Introduction
The purpose of this
paper is to look into Japanese treatment of Chinese
prisoners in China and Southeast Asia between 1931
and 1945, or in other words during the Fifteen Years’ War.
I deal here not only with POWs captured from the
regular army, but also with Chinese guerrillas and
civilians taken by the Japanese, because there were
close parallels between the treatment of both. Thus
the term "prisoner" refers to POWs as well
as guerrilla and civilian captives, while
"Chinese" is used here to include overseas
Chinese also.
Large numbers of
Chinese joined guerrilla forces or gave them every
assistance in attempting to expel Japan from their
country. In Southeast Asia, overseas Chinese ? who commanded considerable
influence in economic and social affairs ? joined up with volunteer
forces organised by the British or organised their
own forces. This led to all people of Chinese
descent, not just those in China, being regarded as
anti-Japanese by Japan; many Chinese civilians were
captured and treated severely by the Japanese as
guerrillas.
Japan has long been
bitterly criticized for its treatment of European and
American POWs and internees, which flouted
international law and common humanity. Although there
is no disagreement on this point, it is also very
important to draw attention to the treatment meted
out to Chinese POWs and civilians.
There is no doubt
that the main purpose of Japan’s aggression was occupation
of China and Southeast Asia, nor that captured
Chinese soldiers ? who were seldom officially treated as
POWs ? were much more numerous than
Europeans and Americans. As I shall make clear later,
the treatment of these Chinese captives was
incomparably more severe than that suffered by
Europeans and Americans. Thus, in dealing with the
matter of POWs, it cannot be emphasised too strongly
that a discussion of how the Japanese treated Chinese
POWs is essential. Thus far, however, most studies
have focused on European and American POWs, and few
overall studies of the POW issue has been made(1).
Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to
fully correct this situation, I will focus on this
aspect of the question ? Chinese prisoners ? which has so far received
little attention(2).
1 Execution without
trial in Manchuria
Japan conquered
Manchuria in 1931, and the following year set up a
puppet-state known as "Manchukuo" (or state
of the Manchus). The occupation was troubled by
anti-Japanese guerrilla activity, and attempts were
made to eradicate opposition. In September 1932, a
law for the "provisional punishment of
bandits" was enacted, where the word
"bandit" actually meant not only bandits
but also guerrillas(3).
According to this
law, certain officers ? Manchukuo military officers and
police officers ? were empowered to "dispose"
of those captured during mop-up operations. The
Japanese army (known as the Kanto-gun in Manchuria)
also used the same tactics. In other words the
Japanese army, the Manchukuo army, and the police
were allowed to kill captives without trial if they
were regarded as guerrillas or anti-Japanese
elements.
This procedure later
came to be known as “genju-shobun”,
which means sever punishment by the letter, or “genchi-shobun”,
meaning on-the-spot punishment(4). It sometimes led
to Japanese garrisons massacring whole villages on
suspicion of anti-Japanese sentiment. And although
the law was abolished in December 1941, the procedure
remained in use until the end of the Manchukuo state.
When the
Sino-Japanese War broke out, “genju-shobun” was
commonly applied by Japanese troops dispatched to
various parts of China. In the north, for example, it
was used in mop-up operations against anti-Japanese
guerrillas, particularly communist guerrillas. The
commander of the Kempeitai (the Japanese military
police) in China from 1938 to 1939 had once been a
military advisor in Manchukuo, and he imported the
method to northern China. There it was adopted by the
chief in staff of the North China Area Army,
Yamashita Tomoyuki(5). As mop-up operations became
more intense, they became known as “sanko-sakusen” (three-lights
operations; "light" in Chinese implies
completeness or thoroughness), meaning total killing,
looting, and burning.
As I shall explain
later, Yamashita went on to command the mop-up
operations in Singapore and Malaya that later became
known as the Chinese massacres. Thus this means of
execution without trial, which originated in
Manchukuo, later became commonplace in China and
Southeast Asia.
2 Treatment of
Chinese POWs during the Sino-Japanese War
Despite fierce
resistance from the Chinese regular army during the
Shanghai Incident of 1932, the Japanese continued to
treat the Chinese army with disdain. In a book
entitled "A study of ways to fight the Chinese
army," published by the Infantry Academy in
1933, the chapter dealing with the treatment of POWs
reads as follows(6).
