Hawaii’s Top Secret Japanese Prisoner of War Camp – Camp Iroquois

davidbfpo · Apr 11, 2022

Thanks to a pointer last week about a USMC POW interrogator, Otis Cary, whose approach was develop trust with them to get results, I had a look around.

Camp Iroquois does not appear on this website; I have not checked our "sister" site ww2f.com .

A "taster" and a post-war spin-off:

Camp Iroquois was unique as a Japanese POW camp with a philosophy of winning the “hearts and minds” which helped play a significant classified, secret role in winning the Pacific War. Americans usually heard very grim and brutal stories of the treatment of American prisoners in the hands of the Imperial Japanese military.
Japanese military POW’s arriving from the Pacific island battlefields were relatively few in numbers due to the fact that they were expected to never allow themselves to be captured alive. Huge numbers killed themselves by suicide attacks or killing each other.
Those that were captured early in the war usually were the result of incapacitating wounds or ship being sunk, such as at the battle of Midway where the Imperial Japanese Navy lost four aircraft carriers, among other fleet ships. Those survivors that could be picked up were brought back to Pearl Harbor to be interrogated for their military knowledge.
Then they were screened for a possible interest in cooperating with the United States to win the war by saving Japanese lives and preparing for the future democratic government of Japan.
Additionally, the alumni of the Camp Iroquois project became some of the most important ambassadors, academics and writers that greatly influenced future American Japanese relations and the establishment of many organizations developing diplomatic and cultural relationships and a solid mutual defense partnership.
Click to expand...

From: Ewa Battlefield

The link has a number of accounts from those who served there, pointers from an archivist to other sources (books) and a little more.

Temujin · Apr 12, 2022

Fold3.com has a number of records on Camp Iroquois, I’ve post below just two of them

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