"The living conditions were quite terrible for the prisoners." "There was no link between normal civilised people and the way these Japanese troops were behaving." "No reason why they really had to behave in this awful sadistic cruel manner." "I hated them, absolutely loathed them, in every single way, I loathed them." "The Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners in the Second World War is infamous." "But they haven't always treated their prisoners so badly." "During World War I Japanese fought on the same side as the British and captured German soldiers who were fighting in Asia." "My grandfather never said the Japanese were cruel." "He liked Japanese people." "During World War I he was brought to Japan as a German prisoner." "They had a lot of free time in the camp." "They made their own sausages." "They had a lot of concerts." "These German prisoners were benefiting from an lmperial command of 1882 which said Japanese soldiers should act towards others with respect." "They were treated as guests at that time." "I think he had a nice time." "Some of the German prisoners of war elected to stay on in Japan after their release, and German restaurants and German beer halls flourished in most of the major cities" "How could the Japanese behave with such kindness towards their prisoners in World War I, and then, less than 30 years later, act with such cruelty?" "In March 1945 Tokyo was firebombed, houses and streets devastated, about 100,000 people were killed." "Rebuilt during the second half of the twentieth century, today the Japanese capital resembles a prosperous American city." "America occupied Japan after the war, and it's easy to imagine that it's because of their influence that Japan appears to have so embraced the west." "But the truth is that Japan first turned its eyes westward long before there was any thought of war." "Crown Prince Hirohito visited Britain in the early 1920s." "Japan appeared enthusiastically to adopt western values, from dancing to democracy." "As far back as 1885, a Japanese academic had coined, what became a popular slogan," "'Abandon Asia." "Go for the West'." "Like the rest of the country, the Japanese monarchy too had been changing, but not in a way that made it resemble western royalty." "In the 1920s, the Japanese were being taught that their Emperor, living here in a 280 acre park in central Tokyo, was more than just a mere human being." "The Emperor at the time was called a 'living god'." "We were taught that the Emperor was a god in the form of a human being." "That was the education we received." "When you think about it realistically, it is strange, and it's not possible, but that was what we were taught." "In Japan it was in the interests of one group more than any other that the Emperor be perceived as an all-powerful living god:" "The armed forces." "The army and navy were only ultimately answerable to their Supreme Commander, Emperor Hirohito." "As long as they acted in the name of their divine emperor, elected Japanese politicians found it almost impossible to control them." "And by the late 1920s many within the army thought" "Japan should act decisively and expand." "At the time, the problem was our population was increasing and our natural resources couldn't sustain such an increase." "Ideally, we hoped to receive co-operation from other countries to solve the problem, but back then the world was under the control of the West and a peaceful solution seemed impossible." "So we decided to do the same as the United Kingdom," "America and France had done in the past and, from time to time, use force to solve the problem." "By the early 1930s, western countries had colonised much of Asia." "Britain's colonies included Hong Kong, Malaya and Burma;" "America's included the Philippines;" "Holland's the Dutch East Indies;" "and the French, Indochina." "Japan, late on the scene, only had under its control Taiwan, a few islands in the Pacific, and Korea." "Now, in 1931, the Japanese army fought to control Manchuria." "At the League of Nations in Geneva, Japan's actions were roundly condemned." "Monsieur Eamon, President of the Assembly, announces that, of the 44 states represented, 42 decide against Japan." "On Japan's behalf, Mr Matsuoka." "For the Japanese Foreign Minister, the western powers were simply hypocrites." "Japan, however, finds it impossible to accept the report adopted by the Assembly" "And so Japan leaves the League." "The Far-Eastern war cloud casts its shadow over the whole world" "Japan, isolated up to the middle of the nineteenth century, was now isolated once more from the western club." "In the face of what they took as the west's double standards, and a growing economic depression at home," "the call was for Japan to expand even further and conquer more territory within Asia." "But, to fulfil such dreams, the Japanese Army needed to recruit ever more soldiers." "By 1937, the Japanese army was five times bigger than it had been at the turn of the century." "Many in the military were concerned at how discipline could