After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States, the United Kingdom and Holland suffered setback after setback at the hands of the Japanese throughout the western Pacific, or the eastern Pacific for those of you in Asia. The British possessions of Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong were overrun, as were parts of New Guinea, the giant island north of Australia. The United States lost Guam, Wake Island, and worst of all from the point of view of both prestige and power, the Philippines. The Free Dutch, whose nation had been conquered by Hitler in 1940, maintained control of their Indonesian colony, including the territory of Brunei – two of the richest territories in the Pacific, mainly in oil and rubber after Hitler's takeover of Holland, but lost it to his allies the Japanese in beginning in January, 1942. At the time, Indonesia was known as “The Dutch East Indies.”

Most of the prisoners the Japanese took during the war were taken in the early stages of the campaign in the Pacific. Prisoners taken later in the war as the Allies regrouped and took the offensive from mid-1942 onward were most often executed shortly after being captured, or questioned using torture, and then killed later.

One of the reasons so many prisoners were taken was because of the nature of the war. All of the territories the Allies defended, with the exception of those in Southeast Asia, like Burma, were islands. With the defeat of the Allied Fleets in the area, there was no hope of reinforcement or resupply for the soldiers and civilians of the Western Powers. Mass surrenders occurred when all hope was lost. Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen were taken prisoner, and hundreds of thousands more civilians became prisoners of the Japanese as well.

That's just counting the Europeans and Americans the Japanese held. Throughout Asia, from the Japanese forced hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, Burmese, Vietnamese, Malayans, Singaporeans and Indonesians into slavery for the many projects they were attempting to build in order the strengthen their defensive and transportation networks.
Death March

There are some excellent movies about the experience of those taken prisoner by the Japanese in WWII: “Empire of the Sun,” “Paradise Road,” “The Great Raid.” “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”, and the most famous of them all, “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” By the way, Paradise Road is probably the most accurate, with “Empire of the Sun” and “The Great Raid” a close second. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is a great movie, but while they were alive, the men who survived the ordeals of the Burma Railroad made sure they let the world know that they hated it, if we tell you why, it'll be a spoiler, so we won't – BUT there are parts of the film that hit the nail on the head – and that's all about the incredible suffering endured by all of the men taken by the Japanese. The worst part is, most of the misery was not because of the heat, or the bugs, poisonous snakes or even the disease – it was because on top of all of this, many Japanese officers and guards tormented their prisoners almost without end. Some books and first hand accounts will tell of kind Japanese guards, or perhaps “less mean” is a better way to phrase it, but sadly, on the whole most accounts are full of physical and psychological torture, disregard, starvation, beatings, and executions.

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