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Diplomats and Diplomacy
The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II
On December 6, 1941, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki was one of a handful of men selected to skipper midget subs on a suicide mission to breach Pearl Harbor’s defenses. When his equipment malfunctioned, he couldn’t find the entrance to the harbor. He hit several reefs, eventually splitting the sub, and swam to shore some miles from Pearl Harbor. In the early dawn of December 8, he was picked up on the beach by two Japanese American MPs on patrol. Sakamaki became Prisoner No. 1 of the Pacific War.
Japan’s no-surrender policy did not permit becoming a POW. Sakamaki and his fellow soldiers and sailors had been indoctrinated to choose between victory and a heroic death. While his comrades had perished, he had survived. By becoming a prisoner of war, Sakamaki believed he had brought shame and dishonor on himself, his family, his community, and his nation, in effect relinquishing his citizenship. Sakamaki fell into despair and, like so many Japanese POWs, begged his captors to kill him.
Based on the author’s interviews with dozens of former Japanese POWs along with memoirs only recently coming to light, The Anguish of Surrender tells one of the great unknown stories of World War II. Beginning with an examination of Japan’s prewar ultranationalist climate and the harsh code that precluded the possibility of capture, the author investigates the circumstances of surrender and capture of men like Sakamaki and their experiences in POW camps.
Many POWs, ill and starving after days wandering in the jungles or hiding out in caves, were astonished at the superior quality of food and medical treatment they received. Contrary to expectations, most Japanese POWs, psychologically unprepared to deal with interrogations, provided information to their captors. Trained Allied linguists, especially Japanese Americans, learned how to extract intelligence by treating the POWs humanely. Allied intelligence personnel took advantage of lax Japanese security precautions to gain extensive information from captured documents. A few POWs, recognizing Japan’s certain defeat, even assisted the Allied war effort to shorten the war. Far larger numbers staged uprisings in an effort to commit suicide. Most sought to survive, suffered mental anguish, and feared what awaited them in their homeland.
These deeply human stories follow Japanese prisoners through their camp experiences to their return to their welcoming families and reintegration into postwar society. These stories are told here for the first time in English.
Japan’s no-surrender policy did not permit becoming a POW. Sakamaki and his fellow soldiers and sailors had been indoctrinated to choose between victory and a heroic death. While his comrades had perished, he had survived. By becoming a prisoner of war, Sakamaki believed he had brought shame and dishonor on himself, his family, his community, and his nation, in effect relinquishing his citizenship. Sakamaki fell into despair and, like so many Japanese POWs, begged his captors to kill him.
Based on the author’s interviews with dozens of former Japanese POWs along with memoirs only recently coming to light, The Anguish of Surrender tells one of the great unknown stories of World War II. Beginning with an examination of Japan’s prewar ultranationalist climate and the harsh code that precluded the possibility of capture, the author investigates the circumstances of surrender and capture of men like Sakamaki and their experiences in POW camps.
Many POWs, ill and starving after days wandering in the jungles or hiding out in caves, were astonished at the superior quality of food and medical treatment they received. Contrary to expectations, most Japanese POWs, psychologically unprepared to deal with interrogations, provided information to their captors. Trained Allied linguists, especially Japanese Americans, learned how to extract intelligence by treating the POWs humanely. Allied intelligence personnel took advantage of lax Japanese security precautions to gain extensive information from captured documents. A few POWs, recognizing Japan’s certain defeat, even assisted the Allied war effort to shorten the war. Far larger numbers staged uprisings in an effort to commit suicide. Most sought to survive, suffered mental anguish, and feared what awaited them in their homeland.
These deeply human stories follow Japanese prisoners through their camp experiences to their return to their welcoming families and reintegration into postwar society. These stories are told here for the first time in English.
- GenresHistory
282 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2003
29 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 25, 2015
Discussion of Japanese soldiers and sailors captured during the Second World War. The author was a Austrian Jew whose family moved in 1940 to the US, and he entered the army's Japanese language program at the end of the war, but apparently the war ended before he could carry out any duties in this regard.
