when did the second world war really begin if you ask an American they might say the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th 1941 a proud Russian might say the war started when Germany invaded the USSR on June 22nd 1941 a poll upset at being forgotten again would then declare that the war really began on September 1st 1939 but who's right we reckon none of them because by the time the Germans March into Poland a war in Asia had already been raging for 2 years claiming millions of lives in this video we tell the story of world war II's bloody Prelude and the two years of fighting that set the tone for the entire Pacific Theater on July the 7th 1937 Japanese private shamura kikuu wandered away from his post in search of a place to drop the kids off at the pool he was one of the 15,000 Japanese soldiers stationed in northern China preparing for a grand invasion of the Soviet Union but across the yongding river in one ping Fortress all the Chinese soldiers could see was a load of well-armed Japanese troops doing Maneuvers when private kiku's Commander noticed he was missing he demanded the Japanese Army be allowed over the river into the Chinese Fortress to search for him the Chinese Garrison flatly denied the demand infuriated the Japanese Commander decided to force his way in with a company of infantry by the time private kajuru returned from his ill-timed break Japanese and Chinese troops were shooting at each other this engagement became known as the Marco Polo Bridge incident but these were also the first shots fired in the Battle of Bing tenin in the second Sino Japanese war and by extension World War II between 1937 and 1939 China suffered 1.03 million military casualties amounting to half of its 1937 strength civilian losses were inordinately higher with some estimates reaching 6.25 million deaths the invading Japanese also suffered 220,000 military casualties during the first 2 years of the war to put that in context the most costly campaign in Europe before Barbarosa was the Battle of France 135,000 French and German soldiers were killed in total battles raging across China killed 10 times as many soldiers not to mention the appalling numbers of Civilian deaths many of these unfortunate casualties came from a battle known as Stalingrad on the yti or more conventionally the Battle of Shanghai a little over a month after private Kiku juru dump started a war the Japanese Army attacked Shanghai their propagandists claimed that the ancient Port City could be captured by the racially Superior Japanese in 3 days and the rest of China in 3 months in reality the tenacious Chinese defended the city tooth and nail for 3 months and 13 days the battle was fought in the most brutal way possible Urban Close Quarters and how to house China's generalisimo Chang Kai Sheek knew he couldn't hope to win against the Japanese without International support so he decided to turn the city's defense into a statement he wanted the world to see that the Japanese Advance could be stopped and that even a small number of Defenders could inflict devastating casualties battered Chinese units held out in Pockets throughout besieged Shanghai their orders from High command were simple yet suicidal defend to the death the Seung Warehouse was one position Chinese forces H up into to make their last stand the defense of the warehouse only lasted a week but in that time 452 Chinese Defenders held off 20,000 soldiers of the Japanese third division the Japanese threw wave after wave of infantry men and tank hits at the Chinese but they were rebuffed each time during the height of the battle the Japanese brought a Siege ladder to scale the warehouse's walls unfortunately for the attackers they scaled the ladder and ran right into Colonel XI uan the Chinese Commander not one to stand back and let his men do the Dirty Work uan promptly strangled a Japanese soldier with one hand grabbed the man's rifle with the other and shot a second Soldier off The Siege ladder with it this guy was not messing around and neither were his men by the end of the battle the Chinese soldiers had killed over 200 Japanese and lost only 10 of their own the defense of siung Warehouse was immortalized as the Last Stand of the 800 Heroes by Chinese propagandists but last ditch defenses like this one were happening right across besieged Shanghai endless pummeling from the air and sea eventually forced the lightly armed Chinese to retreat but the price of this Japanese Victory had been high 20,000 crack soldiers were dead and a few thousand more were too badly wounded to ever return to the fight Chong made a statement to the world China was committed to fighting to The Bitter End while it was contained within Chinese territory the war had Global Dimensions high above the hand to hand fighting on the the ground pilots from the Soviet Union and the United States flew alongside Chinese aviators in german-made hine killers and mesms these three great industrial Nations managed to put aside their differences to fight together against the Japanese in support of nationalist China individuals in the United States launched fundraising campaigns to help out the Chinese forces and attempted to Lobby the US government to cut ties with Japan a horde of Chinese American Mechanics and drivers even crossed the Pacific to set up a military logistics Network until 1938 Germany was training and equipping the cream of China's forces these became the core of China's military and made up the majority of the men who fought to defend Shanghai when the city was eventually lost so were the best trained Chinese soldiers along with their german-made gear the loss of these crack troops was keenly felt and by late 1938 China had not only lost Shanghai but the capital nuning and most other major cities as well the battle lines were drawn and they wouldn't change until 1944 but in the meantime the Allied commanders knew they absolutely had to keep China in the fight why because from 1937 to 1945 Japan never had more than 20% % of its Army outside of China during the entire Pacific Campaign the Allies never faced more than one fifth of the Japanese Army's total strength just imagine how the war may have gone if China hadn't tied down the bulk of Japanese forces the Holocaust was fueled by a number of factors but the idea of racial superiority the supremacy of the Aran people over all others was arguably the most important in the Pacific and in the Far East the Japanese shared similar ideas social conditioning LED Japanese soldiers to feel genetically and racially Superior to their Chinese counterparts for example facilitating the wholesale murder and extermination of Chinese civilians during the occupation of ning and other locations across the country just a forward before we get into today's video despite the vibe this channel gives when discussing the actions of the Japanese in World War II I must say that I have no ill will toward contemporary Japanese society and all its peoples I respect the Force for good they've become on the world stage and the astounding positive economic impact they've had on a global scale with that said I do not and will not ever resend my belief that the Japanese were as bad if not worse than the Nazi party in World War II and make these videos to educate people on the mostly unknown and untaught atrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army in their various campaigns in Imperial Japan honor was everything and someone who had lost their honor and displeased their ancestors was treated like an animal and was essentially shunn by society as a whole this absolute obsession with honor translated tfold onto the battlefield and the Japanese came to be known as the most Fearless fighting force of World War II with this fearlessness however also came brutality and an abundance of it too anybody who was unfortunate enough to be cornered by the Japanese and forced to surrender could expect years of brutality it's well known that civilians of China and Southeast Asia were routinely raped and murdered by vile Japanese soldiers and that civil disobedience in these Japanese controlled territories was punishable by torture and death as if it wasn't bad enough for the civilians the Japanese had a burning hatred for enemies who had decided to surrender instead of die fighting as many of you know this led to hard labor beatings torture and malnourishment to such an extreme level that the prisoners of liberated Japanese prison camps were described as looking like those liberated at alitz in addition to this as we've covered in a previous video the Japanese also implemented a kill all order that stated as soon as the first American Soldier set foot on the Japanese Homeland all Japanese soldiers would be ordered to behead stab burn or shoot the 100,000 or so remaining Allied troops still in the prison camps one Infamous example of Japanese inhumanity toward prisoners in World War II was the sandakan Death March which I'll be covering in fo sometime soon essentially approximately 2,700 British and Australian troops were forced to March through the steamy jungles of Borneo only to be shot when they reached their destination only six men escaped and only one man survived at all when an influx of new prisoners eventually came in to build an air strip in 1942 the same group of guards would randomly execute groups of prisoners so there was more rice for the Japanese guards according to one war crime testimony the Japanese Sergeant told one group of condemned prisoners there's no rice so I'm killing the lot of you today is there anything you want to say but in my opinion by far the worst thing the Japanese did were the Viv sections they performed on live subjects as we all know Unit 731 was the Japanese unit tasked with doing these monstrous experiments overseas however what many don't know is that if you are unfortunate enough to be an American Airman shot down over Japanese airspace Japanese universities were happy to use you as a live PRACK for their students an Infamous example of this was at kushu University where eight American Airmen who were recovered from a b29 shot down near the end of the war were taken to the anatomy department at the University where they had their organs ripped out of their body while they were still alive one prisoner was shot in the stomach to give surgeons practice removing bullets another had parts of his body amputated while he was still alive and another had one of his lungs removed and then was stitched back up to see what would happen there were many other stories similar to these atrocities that took place on Japanese soil and the list of horrible experiments Japanese doctors performed could go on for hours for a nation at War new recruits are vital assets that must be closely guarded after all you can't keep an Army in fighting shape without replacing battle casualties but some of the fighting nations of the second world war didn't see things this way putting their recruits through absolute hell in today's front episode we run through the worst basic training programs that unlucky recruits could find themselves in there was one nation where basic training was so brutal that its consequences can still be felt today this dubious honor of course goes to Imperial Japan while Every Other Nation trained its soldiers to fight Imperial Japan was training its men to die it was all part of the Yamato damashi the Japanese martial Spirit the government was obsessed with soldiers were taught that any order given by an officer was the Divine will of the emperor to question Divine will was basically treason and if the sergeant heard it could get a soldier killed army officers tended to believe their soldiers were at heart undisciplined brutes who only understood violence in training beatings were handed out liberally often for the tiniest of infractions non-commissioned officers would sometimes order their recruits to beat each other to near death these sadists often got carried away and it wasn't uncommon for recruit to be beaten until he died but the worst part was that these beatings never stopped in the field Japanese veterans were often beaten until they were incapacitated by newly minted officers looking to make a name for themselves even General Tojo the head of the Japanese Army beat his subordinates when he felt they weren't up to scratch for the soldiers at the bottom of the pile it was hell anything short of fanatical loyalty to those in senior positions could easily result in broken bones and ruptured organs they were treated like absolute animals and when they were let off the leash in occupied areas that's exactly how they treated the local civilians the the infamously barbaric way Japanese soldiers treated recently captured PS mirrored their own treatment in basic training brutalized from day one these soldiers had it in them to commit the worst atrocities of the war but there's still no excusing what they did describing history in basic binary terms has been shown to be foolish time and time again there's Nuance to history that cannot be represented by something as simple as good versus evil or right versus wrong instead there's complexity that needs to be explored so why is it that we often lose so much of that nuance and complexity when we talk about the second world war there is a factual basis for this broad stroke history and this is perhaps why we find it easier to talk so imprecisely about World War II the death camps of aitz Beren Bon and trinka for example fill us with revoltion as they should the battalions who liberated those camps and those who suffered unimaginable Horrors at the hands of their captors are on the right side of History the good side but this idea of right and good versus wrong and bad falls apart a little when we extend it across the whole conflict or when we expand it to other perspectives the march of Imperial Japan across the Pacific for instance bad certainly for the European and American Powers with Colonial stations and military bases there but what about the people people who were from there the people who had endured decades or even centuries of colonial rule before the world war reached the Pacific does this lead us to Japan's most critical World War II mistake a failure to smash the shackles of colonial rule in Asia by essentially outing one colonial power and installing another in its place did Japan seow the seeds of their own downfall in the Pacific Theater and could it have been any different December 7th 1941 