A War of Annihilation

Cannibalism and Brutality in the Pacific War

In the Pacific War, Japanese strategies and tactics coated the entire theater in a brutal hue. Matched in part by the Allies, the Pacific War was fought at a fevered pitch unmatched by the European Theater western front. 

“The men that fought the Germans held the same political attitudes. Combat was fierce, casualties were heavy, and passions ran high. Yet a sense of restraint existed in Europe that was absent in the Pacific.” (Bergerud, 406)

“As Dower put it, the Pacific War rapidly became a war in which one could either kill or be killed. Therefore the decision to surrender and live or to fight on and die rapidly became a meaningless one. ” (Tanaka, 74)

German General Erwin Rommel called the conflict against the Allies in Northern Africa a “clean war.” The Chinese, Americans, Australians, British, Indians, Burmese, Malayans, etc found anything but a clean war with the Japanese. The Pacific War degenerated into a conflict that resulted in appalling conditions leading soldiers on both sides to commit inhumane acts. 

Part One: A Brief Background on the Radicalization of Japanese society in pre-war Japan

The road to mutilations, rape, genocide, cannibalism, and many other horrific atrocities carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army is not as clear cut as it may appear. Telling this story properly requires going back in time to pre-war Japan. (If you do not care about the background, and are here for Cannibalism and brutality, feel free to skip ahead to part three.) The Meiji Restoration in 1868 was a landmark moment in the history of Japan. From that moment on the nation underwent a remarkable series of changes and intense radicalization of the population.  

“... it is undeniable that the Japanese military structure had within it the potential for brutality right from the creation of Japan’s modern military forces in the early Meiji period.” (Tanaka, 197) 

The Meiji system restricted individual liberties almost instantly. According to Japanese Historian Saburō Ienaga, The Meiji Constitution passed in 1889 “did not guarantee basic human rights.” (Ienaga, 14)

“...there was little or no concept of universal political rights, such as those included in the U.S. Bill of Rights.” (Tanaka, 200)

The speed of Radicalization from 1868 onward meant the Japanese ‘skipped’ important parts of a political awakening. 

“Thus Japan has no history of political rights gained by large-scale mass revolution of the common people, as is the case in Western Europe and the United States.” (Tanaka, 200)

From the time of the Meiji Restoration on, the militaristic right wing of the Japanese political elite slowly became more powerful. 

 “The Imperial Army and Navy enjoyed virtually unlimited freedom of action. And their modes of action reflected the remarkably irrational and undemocratic character of the military.” (Ienaga, 33) 

 “In the early Meiji period, the military were placed under the authority of the Council of State; there was no separation of civil and military affairs.” (Ienaga, 33) 

Japan underwent a serious change in education as well. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Japan was achieving a  90% enrollment rate in schools (Ienaga, 20). Thus, “the standardized educational content stamped a uniform outlook on most Japanese minds.” (Ienaga, 20) Schools were used as a tool of the right wing to stamp their views on the population. 

 “In 1880 the government compiled a list of books favorable to democracy, … and prohibited their use as textbooks. It was the first move toward official intervention in the content of education. The government abandoned the policy of encouraging intellectual curiosity and cultural enlightenment, began a revival of Confucian feudal virtues, and started to compile textbooks to inculcate these values. … After 1904, elementary-school texts were compiled by the national government, all Japanese children were taught from books produced by the Ministry of Education.” (Ienaga, 19/20)

 “Militarism was systematically inoculated during the Russo-Japanese War. … Consider a third-grade student's composition: “I will become a soldier and kill Russians and take them prisoner.  I will kill more Russians, cut off their heads and bring them back to the Emperor. I will charge into battle again, and cut off more Russian heads, kill them all. I will be a great man.” (Ienaga, 24)

Part Two: The Emperor's Army

The soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army conducted themselves in a manner that was distinct from every other military at the time. A major differentiator of the Japanese Army was the utter lack of care for the life of the individual soldier.  This concept is a natural extension of issues within society stemming from the governmental structure. 

