What was the Japanese prisoner of war camp fuji like?

Answer 1

My father was a Japanese POW captured Christmas Day 1941 and spent 3 years 8 months as a "guest" of the Japanese who had no respect whatsoever for their prisoners. The Japanese culture believed death was preferable to surrender. Forced labor was required to receive the daily ration of 2 bowls of rice per day, if a prisoner got sick and couldn't work, the ration was decreased to 1 bowl of rice per day. Anyone on that ration soon succumbed to starvation. Beatings by the Japanese of prisoners were frequent with them often employing the butts of rifles or other objects. The prisoners were forced to dig their own grave, a large pit where they'd be forced to stand on the edge of the pit and be machine-gunned so the pit could be bulldozed over and no one would know of the atrocities the Japanese committed contrary to the 3rd Geneva Convention (1929) where forced labor to obtain food had been outlawed. My father's friend tried to escape and was shot going over the barbed wire. After his wounds had healed, he was rousted from his bunk and taken out of the camp. He was never seen again yet among prisoners in the European Theatre, attempting escape was a right. My father (a Sargent) was elected head cook in his camp and had to stand in opposition to officers believing they should receive a larger ration owing to rank, stool-pigeons were commonly used by the Japanese who paid their informants with food and tobacco so a spirit of mistrust existed even between fellow-POWs. My father claimed there were no atheists in camp, a belief in God or at least some higher power was a requirement of survival. James Clavell wrote a book called "King Rat" about the black-market trade that went on inside the camp for commodities such as tobacco. My father normally weighed 140 lbs, on his return from Japan he weighed in at 78 lbs. Of the POW's 1/3 died in camp, 1/3 died within 10 years of being released and the other 1/3 experienced permanent disabilities related to confinement such as beriberi, pellagra and other vitamin deficiency diseases. The doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) claimed that many of the problems of the POW's subsequent to their return were "psychological". My father had one leg that was twice the diameter of the other, but it was "all in his head". When the Japanese paid a cash settlement to the Canadian POW's for the time they were interred, half the sum was split among the prisoners themselves, the Canadian government retained the other half. For the remainder of his life my father and other ex-POWs worked to insure at least a 50% disability pension was available from DVA by forming several chapters of what became known as The Hong Kong Veterans Association across Canada in various provinces.

Answer 2

See: Japanese POW Camp Fujita, Japan proper; Sendai #8B, Kosaka POW Camp; Formerly Tokyo 10B.