a date that will live in infamy according to President Roosevelt the surprise attack on the American Fleet at PE Harbor but this was no Invasion this was a raid a taste of the might of the Imperial Navy almost simultaneously Japanese forces landed in Thailand which fell only 5 hours later the First Colonial territory to come under attack was Malaya where three Japanese infantry divisions landed at kotabaru Dr driving the defending British and Australian troops out HMS Prince of Wales and HMS repulse will be sunk off Malaya in the coming days Hong Kong also administered by the British would be next although the territory held out for 3 weeks before falling on Christmas Day on December 19th the British held territory of panang fell under Japanese control the Swift advance of the Japanese was now threatening the entirety of British Malaya as 1942 dawned the situation was Bleak for the Allied powers and their colonies in the East the Japanese had already added the American bases at Guam and Wake Island to their empire and the Philippines was now under threat over the next 2 months Britain's Colonial territories would fall like Domino as Malaya and Burma were overrun culminating the fall of Singapore on February 15th further south the Solomon Islands also fell Australian administered New Guinea had mostly fall two putting Australia itself in the firing line a decisive Allied Naval defeat at the Battle of the Java sea effectively put the whole Dutch East Indies under the Japanese yoke compounding the woes of the occupied Netherlands by May the Philippines had surrendered the Japanese empire now stretched from northern China almost to Queensland all it seemed was lost except we know that all was not lost for the allies we know this story we know about how the tide of War changed we know about guak canal and Aima and okanawa and about harosa Nagasaki and about the Japanese surrender at Tokyo bay in 1945 what is a little less well-known and certainly less often discussed is what happened in the intervening years what takes us from the sweeping victories of December 1941 to May 1942 to the capitulation and surrender of September 1945 to understand this we may need to go back a bit further or quite a lot further in fact to 1931 and the invasion of Manchuria a decade before Pearl Harbor Japanese agents staged the mukden incident as a pretext for invading and subduing manua in Northeast China menuria was part of China's Sovereign territory and was not a colonial holding but still there were other forces at work Beyond simply Chinese versus Japanese while the nationalist forces of Republican China under the leadership of Tang shuliang resisted the Japanese advents the invading Army utilized the former Emperor Pui the final leader of the Ting Empire in 1912 when he was still a boy as a sort of puppet head of state the idea was that a liberating Army bringing about a return to the old ways of imperialism and traditionalism would carry more weight than that of an expansionist power in search of mineral wealth the fact that theq Imperial family by 1932 the Manuka Imperial family or the rulers of The Manchurian empire were from the mansu ethnic group and not members of China's hand majority may have added to the complexity of the situation on top of this other ethnic groups in the region from the Mongol people in the west of menuria to the White Russian people in the far Northeast may not have felt the same revulsion to an invading Imperial Army as those aligned to the largely hand quam Tang government might have done we'll never know whether Japan's system of governance in northern China would have been ultimately successful the atrocities that would occur in other parts of china such as in naning and changhai would Harden Chinese and Global sent against the Japanese Invaders while the American nuclear attacks and subsequent Soviet invasion would put an end to Japanese interests on the Chinese Mainland for good however this idea of installing a puppet Emperor someone more palatable to the local populace was a relatively successful one at least in the short term strike to win and only when success is certain if it isn't then do not strike with the Japanese use this model almost a decade later when they began to add to their empire elsewhere across the Pacific not really the existence of a weak and AED former emperor in China played directly into Japanese hands and they used this to their advantage they couldn't really do the same in Burma or in Malaya where Japan's sworn enemies had held colonies for over a century in Indochina which had been overrun even before the outbreak of global conflict in the Pacific the Japanese had used a more diplomatic approach working with the colonial French forces rather than in direct opposition with them and continuing to do so until their withdrawal in 1945 but this did not help the indigenous population who saw little change in their social standing the Imperial Japanese forces maintained a semblance of continuity in the region but the people themselves had nothing to get excited about in fact the presence of the Japanese would catalyze the growing resistance movement formed in China in 1941 the vietn group would launch Guerilla attacks into Northern Vietnam from 1943 strike to win and only when success is certain Vietnam General vuan Gap would later say if it isn't certain then do not strike emboldened by the Japanese Occupation the group would continue these strikes throughout the remainder of the war and see seized control of Hanoi after the Japanese defeat this would be the first major victory in Vietnam's Generations long anti-colonial struggle it would not be the last it was very different in Burma as British forces were driven out and local administrators fled into neighboring India Japanese troops were greeted as liberating Heroes by some sections of the population the Japanese occupiers encouraged Burmese nationalists to form a government of their own supporting bore as head of state with Onan father of future Pro democracy activist and politician onon suuki as war minister but Promises of Independence eventually proved false and atrocities committed at the end of the war such as the massacre at Kalong would raise the civilian death toll of the Japanese Occupation to between 170,000 and 250,000 there were scenes like this in the Dutch East Indies as well as indigenous groups saw an opport to break the centuries old chains of colonial rule imposed by Europeans from a far off land but once again such good will did not last the Japanese may have been Asian like the indigenous Indonesians of the Dutch East Indies but they were in no mood to liberate instead they recruited rusha labor divisions effectively slaves and deported and detained people right across the vast archipelago around 4 million people mainly indigenous Indonesians died as a result of Japanese policies during their 3 years of occupation so if Japan's invasions across southeast Asia and the South Pacific were greeted by some as a positive change as a shift away from the eurocentric colonial model toward a sort of panasian unity what changed why was the Empire of Japan unable to cement its gains in those early months of the war in the Pacific one factor was a lack of autonomy for the conquered territories this was never about ending colonialism instead it was about enforcing a new form of colonialism one orchestrated from Tokyo rather than from London Paris Amsterdam or Washington the Dutch East Indies and Burma may have felt an initial wave of optimism and opportunity at the arrival of the Japanese but for Filipinos The Invasion put a spanner in the works of the developing independence movement in their country another Factor may have been existing conflicts in Malaya for example the local Malay and Chinese communities had been in opposition for decades with differing cultural and political viewpoints leaving violence never far away in the Philippines the Islamic people in the south of the archipelago had been more than ready to fight Spanish and American Colonial forces for the best part of 500 years and it would take considerable diplomacy to prevent these groups from taking up arms against yet another Invader whether it was through a lack of understanding a lack of inclination or simply just a lack of resources after finding themselves stretched thinly across a huge area the Japan jaese Administration was not able to claim these divisions in the end the consensus seems to have been that the Japanese overreached they took on too much too fast and suppressing the millions of new Colonial subjects within their empire while fighting a multi-front war at the same time ultimately proved too much it's possible that with a little more diplomacy tact and benevolence things might have been different by managing their sprawling Empire rather than bringing it to a hill Japan may have found its self in a very different position but this did not square with the Imperial ideology of racial superiority nor does it take into account the formidable power of the American military industrial complex a different approach may have bought the Japanese a little more time but it seems unlikely that it would have won them the war well before the Japanese set foot in China in the 1930s the Korean Peninsula was already part of their empire since 1905 when the Japan Korea treaty was signed Korea was economically politically and culturally dominated by Japan Korea was run as a colony and was brimming with all the oppression that usually entails the obliteration of traditional culture forced labor one-sided business deals corruption exploitation and environmental degradation were all actively encouraged by the ruling Japanese Elite who were eager to strip Korea of all it was worth all while proclaiming to civilize the so-called backward Korean people naturally some decided to take up arms against the occupiers grouped in various small bands Korean guerillas launched small scale raids from bases in Korea's mountainous North all from Over the Chinese border for the Japanese Administration these Freedom Fighters were considered more of an annoyance than a tangible threat to their Authority yet the Japanese Army still went out of its way to hunt the gillers down jumping forward to 1939 Japan was facing a critical labor shortage on the home Islands huge numbers of young men had been conscripted for service in the Army and there simply wasn't enough workers Left Behind to fill their old jobs the solution the Japanese government came up with was Koreans between 1939 and 1945 5.4 million Koreans were taken from their homes as forced laborers around 670,000 were offshored to the Japanese islands where they were put to work in factories most of their compatriots on the peninsula were forced to mine or Farm raw materials for the Japanese empire generally Koreans were seen as a racially closer to the Japanese and therefore were treated slightly better than other forced laborers but they still had a death rate of around 9% most of the forced laborers were men and they could be considered lucky compared with what many Korean women faced lured by false promises of well paid work and opportunities for higher education tens of thousands of Korean women and girls were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery in so-called Comfort stations in both Japan and Korea we've done a video discussing this crime against humanity before so we won't go into detail here we'll leave it with this summary from a United Nations report large numbers of women were forced to submit to prolonged prostitution under conditions which were frequently indescribably traumatic despite their status as second class citizens many Koreans willingly signed up to fight for the Japanese Army until 1944 Koreans weren't conscripted into the military instead they volunteered what might surprise you even more was that the Japanese were actively Turning Away potential recruits from 1938 to 1944 82047 Korean men tried to join the Japanese Army OB these only 17,6 164 were accepted the average acceptance rate was just 4.7% and this wasn't for officer training this was regular infantry but why were the recruiters so picky the most likely answer is that they were worried about loyalty only the most DieHard recruits could be trusted to fight against their own countrymen in the tial region to the north of Korea is an area traditionally known as gando during the second world war it was populated mostly by ethnic Koreans but was within Chinese territory gando was a hot bed of anti-japanese gorilla activity with weapons flowing from China to various pro-independence Rebels the manchuko Imperial Army the military of the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria was given the unenviable task of dislodging the Rebels for good to do this they put together a purely Korean unit called the gando special force the men of the gando special force rivaled the Japanese in their brutality with historian Philip JT noting they earned a reputation for brutality and were reported to have laid waste to large areas which came under their rule as War dragged on into 1944 Japanese planners were aware they were losing well-trained men and vital materials were being lost every day to the Allied advance in the Pacific this is largely what led to the conscription of Koreans into the Japanese Army all Korean men of military age were either drafted into the army or forced into military factories they received only the most basic of training and few could even communicate with their officers this when combined with Japanese racial beliefs LED Korean units to predominantly be given support roles away from the combat zone though some were thrown onto the front lines Korean units were often given the demeaning task of guarding PS and in this role they gained a malevolent reputation Colonel Jacobs an American survivor of the batan death march discussed the Korean conscripts in his Memoirs the Korean gods were the most abusive the Japs didn't trust them in battle so they used them as service troops the Koreans were anxious to get blood on their bayonets and then they thought they were veterans Australian and British soldiers suffered laughed and died side by side in countless hell holes throughout the second world war while positivity and mhip can get you through some seriously tough times they couldn't save the Aussies and Brits whom the Japanese subjected to the misery of the sandhan death marches in the final year of the war in February 