Crazy Nights(aka Crazy Night) is the fourth single by Japanese heavy metal band Loudness, from their 1985 album Thunder in the East. Written by lead vocalist Minoru Niihara and guitarist Akira Takasaki and produced by Max Norman, the single was released by Nippon Columbia on December 1, 1984, in Japan and by Atco Records on November 1, 1985. The song was the band’s big break in the American metal scene and has since become their signature song.
You come to see the show Well, we’re gonna rock and roll, you Come on get on your seat We’re gonna make you feel all right Hey, you wonna go crazy tonight Let me hear you shout and scream You make me mad and wild Well, we’re gonna rock and pile you We’re gonna do our best The beat kicks you in the head all right Yeh, it’s gonna get crazy tonight Let me hear you all go wild Rock and roll crazy night You are the heroes tonight Rock and roll crazy night You are the hero M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. You come to see the show Well, we’re gonna rock and shock you Come on get on your feet The sound hits you in the face all right Ooh, let’s get so crazy tonight Let me hear you rock and roll Rock and roll crazy night You are the heroes tonight Rock and roll crazy night You are the hero Rock And Roll Crazy Night You Are The Heroes Tonight Rock And Roll Crazy Night You Are The Hero M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A. M. Z. A.
As the Nazis did in Europe, the Japanese Imperial Army had concentration camps in the Pacific. The Asian camps were nearly as horrific as the European ones, and the conditions were inhumane, nonetheless.
This is just a side note, but I did notice, while researching, none of the Pacific camps were referred to as camps in occupied countries. For example, the Tjideng camp was stated as being in the Dutch East Indies, not the occupied Dutch East Indies.
For this piece, I am focusing on those camps in the Dutch East Indies (presently named Indonesia).
Throughout East Asia, the Japanese set up concentration camps, also called Jap Camps. The Japanese in the Dutch East Indies detained approximately 42,000 soldiers and 100,000 civilians. Families were separated; the men were placed in different camps from the women and children. Malnutrition, disease, and abuse caused tens of thousands of casualties. More than ten per cent of the Allied citizens (mainly British, American, and Dutch) in Japanese captivity—died.
During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies from March 1942 to August 1945, Dutch soldiers were interned as prisoners of war in camps at Batavia, Bandoeng, and Tjimahi. The military prisoners of war can be divided into two categories: those who remained in captivity in Java, Sumatra, and Madura, and those who were deported as forced labourers to Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), and Japan. Internment can be further divided into two other categories: civilians and military.
For the Japanese, your status in society did not matter. Among the victims were a great number of Dutch nobility.
The internment by the Japanese of European citizens in the Dutch East Indies was not the same everywhere. In the Outer Regions, quite soon after the occupation began, the entire European civilian population was interned in camps, the men separated from their wives and children.
In Java, the internment issue was more complicated because of the large number of Europeans living there. There, the confinement in camps proceeded in stages. First, in March and April 1942, Dutch civil servants and people from the business community – insofar as they were not necessary for the maintenance of public life – were interned.
In April 1942, all Dutch citizens on Java who were older than 17 years had to register. During registration, a distinction was made between full-blooded Dutch people, the so-called totoks, and Dutch people of mixed descent, the Indo-Europeans or Indos. Almost all of the totoks were eventually interned. The majority of the Indo-Europeans on Java remained free, although many Indonesians also ended up in a camp sooner or later.
Initially, there were large and many small camps scattered all over the archipelago; later the civilian internees were increasingly concentrated in a few very large camps. Urban districts, prisons, barracks, schools, monasteries, and even hospitals were set up as internment camps. Here began a period of internment that would last for many for almost three years or more, during which living conditions deteriorated. Nearly 13,000 people died during the internment.
Tjideng was a camp for women and children during the Second World War, in Batavia (today known as Jakarta, Indonesia).
Batavia came under Japanese control in 1942, and part of the city, called Camp Tjideng, was used for the internment of European (often Dutch) women and children.
Initially, Tjideng was under civilian authority, and the conditions were bearable.
But when the military took over, privileges (such as being allowed to cook for themselves and the opportunity for religious services) were quickly withdrawn. Food preparation was centralised and the quality and quantity of food rapidly declined. Hunger and disease struck, and because no medicines were available, the number of fatalities increased.
The area of Camp Tjideng was over time made smaller and smaller, while it was obliged to accommodate more and more prisoners. Initially, there were about 2,000 prisoners and at the end of the war, there were approximately 10,500, while the territory had been reduced to a quarter of its original size. Every bit of space was used for sleeping, including the unused kitchens and waterless bathrooms.
Former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s mother, Hermance, was in Camp Tjideng in Batavia, with her mother and sisters. She remembers having to bow deeply towards Japan at Tenko, “with our little fingers on the side seams of our skirt. If we did not do it properly we were beaten.”
Another punishment, head shaving, was so common that the women would simply wrap a scarf around their bloodied scalp and carry on.
From April 1944, the camp was under the command of Captain Kenichi Sone, who was responsible for many atrocities. After the war, Sone was arrested and sentenced to death on 2 September 1946. The sentence was carried out by a Dutch firing squad in December of that year, after a request for pardon to the Dutch lieutenant governor-general, Hubertus van Mook, was rejected.
