Abstract
This article examines the Japanese response to international legal codes in their treatment of interned enemy civilians in British Asia during the Second World War. It argues that the Japanese were initially restrained by a limited sense of international obligation and even indicated a conditional willingness to honour certain elements of international law in their treatment of captive civilians. This resulted in some comparatively favourable early internment conditions across British Asia, especially in contrast to those experienced by rank-and-file prisoners of war. However, grave breaches of international legal principles became increasingly commonplace by mid-1943, as the Japanese attempted to deter the spread of potentially subversive activities within their occupied territories.
Keywords
During the Second World War the legal position of civilian internees remained ambiguous and ill-defined in contrast to that of prisoners of war (POWs). This was largely due to the fact that there was no binding international treaty which addressed the treatment of these prisoners in specific terms. Both the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1929 Geneva Convention merely sought to ensure humane treatment for POWs and did not address the treatment of civilians by belligerents in times of conflict. Despite the lack of binding international laws containing provisions for internees, a 1934 draft convention for the protection of enemy civilians (compiled by the International Red Cross Committee) nevertheless existed at the outbreak of the war in the East. This article examines the Japanese response to the principles of this draft convention in their treatment of civilian internees across occupied British Asia. This is a significant undertaking as only a limited number of academic works have addressed the issue of Japanese treatment of captive civilians within the context of international law. 1 While several studies have focused on how Japanese treatment of POWs often fell short of the principles of the 1929 Geneva Convention, comparatively fewer studies have evaluated the Japanese treatment of internees within international legal frameworks. 2
The article suggests, firstly, that the Japanese were initially restrained by a limited sense of international obligation as far as captured civilians in British Asia were concerned. During the early months of the war, the Japanese even indicated their conditional willingness to comply with certain elements of international law – albeit on a reciprocal basis – in their treatment of these individuals. This, in turn, had a reasonably positive impact on initial captive welfare and some favourable early internment conditions across British Asia, especially in contrast to those experienced by rank-and-file POWs. The findings of this study are thus consistent with the latest trends in scholarship on Japanese-held detainees. Chiefly, they fit in within the recent movement away from blanket condemnation of the Japanese wartime treatment of prisoners towards a more nuanced understanding of the complexity and variety of these captive experiences. 3
However, as the tide of war began to turn against Japan, the conquerors nevertheless began to treat their captives in a harsher manner. Indeed, as a result of changed exigencies and heightened military pressures on the ground, Japanese violations of international conventions became increasingly commonplace as the conflict progressed. This article identifies the year 1943 as a key turning point in this regard. Clear breaches of international law began occurring from the middle of that year, especially in conjunction with Japanese attempts at deterring the spread of subversive activities within their occupied territories. This article thus argues that Japan’s ultimate mistreatment of civilians did not necessarily stem from the enforcement of deliberate, systematic policies of brutality from the earliest days of captivity. Instead, as this article demonstrates, the turn in Japanese behaviour was heavily influenced by the increasingly tenuous position of the Japanese wartime empire from mid-1943.
I. International Laws on Civilians and POWs before the Second World War
The 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention on Civilians
In the aftermath of the First World War the issue of legal protection for enemy civilians was raised at several international conferences of the Red Cross in Geneva. The final act of the diplomatic conference of 1929 recommended that ‘an exhaustive study should be made with a view to the conclusion of an international Convention regarding the condition and protection of civilians of enemy nationality in the territory of a belligerent or in territory occupied by a belligerent’. 4 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) thus established a commission tasked with drafting a convention for the protection of these two categories of enemy civilians. The commission subsequently produced a draft that was adopted at the fifteenth International Conference of the Red Cross in Tokyo on 29 October 1934. 5 The draft had stipulated, among other things, that enemy civilians should not be interned unless they constituted a risk to security. The holding camps, it stated, should not be established in unhealthy areas. The captives should also be treated humanely and be exempted from corporal punishment. These articles were compiled under the auspices of Prince Iyesato Tokugawa (the president of the Red Cross Society of Japan, who had presided over the Tokyo conference in 1934). Among the individuals elected to draw up the articles was the Japanese foreign minister, M.K. Matsudaira. 6
The 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention was due to be discussed at a diplomatic conference convened by the Swiss government in early 1940. However, the outbreak of hostilities in Europe ultimately prevented this assembly from occurring. Although the ICRC urged for immediate implementation of the draft, the proposal was ultimately rejected. This meant that none of the belligerents in the conflict (which later included the Japanese) were legally obliged to adhere to the draft’s stipulations. Thus, in contrast to combatants, there were no binding international codes governing the treatment of non-combatants at the outbreak of the Second World War. 7
The 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs
Although Japan remained a signatory of the 1907 Hague Convention, the Japanese had nevertheless refused to ratify the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs. This was due to strong opposition from the Japanese military leadership who felt that ratification of the convention would merely impose unilateral obligations on Japan (whose fighting forces never expected to experience the ignominy or abject shame of being taken captive by their opponents). 8 The Japanese refusal to ratify the 1929 Geneva Convention thus meant that they were not legally committed to adhere to the latest revisions within international law as far as captured combatants were concerned. 9
