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History, Myths, and Truths of the World Wars ·
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Posted by
Fernando Corona

Updated 18h
Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow comrades.

81 years ago on March 20th 1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy was ordered
to execute all Allied personnel captured at sea.


The commander of the Japanese First Submarine Force at Truk issued an
order to all of his submarine commanders to execute all crew members of merchant ships after their ships had been sunk and relevant information obtained.

This order to execute survivors of merchant vessels had been officially sanctioned and prescribed at the highest level of the Imperial Japanese
Navy, and indeed, it emanated from the Imperial Japanese government itself.


From early 1943, Japanese submarine crews routinely killed all
survivors of merchant ships sunk by them. Lifeboats were machine-gunned
and rammed, and survivors in the water were machine-gunned.


60 survivors of the American merchant ship SS Jean Nicolet were taken
aboard the Japanese submarine that torpedoed their ship in the Indian
Ocean. They were brutally beaten and stabbed repeatedly on the deck of
the submarine before their bloodied bodies were thrown into the
shark-infested sea.

Under the circumstances, it is astonishing that a handful of Americans
reached their sinking ship and survived to bear witness to this
atrocity. The Japanese government denied that its navy was responsible
for this atrocity.


The order to kill survivors of merchant ships extended beyond the
submarine service to Japanese surface warships.

Following a sortie by the heavy cruisers Aoba, Chikuma and Tone into the
Indian Ocean in February 1944 for the purpose of disrupting Allied
merchant shipping, 72 merchant seamen were taken aboard Tone from MV
Behar and murdered by command of Vice Admiral Naomasa Sakonju. Sakonju
was executed as a war criminal in 1948 for this atrocity. Vice Admiral
Sakonju pleaded in vain that the order to murder survivors of merchant
ships had come from the highest level of the Imperial Japanese Navy.


An interesting aspect of the war crimes of the Imperial Japanese Navy is
that Japan’s hero of Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, might well
have found himself charged as a war criminal in respect of the
officially sanctioned murders of Allied merchant seamen if he had
survived the war.


According to British historian Mark Felton, “officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than
20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of
the Geneva Convention”. At least 12,500 British sailors and 7,500
Australians were killed.


NOTICE: Any/all disrespectful comments regarding events (two nukes
wasn’t enough, etc.) will not be tolerated. Comments and posts such as
those will be deleted and those responsible will be immediately reported
and banned from this space.

Please be respectful, this is your ONE and ONLY warning.

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60 comments from
Richard Cooper
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Richard Cooper
· Fri
Apparently they were very inconsistent in their application of this
order Marine aviator Gregory “Pappy” Boyington was taken prisoner by a submarine after being shot down in January 1944 as was the submarine
skipper Richard O’Kane along with eight of his crew when their submarine
was sunk in October 1944. But these could be exceptions to the rule.

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Edgar D. McDonald II
· Sat
Pappy Boyington survived captivity, he believed because on one hand they didn’t particularly mind beating him, they also respected him as a
fighter. He really did fly over Japanese bases and taunt them to come up
and fight. He ended up in Japan working in the Kitchen with an old Mama
San that helped him. He actually gained weight in captivity.

So yes he really was the exception.

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Michael Saviano
· Sat
How could Pappy have been captured

‘while he headed the black sheep squadren

never ever heard of that

Simon Watts
Shot down and captured on 3rd January 1944, by Japanese submarine I-181.
Never officially declared a POW by the Japanese.
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Ray Melton
· Fri
Any wonder Australian and American aircraft strafed Japanese lifeboats
after the Battle of the Bismarck sea. Payback is a bitch.

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Karl Degraa
· Sat
There were instances of cruelty and criminal behaviour towards Japanese
POWs. This is just a fact and reflects the behaviour of humans in
extremely stressful situations. It is also a fact some soldiers on all
sides of war can be very cruel and callous. All allied soldiers would
have heard stories of…
(more)
Peter Bensen
In fact, for a long time early in the war, Americans were compelled to
expend ammo into the bodies of Imperial Japanese banzai charge dead.
Because some feigned death to attack again. So much so that it caused
ammo shortages in some cases.
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Gigi
· Fri
They treated our POWs like dirt, starved, tortured, beaten, and their
bodies were treated like garbage. On our side we treated Japanese POWs
like family (admittedly not many surrendered - preferring suicide) and
very often, when time and circumstances permitted, we buried their dead
with full milita…
(more)
Warwick Carter
Don't be so sure. We didn’t take many prisoners, particularly during the first half of the war. It wasn’t always suicide or fighting to the
death. It was brutal on both sides. I don't for a minute think we were
anywhere near the savagery of the Japanese- but we certainly were not
angels.

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