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On 9 August 1945, a B-29 named Bock’s Car lifted off from Tinian and headed toward the primary target: Kokura Arsenal, a massive collection of war industries adjacent to the city of Kokura.
The primary target was the city of Kokura, where the Kokura Arsenal was located, and the secondary target was Nagasaki, where two large Mitsubishi armament plants were located.
The weather had been reported satisfactory earlier in the day over Kokura Arsenal, but by the time the B-29 finally arrived, the target was obscured by smoke and haze. Two more passes over the target still produced no sightings of the aiming point. As an aircraft crewman, Jacob Beser, later recalled, Japanese fighters and bursts of antiaircraft fire were by this time starting to make things “a little hairy.” Kokura no longer appeared to be an option as there was only enough fuel on board to return to the secondary airfield on Okinawa, making one hurried pass as they went over their secondary target, Nagasaki.
At 11:02 a.m., at an altitude of 1,650 feet, ‘Fat Man’ exploded over Nagasaki. The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 21 kilotons, 40 per cent greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb.
The Aftermath
Above: An ink wash drawing of four people carrying a stretcher with a man on it. Surrounding them were the still partly burning ruins of Nagasaki just after the atomic bomb had levelled the city to the ground. In the centre of the background, three figures pull a fourth out from under the rubble.
The photographs above are of Nagasaki before the bombing and after the fires had burned out.
Urakami Tenshudo (Catholic Church in Nagasaki) was destroyed by the bomb, the dome/bell of the Church, at right, having toppled off.
Partially incinerated child in Nagasaki. Photo from Japanese photographer Yōsuke Yamahata, one day after the blast and building fires had subsided. Once the American forces had Japan under their military control, they imposed censorship on all such images, including those from the conventional bombing of Tokyo; this prevented the distribution of Yamahata’s photographs. These restrictions were lifted in 1952.
(The photograph above) A rescue crew is searching for the injured throughout the burning streets and ruins of Nagasaki.
Above: A wounded woman and child
A pencil drawing (above) is of a man lying on a mat. The man has bandages around his head and right ankle. Near his head is a can with the words, “Whole milk,” written on it.
(Photo above) Two survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Japanese cities at the end of World War II at the time, accompanied by two female Japanese doctors, visited London.
The two women walked past Buckingham Palace with their companions. From left to right: Mrs Shinobu Hizume, a 52-year-old housewife from Hiroshima; Miss Kikeu Ihara, a 43-year-old school teacher from Nagasaki; Doctor Kimiko Honda and Dr Sugiko Yamamoto. They stay in London to be questioned by doctors to investigate the effects of atomic bomb explosions. Mrs Hizume lost four members of her family, including her husband, in the bombing of Hiroshima. (Photo taken 15 March 1955.)
I will not pass judgment about the event which involved the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Enola Gay. Nothing would be easier than to judge in hindsight. I try to stick to the facts as much as possible. These facts actually started in 1937.
What is often ignored in the whole debate of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima are the years that lead up to that fateful day of 6 August 1945.
The Japanese Imperial Army started the industrial scale of mass murder before the Nazis did. The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing (sometimes called Nankin) was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on 13 December 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. The perpetrators committed additional war crimes, such as mass rape, looting, and arson. The massacre is considered one of the worst atrocities in pre-World War II history. In those six weeks, it is estimated that approximately 200,000 to 350,000 civilians were raped and murdered.
The average death rate of Allied nationalities of POWs in the Pacific War was 27%. The American mortality rate was 34%, the Australian 33%, and the British 32%. The Dutch mortality rate was below 20%. The number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000.
The exact number of civilians and POWs murdered by the Japanese Imperial regime is difficult to determine due to the sheer scale of it, but it well exceeds 10 million. The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy showed they were willing to sacrifice themselves. We have all seen footage of the Kamikaze attacks.
The Japanese government and its head of state Emperor Hirohito, determined the destiny of Japan on 7 December 1941, when they attacked Pearl Harbor.
Before 1943, work on the design and functioning of the atom bomb itself was largely theoretical, based on fundamental experiments carried out at several different locations. That year, a laboratory directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer was created on an isolated mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico, 34 miles (55 km) north of Santa Fe.
Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on 16 July 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project.
The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on the then-known as the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. It was renamed the White Sands Proving Ground on 9 July 1945.
In the early morning of 6 August 1945, three B-29 bombers departed from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean. Six hours later, they changed the course of history. A single atomic bomb dropped from the Enola Gay exploded over Hiroshima, Japan. In an instant, over four square miles of the city and an estimated 90,000 inhabitants ceased to exist.
On 5 August 1945, during the preparation for the first atomic mission, Captain Paul Tibbets assumed command of the aircraft. He named it after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets (1893–1983), who herself had been named after the heroine of the novel Enola. When it came to selecting a name for the plane, Tibbets later recalled that: “…my thoughts turned at this point to my courageous red-haired mother, whose quiet confidence had been a source of strength to me since boyhood, particularly during the soul-searching period when I decided to give up a medical career to become a military pilot. At a time when Dad had thought I had lost my marbles, she had taken my side and said, ‘I know you will be all right, son.’”
