7 Things Japanese Prisoners Found Strange About the U.S. Marines

A Japanese soldier in the Pacific had been ordered never to be taken alive. His army's field code said it plainly: do not suffer the disgrace of becoming a prisoner. So the few who were captured — most of them wounded, unconscious, or starved out of caves — expected torture and death. What they got was a hot meal. Drawing on the interrogation files of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), this is the captivity story told from the prisoners' side: the first hot meal served from the captors' own rations, medics who treated enemy wounded by need and not by uniform, the shower-and-delousing line that handed them clean clothes, guards who gave away cigarettes and chocolate, the deafening noise and ease of the Marines, officers who queued for the same food and carried litters, and interrogators who asked polite questions in perfect Japanese — then reported their names home through the Red Cross. Of the millions of Axis prisoners of the Second World War, just 5,413 Japanese ever reached camps in the United States — beside 371,683 Germans in the same system. There were nearly seventy Germans for every single Japanese prisoner. And every one of those rare men carried home a story his country had told him was impossible. THE SEVEN THINGS • The first hot meal — fed the captors' own rations • The medics — enemy wounded treated by severity, not uniform • Showers, delousing and new clothes — the processing line • Cigarettes and chocolate — handed over freely by guards • The noise — the size, laughter and singing of the Marines • Officers in the queue — same food, same work, no wall of rank • Questions, not death — polite interrogation, Red Cross cards, letters home CHAPTERS 0:00 He Expected to Die 0:53 The Code They Lived By 1:57 Taken Alive 2:54 The Road to Camp McCoy 3:57 One: The First Hot Meal 5:06 Two: The Medics 6:05 Three: Showers and New Clothes 7:07 Four: Cigarettes and Chocolate 8:02 Life Behind the Wire 9:14 Five: The Noise 10:12 Six: Officers in the Queue 11:14 Seven: Questions, Not Death 12:18 The War They Never Heard Of 13:21 The Interrogation Harvest 14:25 Why There Were So Few 15:18 The Numbers 16:14 Going Home, 1946 17:15 The Verdict SOURCES Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) — interrogation reports & research reports, 1942–46 Sidney F. Mashbir — I Was an American Spy (1953) John W. Dower — War Without Mercy (1986) Office of the Provost Marshal General — POW records, National Archives (371,683 German; 5,413 Japanese) U.S. Army, Fort McCoy — prisoner camp history Smithsonian Magazine — the Cowra breakout, 1944 Photographs: U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy and U.S. Army Signal Corps, via the National Archives and Wikimedia Commons (public domain). #WWII #PacificWar #POW #USMarines #MilitaryHistory #WorldWar2 Displaying desc52.txt.