The cruelties in Japanese death camps

The WW II story which is explained in the book of World War II is mostly filled with lot of suffering aspects, but we should take it as inspiring ones. The Japanese death camps in Ambarawa were horrible. The death camp slaves suffered a lot in the Japanese death camps.

The prisoners of World War II in the Japanese death camps were held in appalling conditions, the brutality of their captors caused many deaths along with a lack of food and medicine for diseases such as cholera, dysentery and malaria. Punishments were randomly dispensed and without justification. One of the smaller punishments among death camp slaves was to stand holding a 20lb boulder above head until it was dropped, and then they were beaten. One man was seen to be tied to the ground by a barbed wire collar until he died. The Japanese, faced with so many fit young men at their mercy, saw prisoners as expendable labour for their war effort – the infamous Burma-Siam railway, the 'Death Railway' costing the lives of thousands of POWs.

A historian named Terry Charman at the Imperial War Museum in London, explained: "There was also this feeling among the Japanese that it was a disgrace to become a prisoner under their military code, the Japanese felt a lot of our men had sacrificed their honour in the Indonesian death camps. There was a lot of ill-treatment, beatings, mutilations. The Japanese officers even beat their own men." Indeed the brutality came down the Japanese ranks and the frustrations of junior officers were taken out on the helpless captives. Equally, Korean conscripts press ganged into Japanese service were as cruel as their masters. The pathetic situation in World War II is explained beautifully by Ralph and Kathy Brink in their Brink’s publication.