be maintained in a force that had increased so hugely." "And they found one answer to the problem in the training of the recruits" " it became more brutal." "Any compassionate elements that had existed in the old Japanese warrior code were eliminated." "If the soldiers made the smallest mistake, they were physically beaten." "Sometimes you'd be hit with fists, and sometimes you'd be hit with bamboo sticks." "Sometimes in the evening we couldn't eat our food because our faces were so swollen." "It's called "self punishment"." "Once the instructor gets tired of beating you up, they have recruits face each other, and slap each other." "So we, all of us recruits, comrades together, start to slap each other" " instead of being slapped by an instructor." "Gradually I felt that I'd missed out on something if by night time I hadn't been beaten up at least once." "I was beaten with fists." "There is an expression "seeing stars in your eyes"." "Well, when you're beaten like that, you literally do see stars in your eyes." "The training was so severe that I felt that I'd rather die." "And the Japanese military didn'tjust want to mould their own soldiers but the general population of Japan as well." "This film was shown in Japanese cinemas just months after Japan withdrew from the League of Nations." "In it, Japanese who adopt western values, like this pipe smoking mandolin player, are ridiculed." "A strong attack is made on those Japanese women who have rejected a tradition of subservience, like this westernised Japanese woman who objects to a man standing on her foot." "Many in Japan wanted to grow a bigger empire on the Asian mainland, a policy that was popular not just with the army, but with many politicians, businessmen and ordinary Japanese as well." "The minority who openly opposed military expansion risked assassination." "Seven prominent Japanese, including two prime ministers, were murdered by army officers during the thirties." "It was against this background of intimidation and threat from the Japanese military that the lmperial army moved on China." "The Japanese army advanced over these fields in eastern China in 1937." "And their basic philosophy, as they attempted to create their own gigantic colony here was simple:" "The Japanese ought to have this land because the Chinese weren't worthy of it." "We called the Chinese "Chancorro"." ""Chancorro" - that meant below human, like bugs or animals." "Whereas the Japanese are a superior race, which had been in existence for 2600 years, the Chinese were inferior." "The Chinese didn't belong to the human race." "That was the way we looked at it." "In the course of their war in China, the Japanese used modern weapons of mass destruction." "Ironically, given that the Americans themselves were to bomb Japan on an even greater scale 8 years later, the New York Times reveals that the American government condemned what the Japanese were doing in an article published on 23 September 1937." "The American government holds the view that any general bombing of an extensive area, wherein there resides a large populous engaged in peaceable pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to principles of law and humanity." "And western opinion was about to be more outraged still further, in December 1937, the Japanese army reached the then capital of China, Nanking." "The city is ringed by the glow of 100 flames, that seem funeral pyres in honour of the heroic, or the helpless, dead." "Horror piles upon horror, and one pitiful scene surpasses another." "We found the Japanese doing things in the world that we didn't think were correct." "For one, the Japanese were raping." "Nanking, and that was shown in a dramatic way on the movie screens." "That man carries the body of his child, clinging dumbly to the forlorn hope that life still inhabits its shattered little body" ""On the night of December 14, there were many cases of Japanese soldiers entering Chinese houses and raping women or taking them away." "This created a panic in the area."" ""We Europeans are all paralysed with horror." "There are executions everywhere, some are being carried out with machine guns outside the barracks of the War Ministry." "Last night up to 1000 women and girls were said to have been raped." "About 100 girls in Ginling college alone." "You hear of nothing but rape." "If husbands or brothers intervene, they are shot."" "Rape and brutality almost beyond belief." "Two girls aged about 16 were raped to death in one of the refugee camps." "In the University Middle School where there are 8,000 people the Japs came in ten times last night, over the wall, stole food, clothing, and raped until they were satisfied." "They bayoneted one little boy, killing him, and I spent an hour and a half this morning patching up another little boy of eight who had five bayonet wounds."" "These pictures of victims of the Japanese were taken in Nanking hospital by an American missionary, the Rev John Magee, and later smuggled out of China." "Men had been set on fire, women beaten and raped." "This