 “A man’s life, it was said then, was worth only one sen five rin–one point five percent of a yen–to the prewar military. This was the price of a postcard that many thought was all that was involved in conscripting them.” (Cook, 121)

Debun Shigenobu 

“Japanese officers showed a pathological disregard for the lives and wellbeing of their troops” (Pike, 559) 

Ogawa Masatsugu encountered firsthand, during an interaction with one of the infamous Kempei military police, just how little the individual soldier mattered up the Japanese chain of command.

““You’re alone?” he asked. I replied that I had a companion, but he was a little behind. “Why didn’t you kill him, then?” he demanded. “You can’t get out of these mountains if you wait for stragglers. It’s all right to kill them. One or two of you doesn’t mean anything.” (Cook, 269)

Men were trained simply to follow orders.

 “Men were trained to follow orders habitually and unquestionably, and the training evidently worked.” (Tanaka,74)

“You charged because there was no choice. It wasn’t a matter of courage. My only thought was to do my duty.” (Cook, 43)

Tominaga Shōzō - 232nd Regiment of the Thirty-Ninth Division from Hiroshima

The strong emphasis placed on following orders resulted in Japanese soldiers who were commanded, and carried out, strategies that went far beyond the acceptable limits of Allied soldiers.

“The concept of surrender was accepted by every army in the world. … What was unique to the Pacific War was the general refusal of Japanese soldiers to surrender when any other army would have considered capitulation the only rational and ethical choice.” (Bergerud, 409)

“Japanese infantry units, throughout the war, maintained a fighting effectiveness with a higher rate of casualties, sometimes over 70 percent, which was way beyond the capabilities of British and American troops.  It was normally estimated by Allied commanders that combat effectiveness collapsed after units sustained casualty rates of more than 30 percent.”  (Hirohito’s War, 242) 

In the Emperor’s Army, Japanese soldiers were trained to be ruthless, to kill or be killed. 

“The next-to-last day of the exercise, Second Lieutenant Tanaka took us to the detention center. Pointing at the people in the room, all Chinese, he announced, “These are the raw materials for your trial of courage.” … He said that it was a test to see if we were qualified to be platoon leaders. He said we wouldn't be qualified if we couldn't chop off a head. … The scene was so appalling that I felt I couldn't breathe. … When my turn came, the only thought I had was “Don’t do anything unseemly!” I didn’t want to disgrace myself. … I was tense, I couldn't afford to fail. I took a deep breath and recovered my composure. I steadied myself, holding the sword at a point above my right shoulder, and swung down with a breath. The head flew away and the body tumbled down, spouting blood. The air reeked from all that blood.  ” (Cook, 41/42)

Tominaga Shōzō 

“A new conscript became a full-fledged soldier in three months in the battle area. We planned exercises for these men. At the last stage of their training, we made them bayonet a living human. When I was a company commander, this was used as a finishing touch to training for the men and a trial of courage for the officers. Prisoners were blindfolded and tied to poles. The soldiers dashed forward to bayonet their target at the shout of “Charge!” Some stopped on their way. We kicked them and made them do it. After that, a man could do anything easily. The army created men capable of combat. The thing of supreme importance was to make them fight. It didn’t matter whether they were bright or sincere. Men useless in action were worthless. Good soldiers were those who were able to kill, however uncouth they were. We made them like this. Good sons, good daddies, good elder brothers at home were brought to the front to kill each other. Human beings turned into murdering demons. Everyone became a demon within three months. Men were able to fight courageously only when their human characteristics were suppressed. So we believed. It was an extension of our training back in Japan. This was the Emperor’s Army.” (Japan at War, 42) 

 Tominaga Shōzō

One of the most particularly horrifying aspects of fighting the Japanese was the willingness of individuals to infiltrate Allied lines after dark. The Japanese Army and Navy believed that fighting at night gave them an edge over their opponents. 

“Some of the Japs were without firearms … Completely naked and armed only with long knives, they raided inside the Australian lines at night, … The awful bubbling scream of a man whose throat had been cut was often the only evidence that these night-prowling killers were in the Australian positions.”(Pike, 446) 

Part Three: Into the ‘War of Annihilation’

Fanatical Banzai charges of hundreds or thousands of Japanese soldiers sprinting into Allied lines. Kamikaze pilots who bravely yet suicidally hurled their planes at Allied warships. Night infiltrators that would sneak into enemy lines with an edged weapon, in hopes to jump in a soldier’s foxhole and slit their throat. This is what a military coming into contact with the Japanese could expect in World War II.

