Japan had been condemned by the international community several years before the Second World War began. In 1931, Japanese army officers had staged a bombing of railroad tracks in Mukden, Manchuria, China, in order to provide an excuse for a Japanese invasion of that region. In 1937, the Japanese military engaged in a six-week campaign of raping, murdering, and pillaging that would eventually be known as the Rape of Nanking (Morin 63-64, 66).

A new outrage was born when Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, even though Japanese and American diplomats were involved in talks designed to improve relations between the two countries. Japan also attacked several other U.S.-controlled locations in the Pacific, including Guam, Midway, and the Philippines (Morin 66).     

The attack in the Philippines began December 8, 1941, only eight hours after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor (Baldassarre). As in the offensive in Hawaii, the attack surprised American forces. American bombers and fighters that were lined up for refueling were easy targets for the machine guns and bombs of Japanese aircraft (Black and Blashfield 8), and the Army Air Core lost eighty-six planes (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW1.htm). The American and Filipino armies took additional damage from air attacks December 10 (Black and Blashfield 8-10).

Almost immediately, Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, commander of the Japanese invasion force, began sending in ground troops. He landed in the northern part of the island of Luzon and in the Southern Mindanao Islands (Baldassarre).

General Douglas MacArthur, the head of American forces in the Philippines, had planned to train a combined American and Filipino force of 400,000 by April of 1942. However, at the time of the Japanese attack, the armies of America and the Philippines had only 80,000 soldiers to defend against the Japanese invasion (Black and Blashfield 12-16).

These soldiers were neither well equipped nor well trained. Non-combat troops, such as pilots, and even civilians had been hastily organized into combat teams to defend the Philippines. Even veterans could not have fought well with the equipment they had: old or corroded ammunitions, artillery shells lacking proper fuses, and a general lack of almost everything, from food to gasoline (Baldassarre).

The Japanese army forced Filipino and American troops to retreat to the peninsula of Bataan on the island of Luzon and to the island-fortress of Corregidor. Bataan would serve as the stronghold for the armies, while MacArthur would have his command center on Corregidor. From those two locations the Allied forces would hold off the Japanese siege (Black and Blashfield 19, 21, 27).

The defenders held out through April of 1942, battling against air raids and ground attacks despite low supplies, injuries, and disease. MacArthur had left in February for Australia under orders from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to take command of all Allied forces in the Pacific. At first, they fought in hope of reinforcements or supplies, but eventually they began to despair. As documented in  http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW3.htm, "War corresponded Frank Hewlett wrote:

We're the battling bastards of Bataan.
No Mama, no Papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces.
No rifles, no planes, or artillery pieces.
And nobody gives a damn."

On April 3, the despairing, beleaguered American and Filipino soldiers faced the Japanese army’s heaviest offensive yet. General Edward King, Jr., the commander of the forces on Bataan, realized that the Allied situation was hopeless and that surrender was the only option. Knowing that General Wainwright, who had replaced MacArthur, was under orders to hold out at all costs, King decided to send a surrender team to the Japanese under a white flag, accepting an unconditional surrender (Black and Blashfield 31, 34-35). Trying to stop the massive artillery on Corregidor from firing at the Japanese guns, the Japanese used their new prisoners as human shields, placing them at important locations. The Americans tried to fire over the heads of their captured comrades, sadly killing dozens of Americans. Finally, General Wainwright became aware that he was killing his own men, and he ordered an end to the bombardment (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW7.htm).

The artillery barrage only delayed the inevitable. The Battle of Bataan was over, and the American and Filipino soldiers were prisoners of war (Black and Blashfield 31, 34-35). The Japanese had charge of over 70,000 prisoners of war, or POWs, which was quite a bit more than the 30,000 that the Japanese had planned for. This unexpected challenge caused the captors to become inhumane and brutal. Captives everywhere were bayoneted, shot, or slaughtered with samurai swords (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW8.htm).

The Japanese led their prisoners to Camp O’Donnell, about seventy miles to the north. The transfer was conducted in several steps. First, the prisoners marched fifty-five miles from Mariveles, on Bataan, to San Fernando (Baldassarre). Although some Japanese soldiers tried to help the large number of sick and wounded (Black and Blashfield 36-37), captives who could not make it were usually promptly bayoneted (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW8.htm).

For entertainment during the march, the guards would push their prisoners off cliffs. The Filipinos, as http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW8.htm recounts, fared even worse: "Young girls were pulled out of ranks and raped repeatedly. Anyone who resisted was shot.  Frightened mothers would rub human dung on their daughters' faces to make them unattractive to the guards." Sometimes the guards used their captives for bayonet practice or forced prisoners to bury other prisoners alive (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/pow10.htm).

The treatment of the captives, although always bad, varied widely, with some groups of men getting frequent breaks and food while others received neither supplies nor rest. Despite nearby springs, the prisoners were often denied water (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/pow9.htm), and the only food many got was that which Filipino civilians threw to them from the sides of the road (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW10.htm).

