The Japanese decided that the Western civilians living in their new imperial territories threatened the Empire. Over one hundred thousand of these people now live in misery in concentration camps across Asia. Disease, overwork, hunger, and brutalisation are all taking their toll. Can the Allies free their civilians before time runs out?
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Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Written by: James Newman, Gaby Pearce, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Gaby Pearce, James Newman
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Source literature list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters – https://www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
Australian War Memorial
Nationaal Archief Collectie Spaarnestad Fotograaf
Leiden University Libraries Digital Collections
Chicken icon by David Padrosa from Noun Project https://thenounproject.com/icon/chicken-29260/
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Document This 1 – Peter Sandberg
Firebreak – Edward Karl Hanson
How the Rain Hits – Miles Avida
Last Minute Reaction – Phoenix Tail
Never Forget – Fabien Tell
Potential Redemption – Max Anson
Rememberance – Fabien Tell
Weapon of Choice – Fabien Tell
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
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Despite decades of postwar declarations, legislation, and conferences, the question of how to protect the rights of civilians during wartime persists. With the world seemingly becoming a more dangerous and anarchic place in recent years, this progress seems to be at risk.
The Japanese themselves are ignorant or ignore the mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war during World War II. There is one of the few programs produced by a Japanese television about atrocities committed against Allied prisoners of war. If you can understand Japanese, refer to this work.
➡➡ ドキュメンタリー・212枚の認識票・英軍捕虜の傷痕と戦後補償(70分）https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKrQcKu5Zok
Never forget, indeed…
Heard a story about a woman "detained" in the Philippians with her children. The daughter related how people called her mom Crazy Mary. Mary would scrape the insides of discarded banana peels and crush egg shells for her kids. Because of her actions her kids didn't suffer the same vitamin deficiencies as some of the other detainee children. 50+ years later she was extremely grateful for what "Crazy Mary" had to endure to care for her kids.
Thanks very much for this episode.
The more fluent in English the Japanese commanders in those camps and more cruel they are.Thee second in command in the most deadly concentration camp in Sham Shui Po Hong Kong is one example who expressed his utmost hatred onto the many Canadian POW from the discrimination and exclusion he experienced while growing up in British Columbia.
The Bridge Over River Kwei.
Thanks for all u do sparty. I wish more people could recive these messages of history , but most my peers, honestly cant handle it.
Again, thank you thank you thank you!!!
A boss my father had in the 70s and early 80s was Australian and was a Japanese prisoner during the war. For most of his career he refused to authorize any purchases of Japanese equipment because he didn't want a single penny going to help rebuild their nation. I don't think that's the right way to go about things, but it really does speak to the trauma endured by those held captive. We tend to focus so much on the German atrocities (and they do deserve much attention) but often neglect the horrors of the Pacific.
The effects of the Japanese upon POWs affected my family on both sides for generations. I lost a Great Uncle in Burma to starvation, and both my grandpa and later Nan's second husband, also a veteran, suffered dreadfully but luckily survived the war. Interestingly however, grandpa and my 'step' grandpa both dealt with their trauma very differently to their partner. As a veteran myself, seeing how my wife processed my PTSD (and lives within its radius) has gone some way to clarify how trauma is nuanced and layered. No particular reason to mention this; just an observation on the effects of war on family.
In any case; in Australia, our disproportionate participation in the war demographically is such that the wars effects were near universal. A fellow soldier of mine was of Dutch and Indonesian heritage; and he refused to talk about that period of his families history. It was so bad it had become taboo. One of our Indonesian language instructors was an elderly lady from a Sumatran aristocratic family that fell foul of the Kempeitai. All those years later, she shook physically when recalling her family fleeing the Japanese, losing her father in the process.
Just a few of the reasons that I refer to Japan as the 'Empire of War Criminals'.
Are we getting a video about USA concentration camps for the Japanese that lived in their territory?
You quote from Hilda Bates who was an internee at Batu Lintang but do not quote from Agnes Newton Keith who was also interned at Bath Lintang and whose book on the experience, "Three Came Home" became a best seller. May I ask why?
A powerful closing summary from Sparty (as ever) that sadly draws attention to current ongoing tragedies that echo the terrible events highlighted in this episode.
Never forget
@WorldWarTwo A survivor of the Japanese internmentcamps in the Dutch East Indies visited my elementary school to talk about her experiences.
She was held captive as a child by the Japanese. Much of her story corresponds with what Spartacus said.
What stuck with me though is something she mentioned at the end of the lecture.
After the war her family moved to The Netherlands.
She went to school; like everybody else.
After school she would sometimes play at a friends house.
"She has been in a camp"; her friends would say to their parents.
"It was 'only' a Japanes camp"; the survivor felt obliged to say.
For she was told that the true horror had been in the European camps….
I could't fully comprehend what she was trying to tell us; for I was a child at that time.
Now; almost forty years later; I'm beginning to understand what she was trying to convey.
She had survived the deprivations of a Japanese internment camp; she was forced to leave the country she was born in behind.
But she wasn't allowed to talk about it with her friends. There was no sympathy or understanding for what she went through.
Not allowed to talk about it; she didn't have a chance to even begin procesing what had happened to her.
She didn't talk about it untill she was a senior citizen.
I can only hope that talking about it to us; schoolchildren; granted her some form of peace.
I don't know why; but the war in the East is neglected; repressed and the war in the West is somehow glorified and well – remembered.
The "never forget" quote you use has a bitter aftertaste; for many survivors of the Japanese intermentcamps were more or less shushed into silence.
1:42
Is it koo-lon?
I always thought it was cow-loon
I had a classmate whose father was one of the soldiers who surrendered when the Philippines fell to the Japanese. He survived the Death March and nearly 4 years of internment. When he came back, he suffered from severe PTSD. He slept apart from his wife and the rest of the family, who had strict direction to not enter his room at night, no matter what they might hear.
With China bullying east and southeast Asia, a lot could be accomplished if the countries that don't want to be Chinese dependencies could pull together. But they're going to have a hard time until Japan will at least admit that these things happened. The Japanese response has been to close their eyes, put their hands over their ears, and go "NYAH NYAH CAN'T HEAR YOU!" And of course, China uses this to divide these countries.
After the war, the published death rate for POWs of the japanese was about 80%. In the 1970s, the japanese government started a campaign to rewrite history. A friend of my father, survived the Bataan death march. Of the 200 men that surrendered with him, only 36 survived the war. Just like the American Civil War, the losers rewrite history to make themselves look better.
Yet the earth's creatures "progressed " by leaps and bounds in WWII. Yeah.
Never forget. Pains