When American Marines landed on the Southern Solomons in August 1942, the Japanese had a ‘second chance to make a first impression.’ This was the first time American troops were to come into major contact with the Japanese since early fighting in late 1941 and early 1942.  In the early-war action, Allied soldiers either were killed or surrendered at a mass scale; stories of Japanese conduct rarely made it back to the Allied populations. 

Marine Raiders of the First Division landed on Tulagi on August 7th, 1942. These landings were a broader part of the Guadalcanal invasion, the first major Allied invasion of the war. The strategies employed by the Japanese defenders were shocking to the attackers. 

“The Japs had one battalion, of about 450 men, on the island, … They were all troops–no laborers. All of their defenses were located on the southeast part of the island. … The Japanese casualties were about 400. Not a single Nip gave up. … It was the same in all the dugouts. We found that an officer was alive in one of them. We sent an interpreter out to get him. The interpreter came to the mouth of the cave and asked if the officer wanted to surrender. The answer was a grenade.” (Tregaskis, 72)

– Colonel ‘Red’ Mike Edson - Marine First Division Raider Battalion

Major-General Alexander Vandegrift, who led the First Marines on the island of Guadalcanal and Tulagi, was stunned by the Japanese tactics. Writing to General Thomas Holcomb:

“General, I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting. These people refuse to surrender. The wounded wait until men come up to examine them … and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces with a hand grenade.” (Frank, 157)

Alexander Vandegrift - First Marine Division

The outcome of the Japanese plan to sacrifice soldiers en masse was not a concept that was lost on Allied soldiers, then or now.

“I have thought about the Japanese for fifty years. I had a high regard for Japanese soldiers. They were brave, tenacious, sly, and good at pulling off the unexpected. But in another way, I feel that many of the things they did were simply stupid. They sacrificed their own men needlessly, for no purpose at all. … I feel the military in Japan fooled their people. Somehow they convinced their soldiers that their lives belonged to someone else. So the Japanese was tough and smart but at the end he was finished and had to blow himself up.” (Bergerud, 413)

Louis Maraveles - First Marine Division, on Guadalcanal

Part Four: Allied Brutality in the Pacific War

The Allies were not blameless in the list of atrocities that littered the war. Allied conduct was overshadowed by an antiquated racism that frequented this era. The ‘War of Annihilation’ was not one-sided. 

 “Daylight came, and we put feelers out to see if the Japanese were still there. They had moved out. We moved up the hill into the evacuated Japanese positions. There, we found [our scout’s] body; it had been carved as though he were a piece of beef. All the flesh was gone from his legs, arms, buttocks, and chest, and his heart and kidneys were missing. We had no doubt that they were eating our dead. We vowed right then never to take another prisoner!

“[Before], we did take a few prisoners, but we had no way to take them with us. So someone devised a holding technique, which we called the Indian death lock, to hold the enemy prisoners until we returned–if we returned. We would find a tree approximately six to eight inches in diameter, slide the prisoner up the tree, with his arms tied around the tree. Then, crossing his legs around the tree, we would force his left foot inside and over his right knee. Using his Japanese belt of a thousand stitches [a cloth belt] as a hangman’s noose, we would fasten it around his neck with a slipknot and tie the other end higher up to the tree trunk. As long as the prisoner had strength in his legs and arms, he could hang on. If his strength gave out, he was choked to death. I only knew of this happening once.” (O’Donnell, 127) 

Chester Nycum - 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment on New Guinea

“We learned about savagery from the Japanese. Those bastards had years of on-the-job training on how to be a savage on the Asian mainland. But those sixteen-to-nineteen-year-old kids we had on the Canal were fast learners. Example: On the Matanikau River bank after a day and night of vicious hand-to-hand attacks, a number of Japs and our guys were killed and wounded. At daybreak, a couple of our kids, bearded, dirty, skinny from hunger, slightly wounded by bayonets, clothes worn and torn, wack off three Jap heads and jam them on poles facing the “Jap side” of the river. All of a sudden you look up and those goddamn heads are there.

