I served on a Navy troop transport in the last year of WWII, and when the war ended in August 1945, we were sent to Shanghai to pick up Allied POWs and bring them back to US bases in the Philippines for air transportation home. We had an extra medical staff aboard so that the treatment could begin immediately.

The 2,000 POWs on our ship included American, British, Australian and Dutch servicemen who had been captured by the Japanese between December 1941 and May 1942. Their physical appearance was shocking. The first step we took was to herd them all into show compartments and let them scrub themselves clean, many for the first time in three years. Then, after trashing their ragged clothes, we issued them brand-new GI clothing.

All of the POWs had suffered brutal treatment and neglect, and statistics revealed that more than half of all POWs taken by the Japanese died in prison. Many were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, and the stories they told were heartbreaking. Deliberate starvation, brutal slave work, lack of any medical care were rampant. The Japanese, from the highest general to the lowest private, killed POWs for minor infractions or whenever they felt like it.

After the war, for whatever political reasons, most of the Japanese officers and soldiers who were responsible for the murderous cruelty at the POW camps were never prosecuted. Several generals who had the ultimate responsibility for the Death March, including Homma and Yamashita, were hanged in Manila. But compared to the Nuremberg trials and rooting out of Nazi leaders, the punishment for the Japanese criminals was hardly more than a slap on the wrist.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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