62 pages • 2 hours read
Hampton SidesGhost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The Palawan Massacre and the Cabanatuan POW Camp Raid
Today, Palawan Island is a popular vacation spot in the Philippines. During World War II, however, the Japanese army controlled the area and used it to house American POWs outside of Puerto Princesa. The Palawan Massacre took place on December 14, 1944. The Allied advances in the Asia-Pacific theater evidently prompted the Japanese troops to kill the POWs en masse. In total, Japanese soldiers killed 139 American POWs housed in Camp 10-A. Eleven of the prisoners managed to survive and escape to safety. As the news of this event made it to the American side, it inspired the successful Cabanatuan POW camp raid on January 30, 1945, along with several other rescue missions, such as the raid on Los Baños on February 23, 1945.
In the broader context of World War II, the Americans retreated from the Philippines in March-April 1942 following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s order to prioritize the European theater of war. At the height of their imperial expansion, the Japanese controlled, fully or in part, such countries as Korea, China’s Manchuria, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), and the Philippines. With time, however, General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz successfully used the island-hopping method by targeting the poorly-defended Japanese-occupied islands and cutting off Japanese supplies rather than maintaining a continuous front, as would be the case in a land war. General MacArthur returned to the Philippines and won the Battle of Leyte in October 1944. Another significant event was the Battle of Luzon, which began on January 9, 1945. These battles were part of a larger Philippine Campaign that eventually resulted in the expulsion of the Japanese imperial army from the area in August 1945 as Japan surrendered.
In light of the American advances, General Tomoyuki Yamashita‘s 14th Area Army decided to exterminate the remaining POWs in Palawan. Some of these prisoners were transferred from the Cabanatuan POW camp—the focus of Ghost Soldiers. On December 14, air raids sounded, and the prisoners moved into primitive air raid shelters (trenches covered with logs) as the Japanese set them on fire with aviation fuel. Those who attempted to flee were gunned down or bayonetted. Eleven men successfully escaped by climbing over a cliff, with some hiding in a small natural tunnel in the cliff wall or coral reef pockets. They managed to swim to safety, with some being rescued by Filipino fishermen and guerillas.
Certain surviving POWs were evacuated to the American army stationed in Morotai in Indonesia (Dutch East Indies)—an important island for MacArthur’s advance. The US Army intelligence debriefed survivors like Private First Class, Eugene Nielsen, who retold the horrors witnessed at Palawan, in early January 1945. This information even made its way to the Cabanatuan POW camp. It was fear for the lives of the Cabanatuan POWs that prompted the US Rangers’ and Filipino guerillas’ raid on the camp on January 30, 1945.
Legal Context: World War II POWs and War Crime Trials in Asia
Even though wars are extremely violent and usually large-scale events, they have rules of conduct. Some of their rules are outlined in the Geneva Convention. The latter is a series of agreements and amendments signed between 1864 and 1949 as well as in 1977. The purpose of these agreements is to improve the conditions of those involved in armed conflicts, including the belligerents and civilians. Specifically relevant here is the Convention Relating to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, signed in 1929 with the 1907 Hague Convention acting as a precedent. These agreements bind their signatories to treat POWs in a humane way by following specific rules. Japan was a signatory of the 1929 agreement but did not ratify it. However, during World War II, Japan announced that it would follow the rules of war yet violated them repeatedly. In general, World War II featured war crimes against prisoners of war and other types of crimes.
For this reason, the Allied victors held the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946) in Europe, focused on Nazi Germany, and the International Military Tribunal (1946-1948), focused on Japan in Tokyo. The Philippine War Crimes Commission operated in Manila as a separate entity and investigated such crimes in the Philippines. One of the greatest differences between the European and the Japanese counterparts was the fact that Nazi Germany subscribed to a specific ideology focused on perceived racial superiority. In contrast, the Japanese were imperialist and militarist during World War II but lacked such an ideological counterpart, nor did they have such ideological leaders as Adolf Hitler.
The Allies used Class A, Class B, and Class C categories for war crimes. Planning wars of aggression—a crime against peace—received the Class A designation. Class B pertained to “conventional” types of war crimes that violated the laws of war. The extrajudicial killing of POWs fits into this category. Crimes against humanity were part of Class C war crimes at the higher levels of command and included murder, persecution on racial grounds, extermination, and other types of cruel acts. In practice, Classes B and C often overlapped.
General Masaharu Homma, ultimately responsible for the Bataan Death March, was designated as a Class C war criminal on 48 counts. The Bataan Death March took place in early April 1942, with the Japanese victors of the Battle of Bataan marching tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers and civilian POWs from the Saysain Point in Bataan to Camp O’Donnell, for approximately 65 miles. The march resulted in the deaths of thousands of POWs from starvation, the elements, and killing.
However, Homma’s case, along with the likes of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, was exceptional. The US military tried Homma and Yamashita in Manila directly, hastily, and independently of the rest of the International Military Tribunal. Homma pled not guilty and argued that he was unaware of the atrocities taking place under his leadership. In this book, Hampton Sides makes a convincing case that Homma’s argument may have been authentic. He describes Homma as an Anglophile whose “intentions toward his new prisoners seemed compassionate” (81). The author attributes the prisoner abuse during the Bataan Death March to Homma delegating tasks to others, incompetence, and inability to adjust the schedule accounting for the greater numbers and poor health status of the POWs, as well as the individual cruelty and violence of the Japanese soldiers. In his view, the Bataan Death March was not a systematically-organized atrocity. Nonetheless, the American trial found Homma guilty as the commander in charge and ultimately executed him by firing squad in early 1946. The hasty nature of this procedure has been considered controversial by some modern historians and commentators, such as John Dower and George Kennan. Overall, the World War II war crimes trials raise broader questions of justice for the POWs and other victims that have no simple answers.
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