Shortly after, the regimental commander comes on the scene. He can’t believe the scene in that piece of jungle. Dead Japs and Americans on top of each other. Wounded all around, crying and begging. The colonel sees the Jap heads on the poles and says, “Jesus, men, what are you doing? You’re acting like animals.” A dirty, stinking young kid says, “That’s right, Colonel, we are animals. We live like animals, we eat and are treated like animals–what the fuck do you expect?”” (Bergerud, 412) 

Ore Marion - Marine First Division on Guadalcanal

“On the second day on Guadalcanal we captured a big Jap bivouac with all kinds of beer and supplies. Thank goodness for that because we needed the food to make it through those first two weeks or so. But they also found a lot of pictures of Marines that had been cut up and mutilated on Wake Island. The next thing you know there are Marines walking around with Jap ears stuck in their belts with safety pins. They issued an order reminding Marines that mutilation was a court-martial offense. On New Britain a lot of guys who captured Japs tried to pry their mouths open and take the gold teeth out. They did that with dead ones too. You get in a nasty frame of mind in combat. You see what’s been done to you. You’d find a dead Marine that the Japs had booby-trapped. We found dead Japs that were booby-trapped. And they mutilated the dead. We began to get down to their level.” (Bergerud, 411) 

Donald Fall - US Marine on Guadalcanal

“One group of soldiers shot a sniper and, before he was even dead,  began kicking his teeth out for souvenirs. Another squad passed around a severed Japanese ear as a trophy of sorts. PFC Willard Dominick, … was shocked to see a Marine with pincers “jerk two teeth from a skull … sending up a sickening stench!” (McManus, 358/359) 

This, in turn, propelled an out-of-control ‘War of Annihilation’ into action. 

“According to research conducted by John Dower, during the course of the Pacific War, the Allied forces became increasingly less likely to take Japanese soldiers prisoner. Eventually, the Japanese effectively had no choice but to fight to the death. Soon after the outbreak of war, the unofficial principles of the Allies were no mercy, no surrender, and no POWs. The military ideology of the Allies thus also reflected brutalization.” (Tanaka, 74)

“As the Marines sailed toward Guadalcanal, they were already aware of the beheading of several Marines captured on Wake Island early in the war. … The lesson was simple enough: If you surrender to the Japanese, they will kill or torture you. … If a soldier knows the enemy will take prisoners, he is far more likely to give up. If he believes he will die regardless, he fights on. … If one side has committed an atrocity, the chances for safe surrender by its soldiers also decline greatly.” (Bergerud, 407/8) 

“Ground combat had an undeniably hard edge fueled by mutual hatred.” (Bergerud, 280) 

“It got to the point where we took no prisoners. It wasn’t a written order, but a way to survive. No one should take a chance to take a guy prisoner who might try to kill him. I don't know how you can defend this attitude.” (Bergerud, 413) 

Louis Maraveles 

“In countless ways, war words and race words came together in a manner which did not just reflect the savagery of the war, but contributed to it by reinforcing the impression of a truly Manichaean struggle between completely incompatible antagonists. The natural response to such a vision was an obsession with extermination on both sides—a war without mercy.” (Tanaka, 76)

““The only choice for Japan,” Nogi thought at the time, was “total annihilation or victory. If we go on losing like this, we’ll never return home alive. Will I be questioned on my responsibility? Not likely. We’ll all be dead. If we win, there’s nothing to worry about because it was ordered from above. 

“Holding my sword, I made them kneel down,” Nogi remembered. One, two, then three Flyboys’ heads rolled onto the blood-slicked grass.” (Bradley, 152/153)

Harumichi Noga - Executing American prisoners that would go on to be cannibalized on Chichi Jima

Many veterans certainly grew to hate the Japanese soldiers they fought against. Others simply resorted to these tactics out of a necessity to survive. 

