Massacres and Attrocities of WW2

[von Poop]

Sometimes a massacre seems entirely justifiable in response to an atrocity:
Dachau Concentration Camp - Liberation April 29,1945 Timeline Dachau
I couldn't blame these young Allied soldiers for an instant.
Cheers,
Adam.

[Owen]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

Sometimes a massacre seems entirely justifiable in response to an atrocity:
Dachau Concentration Camp - Liberation April 29,1945 Timeline Dachau
I couldn't blame these young Allied soldiers for an instant.
Cheers,
Adam.

Thanks for bringing that up. Never knew that before.
Can't say I blame them at all.

[lancesergeant]

I read on the website for the Oradour sur Glane, that from a German perspective that atrocities were committed by the Maquis and it was this that led to the response from the SS. Also that a Maquis bomb was detonated in the church leading to the deaths of those inside and not by the actions of the SS. Although it is from a German perspective it shows a disconcerting light on how things were treated after the event. The reason for so many escaping justice is down to evidence that the Maquis atrocities would be exposed and the disinformation would be exposed shaming the French government. It is from a German slant, but it would explain the loose ends which one would not expect from a thorough investigation.

I read recently that General MacArthur himself was party to having the actions of war criminals not acted on. Where did this response come from, and what justification could have warranted it.

[lancesergeant]

One thinks at first some government departments etc should have been bought to book for the inaction in dealing with the war criminals. Then one thinks that with the war over and ogre of Communism from the east and the atomic bomb in their midst, the world was still politically and economical not only militarily an unstable place. Personal disgust and morals could be put on a back burner if knowledge purloined/acquired kept a peace of sorts keeping the ogre from the door so to speak. I don't for one condone it but I can see perhaps some of the reasoning if one looks at the big picture and not how it would affect one nation in particular.

Why more Japanese were not hauled up on war crimes I don't know, but then maybe the position in the Korean peninsula in the early fifties and keeping the Japanese sweet so as to have a base to face a Communist enemy,blocked any determined investigations and the keeping of relations with Japan in light of Korea, meant it wouldn't be prudent to stir up animosity with a new fledged ally.

[spidge]

The Laha Airfield Executions

(February 9, 1942)Two graves, about five metres apart, were dug in a wooded area near the Laha airstrip on Ambon Island. They were circular in shape, six metres in diameter and three metres deep. Soon after 6pm, a group of Australian and Dutch prisoners of war, their arms tied securely behind them, were brought to the site. The first prisoner was made to kneel at the edge of the grave and the execution, by samurai beheading, was carried out by a Warrant Officer Kakutaro Sasaki. The next four beheadings were the privilage of eager crew-members of a Japanese mine-sweeper sunk a few days previously by an enemy mine in Ambon Bay. This could only be considered as an act of reprisal for the loss of their ship. As dusk decended, and the beheadings continued, battery torches were used to light up the back of the necks of each successive victim. The same macabre drama was being enacted at the other round grave where men of a Dutch mortar unit were being systematically decapitated. On this unforgettable evening, 55 Australian and 30 Dutch soldiers were murdered. Details of this atrocity came to light during the interrogation of civilian interpreter, Suburo Yoshizaki, who was attached to the Kure No.1 Special Navy Landing Party, at that time stationed on Ambon.
A few days later, on February 24, in the same wooded area, another bizare execution ceremony took place. Around the graves stood about 30 naval personnel who had volunteered for this grisly task, many of them carrying swords which they had borrowed. When some of the young prisoners were dragged to the edge of the grave, shouting desperately and begging for their lives, shouts of jubilation came from those marines witnessing the executions. In this mass murder, which ended at 1.30am the following morning, the headless bodies of 227 Allied prisoners filled the two large graves. Witness to this second massacre was Warrant Officier Keigo Kanamoto, Commanding Officier of the Kure No.1 Repair and Construction Unit.