1942 Imperial Japan's 25th Army crossed the jeor straight onto the island of Singapore and crushed the defending Allied Forces so thoroughly that they surrendered some 80,000 troops many of these men were consigned to forced labor which under Japanese supervision was synonymous with a slow agonizing death in July 1500 Aussies were shipped to sandan on the island of Borneo a further 500 Australians and 770 British joined the first group the following year held at sandhan p camp these men were forced at gunpoint to build the Japanese and Military air field without heavy machinery using hand tools instead the conditions were terrible before it was a PW Camp sandhan was an experimental Farm owned by the north Borneo chared company during the war it was divided into an Australian compound a British compound and a site for Japanese guards to live and chill when they weren't tormenting their prisoners in charge of sandakan was Japanese liutenant Sumi hosi Jima chosen because he was a military engineer capable of building an Airfield and he was also a huge huge a-hole when new PS arrived at the camp this is what this career sadist said to them you will work until your bones rot Under The Tropical Sun of Borneo you will work for the emperor if any of you escape I will pick out three or four and shoot them the war will last for 100 years we'll call him Hashi now because why not the fences surrounding the compounds were electrified and fixed with barbed wire if a prisoner was caught stealing food the guards would throw them into a wooden cage without food and in minimal clothes often just a loin cloth the mosquitoes were well fed at least no matter what the prisoners could only use the L twice per day the gods also punished them with methods of torture involving electricity and water other methods included hammering meat skewers into their ears such was the Fate that befell leftenant Rod Wells who described the experience as such I think I fainted sometime after it went through the drum I remember the last excruciating sort of pain and I must have gone out for some time because I was revived with a bucket of water eventually it healed but of course I couldn't hear with it I've never been able to hear since it didn't matter if the prisoners were sick or starving or wounded or a second from dead they were forced to break their backs day in and day out working their hands to the Bone to build an Airfield that would undoubtedly be used to wage war against fellow Aussies and Brits in August 1943 the Japanese further crushed the prisoner's morale by removing Australian and British officers from the camp sending them to suffer in Batu lintang Camp instead according to an article on the Australian government's Anzac portal 885 Australians and British perished in sandon and it does seem that the Allies knew what was going on there for in October 1944 they started bombing the Airfield they also planned a rescue operation codeen named Kingfisher but never bloody went through with it just why operation Kingfisher fell through remains unknown either way by January 1945 the Japanese Airfield was so messed up that hosi now Captain decided he would move his operation to the town of Rau instead it didn't matter that renal was 260 km or 160 Mi away through mountain ranges and sweltering jungles and swamps nor that his prisoners were already on death store and so began the sandhan death marches the first group of PS left in January there were 455 of them they had to carry all of the Japanese guards equipment and were only given 4 days rations the journey required nine along the way prisoners dropped like flies if they couldn't keep up the Japanese just killed them Australian private Keith botu one of the sandhan death Marchers survivors described it better than we ever could I've seen men shots and bayonetted to death because they could not keep up with the party no effort whatsoever was made to bury them there was nothing we could do we climbed this mountain about 30 Mi out from an now and we lost five men on that mountain in half a day they shot five of them because they couldn't continue but I just kept plotting along it was a dense jungle I was heartbroken but I thought there was safety in numbers I just kept going it doesn't seem that any of the PS escaped during this first March when the survivors arrived at renal however where they were forced to build a temporary Camp some men tried what follows is an anecdote featured in an article by the Australian war memorial Gunner Albert clear a young man from jalong tried to to escape into the jungle recaptured after a week he was beaten and tied to a log for 11 days Gods beat him spat and urinated on him if you escape the same thing will happen to you a Japanese officer warned at last when he was close to death the prisoners were allowed to free him They Carried him to a creek washed and placed him in a hut where he died by may just 30 of the PS from the first March were alive the alform mentioned Keith botu was among them but only because of his comrade Richard Murray who took full responsibility for some rice the pair had stolen from the Japanese in answer to the theft the Japanese bayoneted Murray and tossed his corpse into a bomb crater by the time the second March arrived on the 24th of June just six prisoners from the 1st March were alive the dead having either succumbed to starvation disease including dentry which would have been a horrible way to go or Japanese bayonets a further four including Bodil had somehow managed to escape into the jungle where the locals took them in after the first March departed sandakan Japanese Captain takakuwa Tako was left in charge of the camp he sent 536 prisoners to renal on the 29th of May their Journey took far longer than the first a March of 26 days and only 183 of them actually made it to R now4 42 were Australian and 41 were British two Aussies managed to escape into the jungle along the way Gunner Owen Campbell and bombarder Richard braithway the locals took them in as they had taken in ral's for escapees now only some 250 PS remained in sandakan on the 9th of June 1945 the Japanese departed with 75 of them on a third and final March the rest were left to starve to death in the camp some resorted to cannibalism to survive but all of them ultimately died so too did every prisoner on the final March over at renal every single P perished too weak to work and thus shot by the Japanese of the six Aussies who escaped two ultimately died as a result of their maltreatment Bodil Not Included the sandan death marches are largely considered to be the most heinous atrocity inflicted upon Australian soldiers during the second world war after the Japanese surrender in the end of the war the Allies put hosi and the equally sadistic takua on trial for war crimes both of these misg greant were found guilty and executed people have since then hiked the route between sandakan and Ral to both honor the men who died upon it and to understand at least to some degree the hell they experienced there was nearly nowhere worse to be in World War II than on board a Japanese ship mostly smaller freighter that had been hastily converted for human cargo the Imperial Japanese Navy shipped tens of thousands of captured Allied PS and Southeast Asian civilians to Japan China and other parts of their empire these PS were destined to spend the rest of the war as slave laborers and sometimes test subjects for demented medical experiments life on board an apply named Hell ship was unimaginable hered into tiny cargo spaces deck PS were crammed so tightly and with so little ventilation that some died from lack of oxygen other common causes of death were dehydration starvation and the everpresent disease dentry was extremely common and men were forced to relieve themselves wherever they could the deck quickly running slick with infectious excrement the conditions were so hellish it wasn't uncommon for PS to go insane an environment of oppressive humidity little oxygen and no water or food broke many men's Minds desperate and deranged some PWS would drink urine or slit their veins to open and drink their own blood and sometimes the blood of others to round off an experience which the word hellish doesn't do justice many of these PS never reached their destinations the Japanese Navy refused to mark p transport ships in accordance with the maritime law meaning that many were torpedoed by Allied submarines and aircraft hunting for Japanese troop ships one hell ship the Suz Maru carried 548 sick PS from slave labor camps in Malaysia she began to sink after being torpedoed by an American submarine most of the human cargo drowned in the hold but 250 PS managed to escape they swam to another Japanese ship which after picking up survivors from the Japanese crew machine gun the water murdering all 250 PS Imperial Japan wasn't the only belligerent nation of the second world war to deploy suicide attacks the Chinese Soviets and Germans did so too but they never came close to the scale of Japanese kamakazi operations in the final years of the second world war as their empire crumbled around them Imperial Japanese commanders deployed an array of suicidal L Stitch that they hoped would cause just enough Bloodshed to turn the war we're starting with the now Infamous Special Attack Force the first kamakazi these were 24 Naval aviators and selected by Commander asaii tamay for a mission he knew would be their last a kamakazi attack on the US fleets in the later Gulf they were all particularly young some weren't even 18 and were well educated they weren't volunteers nor were they Fanatics when Tamaya asked leftenant siki to lead the mission he lowered his head in sorrow and said I'm not going on this mission for the Emperor or for the Empire I'm going because I was ordered to sei's Grim acceptance of death was expected of all kamakazi even if they had strong personal reservations from their writings it's clear these men were desperately searching for the reason they were sacrificing their lives am I simply to die without giving meaning to my life why must we fight we no longer have any purpose for fighting even military High command was grasping its straws just before the first planned kamakazi attack Admiral onishi gave the following speech Japan is engraved danger the salvation of our country is now beyond the power of the Ministers of State the general staff and lowly commanders like myself it can only come from Spirited young men such as you thus I ask of you this sacrifice and pray for your success on October 25th 1944 the alpha menion SEI led the first kamakazi attack one plane in his unit succeeded in Sinking The escort carrier USS sent low perhaps this proved the concept for Admiral onishi and his colleagues many more suicide missions were to come beneath the waves a different sort of kamakazi attack was at work kitan Torpedoes honed in on their targets driven by by human Pilots the kiten was an adaption of the remarkably successful Japanese type 93 torpedo its designers had essentially cut the torpedo in half and added a pilot's compartment in the middle they also fitted the kitan with steering controls and a periscope development was fraught with issues one of the type 1 kian's Chief designers liutenant Hiroshi kuroki asphyxiated when the torpedo he was test piloting sank and become stuck in the mud for running out of air he identified the mechanical defect and scrolled the note detailing its fix despite not being at fault he also apologized for sinking one of the emperor's watercraft the later model the type 2 was marginally more reliable it could submerge in up to 100 m of water and at a maximum range of 83 km but this was rarely seen in practice the kiten was unstable at Sea and difficult to launch in rough conditions ships and submarines had to be modified to carry it which compromised both their speed and maneuverability with disastrous results no less than eight submarines carrying kiden into battle were sunk with all hands trying to launch them a combined loss of 846 men despite a human pilot the kiten was actually less successful than the standard Japanese Naval torpedo and much more expensive to produce only two US ships were definitely sunk by kitens during the war Torpedoes weren't the only munition that the Japanese put a pilot inside they also put young men inside Rockets this idea came from IGN mitsa OTA and a Consortium of students from the University of Tokyo like all Japanese suicide craft both the designers and Pilots Were Young Too Young far younger than the average Japanese sailor or foot slugging Grunt otar and his colleagues designed several prototype human guided Rockets but only the type 11 saw service this aircraft was towed to its Target on the belly of a Mitsubishi G4 embed twin engine bomber when near enough to the Target the Oka would detach and accelerate to lightning fast speeds by means of three solid fuel Rockets speed allowed it to penetrate enemy defenses and inflict massive casualties on enemy shipping at least that was the theory in reality the Oka which US forces dubbed Baka bombs didn't live up to the height they were deployed very late in the war when the US Navy was Battle hardened and its Sailors very experienced they knew the value of anti-aircraft defense especially when it came to kamakazi attacks US Navy task groups expanded their highly effective defensive ring system outwards and focused on destroying the okas before they got to the combat zone when they were attached to the Betty and helpless scores of ERS were also lost when the US submarines Archer fish and red fish sank the Japanese carriers shinono and unu 74 okas were deployed during the war and 56 meant their ultimate end along with their pilots in fiery explosions okar sank two smaller ships in the sea Battle of okanawa in April 1945 they made a negligible impact on the war but led many aamac crew to their deaths if planes Torpedoes and Rockets weren't enough Imperial Japan also turned motorboats into suicide craft these were called Shino in May 1944 Shino boats went into mass production they were originally intended to be made from steel but due to shortages were actually built with wood they were powered by Third Rate car engines and carried a 300 kilo bomb in the nose the onean Shino class 1 displaced just one ton and measured 5 ft long while the Twan variant the class 5 was double this 6,000 Shino Boats were built during the war and 150 Pilots whose average age was just 17 were volunt ordered to drive