Dark Side Of History: The British Torture Of Rudolf Hoess

Rudolph Hoess was not a nice guy. Far from it. But the way the  British dealt with him after the war to extract confessions hardly put a halo on their heads.....

Rudolf Hoess was the Allies' most important witness to the "Holocaust." His affidavit and his testimony were quoted extensively both by the prosecution and in the judgment of the IMT at Nuremberg, as well as by the press. It was his testimony which laid the foundation and validated the claim of the ". . . extermination of millions of people by gas at Auschwitz." Hoess's "confession" is heavily relied upon by historians like Raul Hilberg and others as a primary documentary source to this day.

It is true that Hoess witnessed at Nuremberg to horrendous "atrocities," and he also confirmed the "truth" under oath of an affidavit which he agreed to sign for the prosecution. In it, he confessed to having given orders for the gassing of millions of victims. The affidavit, by the way, was in English, a language he did not speak or understand, according to family members.

We now know from the book "Legions of Death" that Rudolf Hoess was beaten almost to death by Jewish members of the British Field Police Force upon capture and badly mistreated thereafter until he gave this very devastating "testimony" and "affidavit" used by the Allies propagandists ever since. You be the judge. Here is an excerpt from this book by Rupert Butler, published by Hamlyn Paperbacks, page 235:

At 5 PM on 11 March 1946, Frau Hoess opened her front door to six intelligence specialists in British uniform, most of them tall and menacing and all of them practiced in the more sophisticated techniques of sustained and merciless investigation.

No physical violence was used on the family: it was scarcely necessary. Wife and children were separated and guarded. Clarke's tone was deliberately low-key and conversational.

He began mildly: "I understand your husband came to see you as recently as last night."

Frau Hoess merely replied: "I haven't seen him since he absconded months ago"

Clarke tried once more, saying gently but with a tone of reproach: "You know that isn't true." Then all at once his manner had changed and he was shouting: "If you don't tell us, we'll turn you over to the Russians and they'll put you before a firing squad. Your son will go to Siberia."

It proved more than enough. Eventually, a broken Frau Hoess betrayed the whereabouts of the former Auschwitz Kommandant, the man who now called himself Franz Lang. Suitable intimidation of the son and daughter produced precisely identical information.

When they found Hoess, here is how the capture played out. Clarke, one of the participants, recalls it vividly:

"He was lying on top of a three-tier bunker wearing a new pair of silk pyjamas. We discovered later that he had lost the cyanide pill most of them carried. Not that he would have had much chance to use it because we had rammed a torch (flashlight) into his mouth."

Hoess screamed in terror at the mere sight of the British uniforms.

Clarke yelled: "What is your name?"

With each answer of "Franz Lang," Clarke's hand crashed into the face of the prisoner. The fourth time that happened, Hoess broke and admitted who he was.

The admission suddenly unleashed the loathing of the Jewish sergeants in the arresting party whose parents had died in Auschwitz following an order signed by Hoess.

The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjama ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to Clarke the blows and screams were endless.

Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: "Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse."

A blanket was thrown over Hoess and he was dragged to Clarke's car, where the sergeant poured a substantial slug of whiskey down his throat. Then Hoess tried to sleep.

Clarke thrust his service stick under the man's eyelids and ordered in German: "Keep your pig eyes open, you swine." . . .

The party arrived back at Heide around three in the morning. The snow was swirling still, but the blanket was torn from Hoess and he was made to walk completely nude through the prison yard to his cell. It took three days to get a coherent statement out of him.

This statement, tortured and terrorized out of him, was the one we are all familiar with--the "proof" for the so-called "gassing of the Jews."

Historians today are finally admitting that Hoess is a totally unreliable witness--and is it any wonder? He spoke of a concentration camp "Wolzek" which does not even exist. He swore that 2,500,000 people were gassed and burned at Auschwitz and a further half million died of disease, for a total dead of three million. The Toronto Sun of July 18, 1990 claimed 1.5 million. The Washington Post, on the same date, also mentioned 1.5 million.

Source: http://www.zundelsite.org/english/advanced_articles/incorrect.011a.html

More on the topic

Rare Stunning Images Of The Tet Offensive

We have mainly seen images of the Tet Offensive shot by Americans; hence an American tint comes in. Presented below are some images taken by a Japanese lens man, Ishikawa Bunyo. They capture the drama of the critical period of history; a view not American.

The term "Tet offensive" usually refers to the January–February 1968 NLF offensive, but it can also include the so-called "mini-Tet" offensives that took place in May and August.

The Main Tet Offensive Jan-Feb 1968

Mini Tet Offensive in May 1968

South Vietnamese soldiers with Vietcong prisoners during the Tet Offensive. Dakao. May 1968

South Vietnamese with a frightened Vietcong prisoners. Both the Communists and the South Vietnamese fighters  treated prisoners brutally. Threw the Geneva Conventions rule-book out of the window

South Vietnamese soldiers in action. May 5, 1968

Saigon. 1968

In any war, the civilians suffer the most. Vietnamese people flee from the fighting

A member of the 7th ABn. Bn, 1st ARVN Abn Div, takes up his position near the wall of the French National Cemetery.

Dead Vietcong fighters

This American soldier shields these Vietnamese children from the firing

Image Source
These images On Flickr

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SUGGESTED READING

BUY THE BOOK

Chien Tranh Giai Phong Viet Nam 
By ISHIKAWA, Bunyo
 466 pp.
Text entirely in Japanese. Riveting documentary images of the Vietnam War, many in color, shot over the course of the war, with some images from other, earlier books. A comprehensive survey seen from a non-American perspective.

American Soldiers Hated To Take Japanese Prisoners

Japanese POW's on a beach.The four unclothed men in the picture were Japanese soldiers captured by the U.S. Army in New Guinea.

American soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered. According to Richard Aldrich, who has published a study of the diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, they sometimes massacred prisoners of war. Dower states that in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds." According to Aldrich it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners. This analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U. S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."

"We have this stereotypical idea that the Japanese were all cruel and robotic while the Allied forces were tough but fair in their treatment of the enemy. But I was very surprised by much of what I found and had to rethink all those stereotypes."

 "Oh, we could take more if we wanted to," one of the officers replied. "But our boys don't like to take prisoners.

U. S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. POW compounds to two important factors, a Japanese reluctance to surrender and a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were "animals" or "subhuman'" and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to POWs. The latter reason is supported by Ferguson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians—as Untermenschen."

U.S. Marines inspect the bodies of three Japanese soldiers killed in the invasion at Peleliu island at the Palau group, September 16, 1944. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)

1943 diary of Eddie Stanton, an Australian posted to Goodenough Island off Papua New Guinea. 
"Japanese are still being shot all over the place," he wrote. "The necessity for capturing them has ceased to worry anyone. Nippo soldiers are just so much machine-gun practice. Too many of our soldiers are tied up guarding them."

Memoir of a New Zealand soldier working with a Fijian regiment who came across the bodies of two native women, pegged out on an earthen mound. They had been "raped to death" by Japanese soldiers. Then they found a dead American soldier who had stakes driven through each shoulder and his hands cut off. "As we moved away again, one of my corporals said to me: "No more prisoners, turaga[sir]." I agreed with him.''