seven year old boy had been stabbed seven times in the stomach and died after 3 days in hospital." "This woman, Xiuying Li, had been bayoneted by Japanese soldiers because she tried to resist being raped." "He grasped my hand and I took his collar." "He was not as tall as I was and I began to bite him." "He held onto my hand so I couldn't fight back." "I couldn't fight back." "He began to shout because of being bitten." "Then two other Japanese soldiers came." "One stood on one side, the other stood on the other side and then they started to bayonet me." "Around 7 months pregnant at the time she was bayoneted," "Xiuying Li miscarried her baby, a boy, whilst in hospital." "I had a wonderful family." "The Japanese destroyed it." "How cruel they were, my son would have been born in February 1938, he would have been over 60 years old by now." "And after Nanking the Japanese army continued to commit atrocities, particularly during the fierce struggle in the Chinese countryside, where the Japanese were often attempting to wrest control from Mao's Communist Army." "When you enter a village, first you steal their valuables." "Then you kill people and then you set the village on fire and burn everything." "Such killing, burning and robbing was seen everywhere." "Japanese soldiers didn't just burn the Chinese, they used them for bayonet practice." "One Japanese soldier, ordered on several occasions to bayonet Chinese prisoners was Yoshio Tsuchiya." "The first time you still have a conscience and feel bad." "But if you are labelled as courageous, and honoured and given merit, and if you're praised as having this courage, that will be the driving power for the second time." "And so after the second time, I didn't feel anything." "If I thought of them as human beings I could never have done it." "But because I thought of them as animals or below human beings, we did it." "Just as in the city of Nanking, the women and children in the countryside were also at risk" "When soldiers went into the village and entered the houses, they first searched for any valuables to take." "Then they searched for women." "My comrade by chance found a woman in her 30's and captured her." "Then a group rape took place." "She had a baby with her." "Normally when group rape happened, the victims were killed." "But this time she was not killed and was carried to the next base camp." "Then she was taken with her baby on the march the next day." "I heard older soldiers whispering to each other, asking 'what should we do?" "' As the woman was getting weaker." "Suddenly one of them stood up and grabbed her baby and threw it over a cliff, which was 30-40 metres high." "Then instantly the mother of the baby followed, jumping off the cliff." "We were on a break, and when I saw what was happening in front of me," "I thought what a horrible thing to do." "I felt sorry for them for a while, but I had to carry on marching." "No-one will ever know exactly how many suffered during the Japanese attempt to create an empire in China." "But there can be no doubt that many million of Chinese died." "Few of the Japanese soldiers in China who committed rape or murder were ever prosecuted for their crimes by the Japanese military." "But after the war, some Japanese soldiers, like Masayo Enomoto, were imprisoned for war crimes by the Chinese" "During the war, there were many times when you raped and killed women." "Didn't you feel guilty about what you were doing?" "I didn't feel any sense of guilt then." "Why?" "Why didn't you have any sense of guilt or shame?" "Because I was fighting for the emperor." "He was a god." "In the name of the Emperor, we could do whatever we wanted against the Chinese." "Therefore I had no sense of guilt." "The Japanese soldiers' supreme commander, the god-emperor of Japan, spent most of his time secluded behind the walls of his palace in Tokyo." "Even today, opinion is still divided amongst historians as to the extent to which Emperor Hirohito knew about the barbaric crimes his soldiers were committing in China." "Not only are many documents within the imperial and other archives still kept secret even today, but thousands more were burnt by the Japanese before the Americans arrived to occupy their country at the end of the war." "What is certain is that no evidence has surfaced that Emperor Hirohito, as supreme commander of the Japanese army, ever attempted to hold his soldiers properly to account for their conduct in China." "Just across the border from the vicious war the Japanese were conducting in China, lay the British colony of Hong Kong." "By comparison, an oasis of calm." "It was a good little colony." "Last outpost of the British Empire." "And, of course, it was in the last days of the British Empire, as it so happened." "Our lives there were really very happy." "It was a marvellous place for entertainment, where there were always dances going on, formal dances were being arranged, great parties." "The people in the British Empire thought that we were completely superior to any other nation," "as it was the