Whatever torture and atrocities are portrayed is probably tame compared to what actually happened.
My friend’s father was captured by the Japanese when his plane was shot down. He was sent to a camp to be a lab rat. Without pain killers, they slit his thighs and sewed in pus soaked rags. Then they recorded the progress of his health. Luckily his camp was liberated before he died and he was able to get American medical help.
He never walked again though.
For Americans, WWII for us began on December 7, 1941.
For Japanese, WWII in the Pacific began on August 6, 1945.
After the Pearl Harbor attack, my uncle and his friend wanted to enlist immediately. My grandmother told my uncle that they would come for him when they needed him. His friend enlisted, was sent to the Philippines, was captured and was a prisoner in the Death March.
It was a narrow escape for my uncle, who was subsequently drafted, sent to OCS, and became an intelligence officer in the Pacific theater.
I remember reading that the so-called rape of Nanjing was so horrible that the German legate filed a complaint with the Nazi government in Berlin. He was told to forget it, but it takes a lot to horrify a Nazi. It was celebrated as a great victory in Japan. Since I heard that, I have shed no tears for Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
One only needs to read or see the movies “King Rat” and “The Bridge over the River Kwai” to get some idea of how the Jappers treated their POW’s.
I met a vet who even in the 1990s woke up in the middle of the night screaming about the japs burning him with hot pokers.
They were sadistic in ways most could only imagine.