History of World War 2 and it's aftermath ·
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Onlyme

Mon
On this day 20th March 1943

The Japanese Navy was ordered to execute all Allied personnel captured
at sea.

On 20 March 1943, the commander of the Japanese First Submarine Force at
Truk issued an order to all of his submarine commanders to murder all
crew members of merchant ships after their ships had been sunk and
relevant information obtained. This order to murder survivors of
merchant vessels had been officially sanctioned and prescribed at the
highest level of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and indeed, it emanated
from the Japanese government itself.

From early 1943, Japanese submarine crews routinely murdered all
survivors of merchant ships sunk by them. Lifeboats were machine-gunned
and rammed, and survivors in the water were machine-gunned.

Sixty survivors of the American merchant ship SS Jean Nicolet were taken
aboard the Japanese submarine that torpedoed their ship in the Indian
Ocean. They were brutally beaten and stabbed repeatedly on the deck of
the submarine before their bloodied bodies were thrown into the
shark-infested sea. Under the circumstances, it is astonishing that a
handful of Americans reached their sinking ship and survived to bear
witness to this atrocity. The Japanese government denied that its navy
was responsible for this atrocity.

The order to murder survivors of merchant ships extended beyond the
submarine service to Japanese surface warships. Following a sortie by
the heavy cruisers Aoba, Chikuma and Tone into the Indian Ocean in
February 1944 for the purpose of disrupting Allied merchant shipping,
seventy-two merchant seamen were taken aboard Tone from MV Behar and
murdered by command of Vice Admiral Sakonju. Sakonju was executed as a
war criminal in 1947 for this atrocity. Vice-Admiral Sakonju pleaded in
vain that the order to murder survivors of merchant ships had come from
the highest level of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

An interesting aspect of the war crimes of the Imperial Japanese Navy is
that Japan's "hero" of Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, might
well have found himself charged as a war criminal in respect of the
officially sanctioned murders of Allied merchant seamen if he had
survived the war.

According to British historian Mark Felton, "officers of the Imperial
Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than
20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of
the Geneva Convention." At least 12,500 British sailors and 7,500
Australians were murdered.

"a425couple" wrote in message news:GM7TL.295504$Olad.24695@fx35.iad...

Mon
On this day 20th March 1943

The Japanese Navy was ordered to execute all Allied personnel captured
at sea.

---------

Gregory Boyington was shot down in January 1944 and picked up by a Japanese
sub. He wrote that the crew treated him well but warned him that
imprisonment in Japan would be very harsh.

On 3/24/23 03:55, Jim Wilkins wrote:
> "a425couple"  wrote in message news:GM7TL.295504$Olad.24695@fx35.iad...
>
> Mon
> On this day 20th March 1943
>
> The Japanese Navy was ordered to execute all Allied personnel captured
> at sea.
>
> ---------
>
> Gregory Boyington was shot down in January 1944 and picked up by a
> Japanese sub. He wrote that the crew treated him well but warned him
> that imprisonment in Japan would be very harsh.
>
>

Very harsh indeed.
They planned to kill them all, but the sudden events after
the A bombs shocked Hirohito into his announcement were
quick enough that it did not happen.

"Prisoners of the Japanese, POWs of WWII in the Pacific"
by Gavin Daws is a very good and informative read.