After the outbreak of conflict in the East, the Allied powers became justifiably anxious over the well-being of their troops in various East and South East Asian territories that had been rapidly overrun by Japanese forces. To this end, the US government declared its intention to observe the principles of the 1929 Geneva Convention and enquired if the Japanese intended to do the same. The Japanese responded on 29 January 1942 that although they were not formally bound to the Convention, Japan would nevertheless mutually apply (‘mutatis mutandis’) its provisions to POWs. 10 This reply was construed by the Allied powers as tantamount to a Japanese ratification of the Geneva Convention. However, the actual interpretation of the Japanese Ministry of War was that application would be made within ‘the limits of our capability’ and ‘with any necessary amendments; not that we shall apply it strictly’. 11 Thus, in reality, the Japanese had merely promised ‘corresponding application’ of the Convention’s conditions with the injection of various caveats. Chiefly, the Convention would only be applied ‘after suitable amendment of those areas of the Geneva Treaty so as to conform with the reality of our situation, and with the domestic laws and regulations of our own country’. 12
In the absence of binding international codes on civilians, the issue of whether or not the principles of the 1929 Geneva Convention should also be applied to civilian captives was subsequently raised between the conflict’s belligerents. In response to a follow-up enquiry from the US State Department, the Japanese Ministry for Foreign Affairs clarified that ‘Japan will apply on condition of reciprocity Geneva Convention for treatment prisoners of war and civilian internees in so far as convention will be applicable and that they shall not be forced to perform labor against their will’. 13 The Japanese also informed the Allied powers that they would ‘take into consideration the national and racial manners and customs of POWs and civilian internees under reciprocal conditions when supplying them with clothing and provisions’. 14 In short, Japan’s fighting forces were not legally obliged to apply the 1929 Geneva Convention to captured enemy civilians. However, there were nevertheless indications that the Japanese were willing to honour the spirit of the Convention on a reciprocal basis and were assuming a conditionally moderate attitude in their treatment of these individuals. 15
II. Restraints on Japanese Behaviour before 1943
This section examines the Japanese response to the principles of the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention during the early months of the Pacific War. It suggests that certain initial restraints governing Japanese behaviour had a favourable early impact on the situation of civilian internees in occupied British Asia, especially in contrast to the conditions experienced by rank-and-file POWs. This, in turn, may have contributed to the higher survival rates of captive civilians within the region in comparison to that of POWs. Internee death rates across British Asia (ranging from 4.8 per cent in Malaya, 5.0 per cent in Hong Kong to 5.6 per cent in North Borneo) were indeed significantly lower than the death rate of British POWs during the conflict (about 25 per cent). 16 However, as the war progressed and as the Japanese military position in occupied British Asia came under greater pressure, the Japanese nevertheless began to ignore the stipulations of international codes governing the treatment of prisoners.
Internment on Grounds of Security
Article 15 of the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention had stipulated that the internment of enemy civilians in fenced-in camps may only be ordered ‘where the security of the Detaining Power is involved’ and ‘where the situation of the enemy civilians renders it necessary’. 17 Article 14 of the draft had also stated that ‘as a general rule, the compulsory residence of enemy civilians in a specified district shall be preferred to their internment’. 18 While the vast majority of enemy civilians across British Asia were incarcerated soon after the fall of these territories, not all Allied nationals were put in camps immediately. Several British individuals in British North Borneo were only interned in May 1942. The West Coast resident (R.F. Evans) and the commissioner of police (W.C. Adams) had even remained at their administrative positions under Japanese auspices before their eventual incarceration. British accounts of the period indicate that these officials had ‘attempted for the best part of a year to carry on civil administration under the Japanese’ because of the belief that it was in the ‘best interest of the natives for them to act as a buffer between the Japanese and the locals’. 19 The British in Shanghai were only interned in February and March 1943. As in British North Borneo, many members of the Shanghai Municipal Council and other ‘Shanghailander’ personnel within the boundaries of the International Settlement had also remained at their posts in a ‘quasi-normal’ though largely fictitious continuation of pre-war existence. 20
Across British Asia, however, the Japanese often attempted to rationalize the internment of enemy civilians within their occupied territories as a necessary security or protective measure. In Hong Kong and Borneo the Japanese had averred from the earliest days of the British surrender that all enemy civilians were to be incarcerated for security reasons and for their own ‘protection’ and ‘safety’. 21 The Kempeitai (the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army) was said to have pushed for the segregation of these individuals to restrict their movements and to minimize the incidence of ‘anti-Japanese propaganda or activity’ among their ranks. As many of these civilians were key agents of the British colonial state and had served in leading roles in pre-war colonial administrations, the Japanese may have plausibly regarded them as a security risk. In Hong Kong almost the entire personnel of the former colonial government were incarcerated within the boundaries of the Stanley Internment Camp within months of the British surrender. 22 In Singapore the British governor, Shenton Thomas, and most members of the pre-war Malayan and Straits Settlements administrative corps were interned within the precincts of the Changi jail within a few weeks of the Japanese takeover.
Attempts were also made by the Japanese to justify the internment process as a necessary means of securing the protection of their captives. In the Dutch East Indies thousands of men, women, and children were placed in camps for the ‘protection of the civilians’ (as the Japanese had described these localities). The camps were even frequently termed ‘protection centres’.
23
When describing the internment of British, American, and other civilians in Shanghai in April 1943, the Shanghai Times (a Japanese propaganda newspaper) glibly declared that the action was taken ‘to prevent fifth-column activities and guarantee stabilized livelihood for the enemy nationals’.
