History of Sorts

The Japanese treatment of prisoners of war during World War II was brutally inhumane. The men shown in the above photograph belong to the Sikh Regiment of the British Indian Army. They are seated in the traditional cross-legged prayer position, likely reciting their final prayers at the moment this photo was taken—a chilling and morbid scene. The majority of Indian soldiers captured when Singapore fell were from the Sikh community. These photographs were discovered among Japanese records when British forces retook Singapore.

A careful examination of the second photograph reveals markers hanging over each prisoner’s heart, with stakes in front of them bearing rifles. Each target position is numbered, indicating that the soldier assigned to position one will shoot the prisoner at position one, and so on.

The designated positions for this type of shooting practice were generally referred to as “the butts.” This was target practice, not a conventional military execution. In a standard firing squad, multiple shooters—usually half a dozen or more—fire simultaneously to ensure a quick death. Here, however, each shooter was assigned a single victim, and unlike formal military executions, survivors were not given a coup de grâce by an officer; some prisoners were left to die slowly, often subjected to bayoneting or other brutal methods.

The harshest treatment, however, was directed at Chinese prisoners, who were killed in large numbers through exceptionally brutal methods, including shooting, bayoneting, beheading, burial alive, medical experimentation, and other forms of violence.

sourrces

Japan’s World War II POW Policy: Indifference and Irresponsibility

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27067639

Japanese Troops Using Prisoners of War for Target Practice, 1942

Click to access bulletin_e2008_5.pdf