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Like the rest of the country, the Japanese monarchy was changing too – but not in a way that made it resemble Western royalty. In the 1920s the Japanese were being taught that their emperor, living in a park in central 
Britain – 
But there was another western nation which did value the Japanese – 
By the spring of 1942, Singapore, Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines all fell to the Japanese. Japanese newsreel and commentary :" 60,000 prisoners were lined up along the road so that they could have the honour of seeing the great commander Yamashita. The prisoners consisted of soldiers from Britain, Malaya, Australia, India, a parade of mongrel troops." About 350000 POWs eventually fell into Japanese hands in south-east Asia. More than one in four died in captivity.
''Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II'' (2000) is a two-part
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...documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
that examines certain actions, including atrocities, and attitudes, of the Imperial Japanese Army
The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...
in the lead up to and during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. The film also examines attitudes held by the British and Americans, toward the Japanese. It was written and produced by Laurence Rees
Laurence Rees (born 1957) is an English historian. He is a BAFTA winning historical documentary filmmaker and a British Book Award winning author of several books about Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the atrocities committed, especially by them, ...
and narrated by Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West (born 19 June 1966) is an English actor, narrator and theatre director. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor across theatre, film, television and radio. He often appears as reciter with orche ...
.
Synopsis
In theFirst World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
the Japanese fought on the same side as the British and captured German soldiers who were fighting in Asia. They were treated well, even, following an Imperial Order of 1882, 'as guests'. The question arises: "How could the Japanese behave with such kindness towards their prisoners in World War I and then, less than thirty years later, act with such cruelty?"
Part One – Turning Against the West
In the opening decades of the twentieth century 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.'' Crown Prince Hirohito had visited London in the early 1920s.
Like the rest of the country, the Japanese monarchy was changing too – but not in a way that made it resemble Western royalty. In the 1920s the Japanese were being taught that their emperor, living in a park in central Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
, was more than just a mere human being – he was called a living god. Children were educated to think of the emperor as a god in the form of a human being. 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. Only ultimately accountable to their supreme commander 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 that Japan should act decisively, and expand. Masatake Okumiya
was a historian and lieutenant general in the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.
Okumiya graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1930 as a midshipman. He was commissioned an ensign in April 1932, received his wings in November 1933 as a ...
(Japanese Imperial Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...
): "Japan's population was increasing – its natural resources could not 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. We decided, as Britain, America and France had done in the past from time to time, to ''use force to solve the problem.''" By the early 1930s western countries had colonized much of Asia.
Britain – Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
, Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
, Malaya; Holland – Dutch East Indies; U.S – Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
; France – French Indochina
French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...
.
Japan, late on the scene, only had under its control, Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
, a few islands in the Pacific, and Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
. In 1931, the Japanese army launched an attack on Manchuria
Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...
. At the League of Nations
The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
in Geneva the Japanese actions were condemned. Japan left the League accusing the Western powers of hypocrisy. In Japan, in face of growing economic depression and a sense of the West's double standards, the call was to expand even further and conquer more territory within Asia. By 1937 the Japanese army was five times what it had been around 1900. Many in the military thought that in an army that had grown so much, to maintain discipline, it was necessary to make the training of recruits more brutal. If the soldiers made the smallest mistake they were beaten, with fists or bamboo sticks. Recruits were instructed also to hit each other. And the Japanese military did not just want to mould their own soldiers but the general population too. Japanese who adopted western values were ridiculed, women who rejected a tradition of subservience were attacked. Many ordinary Japanese, as well as politicians and businesspeople, now supported the drive toward a bigger empire on the Asian mainland, and the minority who openly opposed military expansion risked assassination. Seven prominent Japanese, including two Prime Ministers, were murdered by army officers during the 1930s. Seeking to create a giant colony the Imperial army moved in 1937 into eastern China. The Chinese were not worthy of the land according to the dominant ideology; they were called bugs, animals, below-human. Yoshio Tsuchiya, (''Japanese Secret Military Police''):" The Chinese were inferior – didn't belong to the human race. That was the way we looked at it." In December 1937 the Japanese Army reached the then capital of China, Nanking
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
. (Film taken by John Magee is shown). Men were set on fire, women beaten, bayoneted, raped. After Nanking atrocities followed in the Chinese countryside – the Chinese used for bayonet practice. Yoshio Tsuchiya (imprisoned 1950-56 for war crimes): " The first time you still have a conscience and feel bad, but if you are honoured and given merit and praised, that will be the driving power for the second time – after the second time I didn't feel anything." A soldier is asked why he felt no guilt or shame raping and killing women. He replies : " 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." Meanwhile the god-emperor of Japan spent most of his time secluded behind the walls of his palace. Even today opinion is divided among historians as to the extent the emperor knew of the barbaric crimes his soldiers were committing in China. " What is certain is that no evidence has surfaced that he ever attempted to hold his soldiers to account for their vicious conduct in China" Rees's film concludes.
