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.

For about the last hundred years, most nations have agreed on who are POW's and what rights and protections all POW's must be given. All that is written into a series of treaties called the Geneva-Hague Conventions.

A conventional POW is a uniformed member of a national military who was captured by another national military outside his/her home nation during a military operation. The two nations need not be at war, but usually are in conflict.

A conventional POW must be removed from the dangers of the combat zone, must be fed and sheltered and offered medical care, and cannot be physically abused or publicly humiliated. A POW has no right of appeal of his/her detention, and is held until the conflict ends (in WWII and Korea, the US held POWs for years, until those conflicts ended). POWs can be interrogated, but not tortured (as international law defines torture).

Usually prisoners have the privilege of sending and receiving letters and packages (searched), International Red Cross inspections of POW facilities, and confirmation of POW capture is communicated to his/her home nation.