Rights as a POW

"The purpose of this booklet is to point out some of your rights as a prisoner of war. Knowing them may help to make the going a little less tough and humiliating if you are ever unlucky enough to be captured by the enemy."

If You Should Be Captured, These Are Your Rights - War Department Pamphlet No. 21-7 - May 1944 (Lone Sentry)

 

very intresting.

 

Yes interesting, but as a practical matter, you only had the rights they allowed you to have.

 

Thanks for posting this... I sometimes wondered what exactly they were allowed to do

 

While that is true, the European powers generally observed them as per the western allies but not concerning the Soviets. The Japanese hadn't ratified the Geneva POW rights, they had signed them, but not ratified them. So even though they "said" they were going to observe those POW rights after the global outrage directed at them after the "Bataan Death March", they did so more in the breach than the application.

But you are correct, as a POW you pretty much were at the mercy (or not) of your captors. Geneva Conventions or no.

 

I used to hear years ago that Germans didn't really treat Western Allied POW's that well however in "Ctizen Soldier" Stephen Ambrose states that most US POW's he talked to thought that more or less the Germans treated them about as well as they could. The caveat being that later in the war the German Civillian population went hungry alot themselves so I guess if some of our POW's went hungry in late 1944,early '45 it would in actuallity be awful hard to blame the Germans . At least that's what I got from it.

 

I very much doubt Most of these regulations were enforced. Many of these rights would have been thrown out so to speak and i agree with belasar. You would have been treated however well the enemy thought fit. I dont think the Japanese were so polite to our soldiers. Look at the Thai burma railway for example.

On another thought. I dont think the likes of the allies treated their POW's by the text book either.

 

Generally the level of comfort the guards and POW's would have were the same as a result of various external factors. Infact, the POW's were at times better off than the guards because of aid packages from organizations like the Red Cross.

 

I think it should be remembered that what each nation’s POWs received was based on what their own military was getting in its garrison rations. Here in America that meant that the POWs of the Axis powers received our "A" or garrison ration the same as our troops stationed behind the lines or even on American soil. This was a ration consisting of about 70% fresh meat, vegetables, fruit, and dairy products along with fresh baked bread. Even the civilian populace around the camps were "rationed" on many of those items, so the POWs ate better than American civilians in some instances.

The same was true for the western allies held by German and to a lesser degree by the Italians. The POWs in their care were, by convention rule to be supplied with the same quality and quantity of food stuffs as their own military at a garrison level. Of course as the war went on, that level deteriorated, but they still didn’t go as hungry as the European civilian population. And as mentioned previously the Germans were pretty decent about allowing Red Cross packages into the camps as well.

While the Japanese were notorious for their "not following" the Geneva Conventions regarding POWs, it should be remembered that even their own troops were underfed as compared to their non-Asiatic foes, even if given the full ration I wonder how much the allied POWs would have appreciated it. The standard Daily Japanese Garrison ration was, in the best of circumstances;

Japanese Armed Forces Rations (Normal/Fresh Foods)

RATION COMPONENT: OUNCES/DAY
Rice or Rice with Barley 28.0
Fresh Meat or Fish 7.4
Fresh Vegetables 21.2
Pickled Radish 2.1
Shoyu Sauce 1.7
Bean Paste 2.6
Salt 0.5
Sugar 1.0
Tea (Generally Green Tea) 0.2

Of course the allied POWs got nothing remotely like even that meager diet, they really were starved and abused quite openly.

 

Does anyone know where to find out how the American repatriated POWs in Europe were handled upon return to control? Were they debriefed by MI or just handed to the nearest medical or replacement units? Any standard procedures written down? Would the records of the POW debriefs be kept somewhere today? In MI Unit records or somewhere else?

 

Thank you for the interesting post - this is something I've never seen before.

 

FYI The NARA site is now making American POW Escape and Evasion reports online. Only 2,953 there so far but it's a start.

NARAtions » World War II Escape and Evasion Reports are now available online

National Archives of the United States - ARC Search Results: Details

 

I am currently reading about the survivors of the USS Houston, and of course there is much discussion about the treatment of the POWs by the Japanese and the reasons why. As has been mentioned, the Japanese did not ratify the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War and according to the author, James Hornfischer, the Imperial Army pushed for it because they reckoned there would not be any "reciprocal benefits" because the Japanese soldiers following the Code of Bushido did not become prisoners.

