JAPAN TELLS SOLDIERS: “NEVER SURRENDER”

Tokyo, Japan January 8, 1941

On this date in 1941 the Tokyo Gazette published the Imperial War Depart­ment’s newly adopted Japa­nese Field Service Code. It advised soldiers in part, “Do not give up under any cir­cum­stances, keeping in mind your re­spon­si­bil­ity not to tar­nish the glo­ri­ous his­tory of the Im­perial Army with its tradi­tion of in­vin­ci­bil­ity.” Japan had refused to ratify the 1929 Geneva Con­ven­tion on the treat­ment of pri­son­ers of war partly, as the country’s vice min­is­ter of the navy ex­plained, because the Japa­nese had no con­cept of being cap­tured. Addi­tional dis­in­cen­tives to sur­ren­dering were the govern­ment’s warning that any Japa­nese POW returning home would be shot and the rumor that the Allies tor­tured and killed any pri­soners they took.

Toward the end of the war in the battle for the Philip­pine capi­tal of Mani­la (Febru­ary 3 to March 3, 1945), 17,000 Japa­nese troops fought to main­tain con­trol of the city in vi­cious hand-to-hand fighting. More than 16,000 Japa­nese service­men perished along with 1,000 Amer­i­cans and 100,000 Fili­pinos. During the Battle for Mani­la U.S. troops also cap­tured the small rock is­land fortress of Corregi­dor in the en­trance to Mani­la Bay. Some 5,000 well-pro­vi­sioned Japa­nese troops held out on Corregi­dor for 10 days, costing 225 Amer­i­can lives and 405 wounded. The Japa­nese dead num­bered over 4,500. Of these 500 were buried alive by U.S. bull­dozers or demoli­tion charges, sealed in Corregi­dor’s caves from which they had been fighting. Indoc­tri­nated to choose between victory and a heroic death, only 20 Japanese were taken captive.

On the island of Iwo Jima during this time frame, the Allies en­gaged 22,000 island de­fenders over the course of five weeks. Total Japa­nese dead was almost 19,000. Only 216 Japa­nese were taken pri­son­er (some cap­tured because they had been knocked un­con­scious or were other­wise dis­abled); roughly 3,000 went into hiding. On the high seas, Allied sub­ma­riners’ dis­incli­na­tion to rescuing ship­wreck sur­vivors, as much as Japa­nese re­sis­tance to being taken cap­tive any­where, goes a long way explaining why, at the end of the war in the Paci­fic, the U.S. held only about 5,500 Japa­nese POWs. Japan’s Axis part­ner Nazi Germany had nothing com­parable to the Japa­nese Field Service Code, and thus the Allies held over 12 mil­lion German POWs and Disarmed Enemy Forces (so-called DEFs) during the war.

Japanese Prisoners of War in Allied POW Camps in the Pacific Theater

Japanese POWs in Manila, 1945Japanese POWs on Okinawa, June 1945

Left: The Battle of Manila lasted for 1 month, from Febru­ary 3 to March 3, 1945. At the end, Japa­nese casual­ties largely amounted to the entire force of 10,000 sailors and marines and 4,000 sol­diers, with only dozens surrendering, mostly foreigner laborers (perhaps these 2 men seen in this photograph).

Right: A group of Japanese prisoners of war on Okinawa, June 1945. The Battle of Oki­nawa (April 1 to June 22, 1945) was the first battle in the Pacific War in which thou­sands of Japa­nese soldiers surren­dered or were cap­tured. Many of the prisoners were native Oki­nawans who had been pressed into service shortly before the battle and were less imbued with the Japa­nese Army’s no-surrender doc­trine. When the Amer­i­can forces occu­pied the island, many Japa­nese soldiers put on Okinawan clothing to avoid capture.

Japanese POWs in Cowra, Australia, 1944Japanese POW in Borneo, 1945

Left: Japanese POWs practice baseball near their quarters in Cowra, Austra­lia, prior to August 5, 1944, when they staged a break­out that resulted in the deaths of 257 of their own and 4 Austra­lian guards. The photo­graph was taken with the inten­tion of using it in pro­pa­ganda leaf­lets, to be dropped on Japa­nese-held areas in the Asia Pacific region. Tokyo lodged protests with the Austra­lian and New Zea­land govern­ments, the only time the Japa­nese govern­ment offi­cially recog­nized that some members of the country’s military had surrendered.

Right: A rope-tied Japanese soldier captured in mid-1945 at Balik­pa­pan on the east coast of Borneo, the world’s third-largest island in today’s Indo­nesia, during Oper­a­tion Oboe (May 1 to August 15, 1945). Heavy bombing and shelling by Austra­lian and U.S. air and naval forces in July 1945 over­whelmed enemy out­posts manned by roughly 30,000–31,000 Japa­nese Army regulars and con­scripted locals on Borneo. As in other battles in the Pacific War many Japa­nese fought to the death. This Japa­nese soldier was an excep­tion, perhaps caught as the Aus­tra­lians combed the jungles and hills for stragglers following the end of major operations on Borneo.

Japanese POWs in Malaya, 1945Japanese POWs in Manchuria, 1945

Left: A group of Japanese POWs in Northern Malaya, Novem­ber 15, 1945. Japanese forces in Malaya surrendered to the Allies first at Penang on Septem­ber 4, 1945, then, after Singapore’s sur­ren­der, in Malaya’s capi­tal Kuala Lumpur on Septem­ber 13, 1945. Japa­nese sol­diers who remained in Malaya, Java, Suma­tra, and Burma at the end of the war were trans­ferred a few miles/­kilometers across the straits from Singa­pore to the Indo­nesian islands of Rem­pang and Galang, where from Octo­ber 1945 onward more than 200,000 Japa­nese troops awaited repatri­a­tion to Japan. The last troops left the islands in July 1946.

Right: In China, few Japanese soldiers surrendered to Chinese forces prior to August 1945. It has been esti­mated that at the end of the war Chi­nese Nation­alist and Com­munist forces held around 8,300 Japa­nese pri­soners. Following the Soviet Union’s declara­tion of war against Japan on August 8, 1945, the Red Army captured 640,276 stranded Japa­nese in Man­churia. This photo shows Kwan­tung Army sol­diers (Japan’s occu­pa­tion army in China) being marched into Soviet cap­tivity in Chang­chun (renamed Hsin­king by the Japa­nese in 1932), the capital of their puppet state Man­chu­kuo (Man­churia). After Japan’s surren­der in Septem­ber 1945, some 560,000 to 760,000 Japa­nese POWs were interned in the Soviet Union and Mon­golia to work in labor camps. Between December 1941 and August 15, 1945, the date of Japan’s capitu­la­tion, the Western Allies had taken just 35,000 Japa­nese pri­soners; most were repatriated by 1946. The Soviets held Japanese POWs much longer and used them as a labor force.

U.S. Navy Ensign Robert Russell’s Account of His 1,200 Days as a Japanese POW in the Philippines, Japan, and China (Part 2)