largest Empire that had ever been built in the history of the world." "On the other side of these mountains, the Japanese were amassing one of the world's most, powerful armies." "Anthony Hewitt was one of those who recognised the enormity of the threat." "I saw a Japanese force carrying out an exercise and I realised that, from a military point of view, they were very advanced." "They had excellent weapons, their soldiers were very highly trained, and they were really outstanding." "Anthony Hewitt sent his report on the strength of the Japanese army to his commanding general, and was told he was probably exaggerating the problem." "The overall Commander in Chief of the British forces in the Far East," "Air-Chief-Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, seems not to have been impressed by the Japanese soldiers he saw, either." "In a personal letter to Major General Sir Hastings Ismay, less than a year before Pearl Harbour, he wrote:" "'I had a good close-up across the barbed wire of various sub-human specimens, dressed in dirty grey uniform, which I was informed were Japanese soldiers." "If these represent the average of the Japanese army," "I cannot believe they would form an intelligent fighting force" "And British officers weren't alone in not being impressed by the Japanese soldiers they saw." "Our concept of the Japanese prior to the time that the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbour was that they were a weak, not very sophisticated people." "And it was so foreign to us." "The Japanese were just of small stature." "They were not a very friendly, but also not a very intelligent group of people." "Obviously, of course, we were wrong." "After all, the head of the country was supposed to be a descendent of god." "And we thought how primitive that situation was." "But there was another western nation, Germany, which did value the Japanese." "Indeed, Nazi Germany and lmperial Japan wanted to form an alliance." "When World War II started in 1939," "Germany's swift growth in power impressed not only the political leaders of the Japanese Government but also the military ones." "They believed that the Germans would win this war." "This belief was the foundation for the Japanese thinking at the time." "A formal treaty of alliance was signed between Nazi Germany," "Japan and Germany's axis partner Italy on September 27th 1940." "It was celebrated in Tokyo with this reception at the German Embassy." "The Japanese took advantage of their new alliance with the Germans by moving into northern Indo-China, today's Vietnam." "This had been a French colony, but the Germans had just over-run France so for the Japanese, it was ripe for the picking." "Japan continued to tell the world it wanted to create a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" " 'Asia for the Asians' was the slogan." "But the reality was, in essence, that the locals were merely swapping one colonial master for another." "In Washington, the American government, nervous about Japanese colonial intentions, announced that fuel sales to Japan would be suspended if Japan did not reconsider her aggressive actions." "The Japanese had no fuel resources of their own and so felt they now faced a simple choice:" "Either give up their imperial ambitions, or fight the Americans." "America is a big country and we knew that we wouldn't be able to win against them once the war was prolonged." "We would lose." "The only hope was to destroy their Pacific Fleet." "At the time, the fleet was the mainstay of military power, be it American, British, or Japanese." "The fleet represented a nation's military power." "So if you destroyed the fleet, the damage would be huge." "It would ruin President Roosevelt's reputation as a Commander-in-Chief." "He might then be put in a difficult position." "So this mission was undertaken bravely." "When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, we thought this is a dirty trick." "Those stinkers, they attacked us by surprise at our own base." "They weren't fair, they weren't honest." "I personally thought that that was the United States' Army Air Corps who'd mistakenly dropped their bombs on us until we saw the red circles on the Japanese planes as they went over." "We were very surprised." "We didn't think they had the capability, nor that they would be bold enough to do it." "We thought that Japanese just could not see well because all the pictures we'd seen of the Japanese over the years they were wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses." "Instead of that, the sneaky Japanese outsmarted us." "Moments after they had bombed Pearl Harbour, the Japanese attacked Hong Kong." "On Hong Kong Island, the stands at Happy Valley race-course were turned into a hospital." "One of the first signs the nurses here saw of the Japanese was when a single engine fighter plane appeared overhead." "First of all, we thought they were Americans." "And then, of course, we saw the great sun on them, and then we realised." "And the next thing these bullets were coming out of the