The stories of American GI's stuck in Japanese prison camps are horrible. In 1996 a WWII vet in San Francisco recommended that I read Daws' Prisoners of the Japanese. One story: when the American GI's were rescued, they were packed onto a plane and flown to America. Four GI's accidentally fell out the door of the plane over the Atlantic. After suffering hell for four years and after getting rescued for two days, they died falling out of an American airplane. Another story: when a group GI's were rescued, they asked for five gallons of ice cream, placed all the ice cream on a bed and then rolled and frolicked in the ice cream. One more story: when the American GI's were rescued, a few of them walked over to a Japanese guard, carried him to the nearest well, tossed the guard into the well, and then walked away.
Thanks for your recommendation. I finished reading it the other day. My contempt for politicians has never been lower. What the Japanese did to POWs was unimaginable. Who thinks like that? Yet our government’s response to the needs of our returning soldiers was as bad if not worse - unconscionable. The fact that so many highly placed Japanese war criminals became politicians and powerful business men after serving a short stint as prisoners is sickening. And that MacArthur protected those doctors in that camp from prosecution in order to gain access to biological and medical experiments is appalling. Words cannot express my outrage.