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Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific
Excellent Book
464 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1994
12 people are currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
Gavan Daws
40 books13 followersGavan Daws (b. 1933) is an American writer, historian and filmmaker residing in Honolulu, Hawaii. He writes about Hawaii, the Pacific, and Asia. He is a retired professor of history at University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Daws is originally from Australia and got his B.A. in English and History from the University of Melbourne. He has a Ph.D. in Pacific History from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
His best-known works are Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, in print since 1968; Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, the biography of a nineteenth-century missionary priest to Hawaii who served leprosy sufferers, and who has recently been canonized; and Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. Daws co-produced and co-directed Angels of War: The People of Papua New Guinea and World War II, which won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary. His other work includes song lyrics and a stage play with music and choreography. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia, and served as the Pacific member of the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind.
Daws is originally from Australia and got his B.A. in English and History from the University of Melbourne. He has a Ph.D. in Pacific History from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
His best-known works are Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, in print since 1968; Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, the biography of a nineteenth-century missionary priest to Hawaii who served leprosy sufferers, and who has recently been canonized; and Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. Daws co-produced and co-directed Angels of War: The People of Papua New Guinea and World War II, which won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary. His other work includes song lyrics and a stage play with music and choreography. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia, and served as the Pacific member of the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 4, 2019
A detailed documentary of the vicious and inhuman way prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese during the second world war. The author interviewed many Japanese ex-POWs during the 1980s and 1990s and the book was originally published in 1994. The atrocities are sometimes unbelievable in their cruel and casual brutality and it is hard to imagine any human perpetrating them. There is also a chapter on the appalling way the US government in particular and other national governments treated the prisoners on their return. Sometimes they had to fight for years for any sort of recognition or disability payments. Almost all of the survivors had chronic, debillitating health problems directly attributable to their treatment in capture and died much younger than they otherwise would have done. The book also raises the question about why so few of the Japanese were ever tried for war crimes when what they did was equally as bad if not worse in some cases than the Nazis. Why was was the emperor Hirohito not tried for war crimes for example. He continued to reign in Japan after the war for many years and Japan has never expressed any sort of contrition or given any sort of apology for its behaviour during the war. A devastating and shocking book but an essential record.
February 17, 2023
This is a very detailed history volume detailing the many statistics (and, much more importantly, the stories) regarding prisoners of the Japanese during WW2. The story needed to be told, and the many many statistics are a part of the story, but the vast numbers make it a slower read. By looking over the references in the back, this book encompasses vast resources containing hundreds of interviews. The final few chapters bring their stories to a good conclusion.
April 12, 2025
The Second World War was the bloodiest act of aggression among men. Millions perished in the flames raged by this Great War, many millions got injured, the lives of a lot many were changed forever and once again the folly of war dawned right and clear in the minds of sensible people anywhere in the world. Asia also carried more than its fair share of the bitter fruit of war than spawned in Europe. Japan aggressively moved into the game, harbouring hopes of establishing an Asian empire of its own – like that of UK, France and Holland – from where they could obtain raw materials for their industries and they could sell the finished products in the colonial markets. The Allied forces opposed them and for a time it seemed that Japan would have the last word. Thousands of American, British, Australian and Dutch soldiers surrendered and were taken as prisoners of war. This book describes the circumstances which led to their capture, grimy details of their lives in the camps, the inhuman treatment meted out to them in work details and special killing projects such as the Burma – Siam Rail road. Apart from expounding the progress of war as a backdrop to the human trauma unweaving before the reader, Daws also looks into the life of the prisoners after they went back home at the end of the war. The narrative is so stunning in its impact and so forceful in its choice of expressions that the reader becomes at one with the prisoner in his suffering. Gavan Daws headed historical research in the Pacific region at the Institute of Advanced Studies and is the author of twelve books with a slew of awards for his documentary films.
The Pacific war was really hard on the Americans. Though they had seen it coming for a long time complacency got the upper hand and it was impossible for them even to contemplate that Japan might be able to give them a good thrashing on the field. Concepts of racial superiority and aversion to Asiatic races prompted many to reside in fool’s paradises, never taking the deteriorating conditions seriously and vainly hoping that the war, if at all it comes about, would last for only a maximum of two weeks, by which time – they thought – Japan would be brought to its knees. But Pearl Harbour altered all calculations and rudely jolted the giant out of slumber. The ruthless efficiency and surgical precision with which Japanese bombers sowed death on that remote Pacific naval base astonished American strategists. The little Asian country appeared on the verge of playing another David, which it did against Russia in 1904-05 when the giant European nation was humbled on the battle field. In Pearl Harbour they could exploit the advantage of surprise to the hilt. Other US bases in the Pacific soon surrendered to Japanese efforts. For a time, it seemed that Japan had established an invincible shield around itself, after subduing American forces in the Pacific. East Asia had already fallen to them in earlier stages of the war – Korea, Indo-China, Indonesia, Thailand and Burma had fallen much earlier. The book presents the conditions and the war situation in general, before going on to describe the actual process in which American troops were overwhelmed and taken prisoner in the Wake islands and Philippines.