Before embarking, a flight surgeon handed Tibbets a dozen cyanide capsules to distribute to crew members in case the plane was shot down. He said, “The capsules would take three minutes to work.” Although crew members possessed limited information, they were not to be taken captive. Tibbets was ordered to shoot anyone who refused, under those circumstances, to swallow the capsule. Tibbets explained, “I had been given the order by the Commander-In-Chief, Pacific, shortly before take off. It was a hell of a thing to know you might have to kill your own crew.”
Tibbets understood that there was very little risk of getting shot down. Lt. Morris “Dick” Jeppson, the crew’s weapons specialist, said Tibbets referred to the flight as “a milk run.” “And it really was,” Jeppson confirmed, “there were no problems, there was no opposition from the Japanese—the plane was flying so high their fighter planes couldn’t get that high anyway. I wasn’t nervous. I tell people I was shot in the ass with confidence. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do.”
Twenty-seven-year-old Brooklyn-born Irishman Robert Lewis expressed his optimism differently by putting a packet of condoms into his flight jacket, wanting to be ready for the postwar party. When Tibbets told his copilot about the suicide pills, Lewis showed him the condoms. Tibbets did not find this amusing.
Hiroshima was the primary target of the first nuclear bombing mission on 6 August, with Kokura and Nagasaki as alternative targets. Enola Gay, piloted by Tibbets, took off from North Field, in the Northern Mariana Islands, about six hours flight time from Japan, accompanied by two other B-29s, The Great Artiste, carrying instrumentation, and a then-nameless aircraft later called Necessary Evil, commanded by Captain George Marquardt, to take photographs. The director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves Jr., wanted the event recorded for posterity, so the takeoff was illuminated by floodlights. When he wanted to taxi, Tibbets leaned out the window to direct the bystanders out of the way. On request, he gave a friendly wave to the cameras.
After leaving Tinian, the three aircraft made their way separately to Iwo Jima, where they rendezvoused at 2,440 meters (8,010 ft) and set course for Japan. The aircraft reached the target in clear visibility at 9,855 meters (32,333 ft). Navy Captain William S. “Deak” Parsons of Project Alberta, who was in command of the mission, armed the bomb during the flight to minimize the risks during takeoff. His assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, removed the safety devices 30 minutes before reaching the target area.
The release at 8:15 a.m. (Hiroshima time) went as planned, and the Little Boy took 53 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at 31,060 feet (9,470 m) to the predetermined detonation height of about 1,968 feet (600 m) above the city. Enola Gay travelled 11.5 mi (18.5 km) before the plane felt the shock waves from the blast. Although buffeted by the shock, neither Enola Gay nor The Great Artiste was damaged. In a 1989 interview, Paul Tibbets said: “Well, as the bomb left the aeroplane, we took over manual control, made an extremely steep turn to try and put as much distance between ourselves and the explosion as possible. After we felt the explosion hit the aeroplane, that is the concussion waves, we knew that the bomb had exploded, and everything was a success. So we turned around to take a look at it. The site that greeted our eyes was quite beyond what we had expected, because we saw this cloud of boiling dust and debris below us with this tremendous mushroom on top. Beneath that was hidden the ruins of the city of Hiroshima.”
The detonation created a blast equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ). The U-235 weapon was considered very inefficient, with only 1.7% of its fissile material reacting. The radius of total destruction was about one mile (1.6 km), with resulting fires across 4.4 square miles (11 km2). Americans estimated that 4.7 square miles (12 km2) of the city were destroyed. Japanese officials determined that 69% of Hiroshima’s buildings were destroyed and another 6–7% damaged. Some 70,000–80,000 people, 30% of the city’s population, were killed by the blast and resultant firestorm, and another 70,000 were injured. Out of those killed, 20,000 were soldiers and 20,000 were Korean slave laborers.
In 2000, Paul Tibbets told NPR about the attack of 6 August 1945. Tibbets remembered his bombardier, spotting their target from 31,000 feet above Japan.
“As we approached the target, finally, Ferebee says I got the aiming point, which was Aioi Bridge if I remember the name of it correctly. We then all got ready for the bomb, the final bomb run. I gave him the countdown. I hooded the circuits, and then the next thing that happened, the bomb had left the aeroplane.
I saw the sky in front of me light up brilliantly with all kinds of colours. And at the same time, I felt the taste of lead in my mouth. And where – we had seen the city on our way in, I saw nothing but a bunch of boiling debris with fire and smoke and all that kind of stuff. It just—it was devastating to take a look at it.”
About the death toll, Paul Tibbets said: “I said to myself, if you’re going to be a bombing pilot, you can’t worry about these things. This is not anything that you’ve thought of, but it’s something that you were told to do to fulfill your duty. The thing of it is there is no morality in warfare, that’s where you start. So there is no morality to anything that goes on in war. War itself is immoral, and I can’t buy that bit of statement. They would have gone on and on and they would have been many more people killed.”
Enola Gay returned safely to its base on Tinian to great fanfare, touching down at 2:58 pm, after 12 hours and 13 minutes. The Great Artiste and Necessary Evil followed at short intervals. Several hundred people, including journalists and photographers, had gathered to watch the planes return. Tibbets was the first to disembark and was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross on the spot.