The author continued to have an interest in Japan, and to some extent his interest is taken up with both explaining the way the Japanese code of ethics, which held that soldiers should die rather than be captured and so provided no instruction about what to do in this unacceptable eventuality, affected how those who did get captured would behave, and how the Japanese POW's dealt with their situation both during captivity and after return. Fundamentally, the author rejects this sort of ethics and is pejorative about those who adhered to it. This point of view gets tiresome at times, since he adopts the tone of "they're all wrong, let's see how the Japanese can overcome this wrongheadedness". No doubt that ethos has unpleasant consequences (like the abusive treatment of Allied POW's at the hands of their Japanese captors), but this judgmental attitude doesn't do much to help understand them on their terms.
There are lots of anecdotes about how the Japanese behaved in captivity, and that's basically the focus of the book. That means that there's no particular discussion of US policy about dealing with them. (And since the book focuses on the Japanese, it covers all the Western powers that held Japanese POW's, but the emphasis is on the US.) The book is particularly interested in arguing that the ethos of non-surrender was counter-productive from a Japanese point of view, since the Japanese prisoners, who'd been routinely treated brutally by the Japanese military, were left adrift when in captivity and were frequently won over by the generally humane treatment at the hands of their captors. (Not to say that all potential Japanese prisoners were treated well; particularly in the early stages of the war, few prisoners were taken, but as the war turned against the Japanese and the Allied intelligence agencies convinced their commanders of the utility of taking prisoners, more Japanese were taken prisoner, and however taken, Japanese prisoners were treated well both in absolute terms and definitely in comparison with the horrific treatment of Allied prisoners.) I would have preferred to hear a lot more about what exactly was learned from the Japanese prisoners.
Being a vague aficionado of the IJN, I was intrigued to see references to rescued sailors from the carrier Hiryu, the heavy cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Akitsuki, but I learned nothing about what if anything was learned from them. Basically, the book is mostly concerned with the ethical problems faced by the prisoners and not about how the Allies (and US in particular) dealt with them per se (though policy does come into it in passing; and there's a whole chapter on the operation of the US Army and Navy's respective language programs, which was interesting).
The author continued to have an interest in Japan, and to some extent his interest is taken up with both explaining the way the Japanese code of ethics, which held that soldiers should die rather than be captured and so provided no instruction about what to do in this unacceptable eventuality, affected how those who did get captured would behave, and how the Japanese POW's dealt with their situation both during captivity and after return. Fundamentally, the author rejects this sort of ethics and is pejorative about those who adhered to it. This point of view gets tiresome at times, since he adopts the tone of "they're all wrong, let's see how the Japanese can overcome this wrongheadedness". No doubt that ethos has unpleasant consequences (like the abusive treatment of Allied POW's at the hands of their Japanese captors), but this judgmental attitude doesn't do much to help understand them on their terms.
There are lots of anecdotes about how the Japanese behaved in captivity, and that's basically the focus of the book. That means that there's no particular discussion of US policy about dealing with them. (And since the book focuses on the Japanese, it covers all the Western powers that held Japanese POW's, but the emphasis is on the US.) The book is particularly interested in arguing that the ethos of non-surrender was counter-productive from a Japanese point of view, since the Japanese prisoners, who'd been routinely treated brutally by the Japanese military, were left adrift when in captivity and were frequently won over by the generally humane treatment at the hands of their captors. (Not to say that all potential Japanese prisoners were treated well; particularly in the early stages of the war, few prisoners were taken, but as the war turned against the Japanese and the Allied intelligence agencies convinced their commanders of the utility of taking prisoners, more Japanese were taken prisoner, and however taken, Japanese prisoners were treated well both in absolute terms and definitely in comparison with the horrific treatment of Allied prisoners.) I would have preferred to hear a lot more about what exactly was learned from the Japanese prisoners.