24
As the interned Hong Kong colonial secretary Franklin Gimson subsequently observed, ‘the Japanese attitude towards us was that we were concentrated so that adequate precautions could be taken for our safety and that we could expect no better treatment than that accorded to the non-interned population of Hong Kong’.
25
He eventually concluded in a report that: though at first this interpretation of internment seemed ridiculous, in reality developments disclosed it was not. The Europeans deprived of employment would have had difficulty in maintaining a livelihood and their activities would have been subject to intensive supervision by the Japanese often resulting in torture and imprisonment.
26
Separate and Healthy Sites of Internment
The Japanese appear to have generally respected the spirit of the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention in their selection of internment venues for their captive civilians in British Asia. Article 16 of the Draft had stipulated that internment camps for enemy civilians should be located separately from those for POWs. The camps ‘cannot be set up in unhealthy districts, nor where the climate would be harmful to the internees’ health’. 27 The Japanese appear to have followed this stipulation quite scrupulously across occupied British Asia by holding civilians in different localities from POWs. The internees in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai, for instance, were incarcerated apart from POWs for the entire duration of the war. While the civilians in North Borneo were imprisoned within the same site (Batu Lintang) as the POWs, they were nevertheless held in discrete sections of the camp. The precincts selected by the Japanese for incarceration purposes were often buildings that had been constructed by the British themselves. These included a prison erected by the British for the imprisonment of Asian convicts (Changi in Singapore), a barracks the British had used for their own military troops (Batu Lintang in Sarawak), and a former British military establishment (Ash camp in Shanghai).
In Hong Kong the British colonial secretary Franklin Gimson was even consulted by the Japanese in their selection of an appropriate internment venue. Thus, as a result of the combined efforts of the colonial secretary and the director of medical services (Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke), the British in Hong Kong were eventually able to persuade the Japanese to intern them within the comparatively isolated (but healthy) surroundings of the Stanley peninsula. 28 Despite the gross overcrowding which eventually took place within the camp’s boundaries, it was nevertheless widely recognized that ‘from an aesthetic and climatic point of view the site was probably the best in the Colony and this undoubtedly played an important part in maintaining the health and morale of internees’. 29 The British internee Lancelot Forster later stated that he found it ‘hard to believe that the Japanese would provide us with such a pleasant spot in which to live’, while a fellow inmate was compelled to remark that ‘in all fairness the buildings were modern and clean’. 30 In October 1943 the Red Cross delegate R. Zindel observed in a report that the Stanley camp was situated ‘in beautiful surroundings’. The camp’s ‘modern buildings with up-to-date conveniences’, he wrote, ‘are mostly built on the crests of small hills, and there is an abundance of light and fresh air’. 31 As the Stanley medical doctor N.C. Macleod had concluded after the war, the camp’s ‘distance from the densely populated urban areas was a distinct advantage which gave a high degree of protection against the introduction of infectious disease’. 32
Humane Treatment of Civilians
Numerous first-hand testimonies suggest that the Japanese were reasonably restrained in their treatment of civilian internees during the early months of their takeover of British Asia. 33 Article 19 of the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention had stipulated that civilian internees ‘shall always be treated humanely. Under no pretext shall they be put to death or submitted to corporal punishments’. 34 In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Borneo, the Japanese appear to have refrained from subjecting their civilian captives to extreme forms of physical retribution throughout 1942 and during the early months of 1943. Very few vicious beatings were reported to have taken place within the internment camps in these territories during the first 16 months of captivity. 35 The Stanley civilians, for instance, were said to have remained ‘comparatively free from interference by Japanese gendarmes, except in cases of violations of regulations promulgated by the Japanese’ during this early period. 36
Internees in occupied British Asia were also treated comparatively mildly in contrast to rank-and-file POWs. On a comparative scale, conditions were often significantly harsher within POW camps in the region, where severe physical injuries were often inflicted on the prisoners by Japanese commandants or guards. In general terms, Japanese-held civilians in British Asia appear to have suffered more from passive negligence (instead of active brutalization) during the early months of captivity.
37
As the Changi internee R.H. Oakeley concluded, ‘in general, we have just been neglected. The ill-treatment has been passive rather than active.’
38
‘It would be an injustice in some respects to say we were badly treated,’ wrote the Stanley internee E.D. Robbins; ‘it would be better to say that we were simply ignored by the Japanese Authorities in charge of our Camp’.
39
His inmate John Stericker similarly felt: In fact, perhaps the greatest quarrel we had with our captors was, that in doing nothing against us, they never did anything for us. This was summarised by the wag who said that after the war, when asked how he had been treated, he was going to say the whole trouble was he had never been treated at all.
40
Extension of the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs to Civilian Internees
Article 17 of the Tokyo Draft Convention had stipulated that the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs should be ‘by analogy applicable to Civilian Internees. The treatment of civilian internees shall in no case be inferior to that laid down in the said Convention.’