Interesting to see the War Department Pamphlet No. 21-7!

I always found it a bit bizarre that nations go out and try to kill each other in any manner possible then expect the other side to follow civilized conventions in the handling of prisoners of war. I mean, don't get me wrong, I thank God for it, I want them to be treated humanely, but it's just a strange concept to me that we* will shoot, bomb, use flame throwers, poison gas and any other weapon to kill and maim but if that doesn't work and we don't successfully get killed or kill the enemy then we expect civilized behavior for those captured. It's just so contradictory. Maybe we should just come up with a more civilized way of workng out those differences to begin with.

*I mean the collective we - humanity.

 

Just look at the way over the last 100 years the standard infantry rifle round has been steadily designed more and more to just wound and maim rather than kill - although primarily for logistical, morale and economic reasons it makes it hard to make that break between thinking of the treatment of fighting enemy soldiers and of those same men as POWs.

The thing to understand is that the majority of the rules of war governing treatment of POWs are not fundamentally based on any humanitarian reasoning, although many claim to be, but so that enemy soldiers, especially when on ideological shaky ground, are more likely to surrender rather than fight to the end - it makes military sense to treat captured enemy soldiers as well as possible.

If the rules were designed to be primarily humanitarian, as you say we would find other ways to wage war.

to digress slightly - there was an early episode of I believe Star Trek, where two planets/nations were at war but they had decided to not actually fight it, leaving the casualties to be decided by a computer simulation - whereupon the 'nominated' casualties voluntarily went to a sort of gas chamber. The theory was that there was no destruction or suffering, and no-one had to fight, but the issues between the countries could still be solved. interesting albeit extreme concept that I think illustrates some of the problems faced with the idea of 'humanitarian' warfare...

 

Ah, silly me, thinking that we might treat people well, or expect the same, for humanitarian reasons. But - looking at it from that perspective it does make more sense. And I suppose, as hard as it is for me to put it into words, and as unacceptable as it is to me for anyone to treat another human being inhumanely, the attitude of the Imperial Army made sense from their point of view. Since they intended to fight to the death, and with their belief that those who surrendered were "worse than worthless," why would they care about the treatment of prisoners?

Maybe just some gigantic paintball war, where the worst you get are bruises and bruised egos and bad hair? With the Star Trek episode, did the people nominated as casualties actually go to a gas chamber? That would be pretty unpalatable to those chosen, although I do appeciate how they would have been just as randomly chosen to die by the computer simulation as those who die in actual combat.

 

I can't remember the exact actual details - I think it wasn't actually a 'gas chamber' but with end result basically the same and yes they did all go willingly - with the result that the Enterprise crew thought it 'barbaric' and tried to stop them despite their rules about not interfering too much (and probably was a minor romance thrown in) - I'm not a Trekkie or whatever you call them, but for some reason that episode always stuck in my mind - fabulous albeit disturbing way of examining the paradoxes between the way we do things, the way they were done and the way they theoretically could be done.

Obviously with the IJA it was more of a 'Religious' kind of issue that overrided the obvious advantages of treating prisoners well, but they also would have had to change a lot of their military and civil structure significantly to be able to deal with POW's better, so even if the will had been there it wouldn't have been as easy as just 'deciding'. what I always found harder to understand is that once they decided to use POWs as slave labour, they didn't treat them a little better so they could perform better, although obviously they didn't want to have to devote the resources needed to guard a strong, healthy force of men.

 

Makes as much sense as actual warfare, I guess, without, as you said, all of the destruction.

Sort of reminded me of that story, The Lottery (Shirley Jackson), where someone is sacrificed for the good of the town and everyone thinks it's great, except the one chosen. This and the Trek episode just kind of highlight the absurdity of it all, we willingly march off to war, but when we take a more "civilized" approach it seems barbaric (I believe Jackson took a great deal of criticism for her story).

I'm not a Trekkie either...

 

Many thanks Lou - I've been trying to find that episode reference for hours but it's hard to know what to search for I should probably watch it again now to see if it actually was as poignant as I remember reading that summary I think there were more issues than I remembered clearly.

edit - it's series one episode 23 if anyone's interested, but sometimes labelled 1/24.