Representative examples are then given of pre-Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...
attitudes towards the Japanese amongst the British and Americans. Sir Robert Brooke-Popham
Air Chief Marshal Sir Henry Robert Moore Brooke-Popham, (18 September 1878 – 20 October 1953) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps as a wing commander and senior staff o ...
, overall Commander in Chief of the British in the Far East is quoted, and Gene La Rocque ( USS Macdonough (DD-351) :" Our concept of the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...
was that they were a weak, not very sophisticated people..so foreign to us ..just of small stature, not a very friendly but also not a very intelligent group of people – obviously, of course, we were wrong."
But there was another western nation which did value the Japanese – Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. Indeed, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan wanted to form an alliance. A formal treaty of alliance was signed between Germany, Japan and Italy on 27 September 1940. Japan used the moment to move into northern Indo-China
Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...
. This had been a French colony but the Germans had just overrun France so for the Japanese it was ripe for the picking. Japan wanted to create ''a greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere''. The slogan was ''Asia for the Asians'' – in essence the locals were 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. With no fuel resources of its own Japan believed it could now either give up its imperial ambitions, or fight the Americans. They attacked Pearl Harbor and, moments after, attacked Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
.
As the Japanese advanced into Hong Kong the Chinese inhabitants of the city became a particular target. Rees's film interviews too a British nurse who tells of how, on 25 December 1941, the day of the British surrender, – nurses at the makeshift hospital at the Hong Kong Jockey Club
The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) is one of the oldest institutions in Hong Kong, having been founded in 1884. In 1959, it was granted a Royal Charter and renamed The Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club (). The institution reverted to its original name ...
were raped.
By the spring of 1942, Singapore, Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines all fell to the Japanese. Japanese newsreel and commentary :" 60,000 prisoners were lined up along the road so that they could have the honour of seeing the great commander Yamashita. The prisoners consisted of soldiers from Britain, Malaya, Australia, India, a parade of mongrel troops." About 350000 POWs eventually fell into Japanese hands in south-east Asia. More than one in four died in captivity.
Part Two – Death before Surrender
Writer-producer Laurence Rees looks at theKamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending t ...
phenomenon – " What could be more impossible to understand?" ethe says, "one of the most extraordinary things which making the series has done is this – I think I understand now why some of them did it, down to a meeting with a kamikaze pilot, he actually volunteered to become a pilot – he explained the ''dreadful'' social pressure that he and his family were living under – if he didn't go to volunteer he knew his family would be ostracised, shunned, – from his point of view it was a sensible, sane thing to do."
When U.S. Marines
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...
tried to re-take Japanese-held islands like Tarawa
Tarawa is an atoll and the capital of the Republic of Kiribati,Kiribati
''
''
We're gonna have to slap, the dirty little jap'', recorded New York, 18 February 1942). Gene La Rocque (USS MacDonough): "We had been taught that the Japanese were sub-human when we got into the attack, but of course we had no love for Hitler, or the Nazis – but we also had many people in America of German descent, Italian – it was an entirely different view we had of the Italians, of the Germans, than we had of the Japanese." Rees's documentary shows a photo published in the war in ''
On 10 March 1945 
The British warships with their armoured decks did not suffer as much under kamikaze attacks as the Americans. In March 1945 as the kamikaze flew around them, the Americans landed on the small island of Tokishiki. As on Saipan, the civilians were told by the Japanese army that the Americans would rape and murder them and encouraged them to adopt kamikaze tactics. To some they gave two hand grenades – one to throw at the Americans, the other to blow themselves up with. Shigeaki Kingjou, a student in 1945, looking back in the year 2000: "I think we were dreadfully manipulated – as I got older, my soul started to suffer. 55 years since the end of the war and I still suffer today." By the spring of 1945, the Japanese empire had been pulled apart. Now the Imperial Japanese Army ordered a heroic stand to be made on 
The Americans expected the Japanese to defend the beaches on Okinawa but on 1 April 1945 when 50000 American troops came ashore they found their arrival virtually unopposed. ''But'' more than 80000 Japanese troops were dug into the fabric of the island interior, some in concrete pill boxes underneath the trees. In Okinawa, as the Americans pushed to the south of the island there were many civilian suicides, some thousand at Cape Kyan. Once more the Japanese military played a crucial role in encouraging the civilian population to kill themselves – on nearby islands where there were no Japanese soldiers there were no mass suicides. Around 8000 American troops, 60000 Japanese soldiers, and 150000 Japanese civilians died on Okinawa.
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' – the girlfriend of an American sailor next to a souvenir from him – the skull of a Japanese signed by her boyfriend's comrades.
Japanese soldiers fighting the Australians in New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
committed cannibalism. Japanese forces were sent to New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
in 1942 but without sufficient preparation – they were simply abandoned. In late 1943, forbidden to surrender and cut off from their supplies, they began to starve – some resorted to cannibalism of their own and enemy dead. According to Professor Yuki Tanaka: "The cannibalism was organised group practice, rather than individually practised." A Japanese major-general wrote an order prohibiting the eating of human flesh but this meant flesh "''excluding enemy flesh''".