A Dead Japanese Soldier Surrounded by American Soldiers

Ulrich Straus, a U.S. Japanologist, suggests that frontline troops intensely hated Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners, as they believed that Allied personnel who surrendered, got "no mercy" from the Japanese. Allied soldiers believed that Japanese soldiers were inclined to feign surrender, in order to make surprise attacks. Therefore, according to Straus, "[s]enior officers opposed the taking of prisoners, on the grounds that it needlessly exposed American troops to risks..."When prisoners nevertheless were taken at Gualdacanal, interrogator Army Captain Burden noted that many times these were shot during transport because "it was too much bother to take him in".

References

Richard Aldrich: The Faraway War

Ben Fenton, "American troops 'murdered Japanese PoWs'" Daily Telegraph (UK), 06/08/2005)


John W. Dower, 1986, War Without Mercy

Niall Ferguson, "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat", War in History, 2004,

Ulrich Straus, The Anguish Of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II (excerpts) (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003 

INGLORIOUS ALLIES DURING WW2: Terror Bombing German Cities

After the war Robert Saunby, Deputy Air Marshal at Bomber Command, commented on the bombing of Dresden. 

The bombing of Dresden was a great tragedy none can deny. It is not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane. What is immoral is war itself. Once full-scale war has broken out it can never be humanized or civilized, and if one side attempted to do so it would be most likely to be defeated. That to me is the lesson of Dresden. 

American B-17 roar in the skies on the way to bomb German cities

In some 50 cities that were primary targets of the air attack, the proportion of destroyed or heavily damaged dwelling units is about 40 percent. The result of all these attacks was to render homeless some 7.500.000 German civilians.

Source;
-US Strategic Bombing Survey 1940-1945 


In Europe, the American Eighth Air Force conducted its raids in daylight. USAAF leaders firmly held to the claim of "precision" bombing of military targets for much of the war, and dismissed claims they were simply bombing cities. However the Eighth received the first H2X radar sets in December 1943. Within two weeks of the arrival of these first six sets, the Eighth command gave permission for them to area bomb a city using H2X and would continue to authorize, on average, about one such attack a week until the end of the war in Europe.

In reality, the day bombing was "precision bombing" only in the sense that most bombs fell somewhere near a specific designated target such as a railway yard. Conventionally, the air forces designated as "the target area" a circle having a radius of 1000 feet around the aiming point of attack. Survey studies show, In the fall of 1944, only seven per cent of all bombs dropped by the Eighth Air Force hit within 1,000 feet of their aim point.

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WAS THE ALLIED BOMBING OF GERMANY SUCCESSFUL?

'There was always at the briefing some military reason given for our attack. It was either a steel-producing town or there was a lot of small industry making precision instruments. But the policy was the destruction of towns. You destroy a town, you hinder the war effort in many ways, and that in itself was the justification. The big mistake was to think that by breaking German morale it would end the war. The morale of the German population was utterly and completely broken, but this had no effect on the hierarchy, the people who were actually directing the war. In the Third Reich the popular voice could not have any influence.

Peter Hinchliffe OBE
Bomber Command
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Source;
-Richard G Davis American Bombardment Policy against Germany, 1942-1945, Air Power Review, Volume 6 Number 3, pp. 49–62. (see p. 54 (PDF 63). http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafi...62250E094B.pdf
-United States Strategic Bombing Survey

During the Second World War, the Allied aerial forces performed air raids civilian populations in Europe and over Japan. These actions were not only defined crimes in retrospect, but were also viewed as such by the leaders of the Axis Powers during the war itself, despite the fact they themselves did likewise. On June 6, 1944, at a conference of top Nazi leaders in Klessheim, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop tried to introduce a resolution to define air raids on civilians as acts of terror, but his motion was rejected.

Source; Trial of German Major War Criminals, vol. 10, pp. 382-383.

Nearing the end of the War, shelter accommodation was available for only about eight million German people. The remainder sheltered in basements, and casualties in these places of refuge were heavy. 

BOMBING OF DRESDEN

The Bombing of Dresden was a military bombing by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) & the British Royal Air Force (RAF) as part of the allied forces, between 13 February and 15 February 1945 in the Second World War. In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometres) of the city centre.

Dresden after the American and British bombers had done their job

As the flames subsided, the residents of Dresden discovered that 24,866 out of the 28,410 houses in the inner city were destroyed - an area of total destruction extending over eleven square miles. As for the death toll, German authorities gave up trying to work out the precise total after some 35,000 bodies had been recognized, labeled, and buried while hundreds of cellars and air raid shelters remained unopened. 

There was far too great a risk for the spread of disease to allow the proper identification of the dead. So, a massive funeral pyre was constructed in the Altmarkt where thousands more were burned.

Mass cremation of German civilians killed

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'Bomber Command was the only weapon we possessed. Bomber Command was available and had to be used every day and every night, weather permitting. Had that force been available and Churchill had got up and said, in the House of Commons, "Well, we have this large bomber force available, but I'm afraid we mustn't use it because as it operates at night we can't be sure of hitting specific targets, and women and children may get killed", the British people would have been outraged and they would have said, "Not attack them because civilians might get killed? Have you gone mad? Hitler's been killing civilians all over Europe, including England." If Churchill had said that he wouldn't have survived as Prime Minister. Morality is a thing you can indulge in an environment of peace and security, but you can't make moral judgements in war, when it's a question of national survival.'

Charles Patterson,
Bomber Command pilot
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This is what remained of the people of Dresden

With such a large amount of undocumented refugees in the city, coupled with the number of people who were outright incinerated or ripped apart by the violent winds, it is impossible to come up with an exact casualty figure. Some scholars have claimed that approximately 30,000 perished, but this estimate is far too low. Even the German authorities who, a few days after the attack, put the total somewhere between 120,000 and 150,000 could have underestimated the final amount. By way of clarification, on the night of the raid, there were approximately 1,250,000 people in the city. After the fire storm subsided, there were just under 370,000. Certainly, the majority of the 800,000 refugees were successful in fleeing Dresden? However, it is entirely justifiable to assume that approximately one quarter of these individuals actually perished in the flames. Therefore, an amount which was closer to reality, which according to American historians was mere propaganda, was provided by Dr. Goebbels -- 260,000. 

Stars & Stripes
London Edition, Saturday, May 5, 1945, Vol. 5, No. 156 

Air Raid on Dresden Killed More Than 300,000 
by Dan Regan
Stars and Stripes Staff Writer 

With the 1st Army, May 3 (Delayed) -- The Allied air raid on Dresden on Feb. 13-14 killed 300,000 persons, according to a report by Dresden police to a group of 600 -- British and French -- prisoners who were given passes by the Germans to enter the American lines. 

Nine British PWs were working in Dresden during the raid and said the horror and devastation caused by the Anglo-American 14-hour raid was beyond human comprehension unless one could see for himself. 

One British sergeant said,

"Reports from Dresden police that 300,000 died as a result of the bombing didn't include deaths among 1,000,000 evacuees from the Breslau area trying to escape from the Russians. There were no records on them. 

