Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Mystery in the mountains - a B-29 loss story

All,

I found this an intriguing article about the loss of a B-29 in a rural area of Japan just a couple months prior to the end of the war. It really is horrifying how the Japanese dealt with POWs and while we did seek justice, I suspect many skated but in general I suspect the population of Japan would have been horrified as well if they had known.

Written by an American author but published in a Japanese paper.

Mystery in the mountains: Piecing together the fate of a downed American aircrew in rural Japan

I never heard of this crash. But it was well known among US troops that you didn't want to get captured by the Nips.
Read Eugene Sledge's account of the grim battle on Peleliu. Several days into the battle, the Marines found several buddies who had been captured, tortured and killed by Japs. And, a Jap surrendered, when the Marines came up to him to cuff him up, he raised his arms and a grenade with the pin pulled fell out from his armpit, and killed two Marines.

After that it was policy to take no prisoners and the Marines just began shooting every Jap they found, wounded, surrendered, or not.

I am sure that airmen in the B29 would have been aware of these stories.

Yep, the japs were pretty ruthless. After Midway, they took several downed aviators, tied weighed chains to their ankles and threw them overboard...alive. Then there were their POW camps, not to mention the fact they've never apologized for all they did. And if you've ever been to Tokyo or any other big city try as a "round eye" going into one of "their" places of eatery...

I remember talking to some of my Uncles who were WWII vets. When they got to drinking the war stories would come out and both freely admitted every Jap they came into contact with were killed. Didnt matter if they surrendered or not. Their hatred of the Japs stayed with them till they died.

Yeah they were pretty psycho. I guess it's culture.

Germans get a bad rap.

Speaking of Eateries

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima_incident

I realize this was an incident of the times. Like all of the other atrocities.

Listened to my dad and his older brother discuss this as a young man. I'm 62 now. My dad fought in the Battle of The Bulge, and other spots over there, while my uncle was a company commander on Sipan and Iwo Jima. Their thoughts on the enemy they faced was quite different as you might guess.

My dad and his buddies had no qualms with the task at hand. But at the same time they realized those guys probably had similar backgrounds to them, etc.

The Japanese.....they hated them...hated em with a passion. They wanted to see them burn alive for their atrocities.

Interesting to hear their stories.

Brutality toward their enemies is common to all Asian countries/cultures.

Several years ago, I caught that movie about the downed B-24 crewman that was picked up in the Pacific in his liferaft with a bud by a Japanese warship. Then off to the mainland. I remember a scene in the movie where they are taking him to some interrogation and the stop at some posh hotel in Tokyo. Take him in. And the place is full of occidental types all in American uniforms.

Now, I don’t know if this was an actual occurrence in this fellows memoirs or if it was some hollyweird artistic license stuff. But if true, I never realized there were that many US military collaborators (if thats really what they were) in Japan. The hotel was literally full of em!! Anyone else remember that scene???

I remember a story of a German officer saving the lives of a US bomber crew. The aircrew was captured and were being led through a town that had been bombed by the Brits. The civilians were throwing the captured Brit aircrew into a burning building. They saw the US aircrew and started for them. The German officer spoke English and told our guys "Run and don't fall. Take your wounded with you. I will not shoot my own people". He locked the aircrew in a box car. The civilians started a fire under the box car and the officer ran up the tracks and got a locomotive crew to pull the POWs to safety.

Interesting article. I've known several men who were POW's of the Japanese. One from Wake Island. They suffered greatly at the hands of their captors and certainly weren't sad about the A-bombs.

I recently finished a book entitiled The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart. He was a 19 year old drafted into the British army in 1939. He was transferred to Singapore just before it fell to the Japanese. For years he was a slave laborer building railroads in Burma , including the Bridge over the River Kwai. Says it was nothing like the movie. In 1943 he was placed on a transport ship headed to the home islands when it was sunk by a U.S. submarine. After five days afloat on the wreckage he was picked up the the Japanese and sent on to the main island. There he unloaded ships then later worked in an open pit coal mine. He was working outdoors in Nagasaki the day it was atomic bombed.

Interesting OP story.

Bill O Reilly's book "Killing the Rising Sun" has some accounts on just how evil the Japs were to their captives.

Purveyors of some of the worst atrocities known to mankind. Too bad many of the wrong ones got vaporized.

My dad had Yorktown shot out from under him, went all through the S Pacific as a young officer, was on Yorktown II getting ready for the invasion of Japan and the Kamikazi onslaught when August 6th saved a million American lives.

He cursed the Japs and the A-Bomb apologists until the day he died. He refused to ride in a Jap automobile. He did have a Japanese-American lifelong friend, Steve Nakashima, who fought the Germans and won many citations for bravery. Steve hated the Japanese, too. He was an American.

japs treated the koreans horribly too. i lived in ROK in the 80's and every korean i knew hated the japs with a passion.