them like their compatriots piloting kamakazi planes Torpedoes and Rockets they were mostly students recruited straight from school or university the Imperial Japanese Army also experimented with boats of this kind but decided against using them for suicide missions the Navy had no such quals Shino sank three three us landing boats of Luzon in the Philippines and another one of okanawa many more attacks were launched but these were largely unsuccessful US forces soon developed countermeasures against suicide motorboats and once they had Shino became sitting ducks in open water as resources dwindled and the Allies encroached on the home Islands the Imperial Japanese Navy had to find even more creative ways to sacrifice their own men one idea they came up with was the fuk Rio program officials planned for 6,000 men to be equipped with specially made diving suits and trained as underwater gorillas these men would deploy from secret underwater foxholes and March for up to 10 hours totally submerged they would travel underwater to a predetermined Point roughly 5 M below the surface here they would lie in weight each man was equipped with a single weapon a bamboo pole with a contact triggered mine fixed to the end he was to crouch on the seabed then leap upwards once the us landing craft sped across the surface after thrusting his pole into the landing Craft's soft underbelly the mine would detonate and kill the Frogman as well as the vessel's occupants two battalions of these kamakazi frogmen were trained and deployed to Yokosuka naval base in preparation for the coming Allied invasion but only one was fully equipped rubber for diving suits was scarce and their production was further hampered by lack of workers and suitable Machinery in the end the furu were never sent on their suicide missions the atomic bombing of Japan forced the government to its knees without a cost The Invasion but what do you think why was it that military officials forced the youth to Pilot their suicide attack craft did you know most of them weren't actually willing volunteers or that they questioned their orders how do you think you would cope with being ordered to undertake a suicide mission as a Ocha rocket or kitan torpedo pilot kamakazi regardless of whether you speak Japanese or not you know what this word means it's the name given to the series of aerial suicide attacks that rained down on allied forces in the final months of the second world war but don't we know all this already there are a number of misconceptions abounding kamikazi attacks and around other suicide attacks during the conflict in this video we're going to be looking at this more closely and asking the key question just how effective was suicide attacks in World War II truly come back with your Shield the saying goes or on it plutar recorded this utterance in his writing later collected in the Morales attributing it to Spartan mothers sending their sons into battle there are plenty of practical interpretations of what this meant in the falling formation The hoplon Shield not only protected the soldier carrying it but also the man to his left so retaining your Shield meant maintaining the Integrity of of the whole unit indeed plutar himself quoted the Spartan King de maratos who stated that the shield is for the common good of all but there's a deeper meaning here too the implication that there are worse Fates than death and there are things more important than personal safety while the Spartan Marshall Doctrine was not really one of suicide there was certainly a glory in death on the battlefield and a shame in returning having Cast Away Your Shield in the face of the enemy this idea is echoed throughout history centuries later Icelandic poet SN stason described how only Warriors who died in battle could Ascend to Valhalla other sources suggest that this was only one of the ways to reach Valhalla but the message is the same it's good to be hacked to bits on the battlefield and only cowards want to die peacefully in their beds a higher calling a more Noble Truth this is what underpins the development of suicide attacks from Viking warriors to Al-Qaeda bombers religion has often played a part if you believe in a holy reward for your actions it's a lot easier to lay down your life preservation of national character is also important the Spartans were renowned for their toughness and bravery and their fighting reflected this Japanese soldiers in World War II were expected to put honor and country above their own lives and relatively few allow themselves to be taken prison as a result ideology is another key factor from Human wave attacks by the communist Chinese troops in the Korean War to Soviet Pilots intentionally colliding with their adversaries during the second World War soldiers have shown themselves willing to accept a high likelihood of death when driven by a strong sense of social good methods and means have changed throughout the centuries but there's a core thread that runs through all of these instances the suicide attack is is not simply a suicide a way of ending life it's supposed to serve some sort of purpose it's supposed to bring Victory even after the individual soldiers themselves have departed this world beginning in October 1944 and continuing for the remainder of the war Japanese kamakazi or divine wind tax are the most famous suicide operations in the history of the Second World War and potentially of all time the aircraft of the kamakazi was Str ra forward the pilot needed only to be able to take off fly the plane to his Target and fly directly at his Target then release the explosive ordinance just before impact as the planes were deployed late in the war resources were at a premium as so aircraft like the Nakajima Ki 115 tarugi or saber were designed using wood with small amounts of Steel and rubber the craft was compatible with a variety of different engines so the Japanese command began using up their stockpiles of obsolete units a radio and instrument panel were on board but the cabin was basic compared to other Japanese planes and the landing gear was designed to be jettisoned these planes and their pilots weren't supposed to be coming back the image of a war plane droning out of the sky arcing down toward an enemy ship and exploding in a FAL blaze of glory is an evocative one but it also leans heavily on a common mythology of the second World War the mythology of the Japanese soldier as an apathetic automation focused only on killing and defending the Emperor of course this is not true kamakazi Pilots were human beings with thoughts fears and apprehensions being selected as a kamakazi was an honor but it was a complicated one I could no longer avoid this fate Ki kahara aged 91 told the BBC in 2017 I was flying thinking today would be my last day alive that's when I heard the engine making some strange noise generating black smoke this is what I had hoped for I was happy I could return alive but I was also scared of what people would think of me those who died for the country were Heroes kuara continued but looking back now they could have had a fulfilling life like I did after the war what they were asked to do shouldn't have been allowed kahara was not the only kamakazi pilot to live to tell the tale and to discuss his own emotional and psychological State on being selected for such a mission I felt the blood drain from my face taka hio Ena aged 92 said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper in 2015 the other pilots and I congratulated each other when the order came through that we were going to attack it sounds strange now as there was nothing to celebrate on the surface we were doing it for our country we made ourselves believe we had chosen to make this sacrifice I just wanted to protect the father and mother I loved and we were all scared enna made three attempts at kamakazi raids and engine trouble kept him alive all three times the final attempt saw him stranded on kuroshima island for 3 months before he was rescued by which time the war was almost over but the majority of kamakazi never came home around 4,000 kamakazi Pilots died in World War II most aged between 17 and 24 one of the big misconceptions of World War II is that only the Japanese kamakazi carried out suicide attacks this plays into the commonly held beliefs about the Japanese forces during the second world war and it neglects something very important no matter how much of a psychological and Military Advantage you might achieve from a suicide attack it's generally going to be a last resort basically you don't do it unless you're desperate in in April of 1945 few nations were more desperate than Nazi Germany the final attempted a break out on the Arden had failed and the Allies were now putting the screws to Germany from all directions it was nearly over all was lost but the fighting continued on April 7th 1945 around, 1300 US Air Force B17 flying fortresses and B24 liberators set off with a grimly familiar objective to pound the factories and rail switches that kept a fading Germany on life support just after midday the expected happened German Fighters appeared ready to do what they could to defend their Homeland the US Gunners manned their arms and prepared for another fight in the sky this time though it was different the Lu vaffa planes did not assume their usual fighting positions instead they came directly at the American aircraft and they came and they kept coming by the time the Americans realized what was going on it was too late maneuvering the lumbering bombers out of the way was impossible and the sickening noise of planes slamming into planes filled the sky in the end up to 15 of the bombers were destroyed by the L buffer suicide attack barely a dent in the overall fighting force that afternoon but the surviving bomber Cru were horrified by what they had witnessed So what had they witnessed exactly what had transpired was an attack by the Z Commando Elba a German Squadron trained to Ram enemy planes out of the sky with the Allies closing in the L buffer was resorting to increasingly Desperate Measures to repel the Invaders Z Commando was not the only unit of this type among the LOF buffer ranks 10 days later German planes under the command of Lieutenant Colonel haa langa began smashing into Bridges held by the Soviet Union on the odor River for 3 days from April 17th to April 20th 1945 the so-called Leonid Squadron named for the indomitable Spartan King and for his Warriors at the Battle of thop hit Target after Target on the Yoda historians disagree over just how successful these missions were but Lieutenant Colonel ler and his men kept at it until the Red Army reached their base at yabok in fact similar tactics were deployed by all sides at one point or another during the war Soviet female Ace Yak Catarina ivanovna zeleno reportedly perished in a suicidal aerial raming attack although there's some controversy over whether or not this attack actually occurred the tactic was certainly deployed by the ussr's pilots the British royal Air Force deployed aerial raming techniques during the Battle of Britain in 1940 while these weren't necessarily suicide attacks the risky maneuver was generally considered a last ditch defensive technique and often resulted in the deaths of Pilots such as sergeant Bruce Hancock who was killed after intentionally smashing his AO ansen into a heinl h 111 on August 18th 1940 aerial raming was a reported tactic for some French Greek Bulgarian and American Pilots although in most cases the pilot survived while certainly a dangerous tactic with a high risk of death these weren't really suicide attacks let's start this analysis with a few St straight forward observations Japanese kamakazi attacks began on October 25th 1944 at the Battle of ler Gulf one of the largest if not the largest naval engagements in history Captain maharu okamura who commanded a kamakazi squadron had this to say I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash dive attacks with our planes there's no other way provide me with 300 planes and I'll turn the tide of War okamura and others like him did not turn the tide of War later golf was lost only a day later kamakazi attacks continued as the Japanese grew increasingly desperate but there were no major Japanese victories for the remainder of the conflict okamura himself would die by Suicide but his suicide would come via the barrel of a gun in July 1948 Z Commando Elba may have taken down as many as 15 enemy planes on April 7th 19 1945 or the number may have been as low as8 28 bombers were shot down by more conventional means that afternoon but still The Raid went ahead German infrastructure was still pummeled and the Nazi regime would fall for good just a month later it's essentially the same story for leonitis targets were hit and the suicide actions undoubtedly struck Terror into the hearts of the enemy but the Soviets were still able to run supplies and Men across the river and soon threatened to overrun the squadron's position in none of the above cases Japanese or German do we find a tactical Advantage but perhaps this is looking at things the wrong way by the time the Japanese and the Germans were systematically using suicide Tactics the War was in its final throws Nazi Germany was only a month from destruction by the time they began their suicidal strikes Japan went about it for a little longer but the victor of the struggle was already decided by October 1944 and All That Remains was a drawn out attritional campaign toward the Japanese home Islands the fact that these approaches were not ultimately successful is unsurprising these were the last roles of the dice after all they were not expected to be successful maybe we should be instead asking could they have been successful for the German leonitis and Elba units we can be confident in saying no it was already too late by this point and no amount of young Pilots dying in a blaze of perceived Glory was going to change this for Japan however it's a little more complex by 1944 though things were going badly for the Japanese military machine the fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy or IGN was still largely intact the Empire could still draw upon a significant number of vessels including many of the capital ships that delivered a significant military threat the problem was what if they could throw out the Americans the Americans could throw more back their way the the attempt to knock out the American Pacific Fleet at PE Harbor