editorial on Ethiopian castration of Italian prisoners of war

[SplitDik (imported)]

So far, I have heard only the stories of some people who are so old that their recolections might not be that accurate, but then again, there was clearly no limit to the cruelty the Japanese showed, and their strong hatred for non-Japanese, and especially tall white men, leads me to believe that it is entirely possible, even probable.

You're talking about whether it is generally known, and I agree that a lot gets forgotten. But I'm talking about people here (like myself) who have searched literature for castration. And there is a difference compared to Rwanda -- this was about Americans and furthermore American soldiers. You can be sure that every POW that survived was thoroughly medically reviewed, with detailed reports of what went on in the camps.

I've also generally been interested in the WWII Pacific history because my dad's father served there in Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands and Phillipines.

Anyway, I'm not talking about general awareness of the situation, I'm talking about how years of doing searches for terms like "POW castration" haven't turned up anything. Where castration is mentioned is as part of killing someone, like castration of Chinese in Nanking, or like mentioned by others above castration after the fact to mutilate the already dead Americans.

I admit it is possible that it was recorded but then covered up, but because they were preparing for war crimes tribunals I don't think they would have hidden any recorded attrocities.

[hazbalz (imported)]

I interviewed several former POW's for an article I wrote in the 1980's and castration of POW's was not the norm. I heard many stories of torture, brutal treatment and starvation but nothing about castration. One man did tell me of a fellow prisoner who developed a nasty infection on his penis and the camp doctor, who was Australian, had no choice but to amputate as they had no antibiotics. Another story I heard was the Brits used Gurkas in the Burma theatre and when Gurkas took Japanese prisoners they immediately castrated them. The Brits went crazy over this and had to instruct the Gurkas not to castrate their prisoners. They didn't always listen, though.