41
Early internment conditions across British Asia were often roughly similar to those experienced by Allied officers in POW camps in the region (who frequently enjoyed supplementary camp privileges in contrast to rank-and-file POWs, and even additional sources of food such as officers’ vegetable gardens). In Hong Kong the civilians at Stanley were eventually informed by their captors in 1944 that they had been treated in a similar fashion to Allied officers since the Japanese takeover. As Stericker noted: It was not until 1944 that the then Japanese Camp Commandant informed the Colonial Secretary that an agreement had been reached between the belligerent powers soon after the outbreak of hostilities, that civilian internees would receive the same treatment as that given to Military Prisoners-of-War. Moreover, there was evidence to show that, especially with regard to compulsory labour etc., they were to be given the status of officers.
42
Exemption from Hard Labour
Civilian internees in British Asia were also largely exempted from hard labour for the duration of the conflict. This paralleled the wartime experiences of captured Allied officers, who were generally excluded from harsh manual labour in accordance with Article 41 of the 1929 Geneva Convention. Rank-and-file POWs in the region, in contrast, were widely used on intensive labour projects (such as in construction or stevedore work on farms, mines, factories, docks, railways, or airfields). Like captured Allied officers, internees were usually tasked with lighter forms of camp-centric labour, such as farming, clothes production, or vegetable cultivation. 43 During the final months of the conflict when all prisoners were subjected to increasingly meagre rations, the physically debilitating effects of harsh manual labour often made a real difference between survival or death. 44
The effects of these differences in prisoner treatment were starkly apparent at the Lintang camp in Sarawak. From the earliest days of captivity, the civilians and officers enjoyed comparatively privileged positions in contrast to the rank-and-file POWs held in a third and separate section of the camp. While the former were excluded from heavy labour by the Japanese, the lower ranks in contrast were compelled to undertake hard manual labour at the Kuching airfield, as well as at the timber yards and docks on the river. Being exempt from harsh labour, the Lintang internees and officers often enjoyed additional time and energy for the cultivation of vegetables to supplement their camp rations. By the final months of the war, the health of the lower ranks became adversely affected by the cumulative effects of overwork, exhaustion, and meagre rations. Thus, partly as a result of these factors, the overall death rates among officers and internees were significantly less than those of the lower ranks at Lintang. 45
III. Limits to Japanese Restraints before 1943
Protection against Public Curiosity
Even from the earliest days of captivity, the Japanese nevertheless chose to ignore certain international principles that clashed with their own wartime priorities and political expediencies. Article 9 of the Tokyo Draft Convention, for instance, had stipulated that ‘enemy civilians shall be protected against measures of violence, insults and public curiosity’. 46 Soon after their takeover the Japanese deliberately elected to march their captive civilians to various internment venues in full view of the local Asian populations. These parades into internment were often devised for maximum psychological effect to convince the conquered populations of the end of white supremacy and of the birth of a new racial reality. As Gwen Dew recalled of the ensuing public spectacle in Hong Kong, the procession of expatriates through a ‘crowded Chinese section’ was a ‘perfect parade of the fall of the great white man in the Far East. Two hundred “masters” and “missies” carrying their bags, stumbling along in the dust, tired, sick, almost broken.’ 47 The American George Baxter observed that ‘thousands of Chinese lined the curbs to watch the white man being ordered around and driven like cattle by the squat Japs. It was plain that humiliation was part of the Jap scheme to convince the natives that the white man had been conquered.’ 48 These calibrated exposures of enemy civilians to public curiosity are revealing for what they suggest about the conquerors’ early inclination to prioritize their own political expediencies. 49
Receipt of Mail and Relief Supplies
The Japanese also fell dismally short as far as regular deliveries of mail and relief supplies to civilian internees were concerned. Article 7 of the Tokyo Draft had stated that ‘enemy civilians shall have the possibility of giving news of a strictly private character to next of kin, and of receiving such news. With the same reservation they shall also have the possibility of receiving relief.’ 50 Although the Japanese did not ignore this stipulation entirely, both mail and Red Cross relief supplies nevertheless reached the internment camps in British Asia on a highly irregular basis. At Stanley in Hong Kong, several prisoners did not receive mail for almost two years after the outbreak of hostilities. By May 1945, as one internee recalled, ‘there were very few who had had any news later than 1943’. 51 Permission was only granted to the captives to submit a monthly 200-word letter to families abroad in May 1943, some 17 months after the British surrender. The first postcards were only received from the POWs held elsewhere in Hong Kong at Christmas 1942. As one account described the resulting misery in the camp: ‘countless women were without knowledge of the survival of their next of kin until one year after the surrender of Hong Kong’, a fact that ‘caused untold anxiety and heartache’. 52 As far as Red Cross parcels were concerned, only a fraction of these supplies eventually reached their intended recipients (although a total of about 225,000 Red Cross parcels were dispatched to the East for distribution among internees and POWs). Delegates of the Red Cross in the region were often prevented from supervising the unloading and/or issue of these supplies. Red Cross parcels (as well as other medical and relief supplies) were also frequently appropriated by local Japanese authorities. 53