in 1941 had been a failure and the vast manufacturing resources of the United States meant their military power grew rather than shrank furthermore many of Japan's most capable Pilots had been killed in action in the first two years of the war and with an inferior pilot training program to the Allies the skill gap between the IGN and the usn flipped heavily in favor of the US Navy from America's entry into the war to the final months of the conflict the total number of US Navy battleships Grew From 17 to 23 Cruiser numbers expanded from 37 to 72 destroyers from 171 to 377 and submarines from 112 to 232 the United States had zero frig of amphibious vehicles in 1941 but had 361 and 2,547 respectively by 1945 and then there were were the carriers the seven Fleet carriers of 1941 expanded to 28 by 1945 while the US's lone escort carrier in 1941 had been joined by an astonishing 70 more 4 years later the United States had a floating Mega Force capable of launching aerial strikes and Landing enormous numbers of ground troops as well as fighting at Sea they were basically the whole package the IGN was up against it desperate situations it could be argued call for desperate measures a single well executed kamakazi attack could knock out a carrier and this did happen today the escort carrier USS s low sits on the seabed perched on the edge of the Philippine trench after she was sunk by kamakazi on October 25th 1944 While most carriers could be repaired after a kamakazi strike this shows us the danger these tactics represented for the American Fleet especially for smaller less protected warships what's more kamakazi tactics were more sophisticated than many realized the Japanese would Target radar pickets blinding the American Defenders ahead of a strike later in the war they used electronic countermeasures such as flurries of metal strips that would confuse enemy radar allowing more kamakazi to reach their objectives did Japan's suicide tactics work no not really was this a military blunder on the part of the Japanese also no the attacks could have worked and in some cases they did achieve small tactical gains suicide attacks like the famous kamakazi raids as well as other examples are not designed to Simply destroy enemy personnel and material they're designed to have profound psychological impact too soldiers work so hard to keep themselves alive when they're suddenly presented with an enemy who apparently shows no fear of death and will actively seek death in an effort to injure their enemy a deep emotional response is to be expected Studies have found significant levels of PTSD in Sailors who survived kamakazi attacks up to 44% of a sample of those who survived in an attack during the Battle of okanawa in 1945 were found to have significant lifelong stress reactions as a result while PTSD is common in those who fought in World War II and in any War it does seem to be more prevalent in those who faced a kamakazi attack another study on Sailors who served on the USS emmans found that those who had been present during the kamakazi assault found it more difficult to adjust to civilian life after the war but suicide attacks take a heavy toll on those who send the planes to such extreme operations do not exactly suggest that all is well with the war effort and the waves of young Japanese men sent out to die in aerial explosive coffins inflicted an immense National trauma on Japan that the country took many years to recover from okamura wasn't the only kamakazi Commander to take his own life either vice admiral takajo onishi also known as the father of the kamakazi killed himself at the war's end leaving a note which claimed he wished to atone for all those he sent to die kamakazi attacks and other suicide operations are such unnat acts that they canot fail but leave far-reaching psychological scars on those Left Behind be resolved that honor is heavier than the mountains wrote Yasuo kurahara in his book kamakazi and death lighter than the feather the veracity of Kara's account has been called into question this quote remains an interesting one its poetry its philosophy and it seeming disregard for personal safety and life for a higher more amorphous con cep like honor have helped to shape our view of kamakazi suicide attacks in the years since the war but as we've already seen this view is largely false the quotes from surviving Pilots display a complicated mix of emotions a vague Pride at serving their Nation their people and their family coupled with a very very real and very very understandable fear of violent death so where does this leave us in terms of the morality of su suicide tactics by most common definitions of morality these tactics are ethically suspect at best convincing a soldier to put their life at risk is one thing convincing them to willfully throw that life away backed by the lofty ethical Frameworks of religion nationalism and martial duty is quite another there were thousands of kamakazi pilots during the war and there have been countless instances of suicidal attacks throughout military history it seems like that some of these Fighters were totally up for it ready to give their lives for a cause that they deemed truly Worthy on the other hand it's just as likely that most were terrified uncertain and regretful of their decision in those awful final moments another quote from Kara's book goes like this seek only to preserve life your own and those of others life alone is sacred this feels like it gets a little closer to the truth of what many come kamazi Pilots would have felt when they were awarded the dubious honor of dying for the Imperial cause kamakazi attacks were not mythology they were very much a real threat the sunken ships dead Sailors thousands of lost Japanese pilots and the psychological trauma for all concerned are evidence of this but as we've discussed they did contribute to much of the damaging mythology of Japan during World War II a nation of killing Machin jeans ready to die for a god emperor not bothered by the idea of taking lives and losing their own in the process this was how Japan was perceived by the outside world and this was a fiction that haunted Japan for decades after the war today Japan is known for its friendly population its surging economy and its extremely low crime rate the idea of the kamakazi while Loosely tied to ideas of honor and tradition that are very important to this day in Japan was a hindrance to the country's post-war rebirth and success but not everyone thinks like this in an interview with the BBC conducted in 2017 a young Japanese man named shune described kamakazi Pilots as heroic his older brother takumi was surprised heroic he asked I didn't realize you were so right-wing it might seem strange to talk about something like kamakazi in these terms but this did become a political reality in Japan in the late 20th century by the 1990s right leaning nationalist groups set out to reframe Japan's wartime story and its imperial history in more positive terms kamakazi was certainly part of this as it was emblematic of the honor codes ingrained into Japan's long feudal history fresh battle lines were drawn on Japan's culture and history left leaning Japanese people favored The View that Japan had been wronged to prosecute the war in the way it did while right- leaning individuals saw Great Value in the honor and tradition of the Imperial Japanese forces perhaps this posturing is all a little unfair to the pilots themselves it's difficult to describe the pilots who flew those missions as anything other than heroic while the practice of kamakazi is morally dubious the pilots that manned the planes were willing to lay down their lives for a cause they believed in for country for family and for Honor irrational and stupid were two of the other words used by interviewees in 2017 perhaps this sort of judgment is best reserved for the decision makers those who sent these young men to almost certain death rather than those idealistic young men themselves what was Japan's aim for the kamakazi campaigns if all had gone to plan perhaps they thought they could knock out key US Navy carriers and hobble American designs on the Japanese home Islands while this may have been possible they'd have had to knock out 28 Fleet carriers and 71 escort carriers to achieve this also missions like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings did not launch from carriers at all but from the North Field base in the Marianas the us could still strike Japan even without their carriers maybe the plan was to traumatize the Americans so much that they would give up the fight alt together possibly kamakazi attacks were certainly horrifying for those who witnessed them but American troops had gone through horrific traumas right across the Pacific losing tens of thousands of men would the American command be content to just give it all up and enure all that suffering for nothing probably not not and then there are the resources each kamakazi attack successful or otherwise meant the loss of planes and Men even when recycling obsolete engines there were only so many of those planes and only a finite number of men Japan could not do this forever while Japan's suicide squadrons were more effective than those of Nazi Germany it was still a final desperate role of the dice in the end the human cost the national trauma and the unpredictable results of suicide tactics me the operations simply were not worth it and they remain a tragic footnote in Japan's history why did the Japanese surrender in World War II if your answer is because they were nuked twice you may have only ever heard America's side of the story but the Americans were the ones who dropped the bombs not the ones who dealt with the repercussions so even though the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unprecedented they were not the sole reason Japan ultimately surrendered in this video we're going to talk about what happened after the bombs were dropped and what ultimately LED it to the end of the war in the Pacific in the summer of 1945 the war between Imperial Japan and the Allies raged on long after Germany's defeat and both sides were exhausted on 26th July 1945 the United States Great Britain and China signed the poam Declaration calling for Japan's unconditional surrender refusal would bring prompt and utter destruction publicly Japan was trying to preserve its reputation of fighting until The Bitter End but behind the scenes the Japanese knew they were screwed so they met in secret with the Soviets who were publicly neutral in the Pacific Theater Japan tried to negotiate a more favorable deal before giving up the fight what the Japanese didn't know was that the Soviets were too timing them they had no intention of giving Japan anything in fact they wanted to take from Japan the Soviets plan to attack Japanese forces in Korea and manua to gain unfettered access to the Pacific Ocean this would have been horrible for Japan which relied heavily on oil and other raw materials imported from Manchuria there was no way Japan could have handled a Soviet invasion and the Soviets knew it they also knew that the Allies wouldn't accept separate or conditional peace treaties with Japan so they R Japan along and gave the Japanese false hope of reaching a favorable surrender that the Allies would accept they did this to prolong the war as long as they could weakening Japan just that much more but America wanted to end the war and when Japan gave no comment to the poam Declaration America went nuclear the Yanks bombed hoshima at 8:15 in the morning local time on 6 August 1945 completely leveling the city there they brought Nagasaki to its knees 3 days later on August 9th now despite what you may think the damage the nukes caused wasn't the worst Japan sustained during the war the Americans had been conducting Air Raids for years obliterating 66 Japanese cities in fact Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as targets because they were two on a very short list of places the Americans hadn't attacked already scientists in the United States wanted to test the bombs on untouched cities in reality some Allied Air Raids caused far much more damage than either atomic bomb in hoshima by the end of the year 140,000 people had died because of the bombs conversely the US killed 100,000 people in a single night during an air raid in Tokyo if you were to rank US Air Raids against Japan in terms of area destroyed in a single attack Hiroshima actually falls six if we're ranking the attacks in terms of percentage of the city destroyed it ranks 17th regarding the impact of the atomic bombs the director of Asian studies at Tokyo's Temple University Jeffrey Kingston said if you look at it from the perspective of the Japanese military it doesn't really make a big difference whether people are dying from firebombing or atomic bombs it is just two additional City centers that are destroyed the bombing of Nagasaki wasn't even the Japanese leaders primary concern that day it was the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria this more than anything marked the end for the Japanese in the afternoon of August 9th following the Soviet declaration of war and American nuclear attack the six-man Japanese cabinet meant to discuss the possibility of unconditional surrender in the end the vote was split 33 the cabinet was afraid and Confused those for rendering argued that the destruction of the Japanese armed forces and Japanese people was inevitable the US had bombs capable of wiping out entire cities but that wasn't the only factor to consider fighting the Americans alone was something the Japanese still felt they could manage even after the bombs what tipped the scale was the Soviets Japan simply didn't have the capacity to defend itself from two major Powers at once especially because the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had seven Japan's access to the resources it would require to stay in the fight the cabinet members against surrender didn't have much of an argument they didn't want to surrender because well that's just not what the Japanese did in the end Emperor Hirohito made the deciding votes choosing to surrender though he cited the bombing as the deciding factor in his public address he said this to the Japanese military the Soviet Union has entered the war against us and to continue the war would endanger the very foundation of the Empire's existence when Japan sent its notice of surrender to the Allies it