The following is from the serial column of Masayuki Takayama, who brings the weekly Shincho to a successful conclusion.
This article also proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but also for people all over the world.
Personal War Crimes
Construction of the Burma Railway, which connects Burma and Thailand, began in the summer of 1942, and a 415-kilometer railway was completed in just over a year.
In addition to the fantastic progress rate of nearly 1km per day, the bridge was also constructed with full-scale bridge technology, rather than hastily done work, to use it for the daily lives of the people of both countries after the war.
It was supported by more than 10,000 railroad regiments and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war.
It recruited other workers from Burma and Thailand, but they were so bad that they disappeared from their workplaces as soon as they were paid in advance.
Fewer than half of the Allied POWs were actually able to work due to malaria and other reasons, but they knew what it meant to drill holes in cliffs with chisels so that they could make progress in their work.
The above is a record of the Japanese side of the story, which also reports a scene where "Japanese soldiers and POWs joined hands in joy" when it opened the entire.
After the POWs were given sufficient rest, they were sent to various camps, including those on the mainland, but tragedy awaited them there.
U.S. submarines raided the surrounding waters and sank 19 ships, including the Arisan Maru, transporting the POWs.
It resulted in the deaths of 11,580 POWs.
Even when they managed to enter the camps, U.S. aircraft targeted them from the air.
In Borneo, Hong Kong, Mukden, and other camps, 318 people were killed in repeated sweeps.
General Percival, a prisoner in Mukden, was almost killed.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also killed 212 American and Dutch POWs.
After the war, the Japanese military was accused of having an overwhelmingly high POW death rate.
It is said that the relentless air raids were a ploy to create such a fiction.
After the war, British, Australian, and Dutch POWs accused Japanese military personnel of mistreatment at the site of the Burma-Burma Railway.
There were two accusations.
The first was to hold them responsible for the railroad construction project that forced them to work unfairly.
The other is the abuse of prisoners of war.
The court charged Lieutenant General Ishida and two others in charge of the railroad and Colonel Nakamura and 12 others for mistreatment of prisoners of war.
The trial result was that the two railroad officials were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In contrast, Colonel Nakamura and his successor, Major General Makoto Sasaki, were finally sentenced to death for the abuse.
The Dutch POWs, who had raised the white flag early in the war and slept in camps during the war, executed 224 Japanese officers in retaliation after the war.
In comparison, more than 10,000 POWs died of disease and weakness on the Burma-Thailand Railway.
It was called the "Railway of Death" and became a synonym for the brutal Japanese military.
The fact that there were so few executions may mean that the British military tribunals were more decent than the Dutch.
However, there was another kind of war crimes tribunal.
In the last war, a total of 250,000 American soldiers in the Philippines, British soldiers in Singapore, and Dutch and Australian soldiers in Java quickly raised their hands at the beginning of the war.
That's the same number as the advancing Japanese army.
If we had to take care of them, we wouldn't be able to fight.
Koreans were hastily recruited to serve as guards, and 3,008 were assigned.
They were brutal," testified an Australian prisoner of war.
They were brutal," an Australian POW testified.
One hundred forty-eight of the most vicious were found guilty, and 23 were executed.
Lee He-lai, nicknamed "The Lizard," was also sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted.
His death was reported in the Asahi Shimbun the other day.
The article said that he was once sentenced to death for "sending prisoners of war to work on the construction of the Burma-Thailand Railway and causing the death of many of them.
No, no, no, he was not in such a high position.
He was only condemned for his personal crime of torturing prisoners of war.
It is a complete lie.
Surprisingly, Asahi repeated the same lie in its editorial and editorial board column.
It intently denounces the Japanese government, claiming that the government did not pay him any benefits after the war because his nationality had disappeared, even though he had suffered as a Japanese serviceman.
The editorial says that he was "not taught about the Geneva Conventions" to protect his sadistic behavior.
The editorial goes so far as to twist the facts to make a personal and insidious crime into a "crime of the Japanese military."
The material was a little too bad for that.
Incidentally, the deceased is said to have apologized to the POWs he tormented before his death.
But wasn't the one who should have apologized to Colonel Nakamura and others who were executed for the deceased's misbehavior?
