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My late dad could have told anyone, without resorting to trumped-up or manufactured propanganda after his 4-year stint in Japanese POW camps, that the Japanese military was "extremely cruel and depraved." The only Japanese plan for POWs (in only mild preference to "take no prisoners," i.e., kill them on the spot) was to get whatever work output they could from them in their stored-up body mass, subsidized only slightly by meager rice rations. When the POW's body mass was depleted and their work on earth was ended, they were simply expected to die, according to the calculations done long before.

The Japanese also had plans to murder all POWs in the event of invasion or defeat. It was only the rapid surrender after Nagasaki that forestalled this.

It was not the Emperor’s rapid surrender that accounts for my dad’s and his 1500 other camp mates’ survival after Nagasaki. Their camp, Fukuoka #17, was just enough out of range (well, 50 miles out, enough to survive in the short term) to comment how that must’ve been “one hell of an ammo dump,” only to see several of their guards lose heart and dessert, presumably to check on their nearby families’ abodes.

After further sacrifice of several prisoners, the guards that remained in the camp were overpowered then torn limb-from-limb by 90-pound men that had endured—and seen their friends succumb to—years of the most horrific torments imaginable.

Prisoners took over the camp and organized, sending out scouting patrols that eventually met up with Americans on the ground near Nagasaki, through which the camp’s prisoners that could travel then evacuated by ship. Most spent Thanksgiving around Manilla, where many pledged their attendance at yearly reunions to be held in the States.

My father, weighing in at 22kg, was not recognized when he first appeared on his parents’ doorstep.