Limited attention, too, was paid by the Japanese to Article 8 of the Tokyo Draft Convention. The article had stated that ‘enemy civilians shall have every facility for application to duly recognized Relief Societies, whose object is to act as intermediaries in welfare activities. These Societies shall receive, for this purpose, all facilities from the authorities, within the limits compatible with military necessities.’ 54 The Japanese did grant their official recognition to the Red Cross delegates stationed in Shanghai and Hong Kong and permitted them to carry out a limited range of welfare activities during the war. However, they nevertheless withheld their recognition of the Singapore delegate (as well as others in Java, Sumatra, Thailand, and the Philippines) and placed considerable restraints on the work carried out by these individuals. 55 In Singapore the delegate Hans Schweizer-Iten was only recognized formally by the Japanese at the end of the war. He was permitted to carry out only a limited number of relief activities for internees and POWs in an unofficial capacity during the conflict. 56 In Borneo the delegate Matthaeus Fischer and his wife were arrested in May 1943 and charged with ‘criminally’ attempting to establish the numbers, names, ages, and health situations of the POWs and internees in the territory. They were executed in December of that year. 57
Civilian Exchanges
The 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention did not specifically address the issue of wartime prisoner exchanges. But the Japanese nevertheless fell deplorably short as far as civilian repatriations were concerned, by refusing to return numerous detainees to their home countries. Thousands of British nationals, in particular, were accordingly forced to languish within the internment camps of occupied Asia – or within camps on the Japanese home islands – until the end of the war. Two exchanges of nationals took place between the United States and Japan in 1942 and 1943. Over 1,300 Americans were sent home from the East in the summer of 1942, and another 1,240 Americans in late 1943. At Stanley in Hong Kong some 300 American nationals were shipped back in June 1942, while some 140 internees (mostly Canadians) were repatriated during a second prisoner exchange in September 1943. 58 However, the bulk of the British at Stanley were incarcerated until the end of the war, as were the captive British civilians in Singapore, Malaya and Borneo. Studies have suggested that the civilian exchanges were widely impeded by breakdowns in diplomatic negotiations between the belligerents (Japan, Britain, and Australia). These were often prompted by deep-rooted security concerns, especially over the risks in allowing potential informants (in particular those who were believed to possess knowledge of coastline installations and harbours) to return to their home countries. 59
These shortcomings suggest an early tendency on the part of the Japanese to pay only token attention to any international legal principles that conflicted with their own wartime values or exigencies. When Japanese interests were at stake, the conquerors often opted to defend their own priorities in the first instance (and often at the expense of the welfare of their prisoners). Dismissive attitudes towards the significance of international law appear to have percolated down from the top of the Japanese hierarchy. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, in particular, was said to have informed officials responsible for Allied prisoners that ‘international law should be interpreted from the view point of executing the war according to our own opinions’. 60 The internee John Stericker became convinced that various loopholes within the Geneva Convention had provided the Japanese with ‘a glorious chance to keep within the framework of the agreement and at the same time to use its weaknesses to the full’. While he felt that the Japanese did not ignore the Convention entirely, they nevertheless ‘twisted it to suit their own ends’. 61 As one official at the US Department of State eventually concluded in a memo in July 1943, Japanese assurances of adherence to the Geneva Convention ‘have always been qualified’ in nature, as the Japanese government had ‘insisted that provisions of local law take precedence over the provisions of that Convention’. 62
IV. Civilian Internees and Issues of International Law within the Camps
During the early months of the conflict, tacit forces of reciprocity and mutual deterrence may have acted to moderate the nature of Japanese treatment of Allied civilians in British Asia. Of the Geneva Convention, the internee John Stericker became convinced at Stanley that the Japanese ‘did not dare ignore it entirely owing to the number of Japanese nationals in Allied hands’. 63 When formulating their regulations for the Stanley camp in Hong Kong, the Japanese had even indicated in a poorly written statement that ‘the treatments of the enemies are based on the way their respective country treat Japanese in their own country’. 64 The Japanese were indeed well aware that large numbers of their own nationals (and others of Japanese descent) had been taken captive in territories under American and Canadian control. Some 110,000 Japanese-Americans on the west coast of America, for instance, were incarcerated in ‘relocation camps’ in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. About 21,000 Japanese-Canadians, too, were held within the interior of British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada during this period. 65 Even as early as February 1942 the US State Department had indicated to Japan that it might ‘reconsider its policy of according to Japanese nationals on its territory the most liberal treatment consistent with the national safety’ if the Japanese did not provide reassurances that they would apply the principles of the Geneva Convention in their treatment of American nationals. 66 It is possible, for instance, that implicit forces of reciprocity may have accounted for the comparatively larger number of repatriations of American and Canadian nationals from Japanese-occupied territories during the conflict.
Within the camps themselves, appeals were frequently made by elected internee representatives to the Japanese to abide by the provisions of the 1929 Geneva Convention. Indeed, the application of international law within camp settings often became a contentious point of discussion between the captive civilians and local Japanese authorities. At Stanley, British, American, and Dutch camp representatives frequently cited the Geneva Convention’s clauses in discussions with Japanese camp officials, especially when attempting to secure better conditions for their compatriots.
67
As the interned Hong Kong colonial secretary Franklin Gimson beseeched the Japanese in May 1942: The fact remains, however, that in the present circumstances internees in Stanley Camp are not even being accorded many of the rights granted to prisoners of war by the Geneva Convention of 1929 which the Imperial Japanese Government has announced its intention of observing … I venture to suggest therefore that it would be to our mutual advantage if the Japanese Authorities would make arrangements to discuss this question with a view to formulating an agreement covering the status and treatment of civilian internees.