Many have argued that the bombing of Hiroshima, and the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki, were atrocities and war crimes. In retrospect, and taken out of the wider context, that is a valid argument. However when you put it in the context of World War II, an enemy that was so evil and brutal that it was even willing to murder its own people. An enemy that didn’t appear to have any compassion and carried out numerous atrocities, murdering, maiming and raping millions. In that context, you may just come to a different conclusion.
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When we hear about the evil during World War 2, it is mostly about the evil committed by the Nazis, and it is important to be reminded of that. However, some acts of the Imperial Japanese Army were just as evil, if not more evil than that of the Nazis.
In 1945, as a first-year student at Kyushu Imperial University’s medical school in southern Japan, Tono became an unwilling witness to atrocities. For a while after the end of the second world war, Toshio Tono could not bear to be in the company of doctors. And the thought of putting on a white coat filled him with dread. Those atrocities, the AWFUL medical experimentation on live American prisoners of war, decades later, continue to provoke revulsion and disbelief in his country and abroad. Tono wanted to shed light on one of the darkest chapters in his country’s modern history, he saw this as a final job.
Below are a few descriptions of what he witnessed.
In early May 1945, a US B-29 Superfortress crashed in northern Kyushu after being rammed by a Japanese fighter plane. The US plane, part of the 29th Bomb Group, 6th Bomb Squadron, had been returning to its base in Guam from a bombing mission against a Japanese airfield. Justin McCurry wrote in The Guardian, “One of the estimated 12 crew died when the cords of his parachute were sliced by another Japanese plane. On landing, another opened fire on villagers before turning his pistol on himself. Local people, incensed by the destruction the B-29s were visiting in Japanese cities, reportedly killed another two airmen on the ground. “The B-29s crews were hated in those days.
“I was in a state of panic, but I couldn’t say anything to the other doctors. We kept being reminded of the misery US bombing raids had caused in Japan. But looking back it was a terrible thing to have happened.”
“The remaining airmen were rounded up by police and placed in military custody in the nearby city of Fukuoka. The squadron’s commander, Marvin Watkins, was sent to Tokyo for questioning. There, Watkins endured beatings at the hands of his interrogators. The prisoners were led to believe they were going to receive treatment for their injuries. But over the following three weeks, they were to be subjected to a depraved form of pathology at the medical school”
“One day two blindfolded prisoners were brought to the school in a truck and taken to the pathology lab. Two soldiers stood guard outside the room. I did wonder if something unpleasant was going to happen to them, but I had no idea it was going to be that awful. Inside, university doctors, at the urging of local military authorities, began the first of a series of experiments that none of the eight victims would survive. They injected one anaesthetised prisoner with seawater to see if it worked as a substitute for sterile saline solution”
“In another experiment, doctors drilled through the skull of a live prisoner. Apparently, to determine if removing some part of the brain could treat epilepsy.”
“Medical staff preserved the POWs’ corpses in formaldehyde for future use by students, but at the end of the war, the remains were quickly cremated, as doctors attempted to hide evidence of their crimes. When later questioned by US authorities, they claimed the airmen had been transferred to camps in Hiroshima and had died in the atomic bombing on 6 August. On the afternoon of 15 August, hours after the emperor had announced Japan’s surrender, more than a dozen other American POWs held in Fukuoka camps were taken to a mountainside execution site and beheaded.”
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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A bit of history that was forgotten in the West, I believe.
In the early hours of 26 February 1936, a group of young radical Japanese army officers led approximately 1,400 troops, under their command, on an attack at the Prime Minister’s residence and other buildings in Tokyo, killing Home Minister Saito Makoto, Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo, and Army Inspector General of Military Training Watanabe Jotaro. They also entrenched themselves in the Nagatacho and Miyakezaka areas of central Tokyo, the hub of the country’s government and military.
The February 1936 military revolt in Tokyo marked the high point of the extremists and the consolidation of power by the Control Faction within the army. With the death of Korekiyo, whose monetary policies had spared Japan the worst effects of the Depression, opposition to additional inflationary spending by the government was silenced.
The Young Officers’ Movement (Seinen shōkō undō) was a loosely-knit organization, comprised of hardcore dedicated activists with a large following of a few hundred “comrades” (dōshi) and sympathizers. Its members maintained connections with each other and some of them were in contact with civilian organizations of radical rightists. Although the Young Officers’ Movement was a clandestine association, it was tolerated and often supported by higher military echelons.
The young officers believed that the problems facing the nation were the result of Japan straying from the Kokutai (national polity). To them, the privileged classes exploited the people, leading to widespread poverty in rural areas, and deceived the Emperor, usurping his power and weakening Japan. The solution, they believed, was a Shōwa Restoration modelled on the Meiji Restoration from 70 years earlier. The rise up of the officers to destroy the evil advisers around the throne would enable the Emperor to re-establish his authority The Emperor would then purge those who exploited the people, restoring prosperity to the nation. These beliefs were strongly influenced by contemporary nationalist thought, especially the political philosophy of the former socialist Ikki Kita. Almost all of the young officers’ subordinates were from poor peasant families and working classes and believed that the young officers truly understood their predicaments and spirits.
The loose-knit young officers‘ group varied in size but is estimated to have had roughly 100 regular members, mostly officers in the Tokyo area. Its informal leader was Mitsugi (Zei) Nishida. A former IJA lieutenant and disciple of Kita, Nishida had become a prominent member of the civilian nationalist societies that proliferated in Japan from the late 1920s. He referred to the army group as the Kokutai Genri-ha (National Principle) faction.