The last part of the journey to Camp O’Donnell was a twenty-four mile train ride from San Fernando to Capas, Tarlac (Baldassarre). Although the tired prisoners of war may have been glad at first to see that they no longer had to march, they soon realized their mistake. The captives were crushed into hot box cars with no ventilation. Those with dysentery added to the filth and stench already prevalent in the cars. Although a few escaped, many died in the cars (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW11.htm).

From Capas, the captives marched five or six more miles to their final destination, Camp O’Donnell. There, the Bataan "Death March" ended (Baldassarre). On it, over 16,000 American and Filipino captives died from deliberate abuse and lack of supplies. Of the 70,000 that had started on the "Bataan Death March," approximately 54,000 reached Camp O’Donnell (Black and Blashfield 37).

Known as Hell Hole #1, Camp O’Donnell was a former Philippine army post that had been abandoned earlier because it could not provide enough water for 5,000 men. Now, 54,000 captives staggering with exhaustion, disease, hunger, and thirst now were forced into it (Black and Blashfield 37). In the beginning, 170 Americans and Filipinos died daily. This number soon increased to 500. In nine months, 40,000 prisoners perished. This is not surprising, since the only food issued to prisoners was a gruel filled with partially rotten rice and vegetables fitting for animals. There was an exception: the stew the guards issued to commissioned officers in their custody was full of vegetables and even meat. The only water available to all captives to wash with or to drink was contaminated with overflow from the latrines (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrokett/POW/POW12.htm).

Even though the Japanese did not provide enough supplies to keep their prisoners alive, they often did not give Red Cross and other packages to the captives. Most of the parcels were taken by guards or thrown into warehouses (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrockett/POW/POW11.htm).

The Japanese had constructed many other POW camps to hold the soldiers that they were convinced they could vanquish. In the Philippines, in addition to Camp O’Donnell, were Baquio and Cabanatuan (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrockett/POW/POW13.htm).  

Cabanatuan Prison was a giant detention center six miles east of a city of the same name (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrockett/POW/POW14.htm). The prison was commanded by a Captain Tanaka. Water here was also in short supply; POWs had to stand in line for several hours to get a drink. Food consisted of rice gruel supplemented with water lilies (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrockett/POW/POW14.htm). On June 6, 1942, the Japanese transferred all American POWs at Camp O’Donnell to Cabanatuan because of the high death rate at the first camp. Filipino prisoners were let out on parole (Baldassarre).

Discipline was harsh. Men were divided into groups of ten. If any of the group escaped, the others were promptly executed. All gathering, including to pray, was forbidden. Even during burials, the Japanese did not permit chaplains to offer prayers. Although the treatment at Cabanatuan was harsh, prisoners transferred from other camps reported that Cabanatuan was one of the better places to be (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrockett/POW/POW14.htm).

Cabanatuan, however, was usually a temporary camp. The Japanese used their prisoners as source of labor, so all captives except the ones too ill to work were transferred by boat from the Philippines to factories, mines, and slave labor camps in Japanese-occupied China, Korea, Japan, or other places in the Philippines (Baldassarre). In contrast to the oppressive heat in the Pacific, the new location of the POWs, such as Mukden, a camp in Manchuria, was below freezing (http://www.jacksonville.net/~rgrockett/POW/POW1.htm).

One of the more notorious camps in Japan itself was Mitsushima Prison Camp, commanded by Captain Sukeo Nakajima. Nakajima’s administration was evidently extremely barbaric, as the Japanese government executed him by hanging as a punishment for the high death rate under him. Replacing him was a Lieutenant Kubo (http://home.pacbell.net/fbaldie/faces.html).

The War in the Pacific raged on. Allied forces were no longer fighting a defensive battle. They began retaking territories the Japanese had occupied. When American forces approached the Philippines, Japanese sailors in Manila raped, tortured, and killed thousands of Filipino civilians in what would become known as the Rape of Manila (Morin 66-67).

Later, the Japanese surrendered (see the Atomic Bomb essay’s information on this). The victorious Allies believed that, like the Germans, the war crimes of the Japanese should not go unpunished. Japanese treatment of prisoners of war was incredibly abusive compared to the actions of its Axis partners. In Germany, for instance, just over percent of POWs died. In Japanese camps, thirty-seven percent perished (Baldassarre).

As a result, the Allies divided suspected Japanese war criminals into three groups. Class A defendants were suspected of having committed crimes against peace. People in Class B were charged with ordering or allowing conventional war crimes. Class C suspects were those suspected of actually committing war crimes.

Trials for the defendants were conducted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE). General MacArthur, now commander of occupied Japan, appointed eleven judges to preside over the trials, which lasted over two years. The trials were held in the War Ministry office in Tokyo. As at Nuremberg, the location held a special irony (Morin 69-71, 78).

The IMTFE tried, as at Nuremberg, a variety of people, including government officials, diplomats, and military officials (Morin 73-75).

The following table includes are only those convicted of ordering, permitting, or committing atrocities.  Since there were fifty-five counts of different crimes, the table does not include the charges the defendants faced.   The table is based on pages 129-134 of Day's of Judgement, by Isobel V. Morin.

As at Nuremberg, many people today consider the trials unfair.  Others believe that the Allies should have prosecuted Japanese war criminals even more.  Add your own personal opinions in the message board.