was not quite as unconditional as the Allies had wanted the Japanese wanted to keep their system of government Emperor and all just after midnight on August 12th A dispatch from a San Francisco radio station relayed information from the Allies to Japan it said they plan to install a military occupation in Japan similar to the one in Germany while those working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs interpreted this as the Allies simply restricting Japan's sovereignty the members of the staff office in the ministry of War deemed it enslavement these officers saw only one way out a good oldfashioned kudat they went to war minister Kika anami to ask him if he would help them put a stop to the poam Declaration General anami considered the most powerful person in Japan after the emperor didn't give these officers a straight answer the offic knew their coup wouldn't get very far without General anami but they were prepared to take action with or without him the leader of the coup major Kenji hatanaka spent the next couple of days planning and Gathering allies on the night of August 13th an imperial Conference was held to officiate the surrender hatanaka and his supporters tried to convince the leaders present at the conference to join their coup and stop the surrender but they were told that it was the emperor's will and what's done is done so lanaka set his crewp in motion the goal was simple occupy the Imperial Palace the palace was aware of an incoming coup so it doubled its Defense Force of Imperial Gods what the palace didn't know was that hatanaka had already won over the leader of the second Imperial God at about 1: in the morning on the 15th of August hatanaka and his men surrounded the palace then stormed in and tried to convince the commander of the first Imperial Guard liutenant general Takeshi Modi to join them without Mod's supports the Rebellion had no hope Modi refused in response hatanaka killed him his Rebels also killed M's brother-in-law Michi Shashi who was in a meeting with Modi at the time with Mii out of the way hatanaka used Mod's official stamp to send a fake order to the first Imperial God requesting their aid in protecting the emperor in reality hatanaka wanted to place the emperor under house arrest for betraying the nation hatanaka and his men blocked all of the palace's exits and detained 18 people over the course of the night they spent hours searching for the pre-recorded surrender speech to no avail while hatanaka was fruitlessly searching for the recordings another group of rebels left to find prime minister Suzuki and assassinate him luckily for Suzuki his chief secretary had warned him about the incoming Rebels and he escaped just minutes before they arrived to take his life with no one to murder the rebel Set Fire to the prime minister's house house and also the chief secretaries less than 2 hours in the coup was already falling apart hatanaka was informed that the eastern district Army was on its way to stop him he and his men didn't have the Firepower to match the army so in a last Stitch effort to Rally support he requested 10 minutes on National radio to explain himself he actually went to the radio station but they told him to get lost at dawn the eastern district Army arrived and took the palace completely dismantled the coup hatanaka rode through the streets of Tokyo throwing out leaflets to explain their actions just before the emperor surrender speech was broadcast at 11:00 a.m. on August 15 hatanaka put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger on his body was a handwritten note which read I have nothing to regret now that the dark clouds have disappeared from the reign of the emperor you've heard of the Gusto and the nkvd before but what about the ketai whose members were largely responsible for Imperial Japan's atrocities the keer tire was Japan's military police and secret police force during the second world war and there's no doubt about it they were a bunch of sadistic a-holes in this video we're going to be talking about the structure of the Kai Thai and some of the unforgivable things they got up to during the war the ker thae wasn't created during the second world war the organization was established back in 1881 stealing a bunch of ideas from France's national police force the national gendi at its conception it consisted of just 349 men the kar was technically a part of the Imperial Japanese Army though it also carried out tasks for the Imperial Japanese Navy the naos or home Ministry and the Shaha or Ministry of Justice because the Japanese Army and Navy hated each other's guts as we've discussed in a previous video the Navy had its own military police the toai this Force was Far smaller than the keerai and existed in part to stop the Japanese Army from sticky beaking in Naval Affairs Under the Umbrella of the keer tire most keer found themselves working in administration police special duties or in auxiliary units composed of local forces in Japanese occupied areas ketai hqs and field ketai the latter composed of between 35 and 600 Personnel were attached to area armies field keerai could be broken down into bunai or sections and bunai or detachments the smallest field cerai units in 1901 the too or special higher force was formed also known as the thought police this was a civilian secret police force under the home Ministry and can be thought of as the civilian counterpart to the ketai the too policed Internal Affairs suppressing anarchists socialists Communists pacifists student activists certain religious groups and anyone one who disrespected the emperor via a network of informants the organization had made over 59,000 arrests by 1936 alone while the kerai and too were separate organizations the ketai had its own secret police Branch according to a report from the June 1945 issue of the US Military Intelligence Services intelligence bulletin practically all members of the campe were volunteers both commissioned and enlisted personnel and the standards for admission to the organization were high the enlisted men had to hold the rank of jotah high or Superior private and had to meet High physical and mental requirements they also had to be politically reliable enlistees went to military police schools or were trained in special units ncos and officers were held to a higher standard needing six or more years of military experience to be considered depending on their role kempe generally wore Japanese army uniforms cavalry uniforms or civilian clothes with a badge underneath in uniform kempe wore a white armband on their left arm which read kempe officers carried a pistol and a saber while enlisted men got a pistol and a bayonet keer had a range of responsibilities they concerned themselves with intelligence Counter Intelligence Espionage propaganda and counter propaganda working under disguise at home and in foreign countries where they often employed local informants at home they protected military zones maintained military discipline dealt with crimes committed by Japanese Army Personnel dealt with conscription laws maintained security by spying on and arresting possible traitors defeatists and people harboring anti-war sentiments and lastly crushed threatening rumors and anyone trying to undermine Imperial Japan overseas They seized supplies and food from local populations managed rations recruited locals for Funtime auxiliary units maintained rear area security managed prostitutes and forcibly recruited sex slaves notably kempe were also in charge of absolutely ruining the lives of prisoners of War when it came to methods Kee loved a bit of torture so much so that they had their own hand book on this depraved art form of theirs while the Kemper ties certainly inflicted great suffering before World War II such as during Japan's annexation of Korea and the early stages of the second Sino Japanese war we're going to focus on the kampe atrocities in the second world war in World War II at least 11 field kamper tires were active outside of Japan in Japan's captured and occupied territories which were mostly in the Pacific by the end of the war the United States Army estimated that the ketar had more than 35,000 discernable members with that number estimate climbing to 75,000 to account for undercover personnel and such after the Japanese 25th Army defeated the Allies in Singapore and seized control of the the island in February 1942 the kerai set up a headquarters in a YMCA building which became known as ketai East District Branch the building was used to administer the 200 regular campe and the 1,000 auxiliary campe in Singapore it was also a house of pain many civilians were tortured here many of them innocent on the 10th of October 1943 alone the keer tire arrested and tortured 57 civilians they suspected were involved in a raid on Singapore Harbor really the attack was orchestrated by The Joint British and Australian spec ops Z special force one Singaporean woman Elizabeth Choy was held in YMCA for nearly 200 days they actually let her go in the end but she suffered no less in choy's words when my interrogators could not get any information out of me they dragged my husband out tied him up and made him kneel beside me then in his full view they stripped me to the waste and applied electric currents to me the kampe also erected iron Stakes outside the YMCA building and mounted them with severed heads sundan p camp on Borneo was hell on Earth for the Allied PS mostly Aussie held there by the keerai from July 1942 to May 1945 putting aside the infamous sandhan death marches for a moment Aussie leftenant Rod Wells described his own experience with one of the kti's interrogation methods the interviewer produced a small piece of wood like a meat skewer pushed that into my left ear and tapped it with a small Hammer I think I fainted sometime after it went through the drum seil cigu was a nurse living in Japanese occupied Malaya during the war Cel and her husband provided medical supplies and services to the Malayan People's anti-japanese Army the keerai caught wind of them and arrested them in July 1943 three they were tortured for 2 years in seo's words they heated iron bars in a charcoal braer and applied them to my legs and back they ran a stick between the second and third fingers on both of my hands squeezing the fingers together and holding them firmly in the air while two men hung from the ends of the cane making a seesaw of my hands and tearing the flesh between my fingers also in Malaya an unnamed magistrate was AR Ed by the keerai because they suspected he was a spy the keerai tortured him by burying him as per the magistrate they buried me in the ground leaving just my head above ground I was then made to close my eyes one of the KET time men put his sword against my throat as if to cut it and kept it there for some minutes after that I was unburied and left out in the sun for the rest of the day after that they shoved the magistrate in a 40 gallon drum of oily water and put the lid on this didn't kill him though the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indian Island of Java on the 24th of February 1942 and it was theirs by the 12th of March this was a disastrous turn of events for Yan rth Oar an Australian woman living on the island with her mother and two sisters all four women were taken to emaa prison camp where they were held for a couple of years in February 1944 the ketai took her from the camp and forced her into sexual slavery in a military brothel where they kept her for 3 months before sending her back to ambara in Yan's words they dragged us away one by one I could hear screaming and this large fat bold Japanese officer appeared grinning at me I put up an enormous fight but he just dragged me to the bedroom I never thought suffering could be that terrible we've covered the dreaded Japanese biological and chemical warfare Unit 731 before but it's worth mentioning that the ketai established this unit which experimented on living beings in a variety of ways to name just a few of these so-called experiments they amputated people's Limbs and otherwise operated on them while they were still alive spun them in centrifuges until they died exposed them to toxins like puffer fish Venom exposed them to lethal x-ray doses infected them with horrible diseases and raped them to spread sexually transmitted infections and force pregnancies for further testing the kerti were responsible for rounding up many of these Unfortunate Souls those were literally just a handful of the atrocities perpetrated by Imperial Japanese military police and the secret police force that Kemp attire during the second world war Warfare often brings out the darkest parts of humanity but when the bullets stopped flying and pieces finally reached we have a duty to hold the criminals accountable for their actions however in the years since the end of the most destructive war in human history the Japanese government still hasn't taken full responsibility for wartime atrocities in this video we dive into the horrific Deeds of the Imperial Japanese empire but first a warning this is going to be a grim one while the Allies Advanced toward Japan in the final days of the second world war the Japanese military police were busy burning documents not battle plans nor P records no they were burning records concerning so-called Comfort women this is what they wanted to hide from 1932 to 1945 between 100,000 and 200,000 women and girls were trafficked across the Japanese empire to inappropriately named Comfort stations there they were continually beaten and raped sometimes as often as 40 times per day by Japanese soldiers and officers these enslaved women were usually forced to work in the rape stations for just a few months their bodies too damaged to be of much in quotation marks use to the Japanese after that in the early stages of Japan's campaign to conquer the Asia Pacific prostitutes from Japan voluntarily followed the Army to staff brothel set up for the offices Army higher ups wanted more but the supply of willing volunteers from Japan quickly evaporated their first fig was to start the propaganda machine clerical manufacturing and nursing jobs were advertised with generous salaries and they attracted many young female workers it was a scam and these women quickly found themselves forced into sexual slavery when word of the scam got out the Japanese started paying local gangs for a steady supply of women instead these unlucky ones were kidnapped off the