Australian Pows Essay

Many were innocent children, women and men approximately 120,000, all held in Internment Camps across the country. Children and adults had to stand in line for many things, including eating and going to the bathroom and spent 4 years incarcerated surrounded by barbed wire.

World War two displaced many Japanese and American POWs. Prisoners in camps were separated from the outside world and were made to feel invisible. Louie Zamperini was an American soldier who was stranded and felt invisible in many Japanese prisoner of war camps. He missed his home and he felt like nobody could see him. MIne Okubo was a Japanese-American citizen that lived in America and she did nothing wrong.

World War One began on the 28th of July 1914, triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. This was the first major large scale war. It had many theatres of war, including: The Western Front, The Eastern Front, Gallipoli and The War at Sea. Britain declared war on 4 August 1914, and Australia’s Prime Minister Joseph Cook pledged our full support. The outbreak of war was greeted with much enthusiasm in Australia and our first taste of action was when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force took over German New Guinea at Toma on 17 of September 1914, but the more significant battles involving Australians were Gallipoli, The Western Front and The War at Sea The Australian troops had a role in most battles of World War One, however Australia’s most

The Japanese soldiers had no sense of remorse or sorrow for the prisoners instead they pushed them to their breaking point. Many prisoners collapsed which proved fatal because if you fell behind you became a practice dummy for the Japanese to sharpen their bayonet skills and techniques of killing on you. On one occasion, a prisoner was falling behind in the rear so tanks that followed lined themselves up to run over the victim and squish him into the pavement to make it look as if he were from a cartoon. Since the Japanese could

War can be loud and visible or quiet and remote. It affects the individual and entire societies, the soldiers, and the civilians. Both U.S. prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese-Americans citizens in the Unites States during WWII undergo efforts to make them “invisible.” Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken hero, Louie Zamperini, like so many other POW’s, is imprisoned, beaten, and denied basic human rights in POW camps throughout Japan. Miné

War can be loud and visible or quiet and remote. It affects the individual and entire societies, the soldier, and the civilian. Both U.S. prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese-American citizens in the United States during WWII undergo efforts to make them “invisible.” Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken hero, Louie Zamperini, like so many other POWs, is imprisoned, beaten, and denied basic human rights in POW camps throughout Japan. Miné Okubo, a U.S. citizen by birth, is removed from society and interned in a “protective custody” camp for Japanese-American citizens. She is one of the many Japanese-Americans who were interned for the duration of the war. Louie Zamperini, as a POW in Japan, and Miné Okubo, as a Japanese-American Internee both experience efforts to make them “invisible” through dehumanization and isolation in the camps of WWII, and both resist these efforts.

Another aspect of wartime Australia that history likes to forget is the emergence of an intense Anti-German movement. In 1914, within a week of the Declaration of War, all German-Australian citizens were declared ‘enemy aliens’ and required by law to report to government offices to report their residential addresses (NSW Migration Heritage Centre 2011). By February 1915, the definition of ‘enemy alien’ came to include those born in Australia, but with parents or grandparents of German or Austrian decent. Due to the number of citizens now classified as ‘enemy aliens’, it became impossible to intern all of them, and the policy of selective internment was aimed at leaders of the German Australian community, including high ranking officials of

The United States put Japanese people in camps, stealing their rights, and placed them in inhumane facilities that no human being should be forced to withstand.

During World War II, thousands of POWs experienced isolation and dehumanization in an Japanesethe attemptefforts of the Japanese to make them feel invisible. In Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, American POW and former Olympic runner Louis “Louie” Zamperini rwas just one of the many soldiers who was dehumanized while in Japanese

The topic of POW's is a fascinating one that can be dealt with in various ways. First, one can gain information from primary sources from diaries and journals kept by POWs or their captors and guards. Second, there are secondary sources that can give general overviews of what treatment the POWs received. Another interesting thing in learning about POWs is to compare how the prisoners were supposed to be treated (in accordance with international law) and how they were actually treated. Another interesting viewpoint you can look at is to compare how countries treated prisoners differently, and subsequently, their reasoning to justify the treatment. The goal of the

The great majority of Australian prisoners were taken captive by the Japanese in the Second World War, it is their stories that are the most well known. Over 22,000 Australians became prisoners of war of the Japanese in southeast Asia.

The camps that the Japanese-Americans were taken to had the worse conditions imaginable. “More than 120,000 Americans of Japanese Ancestry were incarcerated in 10 camps scattered throughout the Western United States during World War II” (Children of the Camps Project 1). Detainees spent many years in these camps. They were locked behind barbed wire fences, and armed guards patrolled the camps. The conditions were comparable to the Jewish camps in Eastern Europe. Entire families lived in quarters that were poorly constructed and horribly cramped. These areas were also unbearably cramped and unclean. There was also no hot water for dishes or showers in the living quarters. In addition, lice was a huge problem in the internment camps. These camps and the laws that our government passed against the Japanese community were atrocious. The United States experienced a terrible tragedy when Pearl Harbor was attacked. However, the American government had no right to make these innocent Americans prisoners of war. During the 1940s and 1950s the Japanese

During world war two, countries on both sides committed war crimes that shocked both the people involved, and the globe. From 1937 through to 1945, the Japanese justified their treatment of the Australian prisoners of war at the Burma railway with three things. The Japanese believed that their bushido code allowed them to treat the Australian this way, their ethics was one of complete brutality and hardship, and the Japanese soldiers were being fed false propaganda that showed a dehumanized view of the Australians. These three statements demonstrate that the Japanese atrocities committed at Burma, were, in the eyes of the Japanese, fair and just.

     These camps were set up along railroad lines so that the prisoners would be conveniently close to their destination. Unfortunately, many prisoners didn't even survive the train ride to the camps. Herded like cattle, exhaustion, disease, and starvation ended the long treacherous journey for many of the prisoners. On the trains, Jews were starved of food and water for days. Nearly 8% of the people did not even survive the ride to the camps. (Nyiszli, 37)

During world war two, the Imperial Japanese army forced an estimated 200,000 women into sexual slavery. This is just one of the many atrocities committed by Japan during world war two. Even though many say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inhumane, the US was completely justified because the future casualties were minimized and Japan and its allies committed atrocious war crimes.