The Kokutai Genri-ha had long supported a violent uprising against the government. The decision to finally act in February 1936, was caused by two factors. The first was the decision announced in December 1935 to transfer the 1st Division, which most of the Kokutai Genri-ha’s officers belonged to Manchuria in the spring. This meant that if the officers did not strike before then, any possible action would be delayed by years. The second was Aizawa’s trial. The impact of his actions had impressed the officers, and they believed that by acting while his trial was still in progress, they could take advantage of the favourable public opinion it was engendering.[30][31]
The decision to act was initially opposed by Nishida and Kita when they learned of it. The pair’s relationship with most of the officers had become relatively distant during the years leading up to the uprising, and they were opposed to direct action. However, once it was clear that the officers were determined to act anyway, they moved to support them. Another barrier to be overcome was opposition to the involvement of troops from Teruzō Andō, who had sworn an oath to his commander not to involve his men in any direct action. Andō’s position in the 3rd Infantry Regiment (the largest source of troops) was essential to the plot, so Muranaka and Nonaka spoke with him repeatedly, ultimately wearing down his resistance.[32][33]
The date, 26 February, was chosen because the officers had been able to arrange to have themselves and their allies serve as duty officers on that date, facilitating their access to arms and ammunition.
From 22 February on, the seven leaders managed to convince eighteen officers to join the uprising with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were informed on the night of 25 February, hours before the attacks started. Although the officers insisted that all NCOs participate voluntarily and any orders given were merely pro forma, many of the NCOs argued later that they had been in no real position to refuse to participate. The soldiers themselves, 70% of whom were less than a month out of basic training, were not told anything before the coup began, though many were enthusiastic once the uprising began.
The bulk of the Righteous Army was made up of men from the 1st Infantry Regiment and 3rd Infantry Regiment. The only other significant contribution was 138 men from the 3rd Imperial Guard Regiment. including officers, civilians and men from other units. The total size of the Righteous Army was 1,558 men. An official count of 1,483 was given at the time; this number excludes the 75 men who participated in Nakahashi’s attempt to secure the Imperial Palace.
The coup leaders adopted the name “Righteous Army” (義軍, gigun) for this force and the password Revere the Emperor, Destroy the Traitors (尊皇討奸, Sonnō Tōkan), adopted from the Meiji Restoration-era slogan, Revere the Emperor, Destroy the Shogunate. Allies were also to display a three-cent postage stamp when approaching the army’s lines.
Early in the morning of 29 February, orders were given to subjugation at 5:10 and to start the attack at 8:30. The Martial Law HQ made neighbours take refuge from the area around and stationed military policemen NHK at Mt. Atago. From the sky, planes scattered fliers to persuade the troops to surrender. At 8:55 on the radio, an advisory titled, “Directive to Soldiers” (兵に告ぐ in Japanese) said, “The Imperial decree has been proclaimed. The command of His Majesty has already been dispatched”…[19] In addition, a balloon advertising, “Imperial Command was Dispatched. Not be Defiant Any Longer” (勅命下る軍旗に手向かふな in Japanese) was launched into the air.
The divisional commander and senior officers persuaded them with tears. Finally, the troops had gone back to their original units by 14:00. Captain Andō attempted to commit suicide but failed. At the army minister’s official residence gathered the rest of the activist officers. They determined to insist on their opinion in court. They, except for Captain Nonaka, who committed suicide, were arrested at 17:00, and also private citizens, Kita Ikki, Nishida Mitsugi, Shibukawa Zensuke and others. The incident had been completely suppressed.
On 4 March at 14:25, ex-reserve 2nd lieutenant Yamamoto Matashi turned himself in at Tokyo Military Police Headquarters. On 5 March, Captain Kōno attempted to commit suicide and died that morning at 6:40. The troops consisted of 20 officers, and 1528 NCOs and privates. 456 were from the 1st infantry regiment, 937 from the 3rd infantry regiment, 13 from the 7th artillery regiment, 61 from the 3rd infantry regiment of the imperial guards, and so on.
The Navy Ministry did a do-or-die resistance against the rebels on the morning of 26 February. For the defence of its building, they prepared for action. In the afternoon, they rushed the landing force to Shibaura and Tokyo from Yokosuka Naval District, whose commander in chief was Yonai Mitsumasa and the chief of staff was Inoue Shigeyoshi. Also, the IJN 1st Fleet was dispatched to Tokyo Bay. In the afternoon of 27 February, they were ready to bombard the troops from the sea. In addition, at 9:40 on 27 February, the IJN 2nd Fleet anchored to Osaka Bay for defence. Their duty finished on 29 February and returned to their work.
The Ni-ni-roku Coup attempt failed. The leaders were arrested; 19 were executed, more committed suicide, and dozens of their superiors in rank were purged for aiding and abetting the violence.
Most of the soldiers in the insurgents didn’t know the plan for the incident. They believed their actions as legal and followed the officers. Some soldiers were tried in the military court; on the other hand, many were killed at the front in the war.
