Reviews for Knights of Bushido A Short History of Japanese War Crimes

The average rating for Knights of Bushido A Short History of Japanese War Crimes based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-09-15 00:00:00 Kevin Stark This interesting book derived its name from a curious episode, later given as evidence before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East: After having being subjected to all the standard forms of torture, the victim was marched blindfold for a considerable distance and then halted. He heard voices and marching feet, the sound of a squad loading their rifles as a firing party would. Then, however, a Japanese officer approached the American pilot and said, "We are the Knights of Bushido, of the Order of the Rising Sun. We do not execute at sunset, but at sunrise." The pilot was marched back to his cell, and told that unless he talked before dawn he would be executed... Lord Russel's book is a shocking, no-holds-barred account of Japanese misdeeds during WWII. When the Geneva Convention was re-enacted, Japan did not sign it. Its military, then rising in power, refused to follow the rules the diplomats had prepared because they expected every man to fight to death, and didn't want to be bound by cumbersome international obligations once they invaded China, as they did two years later. The problem, military leaders reasoned, was that if they treated Chinese prisoners humanely, they might lose control; as the atrocities commited during the occupation, especially at Nanking, showed, the Convention would have got in the way. When war broke out with Great Britain and the United States late in 1941, the Japanese vaguely indicated that they would behave in accord with the spirit of the Geneva Convention. Notoriously, they did not. The stories in Lord Russel's book are horrible – starvation, torture, human experimentation, disease, cannibalism. Lord Russel draws upon a large number of affidavits, eye-witnesses' statements, and documents produced at various trials to create a concise but nevertheless comprehensive account of Japanese war crimes. In the initial chapter, the struggle for political power in Japan is compellingly traced. The author examines the two admirable principles of Japanese conduct, dating from the birth of the Empire of Japan, which ironically were responsible for Japan's aggressive militaristic expansionist policy in the 20th century. The principles are "Hakko Ichio" and "Kodo" – the former meant simply making the world one big family, and the second meant that the first could be achieved only through loyalty to the Emperor. Those two estimable concepts, however, were awfully misinterpreted and misused, again and again, by those who urged Japan towards a policy of territorial expansion. In summary, "Hakko Ichio" was the moral goal, and loyalty to the Emperor was the road that led to it. Thus, Dr. Okawa, who after the end of the war was brought before the Tokyo Tribunal, published a book in 1924 on the very same subject. In it, he argued that as Japan had been the first State in existence it was her "Divine Mission" to rule the world, and that it was highly important for all Japanese to have a nationalist spirit with a capital "N". From this point on, Lord Russel continues his disturbing narrative with the atrocities themselves. The right of all prisoners at war to be properly housed, fed, and treated with humanity became recognized late in the 18th century. In early times they were frequently butchered or sacrificed to gods. If they were not killed, they were mor often than not enslaved, though somtimes exchanged or ransomed. By the first decade of the 20th century, international law had provided that they must be treated humanely and their property respected, they must be decently housed, fed, and their status of war prisoners respected, and that the relief provided for them by the Red Cross and similar organizations must he given to them. Each and every of this provisions, Lord Russel shows, was violated by the Japanese over and over again. Prisoners were murdered, they were bayoneted, they were tortured, they were beaten, starved, and robbed of their possesions. They were forced to work on Japanese military projects – Canadians worked in the shipyards and the mines – and even on the notorious killer-railways projects through the jungles of South-East Asia. As Russel reveals in his shocking narrative, however, this was only the tip of the iceberg. The Japanese habitually and brutally contravened the laws of war while moving prisoners from place to place. He describes in detail the notorious "prison hulks" – coal bunkers with no air and inadequate sanitation, used to transport prisoners by sea. Another inhumane practice depicted in the book are the "death marches": prisoners were forces to march long distances without food without water and without rest. Sick and wounded had to march alongside the fit. Prisoners who fell behind were beaten, tortured, and killed. Lord Russel discloses the much evidence available about this brutal practice, and the fact that the Japanese Government and military authorities were fully aware of it. The book also allows some insight into the nightmarish prison camps, where thousands lost their lives and death was often regarded as a merciful release from unendurable suffering. It was a customary practice to make the prisoners build their own huts instead of sheltering them, thus exposing them to all weather until they'd completed their camp, and the camp commandants operated under the motto "No work, no food" a.k.a starvation. The most appalling and surprising part of Knights of Bushido for me – and no doubt for most the readers – was Lord Russel's account of cannibalism in the Japanese army. An Indian soldier wondered whether he was awake of dreaming when he witnessed, hiding behind a tree, how half an hour after a forced landing, an American pilot had been beheaded by the Kempei Tai (horror-inspiring Japanese police officers who are notorious for sending prisoners of war to human-experimentation laboratories during the war) beheaded the pilot, cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, and buttocks, and later cut it in small pieces and fried it. Lord Russel dedicates a few pages to vivissection and human experiments but not with much detail, which doesn't make it any less horrifying, though. In summary, Knights of Bushido is an unpleasant, gruesome but well documented and well told story. The set of well-choosen illustrations and drawings contribute even more to the overall impression. I cannot say that I enjoyed this book, but it was a very informative history of a forgotten but nevertheless important side of the Second World War. * For the interested, I highly recommend Unit 731 Testimony. It is a disturbing but very well researched account of the Japanese human experimentation program during WWII.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-06-14 00:00:00 Mario Arico The three stars should not be taken as a criticism. This book gives a fairly detailed account of Japanese atrocities in WWII, written by a man who was himself a lawyer and one of the top British legal advisors at Nuremburg and at Tokyo. The first chapter contains a brief, but well focused account of the political rise of the military faction in Japan from 1931 to Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent chapters then present documentary and anecodotal evidence of Japanese war atrocities (from both victim witnesses and from Japanese war diaries) -- mostly (though not exclusively) directed against Chinese and Westerners, or other racial minorities (like the Mantanani Suluks: ). It is quite a dismal tale. Originally published in 1958, the book still shows the scars of the trauma, but Lord Russell succeeds in maintaining a fairly even and documentary approach. One of the more interesting chapters details the use, by the military brass, as a sort of ritual act, of cannibalism: In general, though, the catalogue of atrocities (though the author does not descend into lurid description) is just that -- hence, the missing star. That said, a depressing account..., as I've said. Proof once again that the most dangerous animal known to man... is Man