"After seeing the results of the bombing, I believe these figures are correct."

"They had to pitchfork shriveled bodies onto trucks and wagons and cart them to shallow graves on the outskirts of the city. But after two weeks if work the job became too much to cope with and they found other means to gather up the dead." 

"They burned bodies in a great heap in the center of the city, but the most effective way, for sanitary reasons, was to take flamethrowers and burn the dead as they lay in the ruins. They would just turn the flamethrowers into the houses, burn the dead and then close off the entire area. The whole city is flattened. They were unable to clean up the dead lying beside roads for several weeks," the sergeant added.

THE BOMBING OF HAMBURG

The attack during the last week of July, 1943, Operation Gomorrah, created one of the greatest firestorms raised by the RAF and United States Army Air Force in WWII, killing 42,600 civilians and wounding 37,000 in Hamburg and practically destroying the entire city. The unusually warm weather and good conditions meant that the bombing was unusually concentrated around the intended targets and also created a vortex and whirling updraft of super-heated air which created a 1,500-foot-high tornado of fire, a totally unexpected effect. Various other previously used techniques and devices were instrumental as well, such as area bombing, Pathfinders, and H2S radar, which came together to work particularly effectively. 'Window' was successfully used for the first time - clouds of shredded tinfoil dropped by Pathfinders as well as the initial bomber stream - in order to completely cloud German radar. The raids inflicted severe damage to German armaments production in Hamburg.

This is what remained of Hamburg after the bombing

Bombing of Pforzheim in World War II

During the latter stages of World War II, Pforzheim, a town in southwestern Germany, was bombed a number of times. The largest raid, and one of the most devastating area bombardments of the war was carried out by the Royal Air Force (RAF) on the evening of February 23, 1945. 31,4% of the town's population, up to 17,600 people, were killed in the air raid. About 83% of the town's buildings were destroyed, two-thirds of the complete area of Pforzheim and between 80 and 100% of the inner city.

The Bombing of Kassel.

In 2003 A ceremony was been held in the central German town of Kassel, marking the 60th anniversary of an allied bombing raid that claimed more than 10,000 lives in a single night. The event, at which eye-witnesses relived the horror of that night, with a book been published with shocking photographs of German air raid victims which have never been seen before. Mr Friedrich collected the photos from town archives across Germany while touring the country last year presenting a book about the Allied bombing. 

SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES OF ALLIED BOMBING ON BBC

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War is horrible; war is immoral. But you fight it the way you can. Look what happens to innocent civilians when armies roll across great territories and take cities. How many civilians died at Stalingrad? Outside Moscow? Or Leningrad? We were fighting one of the most immoral entities on the planet, and we had to fight it the best way we could. I just cannot and will never accept that bombing Germany was immoral.'
Air Marshal Sir John Curtiss KCB KBE
Bomber Command navigator
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SOURCE: http://www.canadaatwar.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=2398

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Related
WHY WAS DRESDEN BOMBED TO BITS BY THE ALLIES DURING WW2?

VIETNAM WAR: Vietcong Tried To Entice American Soldiers To Cross Over

A little known episode of the Vietnam War is the attempts by the Vietcong to convince American soldiers to come over to their side by offering money and women. The motive? To learn about the American Army training methods.

 The basic message of these leaflets is, "Hey, American! This girl and $ 10,000 in cash. Live in comfort in Europe or Asia. You do not have to fight their own people. We need to cooperate with you, that you have trained. You can get some extra money, if you will help us to train or participate in intelligence programs."

INGLORIOUS AMERICANS: Killing German POW During WW2

It has been established that half of US documented accounts of WW2 are embellished as falsified lies, cover-ups to deviate from the truth of the horrific and despicable War Crimes committed by the US Army which makes them no better then the Nazis, Japanese & Russians.


The National Archives in Washington, (D.C.) contains an official document called the Weekly Prisoner of War and Disarmed Enemy Forces Report for the week ending Sept. 8, 1945. It shows that 1,056,482 German prisoners were being held by the U.S. Army in the European theater, of whom 692,895 were still classified as POWs, and the other 363,587 as DEFs=Disarmed Enemy Forces. 

This designation was illegal under international law and completely contrary to the Geneva Convention. In the first week of September 1945, 13,051 of the 363,587 Germans died and were listed cryptically as "Other Losses." At this rate, all remaining 350,536 DEFs would have been dead within 27 weeks before the approaching winter. 

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Source US National Archives, 

In 1944: Eisenhower told the British ambassador to Washington that the 3,500 officers of the German General staff should be ''exterminated.'' He also favored the liquidation of perhaps 100,000 prominent Germans. 

April 17, 1945: The Americans opened their enormous Rheinberg Camp, six miles in circumference, with no food or shelter whatsoever. As in the other big "Rhine meadow" camps, opened in mid-April, there was initially no latrines and no water. In some camps, the men were so crowded they could not lie down. Meanwhile, at Camp Kripp, near Remagen, the half-American Charles von Luttichau determines that his German comrades are receiving about 5% as much food as their captors." Complaining to the camp commander, who stated: ''Forget the Geneva Convention. You don't have any rights." 

http://www.canadaatwar.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=2398

Late April 1945: Heinz Janssen, a survivor of the Rheinberg camp, described conditions as they were at the time. "Amputees slithered like amphibians through the mud , soaking and freezing. Naked to the skies day after day and night after flight, they lay desperate in the sand of Rheinberg or sleep exhaustedly into eternity in their collapsing holes.'' 

Late Summer, 1945: Jean-Pierre Pradervand, head of the International Red Cross delegations in France, told Henry W. Dunning, an American Red Cross official, that conditions in the French camps are worse, in many instances, than anything seen in the former Nazi camps. Pradervand showed Dunning pictures of the living skeletons. Dunning explained all this to the American Red Cross in Washington, which informed key government officials. Nevertheless, the cover-up continued. 


1947 - 1950's: Nearly all the surviving records of the Rhineland death camps were destroyed. The West German government concluded that 1.7-million German soldiers were alive at the wars' end, and who were known to have been in fair health, and disappeared. The Western Allies pinned virtually all the blame on the Soviets. 

1950: The first German edition of ALLIERTE KRIEGSVERBRECHEN is published. Never translated into English, the book gives eye-witness descriptions of the horrific deplorable conditions which prevailed in the American camps. 

BUY VIDEO IN THE US

MASSACRES BY AMERICAN TROOPS

The Biscari Massacre: which consist of two instances of mass murders, U.S. troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 75 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.

Source; 

-Weingartner, James J. e, NYU Press, 2000, p. 118. ISBN 0814793665

-James J. Weingartner, "Massacre at Biscari: Patton and an American War Crime", Historian, Volume 52 Issue 1, Pages 24–39, 23 Aug 2007

Canicattì Massacre: killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel McCaffrey. A confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with an offence relating to the incident. He died in 1954. This incident remained virtually unknown until Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it, publicised it.

Source;

-Giovanni Bartolone, "Le altre stragi: Le stragi alleate e tedesche nella Sicilia del 1943–1944."

-George Duncan: "Massacres and Atrocities of World War II in the Axis Countries."