On 28 February, Mutō Akira and others at military affairs in the Army ministry determined to set up a special court martial by Imperial Command of Urgency. It was realized on 4 March. Why it was by the Imperial Command of Urgency that a special court-martial could be set only under martial-law by ordinary law. Also, it solved the problems of jurisdiction, because the insurgents belonged to too many different units to deal with a normal court. Special court-martial could be characterized, compared to an ordinary one: in that, it is a one-tiered judicial system; completely closed; and defendants can’t recuse judges; and with no defence lawyer.
In Army Penal Code, article 25 defines the crime of rebellion:
Article 25 A person who assembles in a crowd and commits the crime of rebellion with armed forces, and shall be sentenced according to the following distinctions: (i) A ringleader shall be punished by death; (ii) A person who participates in a plot or directs a mob shall be punished by death or imprisonment without work either for life or for a definite term of not less than 5 years; a person who performs other leading functions shall be punished by imprisonment either with or without work for a definite term, not less than 3 years; (iii) A person who merely follows others or otherwise merely joins in the rebellion shall be punished by imprisonment either with or without work for not less than 5 years.
Sakisaka Shumpei and other Judge advocate staff investigated the incident, commanding Military Police. In the special court-martial, the trial resulted in a judgement of guilt on most of the activist officers and citizens. Isobe Asaichi had been cursing this judgement until the execution of his death penalty. Also, Andō and Kurihara were greatly shocked at the death penalty on so many of their companions. They believed that the Emperor would be glad if they carried out direct action.
Despite the failure of the coup, the 26 February Incident had the effect of significantly increasing the military’s influence over the civilian government. The Okada cabinet resigned on 9 March and a new cabinet was formed by Kōki Hirota, Okada’s foreign minister. However, this transition was not without its problems. When the selection of Hirota was made clear and efforts began to assemble a cabinet, General Hisaichi Terauchi, the new cabinet’s Minister of War, made his displeasure with some of the selections clear. Hirota gave in to Terauchi’s demands and changed his selections, choosing Hachirō Arita over Shigeru Yoshida as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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We have all heard about the experiments conducted by the Nazis during World War II, but relatively little is known about the experiments by the Japanese Imperial Army. More specifically Unit 731.
The unit, also is known as, “Detachment 731” and the “Kamo Detachment.” was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II.
The unit began as a research unit, investigating the effects of disease and injury on the fighting ability of an armed force. One element of the unit, called “Maruta,” took this research a little further than the usual bounds of medical ethics by observing injuries and the course of disease in living patients.
I will only go into a few of their experiments.
Frostbite Testing: The picture above is of the frostbitten hands of a Chinese person who was taken outside in winter by Unit 731 personnel for an experiment on how best to treat frostbite.
Vivisection: Thousands of men, women, children, and infants interned at prisoner-of-war camps were subjected to vivisection, often performed without anesthesia and usually lethal. In an interview, former Unit 731 member Okawa Fukumatsu admitted to having vivisected a pregnant woman. Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Researchers performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body.
Venereal Disease: To learn what they needed to know, doctors assigned to Unit 731 infected prisoners with the disease and withheld treatment to observe the uninterrupted course of the illness. A contemporary treatment, a primitive chemotherapy agent called Salvarsan, was sometimes administered over a period of months to observe the side effects.
To ensure effective transmission of the disease, syphilitic male prisoners were ordered to rape both female and male fellow prisoners, who would then be monitored to observe the onset of the disease. If the first exposure failed to establish infection, more rapes would be arranged until it did.
In other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; placed into low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped from the sockets; experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; hung upside down until death; crushed with heavy objects; electrocuted; dehydrated with hot fans; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood, notably with horse blood; exposed to lethal doses of X-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with seawater; and burned or buried alive. In addition to chemical agents, the properties of many different toxins were also investigated by the Unit. To name a few, prisoners were exposed to tetrodotoxin (pufferfish or fugu venom), heroin, Korean bindweed, bacterial, and castor oil seeds (ricin). Massive amounts of blood were drained from some prisoners for the study of the effects of blood loss according to former Unit 731 vivisectionist Okawa Fukumatsu. In one case, at least half a liter of blood was drawn at two-to-three-day intervals.
As stated above, dehydration experiments were performed on the victims. The purpose of these tests was to determine the amount of water in an individual’s body and to see how long one could survive with a very low to no water intake. It is known that victims were also starved before these tests began. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at periodic intervals.
One member of Unit 731 later recalled that very sick and unresisting prisoners would be laid out on the slab so a line could be inserted into their carotid artery. When most of the blood had been siphoned off and the heart was too weak to pump anymore, an officer in leather boots climbed onto the table and jumped on the victim’s chest with enough force to crush the ribcage, whereupon another dollop of blood would spurt into the container.
Unit 731 researchers conduct bacteriological experiments with captive child subjects in Nongan County of northeast China’s Jilin Province. November 1940.
Members of Unit 731 were not immune from being subjects of experiments. Yoshio Tamura, an assistant in the Special Team, recalled that Yoshio Sudō, an employee of the first division at Unit 731, became infected with bubonic plague as a result of the production of plague bacteria. The Special Team was then ordered to vivisect Sudō. Tamura recalled:
“Sudō had, a few days previously, been interested in talking about women, but now he was thin as a rake, with many purple spots over his body. A large area of scratches on his chest was bleeding. He painfully cried and breathed with difficulty. I sanitized his whole body with disinfectant. Whenever he moved, a rope around his neck tightened. After Sudō’s body was carefully checked [by the surgeon], I handed a scalpel to [the surgeon] who, reversely gripping the scalpel, touched Sudō’s stomach skin and sliced downward. Sudō shouted “brute!” and died with this last word.”
