Speaking about the crimes of Nazism during the Second World War, many often overlook the allies of the Nazis. Meanwhile, they are not less famous for their cruelty. Some of them - for example, the Romanian troops - actively participated in the Jewish pogroms. And Japan, which was Germany's ally until the last day of the war, has stained itself with such atrocities that even some of the crimes of German fascism fade away.
Cannibalism
Chinese and American prisoners of war have repeatedly claimed that Japanese soldiers ate the bodies of prisoners and, even worse, cut off pieces of flesh for food from people still alive. Often, prison camp guards were malnourished, and they resorted to such methods to solve the food problem. There is evidence of those who saw the remains of prisoners with flesh removed from the bones for eating, but not everyone believes in this nightmare story.
Experiments on pregnant women
In a Japanese military research center called "part 731" Chinese women prisoners were raped to get pregnant, after which they conducted cruel experiments on them. Women were infected with infectious diseases, including syphilis, and monitored to see if the disease would pass to the child. Sometimes women underwent gluttony to see how the disease affected the unborn child. At the same time, no anesthesia was used during these operations: the women simply died as a result of the experiment.
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Brutal torture
There are many known cases when the Japanese mocked prisoners not for the sake of obtaining information, but for the sake of cruel entertainment. In one case, a wounded marine was taken prisoner and his genitals were cut off and, after putting them in the mouth of a soldier, he was released to his own. This senseless cruelty of the Japanese shocked their opponents more than once.
Sadistic curiosity
During the war, Japanese military doctors not only carried out sadistic experiments on prisoners, but often did so without any, even pseudoscientific purpose, but out of pure curiosity. This is exactly what the centrifuge experiments were like. The Japanese wondered what would happen to the human body if it was rotated for hours on a centrifuge at great speed. Dozens and hundreds of prisoners fell victim to these experiments: people died from bleeding, and sometimes their bodies were simply torn apart.
Amputation
The Japanese mocked not only prisoners of war, but also civilians and even their own citizens suspected of espionage. A popular punishment for espionage was the severing of any part of the body - most often the legs, fingers, or ears. The amputation was performed without anesthesia, but at the same time they carefully monitored so that the punished person survived - and suffered until the end of his days.
Drowning
Submerging an interrogated person in water until he begins to choke is a well-known torture. But the Japanese moved on. They simply poured streams of water into the captive's mouth and nostrils, which went straight into his lungs. If the prisoner resisted for a long time, he simply choked - with this method of torture, the count went literally for minutes.
Fire and Ice
In the Japanese army, experiments on freezing people were widely practiced. The limbs of the prisoners were frozen to a solid state, and then skin and muscles were cut off from living people without anesthesia to study the effect of cold on tissue. The effect of burns was also studied in the same way: people were burned alive by the skin and muscles on the arms and legs with burning torches, carefully observing the changes in tissues.
Radiation
All in the same infamous part of 731 Chinese prisoners were herded into special chambers and subjected to powerful X-rays, observing what changes subsequently occurred in their bodies. Such procedures were repeated several times until the person died.
Burial alive
One of the harshest punishments for American POWs for riot and disobedience was burial alive. The person was placed vertically in a pit and heaped with a heap of earth or stones, leaving him to choke. The corpses of those punished in such a cruel way were found more than once by the Allied troops.
Decapitation
Beheading the enemy was a common execution in the Middle Ages. But in Japan this custom survived until the 20th century and was applied to prisoners during the Second Mirwa. But the worst thing was that by no means all the executioners were skilled in their craft. Often, the soldier did not complete the blow with the sword to the end, or even hit with the sword on the shoulder of the executed person. This only prolonged the torment of the victim, which the executioner stabbed with the sword until he reached his goal.
Death in the waves
This kind of execution, quite typical for ancient Japan, was also used during the Second World War. The executed person was tied to a pole dug in the tide zone. The waves rose slowly until the person began to choke, so that finally, after long torment, he could finally drown.
The most painful execution
Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world, it can grow 10-15 centimeters per day. The Japanese have long used this property for an ancient and terrible execution. The man was chained with his back to the ground, from which fresh bamboo shoots were sprouting. For several days, the plants tore apart the body of the sufferer, dooming him to terrible torments. It would seem that this horror should have remained in history, but no: it is known for certain that the Japanese used this execution for prisoners during the Second World War.
Welded from the inside
Another section of experiments conducted in part 731 is experiments with electricity. Japanese doctors beat the prisoners with electric current, attaching electrodes to the head or to the body, immediately giving a high voltage or for a long time exposing the unfortunate to a lower voltage … They say that with such an impact, a person had the feeling that he was being roasted alive, and this was not far from the truth: some the organs of the victims were literally welded.
Forced labor and death marches
The Japanese POW camps were no better than Hitler's death camps. Thousands of prisoners who ended up in Japanese camps worked from dawn to dawn, while, according to stories, they were provided with food very poorly, sometimes not feeding for several days. And if slave power was required in another part of the country, hungry, exhausted prisoners were driven, sometimes a couple of thousand kilometers, on foot under the scorching sun. Few of the prisoners managed to survive the Japanese camps.
The prisoners were forced to kill their friends
The Japanese were masters of psychological torture. They often forced prisoners, under threat of death, to beat and even kill their comrades, compatriots, even friends. Regardless of how this psychological torture ended, the will and soul of a person were forever broken.
Author: Varvara Lyutova