Daws’ description of how the conquering Japanese treated their American and European prisoners is shocking and provokes repulsion at the wanton cruelty and sadism of the victors. He ascribes racial prejudices also to the extraordinary strictness of the Japanese, by hinting that the smallness of the Japanese in physique against their Western prisoners must had fed their inferiority complex to inflict maximum pain on the physically superior body. We have to note here that many of the author’s remarks are outright racist for which he warns us beforehand that the racist remarks are reproduced as such as it came from the prisoners themselves. This argument is so flimsy and lacks any substance or decency. If the author is deputed to report on a street brawl, will he be casual enough to reproduce the exchanges verbatim?
Whatever may be the lapses in discretion on the part of the author, there is no denying that he had captured the grisly details of prison life under the Japanese. Shocking descriptions of the Bataan death march in Philippines, the forced transportations over the sea in undersized vessels and the utter inhumanity of the Japanese administration of POW camps abound in confounding the reader with a realization about the psychological change that comes about in victor against the vanquished. A prisoner’s death due to malnutrition, overwork, disease or all of them combined was nothing of significance to the conquerors. POWs started to die in droves when the Burma – Siam railroad project began.
Japan wanted to conquer India, which was the jewel in the crown of British Empire. However, Burma was a strategically inconvenient place in terms of movement of troops and material. A railroad from Thailand to Burma would ease the Japanese the trouble of moving ships through the Malacca Straits and Bay of Bengal. They could offload them in Thailand at the South China Sea coast and transport through the forests bordering Burma. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were drafted for building the rail road, mostly out of bare hands. Ravaging diseases and lack of food killed 20% of the prisoners of the war. In this stretch Japan forced East Asians also to toil as slave labour. These Romushas, as they were called, were cheated to sign up. This act was in direct contrast to Japan’s moral stand that the war they are waging in Asia was to liberate the Asian people from the Western yoke and to share the resulting prosperity. But the Asian workers’ plight was more pathetic than the westerners. If the latter were treated as enemy prisoners, the former didn’t have a higher claim than animals with the Japanese. About half of them, running to nearly 150,000 perished on the wayside.
When the war was grinding down to a close, the POWs were faced with another threat. The Japanese tried to move them to the home islands, in ships which increasingly came under attack from Allied planes and submarines. Then came the firebombing and cluster bombing of Japan for which the prisoners bore collateral damage. And at last came the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki – these towns were selected for annihilation on the assumption that very few prisoners were held there, but still a few of them died in the nuclear holocaust. The new and devastating weapon finally broke the back of Japan. It surrendered on Aug 15, 1945 and the prisoners went home at last.
The book is distressingly replete with racially charged references and disparaging remarks about the Japanese and Asians in general. It would have been pardonable had this book came out immediately after the war when emotions were flaring hot and high. But, coming after a remove of 60 years, such foul mouthing of the enemy on openly professed racial lines is in bad taste. The author goes on to provide a moral basis for indiscriminate killing of the Japanese, by narrating an incident in which young children spat at the prisoners caught parachuting from downed Allied planes. The narrow-mindedness goes to its extreme when he says that those guards who behaved humanely with the prisoners were Christians practicing their faith in secret. Quite unexpectedly, the author is cross with General Douglas MacArthur who was the commander of the Pacific fleet and played a larger than life role in the war history. But Daws does not spare an opportunity to malign him. If I am asked to hazard a guess on the real motive of the author to produce a book of this sort, I would definitely conclude that it is to provide a moral justification for the terrible nuking of two cities, along with a mostly innocent population. And, to do justice to the author, we have to appreciate that he had succeeded to a large extent in achieving this objective. The descriptions of the war years are so original and absorbing.
The book is recommended.
The Pacific war was really hard on the Americans. Though they had seen it coming for a long time complacency got the upper hand and it was impossible for them even to contemplate that Japan might be able to give them a good thrashing on the field. Concepts of racial superiority and aversion to Asiatic races prompted many to reside in fool’s paradises, never taking the deteriorating conditions seriously and vainly hoping that the war, if at all it comes about, would last for only a maximum of two weeks, by which time – they thought – Japan would be brought to its knees. But Pearl Harbour altered all calculations and rudely jolted the giant out of slumber. The ruthless efficiency and surgical precision with which Japanese bombers sowed death on that remote Pacific naval base astonished American strategists. The little Asian country appeared on the verge of playing another David, which it did against Russia in 1904-05 when the giant European nation was humbled on the battle field. In Pearl Harbour they could exploit the advantage of surprise to the hilt. Other US bases in the Pacific soon surrendered to Japanese efforts. For a time, it seemed that Japan had established an invincible shield around itself, after subduing American forces in the Pacific. East Asia had already fallen to them in earlier stages of the war – Korea, Indo-China, Indonesia, Thailand and Burma had fallen much earlier. The book presents the conditions and the war situation in general, before going on to describe the actual process in which American troops were overwhelmed and taken prisoner in the Wake islands and Philippines.
Daws’ description of how the conquering Japanese treated their American and European prisoners is shocking and provokes repulsion at the wanton cruelty and sadism of the victors. He ascribes racial prejudices also to the extraordinary strictness of the Japanese, by hinting that the smallness of the Japanese in physique against their Western prisoners must had fed their inferiority complex to inflict maximum pain on the physically superior body. We have to note here that many of the author’s remarks are outright racist for which he warns us beforehand that the racist remarks are reproduced as such as it came from the prisoners themselves. This argument is so flimsy and lacks any substance or decency. If the author is deputed to report on a street brawl, will he be casual enough to reproduce the exchanges verbatim?
Whatever may be the lapses in discretion on the part of the author, there is no denying that he had captured the grisly details of prison life under the Japanese. Shocking descriptions of the Bataan death march in Philippines, the forced transportations over the sea in undersized vessels and the utter inhumanity of the Japanese administration of POW camps abound in confounding the reader with a realization about the psychological change that comes about in victor against the vanquished. A prisoner’s death due to malnutrition, overwork, disease or all of them combined was nothing of significance to the conquerors. POWs started to die in droves when the Burma – Siam railroad project began.
Japan wanted to conquer India, which was the jewel in the crown of British Empire. However, Burma was a strategically inconvenient place in terms of movement of troops and material. A railroad from Thailand to Burma would ease the Japanese the trouble of moving ships through the Malacca Straits and Bay of Bengal. They could offload them in Thailand at the South China Sea coast and transport through the forests bordering Burma. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were drafted for building the rail road, mostly out of bare hands. Ravaging diseases and lack of food killed 20% of the prisoners of the war. In this stretch Japan forced East Asians also to toil as slave labour. These Romushas, as they were called, were cheated to sign up. This act was in direct contrast to Japan’s moral stand that the war they are waging in Asia was to liberate the Asian people from the Western yoke and to share the resulting prosperity. But the Asian workers’ plight was more pathetic than the westerners. If the latter were treated as enemy prisoners, the former didn’t have a higher claim than animals with the Japanese. About half of them, running to nearly 150,000 perished on the wayside.
When the war was grinding down to a close, the POWs were faced with another threat. The Japanese tried to move them to the home islands, in ships which increasingly came under attack from Allied planes and submarines. Then came the firebombing and cluster bombing of Japan for which the prisoners bore collateral damage. And at last came the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki – these towns were selected for annihilation on the assumption that very few prisoners were held there, but still a few of them died in the nuclear holocaust. The new and devastating weapon finally broke the back of Japan. It surrendered on Aug 15, 1945 and the prisoners went home at last.
The book is distressingly replete with racially charged references and disparaging remarks about the Japanese and Asians in general. It would have been pardonable had this book came out immediately after the war when emotions were flaring hot and high. But, coming after a remove of 60 years, such foul mouthing of the enemy on openly professed racial lines is in bad taste. The author goes on to provide a moral basis for indiscriminate killing of the Japanese, by narrating an incident in which young children spat at the prisoners caught parachuting from downed Allied planes. The narrow-mindedness goes to its extreme when he says that those guards who behaved humanely with the prisoners were Christians practicing their faith in secret. Quite unexpectedly, the author is cross with General Douglas MacArthur who was the commander of the Pacific fleet and played a larger than life role in the war history. But Daws does not spare an opportunity to malign him. If I am asked to hazard a guess on the real motive of the author to produce a book of this sort, I would definitely conclude that it is to provide a moral justification for the terrible nuking of two cities, along with a mostly innocent population. And, to do justice to the author, we have to appreciate that he had succeeded to a large extent in achieving this objective. The descriptions of the war years are so original and absorbing.
The book is recommended.
July 2, 2019
Prisoners of the Japanese, by Gavan Daws, is an in depth look at the experiences of mostly American POWs held captive by the Japanese during World War 2. It focuses on the specific stories of several individuals including the incidents that caused their captures, and, of course, the terrible trials and ordeals suffered during over three years of captivity.
In graphic detail it describes the tortures, neglect, murders, malnutrition, experiments, and beatings that occurred in camps, hell ships, marches. This book delivered much more than I expected and touches on subjects not covered in most histories of World War 2. For example, on September 12, 1944, far more American POWs were killed by when the Japanese Hell Ships the "Rakuyo Maru" and the "Kachidoki Maru," (unmarked tankers which also contained POWs) were torpedoed by American submarines than were killed on the Bataan Death March. "Of all POWs who died in the Pacific war, one in every three was killed on the water by friendly fire." (p.297).
While focusing on the Allied side, it also gets into the Japanese psyche and tries to describe how they could be so cold-hearted to captives, apparently clainimg that their code of bushido did not apply to POWs and captive civilian populations.
This is a must read add to any World War 2 library, but it isn't pleasant reading. It sheds a light on human behavior, even our own, and it left me with a knot in my stomach more than once.
In graphic detail it describes the tortures, neglect, murders, malnutrition, experiments, and beatings that occurred in camps, hell ships, marches. This book delivered much more than I expected and touches on subjects not covered in most histories of World War 2. For example, on September 12, 1944, far more American POWs were killed by when the Japanese Hell Ships the "Rakuyo Maru" and the "Kachidoki Maru," (unmarked tankers which also contained POWs) were torpedoed by American submarines than were killed on the Bataan Death March. "Of all POWs who died in the Pacific war, one in every three was killed on the water by friendly fire." (p.297).
While focusing on the Allied side, it also gets into the Japanese psyche and tries to describe how they could be so cold-hearted to captives, apparently clainimg that their code of bushido did not apply to POWs and captive civilian populations.
This is a must read add to any World War 2 library, but it isn't pleasant reading. It sheds a light on human behavior, even our own, and it left me with a knot in my stomach more than once.
January 18, 2013
This is a horrifying and heartbreaking account of the treatment of prisoners of war during WWII. I could not put this book down, it had me gasping, laughing and cursing out loud. I highly recommend this book.
August 23, 2024
PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE is a jarring depiction of the “truth of life” of the Allied prisoners of the Japanese in WWII. In this exceptionally well-resourced work of original history, historian Gavan Daws interviewed countless prisoners in the US, Australia, Canada, and Europe between 1982 and 1993 to uncover lesser-known realities of life in Japanese captivity in the Pacific theater. Daws describes the mass atrocities by the Japanese, who inflicted disease, torture, starvation, corporal punishment, and human experimentation that led to deaths of over one-third of captured Americans during the war. From the horrors of the Bataan march, the construction of the Siam-Burma railroad, “hellships” that ferried prisoners in cramped conditions to the Japanese mainland, and ghastly crimes performed against captured airmen as part of so-called research experiments, Daws revivifies the stories of the men who thrived – and succumbed – to those horrific crimes against humanity.
September 10, 2023
Amazing and thorough account of WWII prisoners of war in the Pacific. The author has done an outstanding job chronicling the stories of these poor men. Absolutely horrific and heart rending tales of the brutality, cruel behavior of guards, dreadful living (if you can call it that) conditions, starvation, tremendous wounds and physical suffering, death by the thousands...I could go on but you get the point. I think the worst part was the descriptions of the hell ships. How anyone survived is beyond me. Well done and a fascinating read!
January 14, 2019
This book makes me heartsick for the POWs and all survivors. So many lost at young ages. It also makes me angry for the sheer savagery of the Japanese, the unfairness POWs, contractors and survivors who were not cared for by their governments - physically and emotionally. Why is this part of the war not taught in our schools?
February 1, 2024
A hard but well-written read. Dawes's skill in writing is shown by how quickly I finished the book. It was not an easy topic to write about, but I learned a lot and would not have complained had he added another hundred pages.
May 8, 2017
Cleanliness: there is some language and several mature issues; including an entire chapter regarding torture. I plan to read this again and create a Clean Guide. Check back again or message me to request this be bumped to the top of the list!
July 14, 2020
The cruelty of man upon fellow man knows no bounds 😔
December 27, 2020
3.5 stars
Read
December 10, 2024Excellent account of the POW experience.