street on their way home from work or from outside their schools women and girls as young as 11 from China the Philippines Indonesia Malaya Thailand Burma New Guinea Hong Kong maau French Indo China the Netherlands and Australia were prayed upon but the majority were Korean they were kidnapped by gangsters or soldiers and then broken in by constant rape the physical trauma they experienced often led to infections but life-saving medicine was was Kept For use on soldiers only the damage inflicted on these women and girls left many infertile the horror of military run sexual slavery is too much for many in Japan to the point where some political factions outright deny it some politicians such as toru Hashimoto the former mayor of Osaka try to justify the atrocity in his own words when soldiers are running around at the risk of losing their lives if you want them to have arrest in such a situation a comfort woman system is necessary anyone can understand that we don't understand it only the most deranged Minds could come up with a fate worse than what we've just described and the Japanese managed to do just that they were the doctors from Hell who officially worked for the epidemic prevention and water purification Department of the quantong army but unofficially they were known as unit 731 based in northern China Unit 731 experimented on PS and civilians that kidnapped the sadistic war criminals pretending to be doctors were interested in how the human body was affected by diseases when placed under different pressures healthy men women and children were purposely infected with debilitating diseases and then cut open while still alive for the Japanese to observe the disease's progress when the Mad Men decided to study the disease syphilis they forced an infected prisoner into sex with a healthy prisoner at gunpoint but it really gets worse women were forcibly impregnated so that experiments could be carried out on them and their babies no one survived Unit 731 starved burnt and electrocuted prisoners spun them to death in a centrifuge poisoned them replaced their blood with animal blood injected them with seawater tested experimental weapons on them and conducted seemingly every other kind of cool experiment that you can think of a report on frostbite testing read prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms periodically drenched with water until frozen solid after both arms were gone the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained the victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments one of unit 7 31's goals was to develop a pathogen they could use to wage biological warfare on Americans the unit's Chief General isi planned to airdrop plague carrying fleas into the western United States to cause a pandemic he wanted to make the Americans think twice before invading Japan but weeks before he could put his plan into action his country surrendered now this is by far one of the worst parts of unit 7 31 story not that they conducted the most psychopathically evil experiments imaginable but that the Americans let them get away with it in return for all of their ill-gotten research General MacArthur secretly agreed to Grant all the sadistic Nutters at Unit 731 immunity from war crimes prosecution they all escaped Justice and their research was later found to be amateurish and of no real medical use anyway while those two exam temples were probably the most outwardly evil soldiers of the Japanese empire committed barbaric war crimes everywhere they went there was the nanching massacre where the marauding Japanese Army killed between 40,000 and 300,000 people after killing and capturing nearly all military-aged men the Japanese soldiers persecuted one of the worst incidences of mass rape in human history in some cases women were literally raped to death the marauding soldiers favorite targets were high schools many other massacres were carried out in China as part of the three alls policy kill all loot all burn all it was scorched Earth on steroids and led to the deaths of roughly 2.7 million Chinese civilians some from chemical weapons attacks the policy was personally sanctioned by Emperor hito with which quashes the ridiculous idea that he wasn't a top war criminal too so if Emperor hito knew about the scale of the atrocities his military was committing and willingly signed off on it how many others are culpable too this is a question that modern Japan is still wrestling with and is a common Topic in their National debate but despite greater public recognition for their past crimes Japan still has a long way to go toward official acknowledgement take for example the historic Yasukuni Shrine which functions as a national war memorial for Japanese serviceman who died between 1868 and 1954 there are over 2 million names commemorated on the shrine 1,068 of those names are convicted war criminals these were the sadists who set up rape stations kidnapped girls as young as 11 for sexual enslavement experimented on living people and massacred hundreds of civilians there were also 14 names of Class A war criminals these are men convicted of masterminding the operations that left Millions dead in their wake there's no acknowledgement at The Shrine of what these people did and what's worse the museum at The Shrine deliberately whitewashes The Narrative it depicts Chinese civilians not running in fear for their lives but welcoming the Japanese soldiers as liberators the US is also cast as a warmonger that forced Imperial Japan into Conflict by way of economic blockade this sort of blatant propaganda is not how a nation comes to terms with its history and the majority of the Japanese public knows this many are aware that what is sometimes called the greater East Asia co- Prosperity War has been heavily propagandized by the far right but these Ultra nationalists still wield influence in modern Japan the war crimes for which Nazi Germany was responsible are widely considered some of the most abhorent of all time and are often seen as the greatest evil of World War II but in truth similar Horrors and in some cases even worse crimes were carried out by units and other World War II era Powers Imperial Japan's Unit 731 contained perhaps the worst of these war criminals and committed some of the greatest crimes against humanity in the history of the world Unit 731 officially termed the epidemic prevention and water purification Department of the quantong army was created in 1935 and operated out of a facility in menuria the unit was originally run by Japanese military police but was taken over by General Shiro isi in Fairly short order the unit ran under the cover of being an epidemic prevention department but it was in fact the opposite General isi had been tasked with developing chemical weapons and had been given permission to use human experimentation Unit 731 operated in a number of facilities in menuria and at its height in 1939 contained 10,000 Personnel their primary facility operated under the cover of being a logging facility which led to the unit's Personnel referring to the people sent to the site for experimentation as logs these human guinea pigs were mostly Chinese though Allied prisoners of War were experimented on by the unit as well the unit had a long list of crimes to its name including dissection of human subjects while they were still alive injection of prisoners with deadly diseases forced transmission of syphilis rape chemical attacks on nearby civilian targets and testing weapons on live unarmed targets Unit 731 had eight divisions which focused on weaponizing disease researching biological weapons developing artillery shells containing biological agents producing and storing bacteria training Personnel maintaining equipment medical duties and administration respectively several socalled breakthroughs achieved by Unit 731 led to the development of weapons that saw varying degrees of use in the Pacific Theater bombs designed to spread disease or DeForest land were the most common of these weapons while among the more Sinister were food stores tainted with pathogens that were dropped in areas of China that continued to resist Japan or were given to unsuspecting civilians in Japanese control parts of China hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of these attacks and near the end of the war the unit was even preparing biological agents for an attack on San Diego California though the war ended before this could be executed after the war the remaining Personnel of Unit 731 fled Soviet wrath to Japan and attempted to destroy the evidence of their work with limited success unfortunately not all the members of the unit were brought to Justice the United States secretly offered many who worked with the unit immunity provided that they shared their findings with the United States government and them alone those that were captured by the USSR didn't Fair much worse as despite the conviction of several unit members during the cover off's trials none received a sentence worse than 25 years in a Siberian Gulag to this day not all the details about Unit 731 activities of public knowledge but regardless of the full extent of their activities what we do know about them is enough to paint a full picture of the atrocities that the unit carried out which were on the same level if not worse as the experiments of Joseph mangela in Nazi Germany from The Bridge on the River Quai to to end all wars and from The Railway Man to the harrowing Chinese production city of life and death Japan's second world war atrocities are well documented in cinema and have become a part of our Collective understanding of the war we know about these horrific acts for a reason they happened and they were devastating in their scale and savagery but is it fair to Tar all Japanese soldiers and all Japanese people with this brush no of course not we shouldn't minimize the horrors wrought by Japanese troops in the second world war from northern China to the Solomons and everywhere in between but at the same time we should recognize those who went against the grain those who did their best to save civilian lives and to prevent unnecessary Bloodshed some of these soldiers would themselves die in combat or at the hands of the military commission after the war the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines is about as Grim as it gets as war broke out across the Pacific the nation found itself directly in the path of the Imperial Japanese Juggernaut some 20,000 American soldiers and around 100,000 Filipino native troops came under attack on December 8th 1941 only a few hours after the assault on Pearl Harbor by 1945 most of the Japanese had left the Philippines for good falling back toward their Homeland with increasing desperation more than a million civilians lay dead and whole communities were ripped apart by the brutality of their occupiers abandoned by their supposed Western allies for years left to fight the Japanese empire alone ravaged by new colonizers the second world war would leave a bitter taste for generations of Filipinos to come today the Philippines is a tourist hotspot each year hundreds of thousands of people flock here to take in the sun surf scenery and serenity of what is a gorgeous country but while sebu and borai might be high on the list for travelers dulag on the island of Lea is not not so many tourists come here and this is a Pity because it's home to something truly remarkable heading west from dag Inland along the dag hulita Baran Road there is a shrine there's nothing unusual about this there's plenty of shrines in the Philippines but this one is a little different it is in honor of a Japanese soldier Captain Isa yzo or Captain yamas soy to the locals this was the leader of the local Garrison a Japanese commander and it seems one of the good guys in other circumstances this much activity would have been a death sentence for the local population but the situation at dulag was different the forces here were commanded by Captain Esa yamu and athletic handsome and seemingly kind-hearted soldier who treated occupied civilians and enemy troops with fairness and understanding under yam's command Japanese forces were not permitted to Rampage in the way they did elsewhere in the country atrocities the horrors experienced by other areas of the archipelago were not committed here locals like hovito Bautista aged 13 at the time of the invasion described yamaza as a friend to the Filipino a good leader and a smiling Captain yamar became a well-known face surround the local town he held movie screenings cultural shows and events and athletic competitions that he participated in himself when food stores grew low he implemented programs of planting and sewing on spare land so that no one would need to go hungry and ensured that Filipino children received the education they needed his care for local residents became famous and even local gorilla trop groups would sometimes join in the fun and festivities and secrets in the Town Square but these sympathetic gorillas were a minority dag was the jewel in a crown of Japanese control in the region a symbol of their power and a huge strategic objective Captain yamar was aware of the gorilla's plans and once again the welfare of the local population was his first consideration yamor knew that an attack on dag would cost countless civilian lives and he just wasn't prepared to let this happen on April 22nd 1943 yamaz and his troops marched out of dag to engage the gorillas away from town unfortunately at the nearby Village of kova he marched directly into an ambush in dag local residents heard the sound of battle in the nearby Hills as Guerilla leader Lieutenant Jose nak sareno caught yam's column by surprise withered by vicious fighting the Japanese retreated but not before Captain Isha yamaz was hit fatally he was 32 years old Bautista who would go on to become a school principal and a local historian described the devastation that followed the locals mourned he said the church bell told from morning T night Yo's successor at the Garrison appalled by the humane treatment of nearby communities set about reversing the captain's positive of work children were removed from school and set to work on Japanese airbases and the Bright Days under yamaza became just a memory the following year American forces would raise their flag at dag on their return to the Philippines and this is marked by a memorial at Hill 120 nearby the occupation was nearly at an end the history