WI: A more humanitarian Japanese military in WW2?

It sucks to be a POW, period. First you have to survive the first several minutes when anger, hate, fear, and automatic reactions rule. Then, in many cases, you have to make it through the next several hours while your captors have to make the rational decision if it makes sense to keep you alive when it may not make the most practical sense for their own survival. Generally, I have a hard time seeing every instance of POW killing a war crime in these instances, and all armies have done this. The difference between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" tends to be the extent to which an army considers these instances worth looking at for internal disciplinary reasons. There are many instances of the British and US armies investigating and prosecuting individual soldiers and or unit commanders when things got out of hand. I have also read of a few instances when the Wehrmacht investigated such killings (of US, British, or French captives - or civilians). I am unaware that the Japanese military ever consided such killings anything out of the ordinary.

Also, it simply can't be denied that, once POWs were fully secured and in guarded camps, the difference between the Japanese and just about everybody else is glaring. With a few exceptions, usually prompted by riots or escape attempts, the western allies did not kill POWs that made it that far and treated them as humanely as could be expected. I would also argue that the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe usually did too (at least with respect to western POWs). German treatment of Soviet (and other slav) POWs was another thing entirely - and this was often reciprocated by the USSR's POW camp system. In addition to Nazi racism, I suspect this reflected the totalitarian nature of these nations and the way they treated any of their own citizens considered disloyal.

I believe Japan stands alone in its ethic regarding POWs. By permitting oneself to be captured a POW gave up all rights to be considered worthy of any cosideration. That they even kept prison camps and did not explicitly turn them into death camps (although that was in effect the practice) is to some extent a miracle. In the US, British, and even German armies, wanton mistreatment and murder of POWs was the exception - with the Japanese it is the occasional example of mercy that stands out.
 

Cook

Banned
All available evidence seems to point to Emperor Hirohito being a weak man who allowed himself to be misled by the military. How much he knew about what was being done in his name isn't known because, unlike Hitler, he didn't micro-manage everything but simply relied on what others told him. After all the Emperor never set foot outside his Imperial Palace in Kyoto.

The key reason why the Americans let Emperor Hirohito stay in his job was because they were afraid Japan would be ungovernable if they removed the Emperor. However, Hirohito had to pay a big price for remaining Emperor: he lost virtually all of his power as Japan became a Constitutional Monarch.

In 1945 Macarthur insisted to Washington that if the Emperor was put on trial for war crimes the entire country would erupt in riot and he would require an army of a million men to maintain control. This was baseless; the Japanese leadership, including the Emperor, was wholly discredited in the eyes of the people.

The Emperor’s presence and active involvement in the meetings that lead to Japan launching attacks on its neighbours are well documented, this makes him an active member of the conspiracy to launch a war of aggression, a Class A war criminal.

A Japan that had found all of its leaders, including the Emperor, guilty of the vast crimes they committed could make a true break from the past and move on. Not by denying that past, but by accepting it and dedicated to ensuring that it never happened again.
 
Seems like rather a logistic impossibiolity. Of course, while you cant dealwith every soldier who has done atrocities, even bad atrocities, it remains that both in Japan and Germany way, way too many top officers and commanders got away without any punishment at all...

The most glaring example was of one of the directors of Japan's human experimentation labs in Manchuria who got away scot-free and ended his post war career as the head of a major Japanese pharmaceutical company.
 
Bollocks.

Hirohito knew fully what was taking place. He was an active participant in the regular GHQ briefing, although he, as was the case for every Japanese Emperor since the establishment of the Shogunate, kept out of ordinary daily operational decisions.

The Japanese Emperor was the least powerful "Emperor" on Earth long before the end of WW II. This was by tradition, although the Emperor COULD order things they generally CHOSE not to, prefering to allow thing to proceed as they would as long as the Emperor's personal comforts were properly attended to.

Hirohito KNEW what was being done in his name. He simply CHOSE to allow it to continue.