The Dachau Massacre: killing of German prisoners of war and surrendering SS soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp.

Source; Albert Panebianco (ed). Dachau its liberation 57th Infantry Association, Felix L. Sparks, Secretary 15 June 1989.

Abram Sachar reported, "Some of the Nazis were rounded up and summarily executed along with the guard dogs." According to George Stevens Jr. and Michael Seltzer, 122 SS POWs were killed "in the first hour".

According to Jürgen Zarusky 1997 article in 'Dachauer Hefte', 16 SS men were shot in the coalyard (one more killed by a camp inmate), 17 in Tower B, and perhaps a few more killed by US soldiers in the incident. Anywhere from a few to 25 or 50 more were killed by furious inmates after US Soldiers handed loaded rifles and had guns to the Inmates.

Zarusky's research makes use of the detailed interrogation records contained in Whitaker's official May 1945 investigation report, which became accessible in 1992, as well as a collection of documents compiled by General Henning Linden's son.

In the U.S. military "Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau" conducted by Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the account given by Col. Howard Buechner, U.S. Army medical officer with 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry, to Whitaker on 5 May 1945 did not contradict the Sparks account. He state around 16:00 he arrived in the yard where the German soldiers had been shot, and that he "saw 15 or 16 dead and wounded German soldiers lying along the wall." He noted that some of the wounded soldiers were still moving but he did not examine any of them. He further told Whitaker that he did not know the soldier guarding the yard or which company he was from.

Source; Staff. A review of Col. Howard A. Buechner's account of execution of Waffen-SS soldiers during the liberation of Dachau. Scrapbookpages.com, 28 July 2006.

Note Whitaker and Sparks account are falsified numbers, as the picture clearly shows close to 100 SS Guards along that wall.

SEE LARGER SIZE OF THIS IMAGE CLICK HERE

Col. Felix L. Sparks, a battalion commander of the 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, Seventh United States Army wrote about the incident. Sparks watched as about 50 German prisoners captured by the 157th Infantry Regiment were confined in an area that had been used for storing coal. The area was partially enclosed by an L-shaped masonry wall about 8 ft (2.4 m) high and next to a hospital. The German POWs were watched over by a machine gun team from Company I. He left those men behind to head towards the center of the camp where there were SS guards who had not yet surrendered; he had only gone a short distance when he heard machine gunfire coming from the area he had just left. He ran back and kicked a 19-year-old soldier who was manning the machine gun and who had killed about 12 of the prisoners and wounded several more. The gunner, who was crying hysterically, said that the prisoners had tried to escape. Sparks said that he doubted the story; Sparks placed an NCO on the gun before resuming his journey towards the center of the camp.

Source; Albert Panebianco (ed). Dachau its liberation 157th Infantry Association, Felix L. Sparks, Secretary 15 June 1989.

The Malmedy Massacre: In the aftermath a written order from the HQ of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated December 21, 1944, stated: No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight. Major-General Raymond Hufft (U.S. Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'" Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."

Source; Bradley A. Thayer, Darwin and international relations p.186 p.189 p.180

Near the French village of Audouville-la-Hubert 30 German Wehrmacht prisoners were massacred by U.S. paratroopers.

Historian Peter Lieb as Brian Mckenna, ect. Reasearch found that many US and Canadian units were ordered to not take prisoners during the D-Day landings in Normandy. If this view is correct it may explain the fate of 64 German prisoners (out of 130 captured) who did not make it to the POW collecting point on Omaha Beach on D-Day.

According to an article in Der Spiegel by Klaus Wiegrefe, many personal memoirs of Allied soldiers have been willfully ignored by historians until now because they were at odds with the "Greatest Generation" mythology surrounding WWII, but this has recently started to change with books such as "The Day of Battle" by Rick Atkinson where he describes Allied war crimes in Italy, and "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy," by Anthony Beevor. Beevor's latest work is currently discussed by scholars, and should some of them be proven right that means that Allied war crimes in Normandy were much more extensive "than was previously realized".

Source; The Horror of D-Day: A New Openness to Discussing Allied War Crimes in WWII, Spiegel Online, 05/04/2010, (part 1- Part 2).

Operation Teardrop: Eight of the surviving, captured crewmen from the sunk German submarine U-546 are tortured by US military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' need to quickly get information on what the US believed were potential missile attacks on the continental US by German submarines.

Source;

-Lundeberg, Philip K. (1994). "Operation Teardrop Revisited". In Runyan, Timothy J. and Copes, Jan M. To Die Gallantly : The Battle of the Atlantic. Boulder: Westview Press. ISBN 0813388155. , pp. 221–226; 

-Blair, Clay (1998). Hitler's U-Boat War. The Hunted, 1942–1945 (Modern Library ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 0679640339. , p. 687


Atrocities In Sicily 1943

Many massacres of prisoners of war were committed by units of the American 45th Thunderbird Division during the invasion of Sicily in 1943. At Comise airfield, a truck load of German prisoners were machine-gunned as they climbed down on to the tarmac, prior to be air-lifted out. Later the same day, 60 Italian prisoners were cut down the same way. On July 14, 36 prisoners were gunned down near Gela by their guard, US Sergeant Barry West. At Buttera airfield, US Captain Jerry Compton, lined up 43 prisoners against a wall and machine-gunned them to death. West and Compton were both arrested and convicted of murder. They were later sent to the front where both were killed in action. Both had claimed that they were only following orders and quoted General Paton's speech to them earlier, "When we land against the enemy, don't forget to hit him and hit him hard. When we meet the enemy we will kill him. We will show him no mercy. He has killed thousands of your comrades and he must die". On April 29, 1945, units of the 45th Division liberated the concentration camp of Dachau where more atrocities were committed.

When the 45th Division first formed its members wore a red square patch on their left shoulder, inside the patch was a yellow swastika, worne for good Luck. In 1930s, the symbol became slosely associated with German fascist it had to be abandoned as the insigna of the Division.

Source: George Ducan's, Massacres and Atrocities of World War II.


In Butera on July 13,1943 , Darby's Rangers surprised 5 italian soldiers from 34th Regt, Livorno Division loading an artillery piece on a truck. The soldiers surrendered but the US soldiers machine gunned them. Only one survived, Mr Bruno Vagnetti, now 82 years old and recently interviewed by Gianluca di Feo on Corriere della Sera. 

In the same area, 2 German and 2 Italian soldiers were killed after they surrendered. It is reported in the memories of Edward Barbarino from Darby's Rangers and confirmed in the book "We Led The Way" from Col Darby (chapter VI - Landing in Sicily). They captured 4 soldiers, they searched them and then Barbarino and 3 US soldiers (Shumstrom, Buie and Passera) shot them. 

Sgt. West was court martial, and found guilty for the Biscari Massacre He received a life sentence for killing 37 prisoners of the 75. He never went to jail in the US. He was imprisoned in North Africa and 6 months later sent to the front in Bretagne where he allegedly died, however there's no record. 

