German POWs in Japan during WWII?

Several thousand (mainly Jewish) Germans and Austrians served in the British armed forces in WWII (The so-called King Own loyal Enemy Aliens), perhaps the most famous being Klaus Hugo Adam who served in the RAF (and became better known as Sir Ken Adam, the Oscar set designer of many of the early Bond films) and Horst Pinschewer (known as Geoffrey perry) who captured Lord Haw Haw.

Quite a few Germans served in the French Foreign Legion during WWII.This is no huge surprise as the Legion tends to attract recruits from nations in political or economic turmoil. One regiment, the 5eme REI was based in Indochina in 1940. Although the Vichy regime signed a treaty in September 1940 allowing the Japanese very limited basing rights in Vietnam, the Japanese tore up the agreement almost immediately and sent in a force to take at lest a part of the country. Fighting lasted for four days with a French defeat. The upshot was that the Japanese gained the right to base troops as they liked in the north f the country (and in the whole of the country the following year). All prisoners taken by the Japanese were released ecept fro 200 Germans in the 5eme REI.

I can find no reference to their subsequent treatment in Japan but I would be quite interested to find out. I have no idea whether they received the same treatment as allied POWs but I daresay that it was somewhat worse than that received by Germans captured by the Japanese in WWI.

If any visitor can guide me to more information on their fate I would be most interested.

Unit 731 Revisited?

Shiro Ishii, Unit 731 Commander to 1942 - EVIL

The BBC reports that excavations have commenced at the site of a former medical school in Japan. The excavations might yield evidence of war-time experiments on prisoners.

The site in western Tokyo is said to be linked to the infamous Unit 731. Unit 731 was an Imperial Japanese Army unit that conducted experiments in China that were as appalling than those conducted by the likes of Mengele under the Reich.

The excavation was ordered after Toyo Ishii, a former nurse at the school i said that workers had been made to bury dozens of bodies there after Japan’s surrender.

A nurse in the hospital's oral surgery department, Ishii said she had no knowledge of any experiments on humans at the site, but she and her colleagues were ordered to take bodies and body parts for burial in the compound before US troops arrived.

"We took the samples out of the glass containers and dumped them into the hole," she wrote in a statement in June 2006. "We were going to be in trouble, I was told, if American soldiers asked us about the specimens."

Excavation of the site had to be delayed until residents had been moved from the area.

"We are not certain if the survey will find anything," Health Ministry official Kazuhiko Kawauchi told the Associated Press news agency.


Unit 731 was based in Harbin in Mancukuo during WWII, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria. Under the guise of an “Epidemic Prevention and Water Sanitation” unit it conducted a series of horrendous biowarfare and human vivisection experiments. The number who died at the hands of these butchers is not certain but almost certainly runs into the hundreds of thousand. It would take pages to outline their depravity

While a number of Unit 731 members were tried and sentenced as war criminals by the Soviets (receiving terms of imprisonment up to 25 years), those in American hands received went scot free.

Perhaps one of the most disgraceful acts undertaken by the allies after WWII was the grant of immunity from General MacArthur to members of the unit in return for details of their research.

EVIL

Instead of ending their lives in prison, most members seem to have returned to successful careers. For example, one Unit 731 commander, Masaji Kitano (Above), died peacefully in 1986 having become Chief Director of the Japanese pharmaceutical company Green Cross. I could not care less if MacArthur had been a saint in every other respect (Hahaha!) He deserves a special place in hell for granting vermin like this a free pass from justice.

Douglas MacArthur - Scum

Sadly information was more important than mass murder. The same logic ensured that many Nazi war criminals were welcomed with open arms. Operation Paperclip was not the collection of a group of earnest and apolitical scientists from a war torn Germany…. And yes the Americans ere not the only guilty parties.

I would be interested to know how this story is being covered in Japan.

Rather the magnificent 20,000 than the magnificent seven

After years of being attacked by crows, a colony of vulnerable seabirds nesting in Tokyo are getting protection from honey bees.

Conservationists hope bees will repel the crows, based on the insects' tendency to attack anything dark-coloured that approaches their hives This year beehives from rural areas were relocated to the top of a large water-treatment facility near Tokyo's international airport, where as many as 4,000 birds known as little terns nest after a long migration from Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea.

The terns have long been victims of Tokyo's crows. In a single prolonged attack five years ago, about 60 crows picked off roughly 300 eggs and 160 young birds, and fewer terns have come to the nesting site since then. "The young can't defend themselves against the crows, so we tried to find ways to protect them at the nesting site," said Naoya Masuda, a member of the Little Tern Project. "One thing we tried was putting netting in the trees and stringing up fishing lines, but nothing worked."

Observations suggest that using bees to battle crows will turn out to be an effective solution. It is believed that the bees' reaction is linked to the colour of bears' fur. The insects apparently attack dark-coloured creatures to protect their hives from plunder.

Around 20,000 honeybees currently patrol the terns' nests "It is not 100 percent foolproof yet, because the area is quite large, and there do seem to have been fewer birds here this year so far," said. Masuda "But we are hopeful that it will prove effective over the long term.”


I wonder....