"There is no
need to take POWs into custody nor return them, in
contrast with our treatment of POWs of other
nationalities. Except in certain special cases, it is
sufficient to free them on the spot or in another
location. Further, the Chinese system of residency
registration is imperfect, and most soldiers are
homeless anyway and seldom registered. Thus no
problems will arise if we kill them or deport
them".
Clearly, the notion
that it does not matter if Chinese POWs were killed
or deported prevailed at the beginning of the
Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
Immediately after
the outbreak of this war, Japan’s Vice Minister of War
instructed the China Expeditionary Army that
international laws of warfare, such as the Hague
Conventions, did not apply and that the term POW
should not be used because it was an
"incident" and not a war(7). In line with
this position, no war was declared against China.
Neither a POW administration nor POW camps were set
up. And even after the Asia-Pacific War broke out,
Japan made no effort to set up POW camps for the
Chinese, in contrast with the treatment of Europeans
and Americans.
Although the
Ministry of War gave no instructions as to dealing
with surrendering Chinese, the above instruction was
naturally interpreted as meaning that captives should
be killed, since neither personnel for administering
POWs nor food were available for the troops to
distribute. Accordingly, mass executions took place.
In Nanking, mass executions of POWs were as prevalent
as those of civilians.
An example can be
found in the diary of a Major General in charge of an
infantry brigade; his men took 14,777 prisoners. He
confined them to a nearby school for a time, but
since there was a lack of food for even the Japanese
occupiers, he dispatched a liaison officer to
headquarters for advice as to their treatment. In
answer, he was ordered to kill every one of them. His
men took the prisoners to the banks of the Chang
Jiang river, machine-gunned them, and abandoned the
bodies in the river. Even working as fast as they
could, the gruesome task took two days(8).
Japanese troops
unexpectedly took large numbers of prisoners during
the battle of Nanking. Further, since many Chinese
soldiers abandoned their uniforms and hid among
civilian refugees, many civilians were captured and
executed as POWs. Such mass executions were
systematically committed under military orders. A
similar practice ? executing captured soldiers and
civilians together ? was also used in the case of
Singapore and other territories.
Those captured
Chinese who were not killed on the spot were
compelled to do forced labor. Some of these were
later killed, while others were let free. In all
cases, however, their fate was arbitrarily decided by
the troop concerned, with no consideration of
international law.
3 Treatment of
Chinese volunteers in Singapore
When Japan attacked
Malaya and Singapore, the British effort against the
Japanese was helped by several volunteer forces made
up of Malaya residents including Malays, Chinese,
Eurasians, and civilian Europeans. These British
volunteer forces were of three types.
Firstly, there were
volunteer forces organised by individual settlements
and states, including the Straits Settlements
Volunteer Forces (SSVF), Federated Malay States
Volunteer Forces (FMSVF), and Un-Federated Malay
States Volunteer Forces (UFMSVF)(9). In Singapore,
there were two battalions of the SSVF, and these were
the oldest of the volunteer forces, dating back to
1854. Members were European, Eurasian, Malay, and
Chinese. The Chinese members were what were called
the "King’s Chinese":
English-educated, able to speak English, and owing
allegiance to the British king. Since the SSVF
guarded the inner city of Singapore, they did not
fight directly with the Japanese.
The second type was
the Malay Regiment. Founded in 1933, it consisted of
British officers plus Malay officers and
soldiers(10). The first battalion of the Malay
Regiment fought courageously against the Japanese at
Opium hill to the west of Singapore city.
Third was the
Overseas Chinese Volunteer Corps, commonly known as
the Dall Force(11). The basis of this corps was the
Singapore Chinese Mobilisation Council which was
formed on 30 December 1941. On 31 January 1942, by
which time every British soldier had been expelled
from the Malay peninsular and had retreated to
Singapore island, the British authorities in
Singapore asked the council to organise a volunteer
corps. The corps was instantly ready. In spite of
minimal training, they fought bravely against the
Japanese at Bukit Timah in the center of Singapore
island. However, two days before the British
surrender, the corps was disbanded and the volunteers
escaped. The volunteers consisted of Chinese
communists, Kuomintang (nationalists) and others
educated in Chinese. They usually spoke Chinese and
were patriotic toward China. Some later took part in
communist guerrilla fighting afterwards.
Some of the officers
and soldiers of these various volunteer forces were
captured and became Japanese POWs, while others
(including the Dall Force) escaped or went home.