CHENOGNE Massacer (January 1, 1945)

In the village of Chenogne, a unit of the US 11th Armoured Division had captured around sixty German soldiers. Marched to behind a small hill, out of sight of enemy troops still holding the woods beyond the village, the prisoners were subjected to a volley of machine-gun fire. On this cold and frosty first day of 1945, the GIs were showing no mercy for their unfortunate prisoners as they crumpled to the ground, dead. With memories of the Malmédy massacre still fresh in their minds, killing had become impersonal, revenge was now uppermost in their minds.

Source: George Ducan's, Massacres and Atrocities of World War II.

Some years after the war a mass grave was discovered just west of the city of Nuremberg. In it were the bodies of some 200 SS soldiers. It was not until 1976 that one of the bodies was positively identified. It was the body of SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Kukula, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 38th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment. Autopsies on the other bodies showed that most had been shot at close range, the others beaten to death by the rifle butts of the US Seventh Army GIs. In the village of Eberstetten, 17 German soldiers of the 'Gotz von Berlichingen' Division were shot after they surrendered to US troops.

On April 8, 1945, fourteen members of the 116th Panzer Division were marched through the streets of Budberg to the command post of the US 95th Infantry Division. There, they were lined up and shot. Three were wounded but managed to escape.

On April 13, 1945, tanks of the US 97th or 78th Infantry Division were approaching the village of Spitze about fifteen miles east of Cologne. They came under fire from a 8.8 anti-tank gun which disabled one of the tanks. That night, the village was pounded by tank and artillery fire and at daybreak the US forces entered the village. All the inhabitants, about eighty, were gathered together in front of the church. Included in the eighty were twenty German soldiers, members of an anti-aircraft unit stationed in the village. They were separated from the civilians and marched several hundred yards to a field just outside the village. There, they were lined up and mowed down by machine-gun fire. Next day the US Army ordered the civilians to dig graves and bury the dead. On April 14, 1995, a memorial for the twenty victims was built near the spot.

During the American assault on Sicily, the largest of the Mediterranean islands, (July, 1943) a dozen unarmed civilians, including some children, were apprehended by US troops after the town of Canicatti surrendered. The civilians were reported to be looting after they had entered a bombed out soap and food factory and were filling buckets with liquid soap that had spilled on the ground. At around 6pm, when an American officer, a lieutenant-colonel, and a group Military Police, accompanied by three interpreters, entered the factory the officer fired a series of shots from his automatic Colt-45 point blank into the crowd. He reloaded and fired again. Eight of the civilians, including an eleven year old girl, died. The officer and soldiers then drove off. Fearing reprisals from the residents of the town, the incident was hushed up for over sixty years. Due to the efforts of Dr. Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, this atrocity was brought to light. The perpetrator of this crime, Lieutenant Colonel McCaffery, died in 1954. 

At the village of Chenogne in Belgium a group of twenty-one German soldiers emerged from a burning building carrying a Red Cross flag. Their intention was to surrender to the US forces but as they exited the doorway they were shot down by machine-gun and small arms fire. This happened soon after the Malmedy Massacre on December 17, 1944.

-------------------

Official claims that the death rate of German POWs in American and British hands, were under 1% has been disputed. James Bacque claims an analysis of records supports a German POW death rate of "Over 25%."

Source;

- Dietrich, John (2002). The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet influence on American postwar policy. Pages 131-135: Algora Publishing. ISBN 1892941902. 

-James Bacque, Other Losses revised edition 1999, Little Brown and Company, Boston, New York, Toronto, London ISBN 1-55168-191-9

-----------------------

Rheinwiesenlager War crimes Deaths of POWs from starvation and exposure no prosecutions. The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were transit camps for millions of German POWs after World War II; there were potentially tens of thousands of deaths from starvation and exposure. Estimates range from just over 3,000 to 71,000. 

Source; U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948.

file added 20040121

Latest minor change 2008/1221

Copyright © 2004 by Hugo S. Cunningham

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Eisenhower's Death Camps

The Last Dirty Secret of World War Two. 

By James Bacque.

Call it callousness, call it reprisal, call it a policy of hostile neglect: a million Germans taken prisoner by Eisenhower's armies died in captivity after the surrender.

In fact, German prisoners taken by the U.S. Army at the end of the Second World War were denied these and most other rights by a series of specific decisions and directives stemming mainly from SHAEF--Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. General Dwight Eisenhower was both supreme commander of SHAEF--all the Allied armies in northwest Europe--and the commanding general of the U.S. forces in the European theatre. He was subject to the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) of Britain and the U.S., to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and to the policy of the U.S. government, but in the absence of explicit directives--to the contrary or otherwise--ultimate responsibility for the treatment of the German prisoners in American hands lies with him.

"God , I hate the Germans," Eisenhower wrote to his wife, Mamie, in September, 1944. Earlier, in front of the British ambassador to Washington, he had said that all the 3,500 or so officers of the German General Staff should be "exterminated."

In March, 1945, a message to the Combined Chiefs of Staff signed and initialled by Eisenhower recommended creating a new class of prisoners--Disarmed Enemy Forces, or DEFs--who, unlike Geneva-defined prisoners of war, would not be fed by the army after the surrender of Germany. The message, dated March 10, argues in part: "The additional maintenance commitment entailed by declaring the German Armed Forces prisoners of war which would necessitate the prevision of rations on a scale equal to that of base troops would prove far beyond the capacity of the Allies even if all German sources were tapped." 

Respond; "Your approval is requested. Existing plans have been prepared upon this basis."

On April 26, 1945, the Combined Chiefs approved the DEF status for prisoners of war in American hands only: the British members had refused to adopt the American plan for their own prisoners. The Combined Chiefs stipulated that the status of disarmed troops be kept secret.

Eisenhower's quartermaster general at SHAEF, General Robert Littlejohn, had already twice reduced rations for prisoners, and a SHAEF message signed "Eisenhower" had reported to General George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of staff, that the prisoner pens would provide "no shelter or other comforts...."

Rape And Abuse of Japanese Women By American Soldiers During WW2

“We too are an army of rapists,” 
anonymous soldier, letter to the editor, Time Magazine, November 12, 1945.

In Hollywood movies we have seen the bad man from the SS raping (or attempting to) a beautiful lady (French, British or American). Lately we are increasingly learning of the mass rape of German women by the Red Army hordes in 1945. We have heard of the bad black French colonial troops raping German women in Stuttgart in 1945. Now a lesser reported event of the brutal WW2..... Rape of Japanese women by GIs during the end of the war and during the occupation of Japan......

Japanese historian Oshiro Masayasu writes about the large scale rape by American soldiers in Okinawa in 1945. He reports the incident at a village in Motobu peninsula where GIs landed and found only women, children and old folks there. What followed was abominable. There was a hunt in broad daylight for Japanese women who were ravaged mercilessly.

There is no documentary evidence that mass rape was committed by Allied troops during the Pacific War. There are, however, numerous credible testimony accounts which allege that a large number of rapes were committed by US forces during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes based on several years of research:

Soon after the U.S. marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the marines "mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the situation, they started "hunting for women" in broad daylight and those who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.

According to Toshiyuki Tanaka, 76 cases of rape or rape-murder were reported during the first five years of the American occupation of Okinawa. However, this is probably not the true figure, as most cases went unreported.

