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Portrayal of Japanese Commanders of POW-camps


Why are all japanese commanders of pow-camps portrayed as sadists? Cruel conditions,starvation and occasional cruelty I can believe happened. But the systematic torture of prisoners orchestrated by all the japanese commanders of these camps seems unlikely to me. Yet in all Western-made movies I've seen taking place in a Japanese pow camp this is the rule.Would someone with the necessary historical knowledge please enlighten me as to whether this was a common policy for camp commanders issued from the authorities, or if Hollywood movies are just exploiting a stereotypical view of the Japanese pow-commander.

Maybe poker's just not your game Ike. I know, let's have a spelling contest.
(Tombstone)

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Cruel conditions,starvation and occasional cruelty I can believe happened. But the systematic torture of prisoners orchestrated by all the japanese commanders of these camps seems unlikely to me.



"systematic torture " in my experience, is rarely or not much actually portrayed in movies re Japanese POW camps...the other things you mentioned, are, but are not the same thing. Part of Japanese cruelty anywhere in WW2, was that it was not generally truly systematic...they were not working from any manual or particular government policy directive.It was cultural, more than systematic.

the continual brutality of Watanabe in the movie, which is perfectly believable even if perplexing, is mostly spur of the moment, because he feels like it.
Maybe next two days, he does not bother.Then he comes back two days later and beats the shyt out of someone else for the hell of it.

The movie is badly written/directed, follows book badly, and explains little of anything.
All accounts of life for prisoners in allied POW camps describe exact same set of circumstances, cruel conditions, starvation,forced labor , continual bursts of brutality..all that can and did exist without any 'systematic" about it.

Like a lot of probably young people, probably exploring history from a 'progressive" revisionist perspective,use of in-words like "stereotyping" I would at least suspect you probably have a kind of ideological agenda and fall unwittingly but willingly into the pitfall of "Presentism".
"oh, it could not really have been like that because that does not make sense and it is not how the world works on a Western college-campus latte bar"

Let me guess, right?

You also run threads about how the A-bombs on Japan were unnecessary and war-crimes, and how the Japanese were trying to surrender but we would not let them?

Standard fare...like I said...Presentism.

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It may be a form of presentism,but not intentionally. I am just so used to Hollywood simplifying in terms of good and evil,that I think its useful to question their portrayal of foreign cultures and countries.

I consider myself to be on the left side of the political scale, without that necessitating me having a political agenda when discussing movies on imdb.

I am also interested in history, and if someone with deeper knowledge of particulars can contribute to me getting a new perspective on the past, then that would be a good thing.

I've just been watching a documentary about crimes against german civilians and those thought to be german sympathisers, in the aftermath of WW2. It turns out that in many cases, it mirrors the atrocities made by the nazis during the war.
So I don't really believe in black and white portrayals of people one way or another.Maybe when I was younger, perhaps, but not anymore.

I haven't actually commented on the A-bomb anywhere. It ended the war,but I would have wished for another means of achieving that end. It was cruel,but was it necessary, I don't know.

Maybe poker's just not your game Ike. I know, let's have a spelling contest.
(Tombstone)

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I consider myself to be on the left side of the political scale,


yes...it was a good bet.

It's true that every army and country has individuals capable of atrocities and war-crimes, in the same way as each and every country produces serial-killers and/or mass-shooters.
It's true that each power in WW2 did things like executing prisoners or shooting down people who were surrendering, and little doubt any POW camp might contain individuals who would like to mete out brutality.

It's not however true, that every army behaved like the Japanese army towards civilian populations such as in China, or anything remotely like it. It's also not true that captured Japanese soldiers, what relatively few there were of them, but numbers did exist, were treated remotely as we see people being treated in accounts like "Unbroken"..which whether true in every detail or not, are mostly perfectly plausible and track numerous POW memoir books over the decades.

I haven't actually commented on the A-bomb anywhere. It ended the war,but I would have wished for another means of achieving that end. It was cruel,but was it necessary, I don't know.


glad to hear so.

So I don't really believe in black and white portrayals of people one way or another.Maybe when I was younger, perhaps, but not anymore.


most based on non-fiction accounts, even fairly badly executed ones like Unbroken, don't really do black vs white, when you get into the detail.



anyway, I can recommend the Amazon history forums board, where these very kinds of people are discussed in depth by people with much more detailed knowledge than me, whilst including me.

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