68
The Stanley internees, however, were often cautious in their attempts at petitioning the Japanese for better treatment within the camp, especially when citing certain clauses of the Geneva Convention to their captors. Medical opinion at Stanley had first held, for instance, that it was impossible for Europeans to digest more than eight ounces of rice per day without adverse effects on their health. Excessive rice consumption, as several camp doctors had initially believed, resulted in a host of undesirable physical disorders, such as ‘enteritis, pseudo-dysentery, extreme flatulence and other gastro-intestinal disturbances’.
69
Although this view was to change as camp rations began to deteriorate in quantity, the internees were initially reluctant to petition the Japanese for rations equivalent to those specified in the 1929 Geneva Convention for POWs. John Stericker explained the underlying rationale as follows: Our chief grouse against the Geneva Convention was that it had never allowed for any war being fought with Orientals. For instance, with regard to food, Clause 11 stipulates: ‘The food ration of prisoners of war shall be equivalent in quantity and quality to that of the depot troops’. This was a clause that we always hesitated to quote. We were sure that we were getting less food than the local Japanese troops, but too much insistence on this point might have landed us with a diet of rice, seaweed, sea slugs, cuttlefish, and other Japanese delicacies, so we considered we were probably better off as we were, in spite of everything.
70
Many Japanese commandants on the ground appear to have adopted the dismissive view that the Geneva Convention was of little consequence to the conquerors and that the primary duty of the Japanese was to their own systems of local and military law. The American representative William P. Hunt observed that the Stanley internees had asserted to their captors on numerous occasions that the principles of the Geneva Convention should also be applied to them. However, he noted, the Japanese frequently ‘adopted a negative or indifferent attitude on the subject’. One Japanese camp official named Maejima, he recalled, had even remarked to the internees that ‘he was not certain whether the Convention did govern [them]’. 71 As the colonial secretary Franklin Gimson eventually concluded about his dealings with his captors, ‘the Japanese scorned any reference to international law and stressed Japanese law alone operated. I found appeals to the law of humanity occasionally met with success.’ 72 He later lamented that ‘I made many endeavours to induce the Japanese to give us treatment in accordance with the terms of the Prisoners of War Convention of 1926 [sic] but all these efforts proved abortive.’ 73 The Stanley medical doctor Kenneth Uttley similarly felt that the Japanese camp officials ‘say that they only use international law when it suits them, otherwise it does not exist so far as they are concerned’. 74
While Japanese officials often adopted the view that scrupulous attention to the clauses of international law was unnecessary, many of them were also unacquainted with the specific details of various legal protocols. One study indicates that, in 1941, non-commissioned officers at the Japanese naval academy merely received an hour of instruction on international law during their course of study. 75 Thus, if Japanese NCOs were provided with only rudimentary instruction on the statutes of international law, it was likely that the ordinary Japanese soldier or civilian administrator had even less knowledge of the subject in general. Studies have suggested that some Japanese officials in positions of authority on the ground were completely unaware that the 1929 Geneva Convention existed in the first place. 76
V. Japanese Contraventions of International Law from Mid-1943
One measure of the changing fortunes of the war was the gradual evolution of Japanese behaviour towards their prisoners. While civilian internees in British Asia were treated with some restraint during the early months of the conflict, this comparatively benign approach adopted by the Japanese began to change in mid-1943. Indeed, the limits of Japanese temperance came to be increasingly tested when conditions began to deteriorate in their occupied territories. By the spring of 1943 the rapid succession of Japanese victories in the Pacific was over. The tide of conflict, too, was slowly beginning to turn against Japan. As Allied forces began to exert a greater stranglehold on Japanese seaborne trade, imports of goods became increasingly restricted. Food supplies for local populations thus became scarcer and scarcer. Acts of lawlessness and hostility to the Japanese also began increasing in number. In Malaya the British finally began a campaign to re-infiltrate the territory. Anti-Japanese propaganda became increasingly widespread, while rumours abounded of the imminent arrival of Allied forces. Thus, as their occupied territories became increasingly restive, the Japanese became increasingly crippled by paranoia and a deep-rooted fear of possible insurgencies.
77
A Stanley internee observed the changes in Japanese behaviour within the camp as follows: Probably, as a result of the war situation, the Japanese and guards were highly irritable. Face slappings became frequent. Sometimes people were beaten up unmercifully for most trivial offences. During air raids, which were now becoming more frequent, the guards usually lost their heads.
78
As a result of these developments, the Japanese became increasingly convinced that their Allied prisoners could exert undesirable or corrosive influences on the local populations and disrupt their successful prosecution of war. There was also a growing fear on the part of the Japanese that their captives could potentially trigger political agitation or provoke social disorder within their occupied territories. Some Japanese officials even became convinced that acts of sabotage were being secretly hatched by the former colonial masters of these territories. Their suspicions accordingly fell on various key British civilians within the internment camps. These included men who had been the leading political and financial lights of these territories before the war and had an array of contacts with the local peoples, engineers within their ranks with relevant technical abilities and know-how, and colonial officials who could potentially foment anti-Japanese propaganda or issue insurrectionary directives to the local populations. 79 During the conflict, these civilians had in fact regularly engaged in various underground activities involving contacts outside the camps, often in an attempt to procure basic necessities such as food, money, and medicines. These clandestine networks were often interpreted by the Japanese as forms of potentially incendiary activity, with eventual adverse repercussions for the internees.