— Criminal History of Unit 731 of the Japanese Military, pp. 118–119 (1991)
In April 2018, the National Archives of Japan disclosed a nearly complete list of 3,607 members of Unit 731 to Katsuo Nishiyama, a professor at Shiga University of Medical Science. Nishiyama reportedly intended to publish the list online to encourage further study into the unit.
Only 12 of them were ever brought to justice, and the longest jail term served was seven years.
The Japanese culture always fascinated me, usually in a scary way, but occasionally in a more pleasant way.
Ama pearl divers represent one of Japan’s less-known and yet fascinating cultures. Ama (海女 in Japanese), literally translates to ‘woman of the sea’ and has been recorded as far back as 750 in the oldest Japanese poetry collection, the Man’yoshu.
These women specialised in freediving some 30 feet down into cold water wearing nothing more than a loincloth. Utilising special techniques to hold their breath for up to 2 minutes at a time, they would work for up to 4 hours a day in order to gather abalone, seaweed and other shellfish, and oysters which sometimes have pearls.
Ama traditionally wear white, as the colour represents purity and also to possibly ward off sharks. Traditionally and even as recently as the 1960s, ama dived nude wearing only a loincloth, Even in modern times, ama dive without scuba gear or air tanks, making them a traditional sort of free-diver.
One of the reasons Ama are largely female is said to be their thicker layer of fat than their male counterparts to help them endure the cold water during long periods of diving. Another reason is the self-supporting nature of the profession, allowing women to live independently and foster strong communities. Perhaps most surprisingly however, is the old age to which these women are able to keep diving. Many Ama are elderly women (some even surpassing 90 years of age) who have practiced the art for many, many years, spending much of their life at sea.
Women began diving as ama as early as 12 and 13 years old, taught by elder ama. Despite their early start, divers are known to be active well into their 70s and are rumored to live longer due to their diving training and discipline.
Pearl diving ama were considered rare in the early years of diving. However, Mikimoto Kōkichi’s discovery and production of the cultured pearl in 1893 produced a great demand for ama. He established the Mikimoto Pearl Island in Toba and used the ama’s findings to grow his business internationally. Nowadays, the pearl-diving ama are viewed as a tourist attraction at Mikimoto Pearl Island.The number of ama continue to dwindle as this ancient technique becomes less and less practiced, due to disinterest in the new generation of women and the dwindling demand for their activity. In the 1940s, 6,000 ama were reported active along the coasts of Japan, while today ama practice at numbers more along the scale of 60 or 70 divers in a generation.
While traditional ama divers wore only a fundoshi (loincloth) to make it easier to move in the water and a tenugui (bandanna) around their head to cover their hair, Mikimoto ama wore a full white diving costume and used a wooden barrel as a buoy. They were connected to this buoy by a rope and would use it to rest and catch their breath between dives.
The most important tool for divers searching for abalone (the most prized and lucrative catch) was the tegane or kaigane, a sharp spatula-like tool used to pry the stubborn abalone from the rocks.
During the diving season, life for the ama revolves around the ama hut, or amagoya. This is the place where the divers gather in the mornings to prepare for the day, eating, chatting, and checking their equipment. After diving, they return to the hut to shower, rest and warm their bodies to recover from their day’s work.
The atmosphere in the hut is one of relaxation and camaraderie, for six months of the year the women are free from the usual familial and social duties they are expected to perform, and they are able to connect with other women who share their love of the ocean and diving.
The most profitable pursuit however was diving for pearls. Traditionally for Ama, finding a pearl inside an oyster was akin to receiving a large bonus while they went about their ancestral practice of collecting shellfish. That changed when Kokichi Mikimoto, founder of Mikimoto Pearl, began his enterprise.
The world of the ama is one marked by duty and superstition. One traditional article of clothing that has stood the test of time is their headscarves. The headscarves are adorned with symbols such as the seiman and the douman,[clarification needed] which have the function of bringing luck to the diver and warding off evil. The ama are also known to create small shrines near their diving location where they will visit after diving in order to thank the gods for their safe return.
The ama were expected to endure harsh conditions while diving, such as freezing temperatures and great pressures from the depths of the sea. Through the practice, many ama were noted to lose weight during the months of diving seasons. Ama practiced a breathing technique in which the divers would release air in a long whistle once they resurfaced from a dive. This whistling became a defining characteristic of the ama, as this technique is unique to them.
Diving naked made it easier to keep warm without wet clothes clinging onto their bodies. In Japan, showing off bodies was a pretty common practice, including communal nude baths in natural hot springs, onsen.
After World War II, Kokichi Mikimoto employed Ama for his famous pearl company but designed a white diving costume for them after noting the surprise of foreigners who observed their work. As a matter of fact, Ama began covering up as western tourists who arrived opposed their nudity. These white suits were also believed to ward off hungry sharks.
Such a shame that our western ‘moral’ values destroyed an ancient tradition. It is not like there is no nudity on western beaches.