books were about to be written by The Victors is yamaz as a Japanese Captain was consigned to the wrong side of history but to the residence of dag there's a bit more to the story as liberating American troops returned in October 1944 they expected stiff resistance from the Japanese Garrison so they showed it and they showed it again and they showed it again yuzo who had done his utmost to protect the local population was gone and scores of Civilian perished under the Allied bombardment the church public buildings as well as residencies were raised to the ground said local mayor mild quit the streets that used to be concrete and asphalt crumbled to Rubble after the American shelling the Japanese were driven back the Philippines were free but for one small corner of the island of later the actions of one Japanese officer will never be forgotten it was General Masaharu H who masterminded much of the Japanese attack on the Philippines in 1941 and who oversaw its total surrender in May of the following year to many H is another one of many another one of the ruthlessly efficient unflinchingly brutal Japanese generals who characterize the way we view the war in the Pacific today another General driven more by ideas of Bushido and racial superiority than Humanity or morality his fate certainly suggests this on April 3rd 1946 hmer died by firing squad at Los Banos in the Philippines province of Laguna just one of more than 9900 war crimes executions following the Japanese surrender nothing much to discuss here but maybe this isn't quite right after all we're talking about 900 individuals 900 cases 900 trials 900 executions might some mistakes not have been made along the way probably and what about personal grudges grievances vendettas well as we'll see this is something to think about too Lieutenant General homus swept into the Philippines at the head of the 14th Army featuring some of Japan's most elite troops and their best amphibious divisions by January 7th 1942 H's forces were engaged at the bloody fighting at batan with the objective of shattering the American Filipino forces under the command of Douglas MacArthur batan was a big victory for the Japanese but a costly one both for Japanese ground troops and for Hama personally the 14th Army sustained at least 8,000 total casualties and possibly far more than this and the aftermath of the battle would see H executed some 4 years later this aftermath is now the infamous batan Death March around 75,000 prisoners of War of both American and Filipino origin were marched 65 Mi to prison camps around 177,000 men would never make it dying somewhere out there on the road under brutal treatment from their Japanese overseers the batan death march was conducted on Lieutenant General H's watch the prosecutors found and so it was he who must take the blame and take the blame he did despite the protests of his wife hommer was executed for his part in the massacres along that miserable Road after the fall of batan but something here doesn't sit quite right hmer was known for his military ability and his strategic sense not for his brutality and cruelty as Japanese forces spread out across the Philippines in the early months of 1942 hmer was said to have called for calm called for his troops to treat those they encountered with humanity and care no looting no pillaging no abuse no rape this was to be a military campaign not a terror campaign H decided and he did what he could to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity wherever possible he was believed to have insisted on strict discipline for his troops with kit checks daily shaves and other measures to keep order within the ranks Kemp's well-protected troops he reasoned were less likely to go out and Rampage across the country why would a general who had been so against the idea of abuse and torture suddenly change his mind it's possible that he was sickened by the casualties at batan and was out for Revenge but it it was unlikely large parts of the Philippines still were not in Japanese hands discipline would be everything if they were to press the Home Advantage push on to Victory what feels more likely is hmer simply relied too much on his own chain of command he was at the head of the 14th Army he couldn't middle manage the Affairs of captains and Battalion commanders he had to trust them to conduct themselves properly at batan a combination of miscommunication misunderstanding and misrepresentation may have led to disaster sources suggest that hom and his officers had only expected around 25,000 prisoners to surrender the number was more like 75,000 hmer also received assurances from his Transportation officer General yoshikata kaan that there were enough Provisions to support the prisoners during the move these errors were compounded by ignorance of malaria and other tropical diseases among the Japanese troops which undoubtedly cost lives in other cases the blame fell more directly upon Homer's officers many of whom were too wrapped up in the fury of War to worry about something like proper conduct take Colonel masanobu tuji as an example under tui's command the 122nd Regiment of the 65th Brigade executed hundreds of prisoners along the ban Death March baying and shooting them on the banks of Pon gun River hmer Unknowing continued his campaign toward Manila what came next is some believe what sealed H's fate between the 5th of May and 6th of May 1942 hus Japanese forces laid Siege to the island of corgador in Manila Bay this was the final strategic Allied stronghold on the archipelago general Douglas MacArthur fled the island issuing his famous promise to return while commanding officers Jonathan M Wayne wri George F Moore and Samuel L Howard with taken prisoner the crushing Victory the enormous strategic importance of the island and the humiliation of an enemy Force hmer had much to be proud of after the fall of corridor in 1942 he had achieved Victory as he saw it on his own terms without the need for senseless killing and atrocity MacArthur some believe saw it differently he saw unfinished business in the Philippines and made good on his promise to return almost 3 years later in October 1944 Kar was instrumental in the fall of Imperial Japan and also in the war crimes proceedings that followed he made sure that General H's name was on the list and so hom was tried and put to death despite his own strict moral code was MacArthur motivated by Revenge did the Americans get the wrong man this is open to debate but neither is impossible the third Japanese soldier on our list is someone we've covered on this channel before General tomoyuki Yamashita yamashi commanded the 25th Army who landed in British H Malaya on December 8th 1941 when Masaharu Hama was busy pacifying the Philippines Yamashita was making a name for himself to the West earning the title tiger of Malaya it took the Japanese Army only 2 months to overrun Malaya and claim another slice of Southeast Asia for the Imperial forces by the time Singapore fell on February 15th 1942 some 138,000 Allied troops troops had been wounded killed or captured yamashita's sweeping campaign moving from north to south with ruthless efficiency became Legendary Legendary to some maybe but not to all a careless remark that suggested residents of newly occupied Singapore were citizens of the Empire of Japan in 1942 landed Yamashita in hot water with prime minister Hideki too and this did not end well for the general despite his victory in Malaya Yamashita found himself exiled to Manchuria in mainland China where he commanded the first area Army but the situation had changed by 1944 Hideki Tojo was gone replaced by a new government and the Empire's leadership was looking for a new approach and Japan's war effort was floundering and panic ripped through its forces Yamashita now a full General was summoned once more and sent to command the defense of the Philippines against the returning Americans yam 's defense as we know was ultimately unsuccessful Manila fell on the 5th of March 1945 and the rest of the archipelago would do the same over the following months by the end of the year the war was over with Japan on the losing side among the ranks of executed Japanese officers generals and politicians in the Years following the war was General tomoyuki Yamashita like H he was taken from Japan to Los BOS in the Philippines unlike H however Yamashita was not shot but hanged was this the right decision from the Victorious allies or is this another example of Justice not being served to understand this better let's take a look at what Yamashita was hanged for the military commission accused Yamashita of a deliberate plan to Massacre and exterminate a large part of the civilian population of the Batangas Province as a result of which the commission continued more than 25 thousand men women and children all unarmed non-combatant civilians were brutally mistreated and killed he was found guilty of all charges in a swift trial and sentenced to death the sentence backed by the United States Supreme Court was carried out with similar swiftness and Yamashita died at the end of The Hangman's rope on February 23rd 1946 the pace with which Yamashita was tried convicted and dispatched caused outrage the General's attorney major George guy stated there was not one word or one shred of credible evidence to show that General Yamashita ever ordered the commission of even one of the acts with which he was charged or he had ever any knowledge of the commission of any of these acts either before they took place or after their commission indeed yamashi was convicted according to Anonymous diary entries he say rumor and circumstantial evidence prosecutors were unable to present any hard evidence that connected the General directly with the atrocities committed in the Philippines these atrocities which certainly did happen were carried out at a battalion level and Below by commanders who ignored a direct order from the general himself yamashi like hmer understood the need for a military campaign not a terror campaign he was a brutally effective General but he didn't permit his troops to rape pillage Loot and terrorize civilians and prisoners according to America's own legal code both Yamashita and Hama were wrongfully convicted Yamashita appealed this verdict first at the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of the Philippines who rejected the appeal out of hand and then at the United States Supreme Court only justices Wy rutage and Frank Murphy spoke out against the sentence calling it essentially legalized lynching Justice Murphy would say that both H and Yamashita were taken without regard to the due process of the law it did matter both generals were executed and both names were added to history's list of Despicable Japanese war criminals whether general Douglas MacArthur's own personal Pride played a role in the demise of both men remains a point of argument commanders who practiced respect and decency in their roles generals who fought to keep their troops in line and to prevent horrific atrocities that often emerge from the fog of War but what about the less well-known individuals the soldiers who even when the threat of death was upon them chose to do the right thing the Humane thing these names are even easier to lose in the pages of the history books and yet they should be remembered shunsaku Kudo is one of those names Kudo commanded the ikazuchi a formidable destroyer in the Imperial Navy an experienced officer Kudo had served on warship since 1923 when he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and had commanded destroyers since 1929 on March 1st 1942 an engagement in the Java sea left the Royal Navy's HMS exitor and HMS encounter and the United States Navy's USS Pope fatally wounded some 442 survivors from the encounter and the pope went into the water clinging to debris and life preservers and coated with fuel that poured from the stricken ships death seemed certain hearing of this on the 2nd of March Kudo ordered his crew on a rescue mission by now the men had been in the water for almost 24 hours and yet the ikazuchi braved potential submarine counterattacks on its way to rescue the wounded almost swamped with injured Prisoners the ikazuchi was vulnerable and would have struggled to defend itself despite this Kudo and his crew were able to transport hundreds of Allied seamen to safety in a selfless gesture Kudo himself would go on to commend to two more ships the hataru and the hiiki and would survive the war dying of stomach cancer in 1979 the ikazuchi was sunk by the USS harda in 1944 and went down with all hands the loss of his former ship deeply affected Kudo and in future years he reportedly spoke very little about his wartime exploits including the rescue in the Java sea there were countless other acts of heroism selflessness and ity among the Japanese troops during World War II in 1942 sabur Sakai a pilot was stationed on tarakan island borne Sakai and his comrades were given clear orders destroy all enemy aircraft they came across whether these aircraft were war planes or not encountering a Dutch registered Douglas DC3 over java Sakai knew what he had to do he had to bring down this aircraft over the jungle most likely killing all on board but Sakai soon realized this was a civilian aircraft drawing closer he saw a woman through the window holding a young child in a sudden flash of sentimentality Sakai was reminded of an American woman Miss Martin who had taught English at his school in Japan during the war he decided to do the right thing ignore his orders and signal to the Douglas's pilot that he was not a threat Sakaya did not write his encounter up in any official report which was probably for the best Sakai also survived the war and wrote about his experiences as a flying ace in the 1957 book Samurai he died in 2000 aged 84 the horrors of Japanese Occupation the trauma of war in the Pacific and the devastating human toll of invasion will never be forgotten but there is hope here too to be found in the story of those who maintained a sense of humor of morality of right and wrong even when all hell broke loose around them what do you think is there positivity to be found in these stories were the Americans wrong to put Hama and Yamashita to death or was the Japanese war machine simply too horrific for this kind of redemption let us know in the comments and join back here at the front next time for more second world war deep Dives hope you learned something new