The first signs that large numbers of civilians as well as soldiers might be prepared to die for their emperor rather than surrender came in 1944, south of the home islands of Japan, on the island of Saipan. Japanese propaganda about Saipan emphasised the nobility of dying in the struggle against the British and Americans. With the capture of islands like Tinian
Tinian ( or ; old Japanese name: 天仁安島, ''Tenian-shima'') is one of the three principal islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Together with uninhabited neighboring Aguiguan, it forms Tinian Municipality, one of the ...
and Saipan, heavy bombers were now in easier range of targets on the home islands of Japan and the Allies now launched the biggest aerial bombardment the world had ever seen – more than 160000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Japan in an effort to make the Japanese accept unconditional surrender.
On 10 March 1945 Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
was fire bombed. Over 300 Boeing B-29
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is an American four-engined propeller-driven heavy bomber, designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 F ...
bombers dropped incendiaries which caused a fire storm
A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon, created during some of the largest bushfires and wildfires. Although the term has been used ...
. About 100,000 died. Despite the destruction in Tokyo opinion was still divided in the Japanese government in the months that followed about what should be done. Accepting unconditional surrender might, some feared, mean the elimination of the institution of the emperor itself. Hirohito and his military leaders believed that, in order to negotiate a more advantageous peace, Japan needed to win one big victory – and the Kamikaze would provide the means. Sporadic isolated kamikaze attacks had occurred in 1944 – now in the spring of 1945 kamikazes were to sortie ''en masse'' for the first time. A student from Tokashiki Island: "I didn't think that they were wasting their lives, I believed they were sacrificing their lives for their country. The Japanese people belonged to the emperor – we were his children." The testimony of a pilot suggests that not all kamikaze volunteered as freely as the propaganda sometimes suggested. Kenichiro Oonuki: " All the fighter pilots, about 150 of us at the training base, were called in – a senior officer told us they were recruiting people for a special mission. They said, 'If you go on this mission, you won't come back alive.' Everyone thought this was ridiculous and nobody really was ready to go. We wanted to answer, 'No, I don't want to go'..But later on we thought, 'Wait, if we ''want'' to say no, can we ''really'' say it, ''can'' we say no to this officer?..We told each other that we should calm down and think about the consequences..if people rejected the offer they might be shunned and sent to the most severe battlefront in the south and would meet certain death anyway – then when their family was informed of this, how would they feel? They would be ostracised from the community...so nobody wanted to volunteer but everybody did.." The biggest kamikaze assault of the war was on the British and American fleets during the battle for Okinawa in the spring of 1945.
The British warships with their armoured decks did not suffer as much under kamikaze attacks as the Americans. In March 1945 as the kamikaze flew around them, the Americans landed on the small island of Tokishiki. As on Saipan, the civilians were told by the Japanese army that the Americans would rape and murder them and encouraged them to adopt kamikaze tactics. To some they gave two hand grenades – one to throw at the Americans, the other to blow themselves up with. Shigeaki Kingjou, a student in 1945, looking back in the year 2000: "I think we were dreadfully manipulated – as I got older, my soul started to suffer. 55 years since the end of the war and I still suffer today." By the spring of 1945, the Japanese empire had been pulled apart. Now the Imperial Japanese Army ordered a heroic stand to be made on Okinawa
is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi).
Naha is the capital and largest city ...
, less than from Tokyo.
The Americans expected the Japanese to defend the beaches on Okinawa but on 1 April 1945 when 50000 American troops came ashore they found their arrival virtually unopposed. ''But'' more than 80000 Japanese troops were dug into the fabric of the island interior, some in concrete pill boxes underneath the trees. In Okinawa, as the Americans pushed to the south of the island there were many civilian suicides, some thousand at Cape Kyan. Once more the Japanese military played a crucial role in encouraging the civilian population to kill themselves – on nearby islands where there were no Japanese soldiers there were no mass suicides. Around 8000 American troops, 60000 Japanese soldiers, and 150000 Japanese civilians died on Okinawa.
Media information
DVD release
The series was released on Region 2 DVD byBBC Video
2 Entertain (stylized as 2 , entertain) is a British video and music publisher founded in September 2004 by the merger of BBC Video and Video Collection International in 2004. Under CEO Richard Green, the company operated as a joint venture b ...
as part of the '' BBC World War II DVD Collection''.
Companion book
*References
External links
* {{IMDb title, 0309685 2000 British television series debuts 2000 British television series endings Documentary television series about World War II BBC History of World War II British documentary television series 2000 television specials Nanjing Massacre films Documentary films about Japanese war crimes Japan in non-Japanese culture BBC television documentaries about history during the 20th Century