In the middle of 1943 the Kempeitai units in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Borneo began to strike back at all forms of local resistance (both real and imaginary) with considerable determination and precision. Although vigilance was taken by the majority of internees involved in clandestine communications with the outer world, the continued success of the undertakings depended to a critical extent on caution, stealth, and secrecy. However, some individuals were careless or indiscreet in their operations, and it required only a few chance discoveries on the part of the Japanese to expose various existing underground schemes. 80
Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong
In June 1943 the Kempeitai began detaining several internees and POWs in Hong Kong who had been secretly communicating with the British Army Aid Group (an intelligence organization based in Free China) or who had operated clandestine wireless sets in confinement. 81 Various forms of corporal punishment were meted out to these offenders. At Stanley the former defence secretary J.A. Fraser was suspected by the Japanese of being the ringleader of various clandestine activities. He was subsequently interrogated about the wireless news obtained within the camp’s precincts and the receipt of secret communications from so-called ‘spies’ in China. 82 In October 1943 Fraser, Walter Scott (the assistant commissioner of police), and five other internees who had been involved in secret wireless operations were removed by van from the Stanley jail and executed on Stanley beach. 83 At Stanley subsequent punishments meted out to the captive civilians included ‘the suspension at various times of the receipt of all private parcels from friends and relatives in town and the banning of all public meetings, lectures and concerts over certain periods’. 84
Changi Internment Camp in Singapore
A similar crackdown occurred in Singapore after a unit of Force 136 (comprising members of the Royal Australian Navy) staged an audacious commando raid on Singapore harbour on 27 September 1943. The raid resulted in the sinking of seven Japanese ships and damage to several other vessels. 85 On 10 October 1943 the Kempeitai abruptly raided the Changi camp and arrested various individuals who they believed had supplied crucial information to the commandos. The internees were forced to remain in the sun without food for the entire day while the Japanese carried out searches for radio transmitters and other incriminating materials. Between the morning of that notorious ‘Double Tenth’ incident and the early months of 1944, some 57 civilians were detained by the Japanese and questioned at various interrogation centres in the city. Many of them had held high ranks in the pre-war colonial administration or had worked outside the camp for brief periods. They included Robert Scott, previously the director of information; J. Leonard Wilson, the bishop of Singapore; Hugh Fraser, the acting colonial secretary; J.S. Long, an assistant police commissioner; and Norman Coulson, a water engineer with the Public Works Department. 86
According to a commission appointed by the British in August 1945 to collate evidence on the Double Tenth incident, it became evident over the course of the interrogations that the Japanese were trying to establish that there was a spy organization in Changi Prison which received and transmitted by radio-telephony, which had established contacts in the town for the purpose of sabotage and stirring up anti-Japanese feeling, and which collected money from outside for this purpose.
87
These allegations were untrue, although clandestine wireless sets were operated by the internees for the reception of news broadcasts. Money, too, had been secretly obtained from outside sources for the purpose of supplementing camp rations. But the Japanese were nevertheless convinced that only the British internees had the necessary skills (and technical know-how) for the planning and execution of that audacious harbour attack. 88 During their clampdown on Changi, the Japanese confiscated about $209,000 in cash from their captives. About $40,000, too, was discovered on the person of Bishop Wilson. 89 The bishop was thus suspected of financing ‘a large spying organization throughout Malaya’ under the cover of church work. 90
As in Hong Kong, similar forms of severe retribution were meted out to the British internees who had been arrested in Singapore. The men were detained in cramped cells where the lavatories supplied the only available drinking water. They were also denied food, privacy, and medical assistance, and were subjected to extreme forms of physical and mental torture. 91 Bishop Wilson was ‘tied face downwards on a table and flogged with ropes receiving more than 200 strokes from six of the guards working in relays’, and was reduced to a state of semi-consciousness for three days. 92 Three women were also arrested by the Japanese and subjected to physical iniquities and considerable mental anguish. 93 Fifteen men eventually died under questioning, including Fraser and Coulson, while J.S. Long was executed. Those who survived their ordeals and eventually returned to Changi were ‘almost unrecognisable’ to their friends. 94
Meanwhile, several privileges and concessions at Changi were promptly curtailed by the Japanese. Activities such as concerts, plays, talks, lectures, classes, and study groups were suspended, while meetings between husbands and wives were discontinued. 95 The quantity of camp rations was also drastically reduced during this period, with a corresponding increase in draconian regulations and the number of roll calls. 96 ‘After the double tenth’, recalled Tyler Thompson, ‘the atmosphere was altogether changed: our sense of comparative internal freedom was shattered completely.’ 97 It was not until the middle of 1944 that the Japanese began to relax these restrictions. But Hobart B. Amstutz nevertheless felt that ‘from that day onward a black pall hung over our camp – we never knew when we might be searched again’. 98
Lintang Internment Camp in Sarawak
A similar raid occurred at the Lintang camp in June 1944, when a number of leading internees (including the chief secretary, Le Gros Clark) were arrested by the Japanese. In the months leading up to the crackdown, a group of civilians desperate for news from the outer world had contacted some British POWs who left the camp daily on working parties. The latter eventually established contact with a Chinese individual named Herbert Dhing, who began supplying copies of a Japanese propaganda newspaper to the internees. However, precautionary measures were slack and the man was eventually caught in communication with a POW intermediary. Although a few internees were permitted to return to the camp after a period of questioning, many offenders were charged and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment for ‘plotting against the Japanese’. In November 1944 Le Gros Clark and four other internees were transported by plane to Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu), purportedly for further investigation into the newspaper affair. 99 They were eventually removed from Jesselton to Keningau and shot by the Japanese upon the approach of liberating Allied troops in July 1945. It was rumoured among the internees that the men were executed as the Japanese had feared that they could escape from custody and supply valuable information to the Allied forces. 100
These direct Japanese contraventions of the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention indicate that restraints often broke down within the context of anti-guerrilla operations. Breaches of the Convention also frequently occurred when detaining powers experienced increasing military pressure and became particularly infuriated by – or paranoid about – potentially subversive activities.