In 1998 the remains of three U.S. Marines stationed on Okinawa were discovered outside of a local village. Accounts from elderly Okinawans claim that the 3 marines had made frequent trips to the village to rape the women that lived there, but were ambushed and killed by dozens of villagers with the help of 2 armed Japanese soldiers who were hiding in the jungle, in a dark narrow mountain pass near a river on one of their return trips. "The Japanese soldiers shot at the marines from the bushes and several dozen villagers beat them to death with sticks and stones." According to the same article, one academic claims that "rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 either know or have heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war."

Source;
Yuki Tanaka/Toshiyuki Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II, p. 110-111.

--------------------------------

Some women were also raped when they went to US camps to receive food hand-outs. 

---------------------------------------------

According to a survey conducted by a feminist group in Okinawa – Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence – US troops landed on Zamami Island, a small island west of the main island, and began raping women there in March 1945, shortly after they had landed. They abducted the women, carried them one by one to deserted coastal areas and gang-raped them. After being raped, the women were allowed to go. There is also a testimony that some Okinawan nurses and local women patients who had been admitted to the US Field Hospital were raped by US soldiers. One of the victims, a young girl patient, was raped by a GI in front of her father who was in the tent attending to her. These victims had nowhere to report the crime even if they had wished to do so, the Japanese police system of Okinawa having completely collapsed during the battle.

The rape of Okinawan women by American soldiers continued even after the war officially ended and there are many incidents in which American soldiers took young girls from civilian houses at gunpoint. These girls would later return with their clothes torn off. Some were even killed, although the perpetrators were never caught. As a result, villagers throughout Okinawa used a warning signal of banging on pots and pans to warn of approaching American troops. On hearing this, girls would hide until all was clear. Some women were also raped when they went to US camps to receive food hand-outs. During the first five years of the American occupation of Okinawa, 76 cases of murder or rape-murder were reported. This number was but the tip of the iceberg, as most cases went unreported.
Tanaka Page 133

---------------------------

Two rape cases were reported in Yokosuka on August 30, the day that the US marines landed there. At about 11:00 am, only a few hours after the landing began and three hours before General MacArthur stepped out of his plane at Atsugi airport, two marines on an “inspection tour” entered a civilian house in Yokosuka, and raped a 36-year-old mother and her 17-year-old daughter at gunpoint. About 6:00 pm that day, two other marines entered another home in Asahi-chd and found a housemaid at home alone. While one of the marines was on watch at the door, the other made lewd gestures and tried to grab her. In fear she fled upstairs. The marines followed and raped her in turn in a small room upstairs.

----------------------------------------

On August 31, a US Marine advance party landed at Tateyama in Chiba prefecture. Three days later the US occupation forces to be stationed in Chiba arrived there under the command of General A. Cunningham. On September 1, many small groups of marines from this advance party visited villages nearby and entered some public buildings and private houses, claiming that they were conducting “inspections.” The following are some of the incidents that occurred at that time and were eventually reported to the Adjutant General’s Office of the GHQ through the CLO:

1 Around 12:30 am on September 1, three American soldiers intruded in to
the house of Mr. B. I., [the details of the address], Awa district in Chiba
prefecture. These intruders showed something like a ten yen bank note to
the housewife N., 28 years old and claimed intimacy to her by making
gestures while upon receiving her flat refusal they brought her to the inner
room and raped her in succession.
2 At about 2:00 pm the same day another four American soldiers intruded
into the house of Mr. A. T., [the details of the address], the same village.
They threatened the wife, T. aged 30 as well as his mother and then chased
the three to the next room and one of the Americans violated T. in the first
place. But at that time another three American soldiers entered the
same house. They withdrew from the house without attaining their intended
purposes satisfactorily.
3 At the same hour on that day seven American soldiers while ransacking the
village office in Nishiki village, resorted to indecent acts such as touching
breasts of the girl clerks or rubbing their cheeks.
4 Another several Americans resorted to the same acts to the girl clerks in the
post office located in the same village

-----------------------------------------

  GANG RAPE BY AMERICAN SOLDIERS

About 6 o’clock, in the afternoon of September 1st, two American soldiers
in a truck forced two Japanese to guide them around the Yokohama city.
When they came to Shojikiro, at Eirakucho, Naka-ku they forced Miss
K. Y., aged 24, a maidservant, to board the truck against her will and
absconded to the US Barracks in Nogeyama Park. There altogether 27 of
the American soldiers violated her in turn and rendered her unconscious,
though she later recovered her consciousness through the care of some other
American soldiers and was sent home on September 2nd.

------------------------------------

There were also 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa prefecture after the Japanese surrender.

Source; 
Schrijvers, Peter (2002). The GI War Against Japan. New York City: New York University Press. p. 212. ISBN 0814798160.

For instance, rape--which is considered a way to sharpen aggressiveness of soldiers, steeling male bonding among warriors, and, moreover, "reflects a burning need to establish total dominance of the other" (p. 211)--was a general practice against Japanese women. "The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone" (p. 212).

BUY THE BOOK

Page 211

Page 212

-----------------------------

RAPE OF JAPANESE WOMEN IN MANCHURIA BY RUSSIAN SOLDIERS

Many Japanese women in Manchuria were raped during and after World War II. Japanese women in Manchuria found life difficult after Soviet troops entered Manchuria near the end of the war. Many of those women were used as "dolls" -- sexual objects. There are many accounts of several Japanese women who were raped or almost raped. In one account, a young girl threw herself out a three-story window to avoid being raped by Soviet troops. Another account demonstrated how not only Soviet troops but also Chinese civilians tried to rape Japanese women. A Chinese man came to a woman's house and asked her to give him her two daughters because his daughters were raped by Japanese soldiers. The woman offered herself instead, but the man changed his mind. Japanese men offered some Japanese women as female Kamikaze troops to Soviet troops to protect their community and other Japanese women and children. Once women were raped, they were no longer part of their community and were often rejected by their husbands.

http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/news/001077.html

-------------------------------------------

RAPE AND SEXUAL ABUSE OF JAPANESE WOMEN IN THE POST WAR PERIOD

Terese Svoboda, "U.S. Courts-Martial in Occupation Japan: Rape, Race, and Censorship," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 21-1-09, May 23, 2009.

“We too are an army of rapists,” anonymous soldier, letter to the editor, Time Magazine, November 12, 1945.

Immediately after the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the Japanese Ministry of the Interior made plans to protect Japanese women in its middle and upper classes from American troops. Fear of an American army out of control led them to quickly establish the first “comfort women” stations for use by US troops. By the end of 1945, the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs had organized the Recreation Amusement Association (R.A.A.), a chain of houses of prostitution with 20,000 women who serviced occupation forces throughout Japan. (Many more women known as panpan turned to prostitution in the struggle to survive in the midst of the postwar devastation.) Burritt Sabin of the Japan Times reported in 2002 that just days before the R.A.A. was to open, hundreds of American soldiers broke into two of their facilities and raped all the women. The situation prompted MacArthur and Eichelberger, the two top military men of the U.S. occupation forces, to make “rape by Marines” their very first topic of discussion. Yuki Tanaka notes that 1300 rapes were reported in Kanagawa prefecture alone between August 30 and September 10, 1945, indicative of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon in the early occupation.