Being a vague aficionado of the IJN, I was intrigued to see references to rescued sailors from the carrier Hiryu, the heavy cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Akitsuki, but I learned nothing about what if anything was learned from them. Basically, the book is mostly concerned with the ethical problems faced by the prisoners and not about how the Allies (and US in particular) dealt with them per se (though policy does come into it in passing; and there's a whole chapter on the operation of the US Army and Navy's respective language programs, which was interesting).
February 17, 2022
We hear a great deal about the brutality of combat in the Far East theatre and the horrific treatment of Allied prisoners in the hands of the Japanese. The experience of the relatively small number of Japanese servicemen who were captured by Allied forces is much less well known. There is good reason for this.
Straus lived in Japan as a child, worked as a US Army language officer during the occupation and then as a diplomat in Okinawa. He is well qualified to explain the code of Senjinkun, drummed into Japanese from childhood, which decreed that surrender was not an option and that the shame of captivity would reflect on the prisoner's family and community. He explains how this militaristic world view took hold between the world wars and led to combatants facing off in WW2 with mutually incomprehensible concepts of honour.
Soldiers, sailors and airmen were captured however - either because they were incapacitated at the critical moment or because the primal will to survive overrode their conditioning. They were then faced with a dilemma: being in a situation that had never been envisaged they had no, repeat no training in how to behave as prisoners.
It took some persuasion to restrain Allied front line troops from taking immediate revenge for the merciless Japanese combat behaviour, but once this was done most prisoners were so surprised by the good treatment they received - and so taken aback by the strength of the war machine they saw as they were brought to rear areas - that they became cooperative. Many gave up the information they knew to skilful interrogators, a few worked actively for Allied victory.
Straus traces this back to Senjinkun. The fact of capture separated a serviceman from his unit, his family, his country. Many gave false names and backgrounds to their fellow prisoners as well as to their interrogators. A man with no country has no allegiance.
Broadly the book falls into three sections. Three chapters cover Japanese culture and policy, three Allied prisoner management and interrogation (including language training), and three life in the stockades (including rebellions) and eventual repatriation.
It is well written and makes good use of scanty source material, including post-war memoirs by and interviews with Japanese veterans. The maps and plates are useful. Overall the book covers a badly-neglected topic very well. I suggest reading it in conjunction with The History of Camp Tracy: Japanese WWII POWs and the Future of Strategic Interrogation.
Straus lived in Japan as a child, worked as a US Army language officer during the occupation and then as a diplomat in Okinawa. He is well qualified to explain the code of Senjinkun, drummed into Japanese from childhood, which decreed that surrender was not an option and that the shame of captivity would reflect on the prisoner's family and community. He explains how this militaristic world view took hold between the world wars and led to combatants facing off in WW2 with mutually incomprehensible concepts of honour.
Soldiers, sailors and airmen were captured however - either because they were incapacitated at the critical moment or because the primal will to survive overrode their conditioning. They were then faced with a dilemma: being in a situation that had never been envisaged they had no, repeat no training in how to behave as prisoners.
It took some persuasion to restrain Allied front line troops from taking immediate revenge for the merciless Japanese combat behaviour, but once this was done most prisoners were so surprised by the good treatment they received - and so taken aback by the strength of the war machine they saw as they were brought to rear areas - that they became cooperative. Many gave up the information they knew to skilful interrogators, a few worked actively for Allied victory.
Straus traces this back to Senjinkun. The fact of capture separated a serviceman from his unit, his family, his country. Many gave false names and backgrounds to their fellow prisoners as well as to their interrogators. A man with no country has no allegiance.
Broadly the book falls into three sections. Three chapters cover Japanese culture and policy, three Allied prisoner management and interrogation (including language training), and three life in the stockades (including rebellions) and eventual repatriation.
It is well written and makes good use of scanty source material, including post-war memoirs by and interviews with Japanese veterans. The maps and plates are useful. Overall the book covers a badly-neglected topic very well. I suggest reading it in conjunction with The History of Camp Tracy: Japanese WWII POWs and the Future of Strategic Interrogation.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews