Tom, Sorry I took so long to reply to your email.
...while researching Cordell Hull ... For BRBiggs
Rules of Land Warfare (paragraph 73, FM 27–10) declare that “prisoners of war are in the power of the enemy power, but not of the individuals or bodies of troops who capture them. They must at all times be treated with humanity and protected, particularly against acts of violence, insults, and public curiosity. Measures of reprisal against them are prohibited.”
According to the representations of Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the Japanese government, as published in the Bulletin of the Department of State, February 12, 1944, the Japanese have savagely disregarded these rights of American and Filipino soldiers. “Prisoners of war who were marched from Bataan to San Fernando in April 1942 were brutally treated by Japanese guards. The guards clubbed prisoners who tried to get water, and one prisoner was hit on the head with a club for helping a fellow prisoner who had been knocked down by a Japanese army truck. A colonel who pointed to a can of salmon by the side of the road and asked for food for the prisoners was struck on the side of his head with the can by a Japanese officer. The colonel’s face was cut open. Another colonel who had found a sympathetic Filipino with a cart was horsewhipped in the face for trying to give transportation to persons unable to walk. ... An American Lieutenant Colonel was killed by a Japanese as he broke ranks to get a drink at a stream
... Americans were ... tortured and shot without trial at Cabanatuan in June or July 1942 because they endeavored to bring food into the camp. After being tied to a fence post inside the camp for two days they were shot.” Rules of Land Warfare (paragraph 86, FM 27–10) provide that “Belligerents shall be bound to take all sanitary measures necessary to assure the cleanliness and healthfulness of camps and to prevent epidemics. Prisoners of war shall have at their disposal, day and night, installations conforming to sanitary rules and constantly maintained in a state of cleanliness.”
Conditions maintained by the Japanese in the prison camps were a far cry from this humane provision. “At Camp O’Donnell conditions were so bad that 2,200 Americans and more than 20,000 Filipinos are reliably reported to have died in the first few months of their detention. There is no doubt that a large number of these deaths could have been prevented had the Japanese authorities provided minimum medical care for the prisoners. The so-called hospital there was absolutely inadequate to meet the situation. Prisoners of war lay sick and naked on the floor, receiving no attention and too sick to move from their own excrement. The hospital was so overcrowded that Americans were laid on the ground outside in the heat of the blazing sun. The American doctors in the camp were given no medicine, and even had no water to wash the human waste from the bodies of the patients. Eventually, when quinine was issued, there was only enough properly to take care of ten cases of malaria, while thousands of prisoners were suffering from the disease. ... It is reported that in the autumn of 1943 fifty percent of the American prisoners of war at Davao had a poor chance to live and that the detaining authorities had again cut the prisoners’ food ration and had withdrawn all medical attention.”
The code of warfare among civilized nations prohibits the imposition of “punishments other than those provided for the same acts for soldiers of the national armies ... upon prisoners of war by the military authorities and courts of the detaining power.” (Paragraph 119, FM 27–10.)
Yet, to quote Secretary Hull again, “American personnel have suffered death and imprisonment for participation in military operations. Death and long-term imprisonment have been imposed for attempts to escape for which the maximum penalty under the Geneva Convention is thirty days arrest.”
From
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