101
As the chief of the Singapore Kempeitai (Sumida Haruzo) had explained to an Allied interrogator after the war, the local army command ‘had been pressing him for months to clean up Singapore, to root out the anti-Japanese feeling, to get rid of the lack of cooperation and the sabotage’.
102
Brutality against partisans is often employed as a tool by armed forces to mask internal flaws or weaknesses and to assert dominance in the face of growing threat. The British themselves, for instance, acted harshly in their attempts at quelling the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916, when their own troops were overextended against German forces in Europe during the First World War.
103
It is plausible that local Japanese authorities were influenced by the perception that guerrillas deserved scant protection from the law, and that the civilians suspected of supporting them should be punished.
104
The 21 Japanese defendants who were interrogated at the ‘Double Tenth trial’ after the war asserted that their actions did not infringe international law as it was well within their ‘natural rights’ to ‘take steps to suppress movement of enemy elements’ and to punish those who had engaged in anti-Japanese activities.
105
As the closing speech of the Japanese defence counsel had averred: The compelling of inhabitants of the occupied area to disclose information does not constitute a contravention of international law in war. … When an inhabitant of occupied territory is found to be carrying on espionage and other hostile activities, he can be at any time arrested and punished … When such activities are suspected it is only natural that the suspects are rounded up, questioned and detained. There is no regulation to the contrary, and it stands to reason that this is a natural course.
106
VI. Conclusion
The evidence suggests that conditional recognition was given by the Japanese to the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention on Internees (as well as to the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs on the basis of reciprocal application) up to mid-1943. Although the Japanese were not formally obliged to adhere to both conventions, they nevertheless demonstrated some engagement with the spirit that governed these conventions during the early months of the conflict. As far as their treatment of captured civilians in British Asia was concerned, the Japanese did in fact nominally observe a number of legal statutes. These included the clauses in the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention governing the exclusion of internees from mandatory labour, as well as the provision of separate and healthy sites of internment for these individuals. 107
This article thus contends that the Japanese did not entirely ignore certain principles of international law during the early months of the conflict. As far as resulting incarceration policies were concerned, some comparatively favourable early conditions were granted to both captive civilians and Allied officers in British Asia (especially in contrast to rank-and-file POWs). The exemption of both civilian internees and officers from gruelling manual labour, in particular, appears to have exerted a positive impact on their eventual survival rates. Tacit forces of reciprocity – chiefly the fact that large numbers of civilians of Japanese descent had been detained on American and Canadian soil – may also have acted to moderate the Japanese treatment of these nationalities. It should nevertheless be emphasized that there were frequent limits to the Japanese observance of international law, even during the initial phase of captivity. Across British Asia, for instance, the internees received mail and relief supplies on an irregular basis and were frequently denied access to Red Cross representatives. There was also a tendency on the part of the Japanese to pay only token attention to any international legal principles that conflicted with their own wartime priorities or expediencies.
As the war progressed and as the Japanese military position in British Asia became progressively weaker, there was an increasing dichotomy between the statutes of the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention and actual Japanese behaviour on the ground. By the middle of 1943 the comparative restraint displayed by the Japanese towards civilian internees had been whittled down considerably. In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Borneo, internees suspected of subversive activities were subjected to extreme tortures and other forms of severe physical inquisition (a few were even executed by their captors). Direct Japanese contraventions of the principles of international law became commonplace during the latter phase of the conflict. They suggest that restraints often broke down under pressure, especially when detaining powers felt increasingly threatened by insurrectionary activity. But if not for the conditionally moderate perspective taken by the Japanese towards enemy civilians in British Asia, internment conditions could well have been more severe during the early months of the conflict.
The principles of the 1934 Tokyo Draft Convention – which were assembled under the auspices of the Japanese themselves – and related statutes of the 1929 Geneva Convention thus appear to have exerted a partially restraining impact on the early Japanese treatment of captured enemy civilians in British Asia during the Second World War. This paper accordingly has broader historiographical implications in terms of how the war in the East should be re-evaluated. It advances the emerging notion in recent historiography on the subject, chiefly that the Japanese did not necessarily enforce systematic or monolithic policies of brutality within their holding camps from the earliest days of their takeover. Indeed, Japanese treatment of civilian captives across British Asia was often a function of time and circumstance. As this article suggests, Japanese wartime behaviour was also partially tempered by the existing legal frameworks of the period, especially during the early months of captivity.
Footnotes
Funding
This research was supported by the Tunku Abdul Rahman Centenary Fund at St Catharine’s College Cambridge, the International History Department at the London School of Economics, Wolfson College Cambridge, the Institute of Historical Research, the Smuts Memorial Fund, the Holland Rose Fund, and the Sir John Plumb Charitable Trust.