Posted on 08/22/2014 6:14:01 PM PDT by naturalman1975
In the dead of the night 70 years ago, more than 1,000 Japanese men stormed the barbed wire perimeter fences of Cowra prisoner of war camp in central NSW.
Armed with improvised weapons including baseball bats and sharpened kitchen knives, hundreds of Japanese prisoners overcame machine gun posts in what would become the biggest POW escape of World War II.
The mass breakout at the detention camp on August 5, 1944 resulted in a 10-day manhunt as Australian soldiers and police searched for hundreds of armed escapees roaming the Cowra countryside, 300km west of Sydney.
A total of 359 Japanese prisoners escaped and the death toll reached 231 in the days following, including 31 suicides and 12 who perished in huts they had set on fire themselves.
Four Australian soldiers were killed in the breakout, including Privates Benjamin Gower Hardy, Ralph Jones and Charles Henry Shepherd. Lieutenant Harry Doncaster was killed when he was ambushed during the rounding up of passengers.
Japanese man Teruo Murakami, who took part in the infamous Cowra breakout, returned to NSW for the 70th anniversary earlier this month as survivors and descendants gathered in Cowra for a memorial service.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I read a book a few years ago about the Japanese internment here. Wish I could remember the name but the premise of the book was that a significant percentage of first generation Japanese Americans were loyal to japan and participated in anti US actions.
I once saw a book on the subject of Japanese loyalty. I read the dust cover and now I wish I had bought it but it clearly stated that there was a large number of Japanese Americans particularly in Hawaii who supported the Japanese totally in WWII.
It mentioned one event which I only recall was of a Japanese pilot who landed on one of the more remote islands and who the locals hid from America.
Ping for the morning.
Thanks. I stand corrected.
We didnt kill and eat them.
That is quite a bit better.
The intensity of the anti Japanese rage in America driven by our WW2
home front propaganda and by the Japanese army’s own actions made living freely in the US too dangerous for any Japanese.
Many of their lives were saved by being interred.
There was a POW camp for German soldiers near St. Charles, Minn not too far from where I live. One German soldier was so grateful for the kind treatment he received as a POW at the camp he decided to become an American citizen after the war.
Thanks for the post. Never heard of this.
Something strange happened in Japan between WWI and WWII.
In the first war the Japanese were on the Allies side and German prisoners who were sent to Japan were so well treated that most of them stayed in Japan after the war.
In WWII they were so cruel that most Allied POWs died in their camps.
I seem to remember reading about a similar mass escape during the Korean war. Didn’t a bunch of North Koreans and Chinese POWs take over a camp in S Korea?
I recall seeing a fair number of German graves while in Army BCT, Ft Gordon GA AUG/SEP 1967.
Although the POW camps in the U.S. were spread out across the country, I don’t know why they didn’t put them all in the southwest. I remember reading about a few POW camps in Arizona or some other southwestern state. Even if the POWs escaped, like in remote Australia, there was virtually no chance for survival. Maybe they didn’t put them all there because it because it’s so hot six months of the year in the southwest, they couldn’t get much work out of the POWs.
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=ghosts+soldiers&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=28308421761&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9259723551882481865&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_2wur9gb9ac_bp
The book "Ghost Soldiers" chronicles the shameful way our POWs were treated by the Japanese. Towards the end of the war it was feared that the Cabanatuan POW camp would be massacred by the fleeing army, so a successful raid to save 500 was launched.
If a German POW succeeded in escaping to Mexico, what was the standard procedure? Did the Mexicans keep them, send them back to us or maybe send them back to Germany.
Thank you.
Additional Germans were POW’ed near Bastrop, Luling, and Rockne TX .... Many German-speaking civilians in the area to serve as translators, helpers, etc..
But none helped German POW’s escape.
Mexico entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1942. There were actually some Mexican pilots who flew fighter missions in the Pacific theater against the Japanese.
What were they going to do, swim for it?
Comforting to see that the UK has lousy editors too.
I've just read recently that the Bushido Code, supposed to be a centuries old military doctrine traceable back to ancient Samurai codes... Was in fact not so much the case, historically. The main concept of that ancient code was a more modern construct indoctrinated into the armed forces mostly in the years before the war. Yes... The Bushido code and the Samurai existed for centuries... But Samurai were for the most part individual mercenaries. They served landowning Lords and their primary role was to frighten and keep the local peasants in line. They rarely if ever actually fought in combat with or against large armies of other Samurai. It happened, but not to most Samurai. Their centrality to the ethos of the soldier was largely a fiction expanded and in some ways wholly created specifically for the modern age to inspire loyalty and fanaticism. Which it did.
I don't know. It's just something I saw recently. Anybody else have comment?
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