[spidge]

Banka Massacre


( St. Valentine's Day, Feb.14, 1942)On board the SS Vyner Brooke were 65 Australian Army nurses who, together with other civilian women and children, made up the 300 odd persons being evacuated from Singapore. In the Banka Strait, a narrow strip of water between the islands of Banka and Sumatra, the Vyner Brooke was bombed and sunk by Japanese planes. Twelve nurses had drowned and 32 ended up in prison. A few lifeboats containing 22 nurses managed to reach Radji beach on the mangrove lined shore of Banka Island. On advice from some islanders they were advised to give themselves up to the Japanese as there was no hope of escaping. That night another lifeboat arrived on the shore containing between 30 and 40 British servicemen from another ship sunk earlier. The civilian women, some nurses and children, then set out to walk to the nearest Japanese compound to give themselves up. Once in the compound the nurses were subjected to an endless night of revolting rape by officers and NCOs of the guard platoon. ( After the war it was learned that the same platoon was later posted to Rangoon, Burma, but on the voyage their ship was sunk with great loss of life.) When the Japanese arrived at the beach the men and women were separated, the men were marched into the jungle, never to be heard of again. The soldiers returned and forced the remaining 22 nurses to wade out into the sea. There, they were machined-gunned to death, leaving only one survivor, Sister Vivian Bulwinkle, who later managed to reach the island's Japanese Naval Headquarters where she was put to work in the hospital. For over three years she kept the secret of the massacre to herself and a few friends. To speak openly about it would have been a certain recipe for execution. When the war ended only 24 of the original 65 nurses were still alive.

[spidge]

Philippines Massacre

A full account of all massacres of Philippinos by Japanese troops would fill several books. In Manila, 800 men women and children were machine-gunned in the grounds of St.Paul's College. In the town of Calamba, 2,500 were shot or bayoneted. One hundred were bayoneted and shot inside a church at Ponson and 169 villagers of Matina Pangi were rounded up and shot in cold blood. On Palawan Island, 150 American prisoners of war were murdered. At the War Crimes Trial in Tokyo, document No 2726 consisted of 14,618 pages of sworn affidavits, each describing separate atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops. The Tribunal listed 72 large scale massacres and 131,028 murders as a bare minimum.

[spidge]

The Parit Sulong Massacre

One murderer that did not get away.


In January,1942, a company of Australian and Indian soldiers were captured by the Japanese and interned in a large wooden building at Parit Sulong in Malayasia. Late in the afternoon of January 22, 1942, they were ordered to assemble at the rear of a row of damaged shops nearby.The wounded were carried by those able to walk, the pretext being the promise of medical treatment and food. While waiting at the assembly point, either sitting or lying prone, three machine guns, concealed in the back rooms of the wrecked shops, started their deadly chatter, their concentrated fire chopping flesh and limbs to pieces. A number of prisoners whose bodies showed signs of life, had to be bayoneted. In order to dispose of the bodies, which totaled 161, the row of shops was blown up and the debris bulldozed into a heap on top of which the corpses were placed. Sixty gallons of gasoline was splashed on the bodies and then a flaming torch was thrown on the pile. Just before midnight, the debris of the nine shops had burned into a pile of grey ash two feet high, the 161 bodies totally incinerated. The perpetrator of this foul crime was Lt-Gen.Takuma Nishimura who later faced trial before an Australian Military Court. Nishimura was previously convicted of massacres in Singapore and sentenced to life imprisonment by a British Military Tribunal on April 2, 1947. After serving four years of his sentence, he was being transferred to Tokyo to serve out the rest of his sentence and while the ship stopped temporarily at Hong Kong he was siezed by the Australian military police and taken to Manus Island where his second trial was held. He was found guilty and hanged on June 11, 1951.

[vailron]

Aerial slaughter in Europe reached a climax on 13-14 February 1945 at Dresden. The briefing for air crews misrepresented Dresden as "an industrial city of first-class importance." Dresden had always been a center of art and artists, one of Europe's most magnificent cities, itself a work of art; Dresden's "heavy" industry was the manufacture of porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses. Other industries, according to Kurt Vonnegut, held as a POW near Dresden, consisted largely of hospitals and cigarette and clarinet factories. Harris gave the city and its civilians an all-out scourging with 1,400 bombers carrying high explosives and incendiaries. The following day, 1,350 USAAF heavy bombers attacked the marshaling yards with high explosives. USAAF tactical fighters flew over in daylight and strafed survivors who had sought refuge along the river banks. Estimates of the dead vary from 35,000 to 135,000.

[vailron]

Katyn Forest Massacre