In fact there is an entire TV documentary devoted to Hirohito knowing pretty much everything.

When the government discussed opening peace negotiations in spring 1945 Hirohito even said that they should wait until they had achieved another victory somewhere first to improve heir bargaining position. He suggested opening an offensive against the Chinese or organizing a counter attack in Burma.

It was his generals that told him this was no longer possible.

Also the day after Tokyo was fire bombed leaving countless thousands of dead the government meeting the next morning DIDN'T EVEN MENTION IT HAD HAPPENED and carried on as if it were a normal day.

After the atom bomb Hirohito got scared and they tried to build him a better bomb shelter ha,ha.
 
In 1945 Macarthur insisted to Washington that if the Emperor was put on trial for war crimes the entire country would erupt in riot and he would require an army of a million men to maintain control. This was baseless; the Japanese leadership, including the Emperor, was wholly discredited in the eyes of the people.

The Emperor’s presence and active involvement in the meetings that lead to Japan launching attacks on its neighbours are well documented, this makes him an active member of the conspiracy to launch a war of aggression, a Class A war criminal.

A Japan that had found all of its leaders, including the Emperor, guilty of the vast crimes they committed could make a true break from the past and move on. Not by denying that past, but by accepting it and dedicated to ensuring that it never happened again.

I didn't say I agreed with what was done regarding the Emperor but simply stated why the Americans, or more correctly men like MacArthur, stated the Emperor should stay in power. He should've been tried as a war criminal and punished accordingly.
 
German treatment of Soviet (and other slav) POWs was another thing entirely - and this was often reciprocated by the USSR's POW camp system. In addition to Nazi racism, I suspect this reflected the totalitarian nature of these nations and the way they treated any of their own citizens considered disloyal.

I agree with the thurst of what you're saying, but to clarify: the German and Soviet PoW systems were both brutal, but they were not by any menas the same. Soviet PoWs in German captivity were put in barbed wire enclosures and basically left without food or shelter. The death rate was 60% - about the same as that of European Jewry in the Holocaust. The Soviets sent German PoWs to Siberia, to ordinary GULAG conditions: a combination of forced labour, underfeeding, and exposure that was often murderous but left, at the worst, about 70% of inmates alive.

As you say, it's notable that similar fates (extermination/vicious forced labour) were visited on sections of each country's own population.
 
I agree with the thurst of what you're saying, but to clarify: the German and Soviet PoW systems were both brutal, but they were not by any menas the same. Soviet PoWs in German captivity were put in barbed wire enclosures and basically left without food or shelter. The death rate was 60% - about the same as that of European Jewry in the Holocaust. The Soviets sent German PoWs to Siberia, to ordinary GULAG conditions: a combination of forced labour, underfeeding, and exposure that was often murderous but left, at the worst, about 70% of inmates alive.

As you say, it's notable that similar fates (extermination/vicious forced labour) were visited on sections of each country's own population.

It also should be noted that the German invasion burned the Soviet Union's best farmlands, and if they hadn’t attacked Russia German POWs wouldn’t have been taken in the first place. Secondly post-war Ukraine suffered a famine and the Soviet food supply during the war was precarious. It’s harsh but POWs of the invading enemy army come last in the ration line.
 
The Soviets sent German PoWs to Siberia, to ordinary GULAG conditions: a combination of forced labour, underfeeding, and exposure that was often murderous but left, at the worst, about 70% of inmates alive.

As you say, it's notable that similar fates (extermination/vicious forced labour) were visited on sections of each country's own population.

More than that, the Gulag conditions and mortality rates were not statistically significantly different between regular and POW camps in the USSR, and late war to post-war Germans mostly worked in road building and construction in conditions that were better than most GULAGs. This is in a starving, cold, ruined country.

By comparison, Soviet POW deaths in German camps make up a huge proportion of the total death toll among the services, not to mention anything of the Germans actually executing Soviet prisonsers for being Jewish or having party memberships just like that.

There's hardly any comparison between the two in intent, and even in effect.
 
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