Historian Takemae Eiji reports that
. . . US troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Misbehavior ranged from black-marketeering, petty theft, reckless driving and disorderly conduct to vandalism, assault arson, murder and rape. . . . In Yokohama, Chiba and elsewhere, soldiers and sailors broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape and occasionally murder were widely reported in the press. 

Two weeks into the occupation, the Japanese press began to report on rapes and looting. MacArthur responded by promptly censoring all media. Monica Braw, whose research revealed that even mention of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and particularly the effects of the bomb on civilians, were censored, maintains that pervasive censorship continued throughout the occupation years. "It [censorship] covered all means of communications and set up rules that were so general as to cover everything. It did not specify subjects prohibited, did not state punishment for violations, although it was clear that there were such punishments, and prohibited all discussion even about the existence of the censorship itself."

Censorship was not limited to the Japanese press. MacArthur threw prominent American journalists such as Gordon Walker, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, and Frank Hawley of the New York Times out of Japan for disobeying his orders. Even internal military reports were censored.

Five months after the occupation began, one in four American soldiers had contracted VD. The supply of penicillin back in the U.S. was low. When MacArthur responded by making both prostitution and fraternization illegal, the number of reported rapes soared, showing that prostitution and the easy availability of women had suppressed incidents of rape.

John Dower writes in his Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II that while the U.S./Japanese-sponsored brothels were open “the number of rapes and assaults on Japanese women were around 40 a day,” but after they were closed, the number rose to 330 a day.

Yuki Tanaka records two major incidents of mass rape around the same time. On April 4, fifty GIs broke into a hospital in Omori and raped 77 women, one a woman who had just given birth, killing the two-day-old baby by tossing it onto the floor. On April 11, forty U.S. soldiers cut off the phone lines of one of Nagoya’s city blocks and entered a number of houses simultaneously, “raping many girls and woman between the ages of 10 and 55 years.”

If these incidents are in any sense indicative, how are we to understand the fact that reports in U.S. archives about rape in postwar Japan are sparse: General Eichelberger issued three documents during the first year of the Japanese occupation admonishing the troops about their behavior, citing looting, rape and robbery. General Eisenhower ordered a report about troop behavior on Japan and the Philippines in 1946. (The National Archives has the report’s cover sheet, but not the report.) Albert Hussey, one of the framers of the Japanese constitution, mentions the rise of “institutional rape.” Under the cover of screening for venereal diseases, young women getting home from work were arrested in the subway or in the streets, pressed to have relations and/or examined by Japanese doctors in the presence of soldiers. Rape continued during the occupation as indicated by the plea reported in the NY Times April 21, 1952, from a prominent woman leader, Ms. T. Uyemura, to Mrs. Ridgway, wife of MacArthur's replacement, General Ridgway, asking her husband to isolate the immoral US troops.

Recorded courts-martial for rape during the occupation are few. The Judge Advocate General’s Board of Review for the year 1946, when the R.A.A. closed, shows only 6 courts-martial.  The Return of General Prisoners from the 8th Army stockade in Tokyo, where all GI prisoners were incarcerated prior to being returned to the U.S., lists 6 soldiers sentenced for rape during spring 1946.26 The Index to the Board of Review Opinions of the Branch Office of the JAG (1942-1949) shows only two courts-martial listed during the same period.

French researcher Bertrand Roehner has made available the texts of hundreds of directives from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers to the Japanese government (called SCAPs, SCAPINS or SCAPINs) that reveal much more sexual violence occurred than has ever been acknowledged, a small window onto what went on behind MacArthur’s wall of censorship.

For example, the SCAPIN of August 31, 1949 is illustrative of another tactic MacArthur used to suppress reports of rape and other crimes by occupying forces. It shows that five Japanese were sentenced to hard labor “for spreading rumors derogatory to occupation forces” when American soldiers were accused of raping Japanese women. Another instance of this policy is noted by Takamae Eiji:

When US paratroopers landed in Sapporo, an orgy of looting, sexual violence and drunken brawling ensued. Gang rapes and other sexual atrocities were not infrequent. Victims of such attacks, shunned as outcasts, sometimes turned in desperation to prostitution; others took their life rather than bring shame to their families. Military courts arrested relatively few soldiers for these offenses and convicted even fewer, and restitution for the victims were rare. Japanese attempts at self-defense were punished severely. In the sole instance of self-help that General Eichelberger records in his memoirs, when local residents formed a vigilante group and retaliated against off-duty GIs, Eighth Army ordered armoured vehicles in battle array into the streets and arrested the ringleaders, who received lengthy prison terms.

My uncle, Don Svoboda, unwittingly introduced me to this subject. He committed suicide in 2004, leaving behind audiotapes that spoke of the building of a gallows in Tokyo’s 8th Army stockade where he served as an M.P. in 1946. In trying to discover whether an execution he had witnessed decades earlier had anything to do with his suicide, I interviewed many veterans who had served in the stockade. Five of them remembered “a colored boy” being executed for rape in May; none of them remembered his name; two thought there was more than one execution. No records from the 8th Army stockade report any executions, and neither Truman nor MacArthur signed any military execution papers during 1946, the year that the soldiers remember the hanging. In addition, no records speak of the use, or even the building of the very large gallows that all the vets remembered, including soldiers who were just passing through on their way to Korea in 1952, just before it was dismantled.

AMERICAN SOLDIERS PHOTOGRAPH JAPANESE WOMEN IN OCCUPIED JAPAN

If courts-martial for rape went under reported, perhaps so too did trials, prison sentences and executions for rape. In particular, keeping executions secret would be a logical extension of MacArthur’s use of censorship. Did MacArthur order executions to send a message to the troops in order to bring rape under control but conceal it from the public and the press? The MPs assumed the execution(s) were approved. Did MacArthur sign the execution papers and then have them destroyed? Were the executions handled extra-judicially by one of MacArthur’s subordinates? James Zobel, the MacArthur Memorial archivist, referred to MacArthur’s righthand man, General Willoughby, who was head of Intelligence in Japan, as a “burner.” An index at the National Archives contains a letter from a Mr. Leon Guess “concerning the number of Negro soldiers executed as a result of courts-martial” dated July 7, 1946, about the time it would take for news of a May execution to get back to the States, but there’s only the index notation, no letter, the only one missing in the file.

J. Robert Lilly, who has written extensively on executions of black soldiers during WWII, discovered that questioning the families of dead soldiers did not necessarily determine whether a soldier had been executed because sometimes the military reported deaths due to other causes. In trying to trace the executed men, I found that pursuing the records of soldiers who died in occupied Japan was also fruitless. No soldiers were buried in Japan, and those executed are not distinguished from those who died accidentally or from natural causes. In addition, many of the 202 Americans cremated in Japan are among those listed as unknown. An examination of chaplains’ and physicians’ records regarding executions also reveals no relevant material. Emailing and writing to the historian at the 8th Army Public Affairs office in Yongsan, Korea was met with silence. Files around the subject of executions during the occupation consulted at the National Archives sometimes contain lists of the contents but no contents, a situation confirmed by Roehner’s experiences at the Archives in the US and in Japan.

Although Roehner maintains that a kind of “omerta” surrounds occupation records worldwide, there are other possible explanations for some of the omissions. The 1973 National Archives fire offers one possible explanation for the lack of documentation regarding soldiers’ records--at least it is most often cited. The Bush Administration’s funding cuts to the National Archives make it very difficult for archivists to process or even become familiar with the huge holdings. Many of the occupation files in the National Archives are filed either with WWII or Korean War papers—but sometimes at the beginning of administrative files marked 1950, which makes them difficult to locate.

According to my uncle, most of the serious offenders in the 8th Army stockade were black. Alice Kaplan writes in The Interpreter, a book that discusses the discrepancies in sentencing between black and white servicemen convicted of rape in the European theater, that black troops who made up 8.5 percent of the armed forces during WWII were accused of committing 79 percent of all capital crimes. Lilly reports that while 57% of the soldiers accused of sexual offenses in Europe were white, most of the convicted were black, some 66%. “It is quite possible that the complaints against black soldiers were those the army selected to record, thus indirectly creating an incomplete and inaccurate account,” he writes. They were also more likely to be tried because of commander prejudice, many commanders being Southerners. Although white and black soldiers were convicted of rape in both theaters during the war, only black servicemen were executed for this crime. Racial prejudice at a time when lynching was frequent in civilian life in the south and the military remained segregated is censorship’s “elephant in the room.”

The US government, with Japanese collaboration, has suppressed important information about crime and punishment during the occupation: it has concealed the numbers of rapes and the identity of the perpetrators; it has concealed the prosecutions, arrests and executions for rape and other crimes. There is reason to believe that the information is not only politically charged in terms of the US-Japan relationship, but that it is racially charged. Specifically, the extreme punishment of blacks charged with rape—in several cases including execution—is a reminder of the Jim Crow justice of an earlier era.

This is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at The American Society for Legal History, Ottawa, November 2008.

-----------------------------------------------------

COMFORT WOMEN FOR AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN JAPAN

In the week following its surrender, and before occupation forces arrived, the Japanese government had discussed ways of dealing with the anticipated problem of sexual violence by occupation forces. On August 21, Prime Minister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko called a special meeting of several of his ministers. The subject of discussion was the various demands put forward by the Allied forces regarding the actual procedures for ending the war. The details of these demands were brought back by Lieutenant-General Kawanabe Torashird, an envoy extraordinary, who had just returned to Tokyo that morning from a meeting with the military commanders of the Allied forces in Manila in the Philippines.

At this cabinet meeting, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, then Deputy Prime Minister, who had served as Prime Minister three times during the Asia-Pacific War, expressed grave concern about the possibility of “mass rape” of Japanese women by Allied troops. He suggested setting up a comfort women system to protect Japanese women and girls. The suggestion seemed to come out of his anxiety over the possibility of “mass rape” such as that committed by Japanese troops against civilians in occupied territories during the war.

------------------------------------------

RECRUITMENT POSTER BY THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT

Announcement to New Japanese Women! We require the utmost co-operation of new Japanese women who participate in a great project to comfort the occupation forces, which is part of the national emergency establishment of the postwar management. Female workers, between 18 and 25 years old, are wanted. Accommodation, clothes and meals, all free.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

American sailors throng a Japanese comfort women house

THE IGNOMINY OF A DEFEATED JAPAN: POLICE ORGANISED BROTHELS FOR AMERICAN TROOPS

On August 18, 1945 the Police and Security Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs telegraphed the following instructions to the governors and police chiefs of all prefectures:

With regard to the comfort facilities in areas where the foreign troops are going to be stationed:

In the areas where foreign troops will be stationed, the establishment of comfort facilities are necessary as outlined in the following separate notation. As the handling of this matter requires circumspection, please take every possible precaution by paying attention particularly to the following items.

1 It is still beyond speculation where the foreign troops will be stationed
and when they will arrive. Therefore, do not cause public unrest by
forming a hasty conclusion that it is inevitable for those troops to advance
to your prefecture.
2 Make preparation of such facilities now confidentially as their prompt
establishment is required in the case of the troops’ station, but ensure
that the information not be revealed to the outside.
3 In carrying out this plan, avoid arousing misunderstanding among local
people by explaining to them that this scheme will be implemented for
the purpose of protecting Japanese citizens.

The outline of the preparation for the establishment of comfort facilities for the foreign troops:

1 Allow the business for the foreign troops within limited quarters, regardless
of existing regulations of control.
2 The above-mentioned limited quarters should be determined by the
[prefectural] police chief, and prohibit Japanese subjects from using the
facilities.
3 The police chief should actively give guidance in management of the
following facilities and promote their rapid expansion.
• Sexual comfort facilities
• Eating and drinking facilities
• Recreation centres
4 Recruit the women required for the business from geisha, licensed and
unlicensed prostitutes, waitresses, barmaids, habitual illicit prostitutes
and the like.

----------------------------------------------

Long after night fall, GIs heard the sound of an approaching truck. When it was within hailing distance, one of the sentries yelled “Halt!” The truck stopped, and from it emerged a Japanese man, with a flock of young women. Warily, they walked towards the waiting GIs. When they came close, the man stopped, bowed respectfully, swept the ground behind him with a wide, generous gesture, and said: “Compliments of the Recreation and Amusement Association!” 

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Comfort women were subject to numerous instances of sexual violence. For example, on the evening of September 4, three Australian soldiers visited a comfort station at Higashiyama in Kyoto. They were apparently former POWs who had been released from a POW camp somewhere in Japan and were staying at a hotel in Kyoto, waiting to be repatriated. After they were entertained at this station, they insisted on being accompanied by three comfort women to their hotel, where their fellow Australian soldiers were staying. The manager of the station refused the request. However, they forcibly took the women away, shouting at the manager that “Japan lost the war and your police have no power at all!” At the hotel, the women were confined to one room and gang-raped by seven drunken former POWs. In the following morning these women were sent back to the comfort station. The Australian men apparently kept the women’s underwear kimonos.

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Suggested Reading

Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation  By Toshiyuki Tanaka
RAPE BY JAPANESE  SOLDIERS (AND LATER OCCUPYING AMERICAN SOLDIERS)
Japan's Comfort Women tells the harrowing story of the "comfort women" who were forced to enter prostitution to serve the Japanese Imperial army, often living in appalling conditions of sexual slavery. Using a wide range of primary sources, the author for the first time links military controlled prostitution with enforced prostitution. He uncovers new and controversial information about the role of the US' occupation forces in military controlled prostitution, as well as the subsequent "cover-up" of the existence of such a policy. This groundbreaking book asks why US occupation forces did little to help the women, and argues that military authorities organised prostitution to prevent the widespread incidence of GI rape of Japanese women, and to control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
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America's Geisha Ally: Re-Imagining the Japanese Enemy

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Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II 

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RELATED

Rape Of French Women By American Soldiers During WW2

Rape of German Women During WW2 (Eyewitness Account)

Rape of German Women When The Country Lost The War

Mass rape of German Women

Rape By German And Waffen SS

Rape And Abuse Of Asian Women By Japanese Soldiers During WW2