“I don’t know that we were indoctrinated with a hate for the Jap. We knew what they had done in Nanking. We knew they had machine-gunned our nurses on Banka Island. We knew they had bayoneted AIF prisoners after they captured Rabaul. We knew they had bayoneted hospital inmates in their advance down the Malayan Peninsula. But we did not develop a hatred. We just would kill every bastard soul of them the moment we came against them. We knew their bushido banzai code was to take no prisoners in battle and never surrender. So we killed them.” (Bergerud, 413/4) 

Bill Crooks - Australian Imperial Force on New Guinea

Part Five: Cannibalism in the Pacific

Regardless of the ferocity of combat in a conflict, it is incredibly rare for cannibalism to occur at scale. Despite this, evidence of organized and systematic Japanese cannibalism exists in the Pacific War. 

“The victims of cannibalism in the war can be divided into four groups: (1) Allied soldiers, the majority of whom were Australians; (2) Asian POWs who were brought to New Guinea as laborers; (3) the local population of New Guinea; (4) other Japanese soldiers.” (Tanaka, 115)

Numerous challenges emerge when attempting to prove the full extent to which cannibalism occurred. There are written and video records from surviving Japanese soldiers who engaged in this act, but an obvious and understandable hesitancy to admit their actions exists for many.  Not many Japanese soldiers made it home to tell their stories which further exacerbated this problem where cannibalism seemingly occurred at a large scale. 

“A total of 157,646 Japanese troops were sent to eastern New Guinea; only 10,072 survived to the end of the war, a mortality rate of 94 percent. The majority of the deaths were from starvation and tropical disease.”(Tanaka,130) 

 “Not all men in New Guinea were cannibals, but it wasn't just once or twice. I saw this kind of thing. One time, when we were rushing from a mountain trail, we were stopped by four or five soldiers from another unit. They told us they had meat from a big snake that they were willing to share with us. Their almost sneering faces unnerved me. Maybe we were thinking too much, but my companion and I didn’t stop. “Thank you, maybe next time,” we said, and left. I knew that if it were really a snake, they’d never have shared it. They were trying to pull us in to share their guilt. We never talked about it afterwords, but when we reached the coast other soldiers warned us that there were demons in the jungle. Maybe this was just wild fear, but I can still visualize it clearly.” (Cook, 274)

Ogawa Masatsugu - Seventy-Ninth Regiment of the Twentieth Division on New Guinea

There exists substantial evidence of instances where Allied soldiers, primarily Australian, were victims. The existence of this evidence was typically due only to circumstance. These cases tended to show the extent to which this was an organized group activity.

Australia, far more than America, pursued legal retribution for acts of cannibalism against Japanese soldiers post-war. There exists more concrete evidence from these instances. Allied governments tended to shy away from discussing these matters to the public.  At a time when heavy censorship of frontline brutality was common, soldiers being eaten was not something Allied countries wanted their citizens knowing of. 

 “The vast majority of incidents in which Australian soldiers were victims had a similar pattern in that the Japanese soldiers had no time to dispose of the mutilated and cooked remains. … It seems clear that Japanese soldiers removed the bodies of Allied soldiers from the area in which fierce combat was occurring and carried them to a safe area to be cooked and consumed, while others held back the Allied forces in order to prevent them from recovering the bodies. This indicates that these incidents were not isolated or sporadic acts but part of an organized process.” (Tanaka, 118/119)

  “Advancing Australian soldiers discovered evidence of cannibalism. The Japanese had tied Australian soldiers to trees, cut strips of flesh from the bodies, and wrapped the strips in large leaves in order to preserve the meat.” (O’Donnell, 144) 

 “The following is a typical example of an Australian victim recorded on May 20, 1945.

SX8064 WO II HUGO C of — Bn, being duly sworn, states: 

On the morning of the — at 0900 hours, NX 79420 Cpl GRIFFIN, J, the late Sjt Sewell, and myself recovered the body of — who had been killed by enemy action on the —. We found the body in the following condition. 

1. all clothing had been removed 

2. Both arms had been cut off at the shoulder 

3. The stomach had been cut out, and the heart, liver and other entrails had been removed

4. All fleshy parts of the body had been cut away, leaving the bones bare 

5. The arms, heart, liver and entrails could not be found

6. The only parts of the body not touched were the head and feet. 

A Japanese mess tin which appeared to contain human flesh was lying four to five yards from –’s body between two dead Japanese soldiers. 

