Hidden Horrors; Japanese War Crimes in World War II
Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, a Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996. This is presumed to be the first U.S./English Language edition, first printing. Hardcover. DJ has some wear and soiling. Minor soiling to book edges. Includes List of Illustrations, as well as Foreword by John W. Dower. Also includes Acknowledgments and Author's Note, as well as an introduction. Chapters cover The Sandakan POW Camp and the Geneva Convention; The Sandakan Death Marches and the Elimination of POWs; Rape and War: The Japanese Experience; Judge Webb and Japanese Cannibalism; Japanese Biological Warfare Plans and Experiments on POWs; Massacre of Civilians at Kavieng; and Conclusion: Understanding Japanese Brutality in the Asia-Pacific War. Notes. About the book and the author. Index. First Published in 1993 in Japan by Otsuki Shoten (in Japanese). This is one of the Transitions: Asia and Asian America series. Based on exhaustive research in previously closed archives, this book represents a landmark analysis of Japanese war crimes. The author explores individual atrocities in their broader social, psychological, and institutional milieu, and places Japanese behavior during the war in the broader context of the dehumanization of men at war--without denying individual and national responsibility. Yuki Tanaka (Tanaka Toshiyuki, born May 26, 1949) is a History Professor at Hiroshima University. He has written extensively about forced prostitution under the Japanese Empire, as well as in Japan under US military rule. He also writes about the laws of warfare. This book documents for the first time previously hidden Japanese atrocities in World War II, including cannibalism; the slaughter and starvation of prisoners of war; the rape, enforced prostitution, and murder of noncombatants; and biological warfare experiments. The author describes how desperate Japanese soldiers consumed the flesh of their own comrades killed in fighting as well as that of Australians, Pakistanis, and Indians. Another chapter traces the fate of 65 shipwrecked Australian nurses and British soldiers who were shot or stabbed to death by Japanese soldiers. Thirty-two other nurses, who landed on another island, were captured and sent to Sumatra to become comfort women prostitutes for Japanese soldiers. Tanaka recounts how thousands of Australian and British POWs died in the infamous Sandakan camp in the Borneo jungle in 1945. Those who survived were forced to endure a tortuous 160-mile march on which anyone who dropped out of line was immediately shot. Only six escapees lived to tell the tale. Based on exhaustive research in previously closed archives, this book represents a landmark analysis of Japanese war crimes. The author explores individual atrocities in their broader social, psychological, and institutional milieu and places Japanese behavior during the war in the broader context of the dehumanization of men at war without denying individual and national responsibility. Condition: Good / Good.
Keywords: Japanese War Crimes, Prisoners of War, Cannibalism, Biological Warfare, Human Experimentation, Massacre, Kavieng, Rape, Sandakan, Geneva Convention, Death March, John Dower, Judge Webb, Brutality
ISBN: 0813327172
[Book #82317]
Price: $75.00