend the American decision to exonerate the emperor of war responsibility and then, in the chill of the Cold War, release and soon afterwards openly embrace accused right-winged war criminals like the later prime minister Nobusuke Kishi." For Herbert Bix, "MacArthur's truly extraordinary measures to save Hirohito from trial as a war criminal had a lasting and profoundly distorting impact on Japanese understanding of the lost war."

MacArthur's reasoning was that if the emperor were executed or sentenced to life imprisonment, there would be a violent backlash and revolution from the Japanese from all social classes, which would interfere with his primary goal to change Japan from a militarist, semi-feudal society to a pro-Western modern democracy. In a cable sent to General Dwight D. Eisenhower in February 1946, MacArthur said executing or imprisoning the emperor would require the use of one million occupation soldiers to keep the peace.

Other trials

Main articles: Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, and Yokohama War Crimes Trials
Sergeant Hosotani Naoji of the Kempeitai unit at Sandakan (North Borneo), is interrogated on 26 October 1945, by Squadron Leader F.G. Birchall of the Royal Australian Air Force, and Sergeant Mamo (a Nisei interpreter). Naoji confessed to shooting two Australian POWs and five ethnic Chinese civilians.
In Singapore, a hooded Lieutenant Nakamura is led to the scaffold after being convicted of beheading an Indian soldier on the Palau Islands, March 1946.

Between 1945 and 1956, the Chinese, Americans, British, Australians, Dutch, French, and Filipinos held trials at forty-nine locations. Australian prosecutors collaborated with British and American courts to hold Japanese individuals accountable, conducting trials for numerous individuals in Amboina, Dutch East Indies, and Rabaul, New Britain. China prosecuted at least 800 individuals, including some linked to the Nanjing massacre, while France and the Netherlands tried several hundred others. The French prosecuted a Japanese civilian in Java for forcing many women into military prostitution, and the Dutch sentenced Japanese individuals to death for murdering local residents and Dutch prisoners. In late 1949, the Soviet Union also put twelve Japanese on trial in Khabarovsk for biological warfare offenses—six were from Unit 731, two from Unit 100, and four from other groups. Later, several hundred Japanese people suspected of war crimes were handed over to the People's Republic of China, where they faced trials in the mid-1950s.

Approximately 4,300 of the 5,379 Japanese, 173 Taiwanese, and 148 Koreans tried as Class B and C war criminals were convicted of conventional crimes, such as rape, murder, violations of the rules of war, and mistreatment of prisoners of war. Hundreds were given life sentences, while nearly 1,000 were given death sentences.

The largest single trial was that of 93 Japanese personnel charged with the summary execution of more than 300 Allied POWs in the Laha massacre (1942). The most prominent ethnic Korean convicted was Lieutenant General Hong Sa Ik, who orchestrated the organisation of prisoner of war camps in Southeast Asia. In 2006, the South Korean government "pardoned" 83 of the 148 convicted Korean war criminals. One hundred-sixty Taiwanese who had served in the forces of the Empire of Japan were convicted of war crimes; 11 were executed.

While German doctors were prosecuted and their crimes made public, the U.S. kept details of Japanese biological warfare experiments hidden and granted immunity to those responsible. In contrast to the immunity given to those involved with Unit 731, the U.S. conducted a tribunal in Yokohama in 1948, where nine Japanese physician professors and medical students were charged with vivisecting captured American pilots. Two professors received death sentences, and the others were sentenced to 15–20 years in prison.

Post-war events and reactions

The parole-for-war-criminals movement

The British authorities lacked the resources and will to fully commit themselves to pursuing Japanese war criminals.

On 4 September 1952, President Truman issued Executive Order 10393, establishing a Clemency and Parole Board for War Criminals to advise the President with respect to recommendations by the Government of Japan for clemency, reduction of sentence, or parole, with respect to sentences imposed on Japanese war criminals by military tribunals.

On 26 May 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles rejected a proposed amnesty for the imprisoned war criminals but instead agreed to "change the ground rules" by reducing the period required for eligibility for parole from 15 years to 10.

Official apologies

Further information: List of war apology statements issued by Japan
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Several Japanese government officials and former Japanese emperors have acknowledged Japanese war atrocities committed in China. The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in regard to war crimes are separate. Therefore, while maintaining that Japan violated no international law or treaties, Japanese governments have officially recognised the suffering which the Japanese military caused, and numerous apologies have been issued by the Japanese government. For example, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, in August 1995, stated that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology". Also, on 29 September 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka stated: "he Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself."

However, apologizes made by Japanese officials have been criticized as insincere. For example, in the Kono Statement, while Japanese officials acknowledge the japanese military's involvement in the comfort women system, they denied the coercion and forced transportation of the woman and refused to offer compensation to the victims.

The official apologies are widely viewed as inadequate or only a symbolic exchange by many of the survivors of such crimes or the families of dead victims. In October 2006, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed an apology for the damage caused by its colonial rule and aggression, more than 80 Japanese lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party paid visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Many people aggrieved by Japanese war crimes also maintain that no apology has been issued for particular acts or that the Japanese government has merely expressed "regret" or "remorse". On 2 March 2007, the issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe, in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion." Before he spoke, a group of LDP lawmakers also sought to revise the Kono Statement. This provoked negative reaction from Asian and Western countries.

Emperor Showa initiated an official boycott of the Yasukuni Shrine after learning that Class-A war criminals had been covertly enshrined there after the war. This boycott remained in place from 1978 until his death and has been upheld by his successors, Akihito and Naruhito.

On 31 October 2008, the chief of staff of Japan's Air Self-Defense Force Toshio Tamogami was dismissed with a 60 million yen allowance due to an essay he published, arguing that Japan was not an aggressor during World War II, that the war brought prosperity to China, Taiwan, and Korea, that the Imperial Japanese Army's conduct was not violent and that the Greater East Asia War is viewed in a positive way by many Asian countries and criticizing the war crimes trials which followed the war. On 11 November, Tamogami added before the Diet that the personal apology made in 1995 by former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama was "a tool to suppress free speech".

Some in Japan have asserted that what is being demanded is that the Japanese Prime Minister or the Emperor perform dogeza, in which an individual kneels and bows his head to the ground—a high form of apology in East Asian societies that Japan appears unwilling to do. Some point to an act by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who knelt at a monument to the Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1970, as an example of a powerful and effective act of apology and reconciliation similar to dogeza.

On 13 September 2010, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada met in Tokyo with six former American POWs of the Japanese and apologized for their treatment during World War II. Okada said: "You have all been through hardships during World War II, being taken prisoner by the Japanese military, and suffered extremely inhumane treatment. On behalf of the Japanese government and as the foreign minister, I would like to offer you my heartfelt apology."

On 29 November 2011, Japanese Foreign Minister Kōichirō Genba apologized to former Australian POWs on behalf of the Japanese government for pain and suffering inflicted on them during the war.

Compensation

The Japanese government, while admitting no legal responsibility for comfort women, set up the Asian Women's Fund in 1995, which gives money to people who were forced into prostitution during the war. Though the organisation was established by the government, legally, it has been created such that it is an independent charity. The activities of the fund have been controversial in Japan, as well as with international organisations supporting the women concerned.

Some argue that such a fund is part of an ongoing refusal by the Japanese government to face up to its responsibilities, while others say that the Japanese government has long since finalised its responsibility to individual victims and is merely correcting the failures of the victims' own governments. California Congressman Mike Honda, speaking before U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of the women, said that "without a sincere and unequivocal apology from the government of Japan, the majority of surviving Comfort Women refused to accept these funds. In fact, as you will hear today, many Comfort Women returned the Prime Minister's letter of apology accompanying the monetary compensation, saying they felt the apology was artificial and disingenuous."

Compensation under the San Francisco Treaty

Main article: Treaty of San Francisco
Compensation from Japanese overseas assets
Japanese overseas assets in 1945
Country/region Value (1945, ¥15=US$1) 2024 US dollars
North East China 146,532,000,000 $165 billion
Korea 70,256,000,000 $79.3 billion
North China 55,437,000,000 $62.5 billion
Taiwan 42,542,000,000 $48 billion
Central South China 36,718,000,000 $41.4 billion
Others 28,014,000,000 $31.6 billion
Total ¥379,499,000,000 $428 billion

"Japanese overseas assets" refers to all assets which were owned by the Japanese government, firms, organizations, and private citizens, in colonized or occupied countries. In accordance with Clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty, Allied forces confiscated all Japanese overseas assets, except those in China, which were dealt with under Clause 21.

Compensation to Allied POWs

According to historian Linda Goetz Holmes, many funds used by the government of Japan were not Japanese funds but relief funds contributed by the governments of the US, the UK, and the Netherlands and sequestered in the Yokohama Specie Bank during the final year of the war.

Allied territories occupied by Japan
Japanese compensation to countries occupied during 1941–45
Country Amount in Yen Amount in US$ 2024 US dollars Date of treaty
Burma 72,000,000,000 200,000,000 $2.27 billion 5 November 1955
Philippines 198,000,000,000 550,000,000 $6.16 billion 9 May 1956
Indonesia 80,388,000,000 223,080,000 $2.36 billion 20 January 1958
South Vietnam 14,400,000,000 38,000,000 $397 million 13 May 1959
Total ¥364,348,800,000 US$1,012,080,000

Clause 14 of the treaty stated that Japan would enter into negotiations with the Allied nations whose territories were occupied and suffered damage by Japanese forces, with a view to Japan compensating those countries for the damage.

Historical negationism and denialism in Japan

In numerous historical debates within the region, Japan has been criticized for its failure to adequately address its imperial past. Key issues include the visits of Japanese prime ministers to the contentious Yasukuni Shrine, ongoing denials of state involvement in the system of forced wartime prostitution, efforts to justify the Asia-Pacific War, legal rulings rejecting state compensation for forced labor, and the positive assessments of Japan's colonial period. These issues have periodically strained Japan's relations with its crucial neighbors, particularly the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea.

Nippon Kaigi is an influential ultra-right-wing lobby group that wields considerable power in shaping Japanese politics. As of 2015, its membership boasts prominent figures such as former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, approximately 80% of the cabinet, and nearly half of the country's parliamentarians. This organization is infamous for its historical negationism and denial of certain war crimes The organization denies the Nanjing Massacre, labelling it as exaggerated or fabricated. Historical negationism concerning the comfort women issue has been predominantly led by the Nippon Kaigi since the mid-1990s, with significant efforts notably observed during both the initial and second Abe administration.

Following a Cabinet meeting during Shinzo Abe's initial tenure as prime minister in 2007, the administration said that there was no documented evidence supporting the coerced recruitment of comfort women. This stance was the official position of the administration and is reinforced through collaboration with Japanese right-wing media outlets.

Textbook controversy

The existing regulations regarding textbooks grant the government absolute authority to determine which textbooks should be adopted by local schools. School boards, teacher unions, and local citizens, traditionally more left-leaning groups that have opposed government-approved books, have experienced a significant erosion of their autonomy in selecting textbooks, compelling them to adopt government-censored textbooks.

In 1952, the Japanese government instructed Japanese historian Ienaga Saburo to eliminate information and references from his textbook regarding Unit 731, despite having his claims corroborated by other scholars. While Ienaga's legal action against the Japanese government initially compelled them to publish his textbooks detailing Japanese war crimes, the Japanese Supreme Court overturned this decision in 1993. The Supreme Court's 1993 ruling affirmed the government's authority to compel Mr. Ienaga to remove unsettling specifics concerning the Japanese invasions of Manchuria and Korea, as well as the rapes and killings committed by Japanese military personnel during their occupation of East and Southeast Asia.

Textbooks approved for junior high schools in 1997 typically presented relatively high estimates of the number of victims, but those published in 2005 often refrained from providing specific numbers altogether. Similarly, the term "massacre" was largely replaced with the term "incident."

In 2014, the Japanese government attempted to pressure McGraw Hill, an American publishing company, to remove two paragraphs addressing the issue of comfort women from one of their textbooks. McGraw Hill rejected the demands from the Japanese government, and American historians condemned Japan's attempt to alter the historical account of comfort women.

In 2015, other alterations involve six out of seven textbooks reducing the criticism of the Japanese military's role in mass suicides among Okinawans in 1945. Additionally, only one textbook addressed the topic of comfort women.

In 2022, the Japanese government made changes to 14 textbooks covering Japanese and world history. The ministry replaced the words "forced arrest" and "forced conscription" with "mobilization" and "conscription" when recounting the history of forced laborers in Japan, including Koreans during the period of Japanese annexation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.

Later investigations

As with investigations of Nazi war criminals, official investigations and inquiries are still ongoing. During the 1990s, the South Korean government started investigating some people who had allegedly become wealthy while collaborating with the Japanese military. In South Korea, it is also alleged that during the political climate of the Cold War, many such people or their associates or relatives were able to acquire influence with the wealth they had acquired collaborating with the Japanese and assisted in the covering-up, or non-investigation, of war crimes in order not to incriminate themselves. With the wealth they had amassed during the years of collaboration, they were able to further benefit their families by obtaining higher education for their relatives.

Further evidence has been discovered as a result of these investigations. It has been claimed that the Japanese government intentionally destroyed the reports on Korean comfort women. Some have cited Japanese inventory logs and employee sheets on the battlefield as evidence for this claim. For example, one of the names on the list was of a comfort woman who stated she was forced to be a prostitute by the Japanese. She was classified as a nurse along with at least a dozen other verified comfort women who were not nurses or secretaries. Currently, the South Korean government is looking into the hundreds of other names on these lists.

In 2011, it was alleged in an article published in the Japan Times newspaper by Jason Coskrey that the British government covered up a Japanese massacre of British and Dutch POWs to avoid straining the recently re-opened relationship with Japan, along with their belief that Japan needed to be a post-war bulwark against the spread of communism.

Tamaki Matsuoka's 2009 documentary Torn Memories of Nanjing includes interviews with Japanese veterans who admit to raping and killing Chinese civilians.

Concerns of the Japanese imperial family

Potentially in contrast to Prime Minister Abe's example of his Yasukuni Shrine visits, by February 2015, some concern within the Imperial House of Japan — which normally does not issue such statements – over the issue was voiced by then-Crown Prince Naruhito, who succeeded his father on 1 May 2019. Naruhito stated on his 55th birthday (23 February 2015) that it was "important to look back on the past humbly and correctly", in reference to Japan's role in World War II-era war crimes, and that he was concerned about the ongoing need to "correctly pass down tragic experiences and the history behind Japan to the generations who have no direct knowledge of the war, at the time memories of the war are about to fade". Two visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in the second half of 2016 by Japan's former foreign minister, Masahiro Imamura, were again followed by controversy that still showed potential for concern over how Japan's World War II history may be remembered by its citizens as it entered the Reiwa era.

Emperor Shōwa upheld an official boycott of Yasukuni Shrine after he discovered that Class-A war criminals had been secretly enshrined after the war. This boycott lasted from 1978 until his death, and his successors, Akihito and Naruhito, have continued the boycott.

List of major crimes

Massacres

Units

War crimes

See also

Notes

  1. "Interestingly, although the United States condemned these practices, notably during the Tokyo Trial, its armed forces used the same technique several times in the context of the War on Terror. They then proceeded to deny that simulated drowning was torture, an opinion shared by at least The Wall Street Journal which, on 12 November 2005, commenting on the torture of alleged terrorists of Al-Qaeda, published an editorial denying that the technique had "any proximity to torture". During the presidential elections in the United States in 2008, these interpretations were the subject of controversy, with candidates John McCain and Barack Obama considering the practice as torture, as opposed to other Republican candidates.

References

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Sources

Further reading

  • Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1-883319-85-4 ISBN 0-7567-5698-7 ISBN 0-8264-1258-0 ISBN 0-8264-1415-X
  • Bass, Gary Jonathan. Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Trials. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
  • Bayly, C. A. & Harper T. Forgotten Armies. The Fall of British Asia 1941-5 (London: Allen Lane) 2004
  • Bergamini, David. Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, William Morrow, New York, 1971.
  • Brackman, Arnold C.: The Other Nuremberg: the Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987. ISBN 0-688-04783-1
  • Dower, John W. (1987). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 0-394-75172-8.
  • Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-253-33472-1
  • Felton, Mark (2007). Slaughter at Sea: The Story of Japan's Naval War Crimes. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-263-8.
  • Frank, Richard B. (1999). Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Penguin Books.
  • Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 4-900737-39-9
  • Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. ISBN 0-375-50231-9 ISBN 0-385-33496-6
  • Harries, Meirion; Harries, Susie (1994). Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-75303-6.
  • Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. ISBN 0-8129-6653-8
  • Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0-415-09105-5 ISBN 0-415-93214-9
  • Holmes, Linda Goetz (2001). Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs. Mechanicsburg, PA, USA: Stackpole Books.
  • Holmes, Linda Goetz (2010). Guests of the Emperor: The Secret History of Japan's Mukden POW Camp. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-377-2.
  • Horowitz, Solis. "The Tokyo Trial" International Conciliation 465 (November 1950), 473–584.
  • Kratoksa, Paul (2005). Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories. M.E. Sharpe and Singapore University Press. ISBN 0-7656-1263-1.
  • Lael, Richard L. (1982). The Yamashita Precedent: War Crimes and Command Responsibility. Wilmington, Del, USA: Scholarly Resources.
  • Latimer, Jon, Burma: The Forgotten War, London: John Murray, 2004. ISBN 0-7195-6576-6
  • MacArthur, Brian (2005). Surviving the Sword: Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East, 1942–45. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6413-9.
  • Lingen, Kerstin von, ed. War Crimes Trials in the Wake of Decolonization and Cold War in Asia, 1945-1956. (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2016) online Archived 8 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Minear, Richard H. (1971). Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
  • Maga, Timothy P. (2001). Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trials. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2177-9.
  • Neier, Aryeh. War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror and the Struggle for Justice, Times Books, Random House, New York, 1998.
  • O'Hanlon, Michael E. The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes (Brookings Institution, 2019) online review Archived 17 February 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  • Piccigallo, Philip R. (1979). The Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crimes Operations in the East, 1945–1951. Austin, Texas, USA: University of Texas Press.
  • Rees, Laurence. Horror in the East, published 2001 by the British Broadcasting Company
  • Seagrave, Sterling & Peggy. Gold Warriors: America's secret recovery of Yamashita's gold. Verso Books, 2003. ISBN 1-85984-542-8
  • Sherman, Christine (2001). War Crimes: International Military Tribunal. Turner Publishing Company. ISBN 1-56311-728-2. Detailed account of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East proceedings in Tokyo
  • Trefalt, Beatrice . "Japanese War Criminals in Indochina and the French Pursuit of Justice: Local and International Constraints." Journal of Contemporary History 49.4 (2014): 727–742.
  • Tsurumi, Kazuko (1970). Social Change and the Individual: Japan before and after defeat in World War II. Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09347-4.
  • Williams, Peter. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. ISBN 0-02-935301-7
  • Wilson, Sandra; et al. (2017). Japanese War Criminals: The Politics of Justice After the Second World War. New York City: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231179225.
  • Yamamoto, Masahiro (2000). Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-96904-5. A rebuttal to Iris Chang's book on the Nanking massacre.

Audio/visual media

  • Minoru Matsui (2001), Japanese Devils, a documentary which is based on interviews which were conducted with veteran soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army (Japanese Devils sheds light on a dark past) CNN
  • The History Channel (2000). Japanese War Crimes: Murder Under The Sun (Video documentary (DVD & VHS)). A & E Home Video.

External links

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