(signed) C. HUGO WO II 

SX 8064 

(Tanaka, 116)

“Many other cases refer to the fact that Japanese cannibalism extended to the entrails and the genitals of the victims; in some cases the brains were taken out, and therefore in such a case it was difficult to identify the soldiers, as the face was disfigured beyond recognition. That intestines were cooked is confirmed by a report dated May 22, 1945, from which the following is an excerpt.” (Tanaka, 117) 

“The General asked me about the execution and about having some meat … One had to have enough fighting spirit to eat human flesh.” (Bradley, 226)

Major Sueo Matoba - On Chichi Jima

In New Guinea, native populations were caught in the gears of war, and there exists evidence of Japanese soldiers eating native populations.

“... incidents also occurred in which Allied soldiers and members of the local populations became victims. For example, Ogawa Shōji noted that toward the end of the war, Japanese soldiers referred to the Allies as “white pigs” and the local population as “black pigs.” But such honesty is rare, and so the information about the widespread practice of cannibalism during the latter part of the war has long been confined to rumor.” (Tanaka, 114)

Allied troops often found horrific conditions. During the Allied advance into Hollandia on New Guinea, the 41st division of the US Army found one of the most horrific scenes of the war. 

“Inside Eichelberger found “an almost unimaginable purgatory” and bodies that “littered almost every square foot of ground.” Many had been fried by flame-throwers or were decomposed. A butcher’s shop was discovered where the meat being prepared was human.” (Pike, 807)

Part Six: The Blueprint

The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy supply problems on paper created the conditions that pushed Japanese soldiers to cannibalize each other and the enemy. 

“Throughout their advance in South East Asia from December 1941 onwards, Japanese forces had always trodden a fine line in terms of margin for error or setback. … As a result they planned logistics for short campaigns; it was all that Japan’s ‘thin’ logistical capabilities could stretch to. An advancing Japanese Army could operate on just four tons per thousand men per day (PTMD) while American and Allied armies needed a minimum of twelve tons PTMD. In 1944 the US Army in Europe was being supplied for operations at an astonishing rate of seventy tons PTMD.” (Pike, 447)

Japanese war planners were, to a certain extent, prepared to accommodate for this shoestring strategy. Japanese supply plans placed a shocking dependence on soldiers' capabilities to live off the land. 

“As was common with Japanese armies, food supply was supplemented by well organized foraging. … Troops were trained in foraging techniques and references to pig chasing are common in Japanese war diaries.” (Pike, 447) 

Not long after the American invasions on Guadalcanal in early August 1942, Japanese supply logistics began to break down. 

“In practice Japanese logistics of food supply to front line areas broke down within a year of the start of the Pacific War. Thereafter food supply was often ad hoc and highly dependent on local supply or foraging.” (Pike, 441) 

“In hindsight it is clear that Japan was already defeated on New Guinea. Although there remained 350,000 Japanese troops in the Southwest Pacific region, because of American dominance of land and air, it was impossible to move them or indeed supply them.” (Pike, 796)

A case study of supply problems in action: General Horii led over 10,000 Japanese troops across the Owen Stanley Mountains in the summer of 1942, but during that fall, supply constraints began. 

 “The campaign to take Port Moresby (May-December 1942), … was planned purely “off the map” and took no account of particular local conditions and hazards.” (Tanaka, 129)

“Unseasonably heavy rain fell from 9 September to 13 September when it seems that Horii’s supply lines broke down completely. … providing just 4,000 kijoules per day compared to the 12,000 kijoules required for light work and 16,000 required for heavy duty.” (Pike, 440) 

Frustration among the soldiers began to show in diaries and other testimonies.  

“It is damp and dark here in the thick woods. We have no more than a handful of rice left. If we are to remain until the end, we will all die from beriberi. What is the Army doing?”” (Campbell, 143) 

Lieutenant Sakamoto, on New Guinea

“I sensed the extremes of existence could be reduced to the human stomach.” (Cook, 273)

Ogawa Masatsugu

By October of 1942, the entire supply situation in New Guinea had broken down.

“Because of the food shortage, some companies have been eating human flesh (Australian soldiers).” After weeks of consuming grass and roots and putrid horseflesh, Sakamoto added, “The taste was said to be good.”” (143/4, Campbell) 

– Lieutenant Sakamoto - October 19, 1942, in a diary entry.

On November 4, Sakamoto wrote again… 

”We ran short of rations, … We devoured our own kind to stave off starvation.” (Campbell, 146) 

Even when supplies were able to make their way to the most needed areas, they often did not make it to the frontline troops. 

  Japanese transport officer - “Though we focused on the fact that we must not let the front line starve, in our hearts, we couldn't but be aware that we ourselves would die [on two cups of rice per day].” (Pike, 440)

Kiyoshi Wada was an Imperial Japanese Army soldier fighting on New Guinea. He recorded in his daily journal on December 28, 1942:

“All officers even though there is a scarcity of food, eat relatively well. The condition is one in which the majority is starving. This is indeed a deplorable state of affairs for the Imperial Army.” (Pike, 158)

By the end of the fighting in New Guinea, and throughout the advancement of the Pacific War, the situation deteriorated even further.

“Most of the Japanese forces who were retreating from mountain to mountain were looters. This is a terrible thing to remember. There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost was killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him. He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women. But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were regarded as the object of our hunger. We had no sexual appetite. To commit rape would have cost us too much energy, and we never wanted to. All we dreamt about was food. I met some soldiers in the mountains who were carrying baked human arms and legs. It was not guerillas but our own soldiers who we were frightened of. It was such a terrible condition.” (Tanaka, 114)

Nogi Haramuchi

“The Japanese sources give the impression that in most cases Japanese soldiers themselves were the victims of the acts of cannibalism that occurred in New Guinea and the Philippines toward the end of the war when their supplies had been completely cut off.” (Tanaka, 114)

“In a book published in 1992, Ogawa reported that toward the end of the war he was witness to horrific conversations among Japanese soldiers in New Guinea along the lines of “so-and-so has died, lets go and get his body.” In another case a friend of his found human flesh in the mess tin of an officer who had become ill and died.” (Tanaka, 114)

Part Seven: Conclusion

The story of group psychology, and how it can degenerate to this extent, is not easy to break down. 

 “It is insufficient to attribute responsibility to these individuals, however, without placing their behavior within the context of Japanese military ideology.” (Tanaka, 74)

Can a perpetrator of a war crime also be a victim of a war crime? Yuki Tanaka suggests this is more frequent than one might think at first glance. 

“The widespread occurrence of cannibalism was by Japanese soldiers who had been abandoned by their commanders. Responsibility for these crimes must rest principally with Imperial Headquarters and its ill-considered and ad-hoc Southwest Pacific strategy.” (Tanaka, 130)

Tanaka, alongside the weight of scholarship in this field, argues the responsibility for such actions does not fall squarely on the individual Japanese soldiers that partook in such gruesome activities. 

“The principal responsibility for the geographically widespread occurrence of cannibalism in the Southwest Pacific does not rest with individual troop commanders but with Japanese Imperial Headquarters and the strategies it employed in the prosecution of the war. …” (Tanaka, 129) 

“A tragedy took place in the South Pacific that stemmed largely from the grotesque manipulation of the Japanese people by their military government. By successfully convincing their soldiers to find meaning in oblivion, and to accept the frightening idea that spiritual purification comes through purposeful death, the Japanese government created the mental framework for total war. If Japanese soldiers would not surrender, American and Australian troops very simply would not take prisoners.” (Bergerud, 415) 

References

Bergerud, E. (1996). Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific. Penguin Books. 

Bradley, J. (2006). Flyboys. Little, Brown and Company.

Campbell, J. (2008). The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea– The forgotten war of the south pacific. Three Rivers Publishers.  

Cook, T.C. Cook, T.F. (1992). Japan At War: An Oral History. The New Press. 

Frank, R.B. (1990). Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle. Random House. 

Ienaga, S. (1968). The Pacific War: 1931-1945. Random House. 

McManus, J.C. (2019). Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943. Penguin Random House LLC. 

O’Donnell, P.K. (2002). Into the Rising Sun. The Free Press. 

Pike, F. (2015). Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War 1941-1945. Bloomsbury Academic. 

Tanaka, Y. (1996). Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Westview Press. 

Tregaskis, R.W. (1943) Guadalcanal Diary. Random House.