Among the POWs, one group of seventy to ninety
officers and soldiers was selected and brought to the
coast for execution by bullet. Among them were eight
Malay officers from the Malay regiment and the FMSVF,
twenty-six Chinese from the SSVF, as well as
Eurasians from the SSVF. One Chinese sergeant
narrowly escaped, although shot in the knee, and was
able to act as witness to the massacre after the
war(1??.
The Malay officers
were given a choice: join the Japanese army or be set
free as civilians. They refused both options,
however, and demanded to be treated as British
officers ? to be taken as POWs. The Japanese
denied them this right.
The Japanese
executed both Chinese volunteers and Malays and
Eurasians, while Asian officers detained in Changi
prison with British officers were spared. Although
there is no evidence to suggest why the executions
took place, one explanation is racial discrimination
by the Japanese against other Asians in comparison
with their treatment of Europeans. European officers
and soldiers were treated as POWs, but this was not
the case with Asians.
4 Massacres of
Chinese in Singapore and Malaya
After Nanking, the
second biggest massacre perpetrated by the Japanese
was in Singapore. The Japanese Army had been planning
mop-up operations against those Chinese who remained
anti-Japanese since before British surrender. As soon
as the occupation was complete on 15 February 1942,
the Japanese army ? under the command of the same Lt.
General Yamashita Tomoyuki ? put these plans into effect(13).
According to the
original plan, mopping-up was to last from 21 to 23
February, and the sweep was to pick up (1)
volunteers, (2) communists, (3) looters, (4) those
bearing arms or harbouring arms, and (5) elements
obstructing Japanese operations, disturbing peace and
order, or likely to disturb peace and order.
Clause (5) above was
later revised because the Singapore garrison
commander under orders to implement it claimed that
he could not pick out such elements in so short a
time. Certainly, the wording in clause (5) was too
vague. In the end, it was altered to read
"people named on the list." The Japanese
had already captured some lists of names from Chinese
organisations that had supported the defense of the
Chinese motherland against Japanese aggression. These
lists included people who, perhaps, simply donated
money to the Kuomintang government. They were
executed simply because their names were on the list.
People identified by clauses (1) to (5) were to be
killed without investigation or trial.
The Chinese
population of Singapore, and especially males between
eighteen and fifty years old, were crammed into
designated areas, where they were screened by the
Kempeitai with the help of collaborators. The
collaborators, wearing hoods or masks and consisting
of ex-communists, ex-volunteers, police officers, and
others, picked out certain people as anti-Japanese
elements. In general, few questions were asked of the
people selected. In one particular location, they
were simply asked whether they were volunteers or
civil servants, and those answering in the
affirmative were selected.
The Japanese might
have been using the term "volunteer" to
mean a member of the Dall force, but in fact they
were probably mixing up the several volunteer forces.
Even Malay officers were regarded as anti-Japanese
simply for not obeying orders.
Those categorised as
anti-Japanese were taken away in lorries to coastal
areas where they were tied, shot, and ? if still alive ? stabbed to death with
bayonets. Those found not to harbour anti-Japanese
sentiment were allowed to return home after several
days of hardship.
According to the
diary of the Singapore garrison commander, Major
General Kawamura Saburo, the total number reported to
him as killed by the various Kempeitai section
commanders on 23 February was five thousand(14). This
was the third day of mop-up operations when
executions were mostly finished. It is said in
Singapore that the total number killed was forty or
fifty thousand; this point needs further
investigations.
On 21 February, the
first day of these mop-up operations in Singapore,
the army sent two divisions to mop up anti-Japanese
elements in the Malay Peninsular. Operations
continued for about a month. According to my
research(15), about four thousand Chinese, including
females and children, were killed in the state of
Negeri Sembilan alone, where the Chinese population
at the time was about one hundred and twenty
thousand. Some villages that were regarded as
cooperating with the guerrillas were completely wiped
out. In contrast with the Singapore operations, where
the targets were male alone, many of those killed in
the peninsular were women and children.
In Seremban, the
capital of Negeri Sembilan, those executed were: (1)
hostile elements and communists, (2) those remaining
insolent throughout questioning, and (3) those
suspected of disturbing the social order(16). These
alone were reasons for execution without trial.
In the larger towns,
the Japanese selected male suspects and took them to
the suburbs for secret executions. In the villages,
on the other hand, several hundred villagers were
executed on the spot, regardless of age or sex, and
every house burnt to the ground. The villages usually
fell to ruin.
One of the reasons
for such terrible actions, particularly in Singapore,
was that the Japanese treated ex-volunteers not as
POWs, but as anti-Japanese elements with the
potential to carry out guerrilla warfare. There was
no way to distinguish ex-volunteers nor guerrillas
from civilians. Thus every Chinese was regarded as
anti-Japanese and a guerrilla sympathiser. It was the
case in China with Japanese.
Japanese policy as
regards POWs was established by the Ministry of War
in May 1942. According to an instruction known as the
“Rules for the Treatment of POWs”,
all POWs except Europeans and Americans who do not
need to be interned should be freed immediately after
making an oath or should be utilised locally(17).
Thus the Japanese specifically set up POW camps for
Europeans and Americans, but not for Asians.
One of the reasons
for this difference was that certain officers in
charge of the POW administration were afraid of
reprisals by the Allies, in particular the USA, if
POWs were treated improperly(18). However, they had
not such anxiety about China and other Asian
countries. Chinese officers and soldiers in the
British forces were not considered worth taking as
POWs by Japanese. This was the case even with Malay
officers.
In the same way,
Indian officers and soldiers in the British forces
were not regarded as POWs; they were mobilised into
the Indian Independent Army or as
"volunteer" laborers. It is doubtful,
however, whether they truly did voluntarily.
Indians were taken
as laborers to various Pacific islands in order to
construct airfields or camps for Japanese. However,
as soon as the Japanese perceived danger of American
attacks, they accused the Indians of espionage and
executed them without trial. Such cases were heard at
the war crimes trials held by the allied nations
after the war(19).
Conclusion
The Japanese
treatment of Chinese soldiers both in China and in
Southeast Asia was not the same as that given to
European and American forces. With European and
American captives, the Japanese had, to a certain
extent, to take international laws into
consideration. On the other hand, the rights of
Chinese and other Asian prisoners were simply
ignored. It has been said that Japanese policy toward
POWs changed in the 1920s or 1930s(20). However, it
is clear that double-standards still remained
throughout the Sino-Japanese war and the Asia-Pacific
war. Although European and American POWs were treated
inhumanely, the Chinese were not even considered POWs
and were often executed on the spot without
hesitation.
This treatment of
the Chinese originated in the Manchurian Incident, as
already mentioned. Since Chinese civilians were
regarded as latent guerrillas, the same treatment was
given to Chinese soldiers and Chinese civilians. This
attitude might even date back to the first
Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895 when many Chinese POWs
were massacred by the Japanese at Lushun(21). There
is room here for further investigations.
To finish, I want to
consider this subject from the viewpoint of
comparative studies. It must not be overlooked that
it is not uniquely Japanese to treat POWs inhumanely,
although the Japanese treatment of POWs was much
worse than that of the Allies. During the
Asia-Pacific war, the US army sometimes killed
Japanese on the spot when they were captured on the
battlefield, according to John Dower and George
Feifer(22). Although the US army often protected
Japanese POWs and civilians, some US troops would
never have accepted Japanese soldiers as POWs, such
as at Tarawa, Okinawa, and so on. Japanese soldiers
sometimes had no alternative but death; not because
they had been ordered not to surrender, but also
because of US treatment.
John Dower pointedly
notes that one of the main reasons for such behavior
was racial prejudice. This was the case with Japanese
policy toward the Chinese. And there have been many
similar cases, such as the US toward Vietnamese.
Inhumane treatment of POWs often seems to occur when
one nation has some kind of prejudice against
another. There is a need for further comparative
studies on the treatment of POWs(23).
We may note, in
passing that the British treated Japanese internees
inhumanely. Japanese civilians were captured in
Southeast Asia and deported to India after the war
broke out. According to the British Foreign Office
documents(24), of two thousand eight hundred
captives, one hundred and six died of dysentery,
malaria, beri-beri, and other diseases as a result of
the poor conditions by the end of 1942. The British
government improved the situation after protests from
the Japanese government, so it cannot be said that
British treatment of internees was as inhumane as the
Japanese. However, it does demonstrate that there is
a likelihood of internees being treated inhumanely.
In the case of
Japanese treatment of European and American POWs, one
can safely state that an inferiority complex with
regard to Europeans was one reason for the Japanese
behavior. Inferiority complexes do sometimes cause
aggressiveness against the object perceived as
superior. On the other hand, in the Chinese case,
Japanese racial prejudice against the Chinese became
extreme. Both types of treatment illuminate a
characteristic of modern Japan which we Japanese
still exhibit.