January 28, 2016
Prisoners of the Japanese
462 pages. 34 pages of notes. 1994.
Obviously this is so filled with information that I will just point out a few areas that I thought were most interesting. There is material here about specific people and also about the camps in general.
1. The book opens with general information about when the most prisoners were taken, how they were used (which often led to their deaths), and where they ended up.
2. Racism and classism played rolls in the camps as the whites looked down on the blacks and the rich (especially from England) looked down on those not as rich as themselves.
3. There were also differences in behavior among those in the camps depending on what country they came from.
4. Only Americans killed each other during captivity.
5. There were hundreds of POW camps.
6. Officers tended to be separated from non-officers and were sometimes treated better.
7. The Bataan March, in all its horrors, is described.
8. Reasons, from the Japanese viewpoint, for killing prisoners are given.
9. Reasons for Japanese not being taken prisoners are given.
10. Cigarettes became a main bartering item in the camps.
11. The Japanese assumed illness was a weakness of spirit.
12. Things POWs would be punished for in the camps are noted.
13. The Japanese looted Red Cross packages meant for the prisoners.
14, The construction of the Burma railway is described.
15. The troubles the Japanese had as the war went on are described in detail.
16. The end of the war and what happened to the prisoners afterwards is also discussed.
This is only a small fraction of the information covered in this very useful text.
September 1, 2019
According to the author, during the first months following Pearl Harbor, the Japanese captured more than 140,000 Allied prisoners. More than four died at the hands of their captors--denied medical treatment, starved, or worked to death. In Japan, the killing went on to the last moments of the war. Downed airmen were tortured by the hundreds, and even beheaded. The book includes extensive Sources, including interviews, POW diaries, and 27-volume The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, and official histories. There are also several pages of notes.
My uncle, Dale R. Wilson, may have been a POW of the Japanese during World War II, when his B-25 was shot down in New Guinea in late 1943. This book has been a resource in trying to learn what may have happened to Dale. When I learned how the Japanese brutally mishandled downed airmen in the Southwest Pacific Theater, maybe it would have been better if he’d perished with their plane and rest of the crew on the day they were shot down.
My uncle, Dale R. Wilson, may have been a POW of the Japanese during World War II, when his B-25 was shot down in New Guinea in late 1943. This book has been a resource in trying to learn what may have happened to Dale. When I learned how the Japanese brutally mishandled downed airmen in the Southwest Pacific Theater, maybe it would have been better if he’d perished with their plane and rest of the crew on the day they were shot down.
January 5, 2009
Opened my mind to the little known atrocities that Japanese POWs endured during WWII. More than I thought. Their stories of terrible suffering and murder have been overshadowed by the well publicized suffering of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. It was informative to get a glimpse into what happened to these prisoners of our other WWII enemy. No wonder the grandfather of a good friend nearly fell over in shock when my friend informed the family he was going to relocate to Japan for a time. Certainly the Japan today is different from the Japan of the 1930's and 40's.
February 11, 2009
This book had a little too much info for somethings. But I really enjoyed the history. My grandpa was a prisoner of the japanese and I have felt like I needed to get to know more about what probably happened to him. I was 16 when he died and I wish I would have been more interested in his story and what happened to him.
August 21, 2014
An important book for historians of World War II. the atrocities committed on POW's & conquered people by the Japanese is almost unbelievable. I wish the author had provided more insight into the medical experimentation conducted on POW's. The book is very readable & keeps your attention.
October 1, 2007
The latest execrable effort from Ken Burns has left me rather grumpy and so I'm looking through my bookshelves for WWII titles that are a better use of my time. This is one of them.
Want to read
May 31, 2012I have been trying to read this for years to get a better understanding of what my Grandpa went thru, but boy it is tough to read and think about!
July 27, 2011
My heart goes to the brave soldiers who fought for our country. WWII is long been gone but reading the book relived the painful experiences of our grandfathers.
February 16, 2012
Well written, unbiased, informational and honest account of what happened with POW of Japanese during captivity, liberation and after.
Read
April 5, 2013Brutal-True revaluations of life in Japanese POW camps. How these men survived was solely on their will to live
December 29, 2014
This should be a must-read for all U.S. citizens. It recounts the horrors that U.S. and other Allied troops endured at the hands of the Japanese.
March 7, 2016
I thought it was better than Unbroken. Sad, but informative....
September 4, 2016
I could hardly put this one down. A thoroughly gripping and unforgettable account of absolute Hell on Earth.
Read
June 20, 2007awful things happened in wwII
August 3, 2007
Sad, very sad. Brings tears to my eyes
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews