List of War Crimes During Pacific Asia War

by Kelly Suen

• Nanking (Nanjing) massacre - since the capture of Nanking on December 13, 1937, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people and continued to do so for more than 40 days until February 1938. Chinese soldiers were hunted down and killed by the thousands, and left in mass graves. Entire families were massacred, and even the elderly and infants were targeted for execution, while tens of thousands of women were raped. Bodies littered the streets for months after the attack. The Japanese looted and burned at least one-third of Nanking’s buildings. There are no official numbers for the death toll, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people.
  
• Alexandra Hospital massacre at Singapore - On February 13, 1942, Japanese troops went through the first floor of the hospital and bayoneted everyone on that floor. They then went to the second floor and other parts of the building, removed patients and medical personnel, and massacred them.
  
• Bangka Island massacre - On February 16, 1942, 50 male prisoners and 21 Australian nurses and one civilian woman were massacred by Japanese soldiers on a small beach on Bangka Island, Indonesia. The men were separated from the women and taken to a nearby place where they were murdered. When the soldiers returned, they demanded the women to talk into the ocean and then they machine gunned the women from behind.
  
• Bataan Death March - On April 9, 1942, over 70,000 American and Filipino soldiers were forced to march a distance of 75 miles (120 kilometers) for days without food or supplies in intense heat to San Fernando. Around 1,200 Americans and 16,000 Filipinos died en route from beating, mistreatment, or random execution, and left on the road. At San Fernando, the prisoners were crowded into railway freight cars to be transported to Camp O’Donnell. Many died in the cars due to exhaustion and lack of ventilation. Approximately 1,522 American and 29,000 Filipino prisoners died there by August 1942 alone.
  
• Pantingan River massacre - Hundreds of P.O.W with their hands tied behind their backs were bayoneted to death.
  
• Tol Plantation massacre - In February 1942, surrendered Australian soldiers were bound together in groups of nine or ten, marched into undergrowth, and bayoneted one by one. They were left for dead, but six survived and were later rescued.
  
• Massacre of surrendered troops at Laha airfield, Ambon, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) - early 1942, about 300 were killed in four separate massacres with no survivors.
  
• Massacre of surrendered troops at Parit Sulong, Malaya (Malaysia) on January 22, 1942 - 163 Australian and Indian soldiers captured and executed. They were killed that evening by machine-gun and rifle fire. Only two men survived.
  
• Treatment of P.O.W during construction of the Burma-Siam Railway - Between October 25, 1942 and May 1, 1944 during the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway between Thanbyuzayat and Niki P.O.W. were treated inhumanely in unsanitary conditions. Assaults, humiliation, and forcing the sick to work were common.
  
  • To supplement the prisoners of war employed on the work, native laborers, Burmese, Tamils, Javanese, Malayans and Chinese were recruited, sometimes on promises of varying kinds, and others by force. About 150,000 of these laborers were employed on the railway work. Their treatment and the conditions they worked and lived in were worse than the P.O.Ws’. At least 60,000 of the 150,000 laborers died during the period of construction.
    
• Treatment of P.O.W at Tan Toey Camp, Ambon - Ill-treatment of Australian and Dutch P.O.W during the period February 1942 and August 1945. By October 1942, of the 548 P.O.Ws in the camp 379 died of illness, 17 were executed, and 13 escaped. In August 1945 there were only 139 survivors.
  
• Treatment of P.O.W at Hainan Island - In November 1942 263 Australian and about 240 other Allied P.O.W. were moved from Ambon to a P.O.W. Camp on Hainan Island. They remained there for the rest of the war. Their rations were inadequate and were progressively reduced. They were denied medical supplies and assistance, and were forced to engage in heavy labor even when sick. Assaults and ill-treatment by the guards were common. Of the 263 Australians, 72 died. Among the P.O.W. as a whole, there were 626 cases of, beri-beri, resulting in 26 deaths in 1943, and there were 67 deaths, mainly from malnutrition and starvation, between March and August 1945.
  
• Wake Island massacre - On October 7, 1943, 96 American P.O.Ws were executed.
  
• Palawan P.O.W massacre - At a P.O.W camp near Puerto Princesa Bay, 150 American prisoners were told by their Japanese captors that if Japan won the war, they would be returned to America, and if Japan lost, they would be killed. At about 2 p.m. on 14 December 1944, the prisoners were ordered to go into shallow, lightly covered air raid shelters. Once in, the Japanese soldiers poured in gasoline and threw in lit torches. Those who managed to escape were killed by fire from rifles and machine guns placed in position for that purpose, and some by bayonet thrusts. Five survived the ordeal by swimming out into the bay at night and escaping into the jungle.
  
• Manila massacre - In February 1945, Japanese soldiers raped many young girls at the Bay View and three other hotels. At the German Club and at Fort Santiago the victims were gathered together in a building, which was set on fire. Those who attempted to escape were shot or bayoneted as they emerged through the flames. Women were also raped at the German Club and their infants bayoneted in their arms. After raping the women the Japanese poured gasoline on their hair and ignited it.
  
  • Philippine Red Cross in Manila - On February 10, 1945, Japanese marines entered the headquarters building of the Philippine Red Cross and killed or wounded many staff members, patients, and refugees by shooting or bayoneting the victims even after being told that the building belonged to the Red Cross. The building was burned on February 13.
    
  • St. Paul’s College in Manila - Around 250 people were placed in the building and the windows and doors shut and barred. The three chandeliers were wrapped in black paper with wires ran from inside the wrappings to the outside of the building. Later, the Japanese brought in food and drinks and told the crowd the items were safe. Within a matter of moments the chandeliers exploded and panic ensued. The Japanese outside the building began firing machine guns into the building and threw grenades through the windows into the room.
    
• Sook Ching massacre - Between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore were taken to beaches and massacred.
  
• Port Blair, Andaman Islands mass drownings - On August 1945, civilian internees were placed aboard a ship, taken to sea, and forced into the water.
  
• Treatment of P.O.W at Sandakan and Ranau (Borneo): At Sandakan in August 1944 about 2200 Australian and British P.O.W. to build airfields. Some 1200 died in Sandakan Camp itself and the rest on the two Death Marches to Ranau. Treatment of P.O.W. initially was reasonably well, until rations were reduced and beatings increased.
  
  • First Death March - The death marches began early in 1945. With the anticipation of Allied landings on Borneo, the Japanese decided to move the prisoners to prevent their liberation.The trail from Sandakan to Ranau was over 100 miles long and difficult. The trail was marshy for 30 miles, then the next 40 miles were full of steep hills, and the rest of the trail was mountainous. Approximately 455 P.O.Ws left Sandakan in different groups between January and March 1945.
    
  • Second Death March - In May, after a large Allied sea-air bombardment of Sandakan, the Japanese evacuated the remaining prisoners and burned the camp to destroy evidence. The march began on 29 May 1945. The men were sicker and more malnourished. Those who couldn’t walk any further were shot or bayoneted, and some, beheaded. Only 183 prisoners survived the journey to Ranau on June 27. Those too sick to march were left behind in the burnt-out camp to die.
    
  • Third Death March - About 250 prisoners were left behind at Sandakan after the departure of the participants in the second death march. These prisoners were so ill that the Japanese initially intended to leave them at Sandakan to die of starvation. They sent another group of seventy-five prisoners on a third death march on June 9, 1945. This group was so weak and sick that none survived beyond 30 miles (50 kilometers). Whenever someone collapsed, he was instantly killed by a Japanese guard. All of the seriously ill prisoners who were left at Sandakan were either murdered by the Japanese guards or died from starvation and sickness.
    
  • On July 28, when four Australians managed to escape, there were about 40 P.O.Ws still alive at Ranau. In August 1945, the Japanese massacred the surviving prisoners. Evidence suggests that these last survivors were murdered on 27 August, 12 days after the official Japanese surrender.
    
• Hell ships - There were about 156 “Hell Ship” voyages, during which Allied P.O.W were herded into the holds of Japanese merchant ships that also carried supplies and weapons. The holds were often crowded and unsanitary, with the hatches fastened down to prevent escapes. The merchant ships were targets for american planes and submarines, whose crews did not know the ships were full of American and Allied P.O.Ws.
  
  • One of these hell ships was the Lisbon Maru. On October 1, 1942, the Lisbon Maru transported almost 1,850 P.O.W and about 780 Japanese soldiers from Shamshuipo P.O.W camp to Japan when it was hit by a torpedo fired by the American submarine Grouper 120 miles southeast of Shanghai. The Japanese troops were taken off onto a Japanese destroyer and another troopship, but the P.O.Ws were left battened down in the holds. They stayed there for 26 hours, then broke out as the boat began to settle. Japanese ships in the area shot at men in the water. Most of the prisoners started swimming towards nearby Islands, but eventually the Japanese started picking them up. By the end of the day, 825 men had died either on board the ship or in the water around it.
    
• Comfort women - Women were kept in brothels to pleasure Japanese military personnel. To reduce local resentment against Japan and to prevent the spread of venereal disease, the Japanese military contracted private vendors to set up “comfort stations” for the troops as early as 1932. The women were kept isolated. Many were trafficked from distant countries and did not know the local language, so they could not leave the facilities and were abused if they did not comply with their captors’ orders.
  
• “Three all” policy - stands for “Kill all, burn all, loot all”. It describes the Japanese Army’s tactics in attacking Communist guerrilla forces in north China.
  
• Cannibalism - Toward the end of the Pacific War, the Japanese army and navy descended to consumption of body parts of Allied prisoners. They were permitted to do so in an order issued from the 18th Army Headquarters on December 10 1944.
  
  • Chichijima  - Between August 1944 and March 1945, on Chichijima, the largest of the Bonin Islands, Japanese forces executed eight downed U.S. airmen. In four of these instances, the prisoners were cannibalized after their executions.
    
• Biological experiments
  
  • Unit 731 - near Pingfan Station, 20 km from Harbin. Experiments were conducted on humans with plague bacteria, cholera, glanders, and other pathogens. Japanese scientists vivisected the infected bodies of their victims to record the day-by-day progress of pathogens through the system. Unit 731 scientists conducted research in and bred lethal bacteria to be used as weapons. They also bred plague infested fleas for the purpose of spreading bubonic plague epidemics on enemy territories. As the war was ending, evidence of human experimentation was concealed. Experiment facilities were demolished and subjects were killed.
    
  • Bubonic plague in Ningbo - In 1940 a special expedition of Unit 731 was dispatched to central China where plague infected fleas were dropped from an aircraft, causing a plague epidemic in the Ningbo area.
    
  • Bubonic plague in Chengde - In 1941 Unit 731 sent a similar expedition to the Chengde area.
    
  • Unit 100 - located in Mogatong, near Changchun; prepared anthrax germs, glanders germs, and germs causing other infectious livestock diseases, and engaged in the cultivation of microbes for the infection and destruction of cereals, and the pathogenesis of cattle plague. Experiments on living people were also carried out in Unit 100. Unit 100 routinely sent bacteriological groups to the borders of USSR which carried out bacteriological sabotage against the Soviet Union by contaminating water sources on the border.
    
  • Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing killed hundreds of Chinese subjects in plague, anthrax, typhus, typhoid, and other pathogen tests. Unit 1644 also supplied germs for Unit 731.
    
  • Unit 1855 in Beijing, at least 300 human subjects were killed.
    
  • Unit 2646 in Hailar, Inner Mongolia - Subdivision 80 of Unit 2646 conducted secret human experiments.
    
  • Unit 9420 in Singapore produced large quantities of pathogens. Human remains were discovered in late 1980s indicating possibility of small-scale human experiments conducted at this site
    

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Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath By Michael Norman
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Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army: Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons By Otozō Yamada
http://www.pacificwar.org.au/JapWarCrimes/TenWarCrimes/Sandakan_Death_March.html
https://www.laguardia.edu/maus/files/Ethics-ch-16.pdf
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