During the 1960s, these celebrated white shrouds were phased out in favor of the wetsuit – a significant compromise that allowed the Ama to continue working throughout the year in the temperate waters of the Japanese archipelago.
While ama gather various foods such as seaweed, shellfish, and sea urchin, it is the abalone that is most prized and lucrative. In the heyday of abalone diving in the 1960s, a skillful ama could earn as much as 80,000 US dollars in a six-month diving season. As a result, talented ama were viewed as highly eligible and could take their pick of the local men when choosing a husband.
Unfortunately, with the decline of abalone stocks the earning power of the ama has also been reduced. Despite the efforts of the fisheries cooperatives to preserve precious resources through restricted diving hours, bag limits, and size regulations, outside factors such as pollution and global warming have harmed the environment and affected the growth of abalone.
While in the past it may have been possible to make a good living from abalone diving alone, most ama now dive to supplement their main income of farming or other work.
Although perhaps the scantily-clad, romanticised image of the profession is a thing of the past, there’s still a rich history and culture that needs to be conveyed to younger generations. The tourism industry at Mikimoto Pearl is a great start to help preserve the memory, but the age-old fishing traditions held by small coastal villages are definitely in need of special attention to make sure their heritage isn’t forgotten completely.
I have to admit I did enjoy doing this blog. It was a welcome distraction of my usual heavy WW2 and Holocaust blogs.
If any one is offended by the nudity, get over it it is the 21st century.
On December 7,1941, 80 years ago today, a hurried dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, was sent to all major navy commands and fleet units provided the first official word of the attack at the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor base. It said simply: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL.
Later that day Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii Territory, killing over 2,300 Americans. The U.S.S. Arizona was completely destroyed and the U.S.S. Oklahoma capsized. A total of twelve ships sank or were beached in the attack and nine additional vessels were damaged. More than 160 aircraft were destroyed and more than 150 others damaged.
The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress and declared, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941–a date which will live in infamy–the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
The Senate voted for war against Japan by 82 to 0, and the House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 388 to 1. The sole dissenter was Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a devout pacifist who had also cast a dissenting vote against the U.S. entrance into World War I. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the U.S. government responded in kind.
Also on the day following Pearl Harbor, Alan Lomax, head of the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song, sent a telegram to colleagues around the U.S. asking them to collect people’s immediate reactions to the bombing. Over the next few days prominent folklorists such as John Lomax, John Henry Faulk, Charles Todd, Robert Sonkin, and Lewis Jones responded by recording “man on the street” interviews in New York, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. They interviewed salesmen, electricians, janitors, oilmen, cabdrivers, housewives, students, soldiers, physicians, and others regarding the events of December 7. Among the interviewees was a California woman then visiting her family in Dallas, Texas.
“My first thought was what a great pity that… another nation should be added to those aggressors who strove to limit our freedom. I find myself at the age of eighty, an old woman, hanging on to the tail of the world, trying to keep up. I do not want the driver’s seat. But the eternal verities–there are certain things that I wish to express: one thing that I am very sure of is that hatred is death, but love is light. I want to contribute to the civilization of the world but…when I look at the holocaust that is going on in the world today, I’m almost ready to let go…”
Adolf Hitler responded by declaring war on the US on 11 December, firmly bringing America into both fronts of the war.
Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7th 1941. We have all seen the images of that fateful day. However the order for the attack was given more then a month before.
On November 5th, 1941, the 7th Imperial Conference was convened, and two types of request proposals (Draft A and Draft B) were decided upon.
From 10:30 to 15:15, on Wednesday November 5, 1941, t The 7th Imperial Conference is held. Two different Japanese proposals were decided on for submission to the US. These two plans were referred to as Draft A and Draft B. Japan planned to first propose Draft A in negotiations and if not accepted, propose Draft B, which included additional concessions.
Preliminary planning for an attack on Pearl Harbor to protect the move into the “Southern Resource Area” (the Japanese term for the Dutch East Indies and Southeast Asia generally) had begun very early in 1941 under the auspices of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, then commanding Japan’s Combined Fleet. He won assent to formal planning and training for an attack from the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff only after much contention with Naval Headquarters, including a threat to resign his command. Full-scale planning was underway by early spring 1941, primarily by Rear Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka, with assistance from Captain Minoru Genda and Yamamoto’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Captain Kameto Kuroshima.The planners studied the 1940 British air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto intensively.
The Japanese military had long dominated Japanese foreign affairs; although official negotiations between the U.S. secretary of state and his Japanese counterpart to ease tensions were ongoing, Hideki Tojo, the minister of war who would soon be prime minister, had no intention of withdrawing from captured territories. He also construed the American “threat” of war as an ultimatum and prepared to deliver the first blow in a Japanese-American confrontation: the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Despite these preparations, Emperor Hirohito did not approve the attack plan until November 5, after the third of four Imperial Conferences called to consider the matter. Final authorization was not given by the emperor until December 1, after a majority of Japanese leaders advised him the “Hull Note” would “destroy the fruits of the China incident, endanger Manchukuo and undermine Japanese control of Korea”. And so Tokyo delivered the order to all pertinent Fleet commanders, that not only the United States—and its protectorate the Philippines—but British and Dutch colonies in the Pacific were to be attacked. War was going to be declared on the West.
On December 7, 1941. Just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on Pearl Harbor , where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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History of Sorts 
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