wings." "We had three red crosses on the top of the Jockey Club, so they could see that, but they never worried about that." "You were scared, but I mean, when you've got a crowd of you, you mustn't show that, you mustn't show that you're afraid." "The attitude of the Japanese who invaded Hong Kong that December, was very different from that of their countrymen who had so generously cared for their prisoners in the First World War." "These Japanese soldiers, with their country having pulled out of the League of Nations were scarcely concerned about what world opinion would say of their treatment of prisoners;" "all of these soldiers had been subjected to a training that brutalised them and they had been told that surrender was dishonourable." "Most of them came from the horrific war in China, where they'd fought an enemy they believed was subhuman." "Some of the first to suffer at the hands of the Japanese on Hong Kong Island were the staff of the British army medical store at the Silesian Mission." "From the top windows, we could see that we were surrounded by Japanese." "Wasn't very long after, the Japanese knocked at the doors and ordered us all out to the courtyard." "The Japanese then ordered all the men to be stripped from the waist up." "I was then asked to lead the party up the hill to where the road met a nullah." "A nullah is an Indian word meaning a storm water drain, or a stream." "On the hillside were Japanese troops." "They were jeering and shouting at us as we went." "What they did do was to bayonet us." "In other words, we were there for bayonet practice." "They bayoneted us in the back then pushed us into the drain, one by one." "And I was the end of the line and I said, 'Look, I've got to do something quick'." "By instinct I fell in." "Few seconds later, another body fell on me." "I lay in the nullah." "The water was passing under me, it began to get more and more bloody." "After about 10 minutes, everything was quiet." "And then I heard somebody walking along the top of the nullah, along the edge." "He came over to where I lay." "I heard the bullet, I heard the shot." "And the next thing I felt was this severe blow across my face." "Blood was coming out of my mouth" "You felt a sense of hopelessness, absolutely bleak, a sense of frustration that this should end like this..." "The bullet did not inflict serious injury on Osler Thomas, and he was able to hide underneath the dead bodies of his comrades until nightfall." "At that particular point, the nullah, makes a 90 degree turn, and tumbles down the hill via a series of steps." "That night, when things were dark, I made my way down the nullah." "The Japanese murdered 30 people on the hillside." "Osler Thomas was one of only 2 survivors." "We never realised what was going to happen." "We thought Japan would take over Hong Kong and that was it." "Life perhaps would be very much like the same." "But it wasn't so." "As the Japanese advanced into Hong Kong, the Chinese inhabitants of the city became a particular target." "I watched them, the Japanese, kill people on the cricket ground, along Queens Road." "They were just hitting the Chinese all over the place, knocking them down with rifle buts, shooting people for no reason at all, robbing them." "It was really quite ghastly." "We were the people who were meant to look after the Chinese of Hong Kong and we were meant to be the people who should have defended them and now we had left them at the mercy of these ghastly people." "It upset me terribly." "On Christmas Day 1941, the day the British surrendered, some Japanese soldiers turned their attention to the nurses in the makeshift hospital at the Hong Kong Jockey Club." "The Japanese came, shone their torches round, and picked out four girls, and made us go upstairs." "One girl, she had been sick, and um, I put my foot in it." "I said, 'This girl's sick, she's very sick', they didn't take much notice." "Eventually, the three of us saying, she must go down, they did, and, unfortunately for us, we were all raped." "Wasn't very nice." "But if we tried to do anything, you'd have got a bullet, so that was the only thing..." "just had to grin and bear it." "Whilst only a small minority of western women in Hong Kong suffered the same fate as Connie Sully at the Jockey Club, the Japanese did go on to mistreat virtually all those they imprisoned in Hong Kong, often placing them in camps" "where they suffered from malnutrition and over-crowding." "By the spring of 1942," "Singapore, Burma, Malaya and the Philippines had all fallen to the Japanese." "In Singapore alone, 50,000 troops were captured." "Throughout South East Asia," "Japanese forces disarmed the Prisoners of war and revelled in what they had accomplished." "I think we were all rather shocked and taken aback to see the size of them." "We thought, 'how on earth are we going to look after people of this size'?" "More than 350,000 Prisoners of War would eventually fall into Japanese hands in South East Asia." "More than one in four of them would subsequently die in captivity."