Guests of the Emperor; The Secret History of Japan's Mukden POW Camp

Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Very good. xiv, [2], 147, [5] pages. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Black ink underlining noted on several text pages. Includes List of Illustrations, Acknowledgments, Introduction, Notes, Bibliography, and Index, as well chapters on The Long Hearbreak Begins; Voyage to a Frozen Hell and Deadly Camp; Man in a Cage; The Unit 731 Doctors Come to Mukden; Unit 731 Doctors Call Again and Again; The Colonel's Rules and His "Hospital"; The MKK Factory: Daily Toil, Fear, and Sabotage; Major Stanley Hankins: A Major Military Embarrassment; Escape; Red Cross Double-Crossed; Another Escape: An Ongoing Mystery; B-29s Bring Death, Hope, and Rescue; The Long Road Back; Justice in the Aftermath?; Back in Time; and Epilogue. Linda Goetz Holmes has been interviewing, writing and publishing work about World War II prisoners in the Pacific for the past 30 years. She was the first Pacific War historian appointed to the U.S. Government Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working group (IWG), under the aegis of the National Archives, tasked with locating and declassifying material about World War II crimes. The IWG presented its final report to Congress in April 2007. Her 1994 book, 4000 Bowls of Rice: A Prisoner of War Comes Home, about Allied prisoners of war forced to build infamous Burma Railway during World War II, was selected for inclusion in the John E. Taylor Collection of Military History and Intelligence and the National Archives in College Park MD. Linda Goetz Holmes reveals the truth behind the rumors and horrors of the Mukden prisoner of war camp. Like an onion, Holmes peels away the layers of secret horrors, one layer at a time. At last, we see the proof of Japanese medical experiments by the notorious Unit 731 on American prisoners at Mukden, the largest fixed POW camp in the Empire. She carefully documents the use of germ warfare experiments upon the men and the endless brutality and torture of the prisoners by Japanese guards and Japanese nationals. The full story of the four men who sought to escape is told in detail and Holmes traces not just their escape but their capture and the abuse of the remaining POWS in revenge for the 'loss of face' by the guards. Holmes spares no one in telling the truth about the Mukden camp, including the utter incompetence of most American officers, especially the ranking officer, Major Stanley H. Hankins. Few ever cared about the suffering of their subordinates and were willing to steal their food and medicine for their personal use. It is not a story of honor, but truth is rarely pretty. A magnificent work of research and narrative that is destined to be the definitive work about the Mukden POW camp." Roger Mansell, director, Center For Research Allied POWS Under the Japanese "It is high time that we are provided with a truthful and revealing account of that large Japanese camp for American prisoners of war who suffered not only the brutality and deprivations of most captured by the Japanese, but were also the first victims of the horrendous biological warfare experiments of the notorious Unit 731, and after liberation have been shamefully ignored and mistreated by their own government." Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of A World at Arms "Linda Holmes' informative narrative is the most complete account of the Japanese treatment of U.S. POWs at the Mukden POW camp. She skillfully weaves her extensive interviews with former POWs into a compelling tale of life and death in Japanese captivity." Edward J. Drea, author of Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and fall, 1853-1945. In World War II more than 36,000 American men, mostly military but some civilian, were thrown into Japanese POW camps and forced to labor for companies working for Japan's war effort. At Japan's largest fixed military prison camp, Mitsubishi's huge factory complex at Mukden, Manchuria, more than 2,000 American prisoners were subjected to cold, starvation, beatings, and even medical experiments while manufacturing parts for Zero fighter planes. Those lucky enough to survive the ordeal required the efforts of an OSS rescue team and a special recovery unit to make it home alive. The dramatic story that unfolded at Mukden is told in rare detail by Holmes, who spent two decades tracking down the POWs. In addition to the well-researched story of the brutal captivity and forced labor at the hands of the Japanese that these POWs endured, she shows conclusively for the first time that some Americans at Mukden were singled out for experiments by Japan's infamous biological warfare team. "Linda Holmes chronicles the epic of the horrific wartime experiences of Allied prisoners of war under the Japanese. The story of the Mukden prison camp should remind all readers of the terrible price paid by Allied prisoners during World War II: the brutal captivity, the terrible `hell ships,' the inhospitable camp conditions, the brutal treatment by the prison cadre, the slave labor they were forced to perform, and, in the special case of those POWs held in the Mukden camp, the `experiments' they were subjected to by the infamous Japanese biological warfare organization, Unit 731. Robert J. Hanyok, former federal historian and author of Eavesdropping on Hell and West Wind Clear.