I forgot to mention, the station I was on was taken over by the Japanese. After the Japanese surrendered and taken over by the RAF, two mass graves were found, then years later when the boundary fence was being repaired human remains were also found, their hands tied behind their backs with barbed wire.

Originally Posted by BritinAfrica

I forgot to mention, the station I was on was taken over by the Japanese. After the Japanese surrendered and taken over by the RAF, two mass graves were found, then years later when the boundary fence was being repaired human remains were also found, their hands tied behind their backs with barbed wire.

There should have been a "Neurenberg" trial for the Japanese, but logic stops where politics begin.

Originally Posted by VDKMS

There should have been a "Neurenberg" trial for the Japanese, but logic stops where politics begin.

Oh, but there were trials, plenty of them. I knew a man who was present when 5 Japanese War Criminals were hung in one morning, in 1951, over the pit in the motor repair shop on Manus Island, a mere flyspeck of an island.

There were many others shot and hung in other places, but somehow they never achieved the notoriety of the Nazi war Criminals.

Captain Hoshijima the CO of Sandekan POW camp bit the hangman as he was being led to the gallows. April 1946.

The Japanese official report in the death of my uncle on the first Sandekan death march was "Malaria." They forgot to add starvation rations, refusal to provide medical treatment and being shot or bayoneted by guards. He, like thousands of others, has no known grave.

According to the Japanese they treated the POW's fairly, evidence by local villagers who witnessed the death marches more or less put the noose around the neck of Capt Hosijima.

A neighbour of mine in UK was in Singapore not long after the Japanese surrender, he was sickened to see ex Japanese camp guards riding around in jeeps laughing and joking.

A real slap in the face was Hirohito's visit to UK in 1971. My dads neighbour sent his Burma Star and other medals back to Buckingham Palace, ex POW's and families were utterly disgusted. Imagine the outcry if Adolf Hitler had survived and was invited to view the east end of London bombed during the Blitz.

My family never were great fans of the Royal Family, after Hirohito's visit, they had an intense hatred for them. I heard that Mountbatten wasn't too pleased either.

Originally Posted by Panzercracker

The german nation is responsible for hiding tens of thousands of their criminals but then again Germans feel no real regrets apart from having lost.

I tend to disagree there, the majority of younger Germans I have encountered are very well aware of the crimes done by the nazis, and they bear a collective guilt simply by being born German.
As it turned out I actually had more knowledgde of German history (1870-1918) than several well educated Germans I talked to, I had to ask them why, and they explained that most of the German history prior to the nazi-take over in 1933 was more or less erased from their history books.
They were taught about the nazi regime and the crimes commited under their rule, whatever happened before that was left to the individual student to find out.

I was also a bit stunned when a retired mechanic from Germany, probably born in the last stages of the war, came up to me and asked what kind of crimes they had done in this area.
"Was für scheisse haben wir hier gemacht im den krieg?"
So I gave him the short story, and asked why he mentioned it, as he was obviously not here in those days.
His reply was simply: "No, but we're Germans."

A kind of attitude I've never experienced from any Japanese.

On exercise in Germany we had our trucks parked and cammo'd up all over small village, along side houses, in a pub car park etc. As I was checking my section for fuel status an elderly German civilian came out of his house and offered me a beer, needless to say I accepted. In my very limited German I asked him “Doesn't it annoy you to have our trucks all over your village?” He replied, “I'd rather have you then the Russians.”

When I was station at our Embassy in Vienna, I lived in the Dreiecke which was in the Russian Occupation Zone. No matter where I went there, the people treated me warmly and many told stories of how happy they were when we and the Brits ended the Occupation and forced the Russians to leave.
According to them, it was harder for them to recover from the war as the Russians had literally torn down and carried back to Russia every single thing they wanted to. Shops. Bakeries. Any kind of production plant. And just tons upon tons of steel, iron, copper and any other useful metals.
Unlike Germans, Austrians are well-versed in their history and their only apology for the war was their acceptance of Unschluss, saying they knew Austria had no chance of standing up to "The Austrian Corporal."