What were the camps like?
There were more than 140,000 white prisoners in Japanese prisoner of war camps. Of these, one in three died from starvation, work, punishments or from diseases for which there were no medicines to treat.
Prisoners of the Japanese found themselves in camps in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and other Japanese-occupied countries.
Prisoner of war camps in Japan housed both capture military personnel and civilians who had been in the East before the outbreak of war.
The terms of the Geneva Convention were ignored by the Japanese who made up rules and inflicted punishments at the whim of the Camp Commandant.