Of course, during the Pacific War of World War II, the Japanese attacked Southeast Asia, and this area was full of colonies of Western colonists, in addition to the French occupying the Indochina Peninsula, the United Kingdom occupied Singapore and Malaysia, the Netherlands occupied Indonesia, and the United States occupied the Philippines, so as soon as the war broke out in the Pacific, a large number of "foreigners" in these colonies became prisoners of the Japanese army.
Because of the lack of materials to support the war, the Japanese army set its sights on the South Sea, when the European powers were defeated by Nazi Germany, France and the Netherlands were all destroyed, and the British were also besieged and strangled by German submarines, so it can be said that no one can control the colonies in Asia. In Japan's Pacific War grand strategy, attacking the United States is only a phased target for military containment, and the capture of the Nanyang region is the fundamental purpose of the strategy.
Therefore, at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese army had already begun military operations against the Southeast Ocean at the same time, and they dispatched a large number of warships, aircraft carriers, warplanes and ground troops to launch a large-scale and all-out raid on the Nanyang region, and almost all the land rich in resources was collected in one go.
The more famous wars that broke out were the Battle of the Philippines under the command of Masaharu Honma and the Battle of Malay under the command of Yamashita Bongfumi. During the Battle of the Philippines, the Japanese army forced the commander-in-chief of the US army, MacArthur, to flee in a small boat, and a large number of senior generals and nearly 80,000 US and Filipinos troops were captured. However, our topic is Britain and the Netherlands, and the United States-related things will not be repeated.
During the colonial period, the British East India Company merged Singapore, Penang and Malacca into the "Three Continents Province", that is, the "Straits Settlements", in addition to dividing the Malay Federation, the Malay Dependent States and the West Coast of Borneo, Brunei and other regions, the British took a loose form of rule of these colonies, its core jurisdiction is Singapore, managed by the Governor of the Straits Settlements, the British are quite numerous, Singapore is also the base camp of the British army.
The Battle of Malay on the British side broke out on 8 December 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese commander, Yamashita Bongfumi, had actually received orders to leave sanya on 4 December. The British were defeated by Yamashita's frantic attack and could only slow down the Japanese attack through the river network.
Before the war, the British drew warships and aircraft carriers from the mainland to form a "Z Fleet", which went out of port on the day of the war, and as a result, they encountered intensive air strikes by the Japanese army, almost all of which were destroyed, and the battleships of "Prince of Wales" were sunk.
The British army, which had lost its naval power, quickly lost its strategic initiative, collapsed in the continuous surprise and interspersion of the Japanese army, Kuala Lumpur soon fell, and finally Yamashita Fengwen led the army that lacked ammunition and food all the way into Singapore, forcing the British Lieutenant General Percival to surrender, and more than 80,000 British troops became prisoners of the Japanese army.
Along with a large number of officials and civilians, Sir Shenton Whitelegge Thomas, governor of the Straits Settlements, was captured at this time, and Sir Mark Aitchison Young, the governor of Hong Kong, who had just been in office for three months, surrendered to the Japanese on December 25, Black Christmas.
Lieutenant General Percival was imprisoned by the Japanese army and Lieutenant General Wainwright of the American army, and he was tortured and punished for hard labor. Later in the war, they were left in custody at a prisoner's camp in Liaoyuan, Jilin Province, and were eventually rescued by the Soviets after the Japanese surrendered, and then stood behind MacArthur and participated in the Japanese surrender ceremony on the Iowa battleship.
Sir Sandon and Governor Yang muqi suffered similarly, but Yang Muqi restored his status as Governor of Hong Kong at least in 1946, and Sir Sandon lost his governorship due to Lord Mountbatten's post-war military administration and the abolition of The Straits Settlements.
The Dutch suffered less than the British, but the losses were also very large, but because the number of people was relatively small, and the scale of the battle with the Japanese was not very large, the number of prisoners in the early stages was inconspicuous. The most important thing for the Japanese in the Pacific War was Borneo crude oil, which was of good quality enough to be directly injected into the heavy oil of Japanese warships.
Therefore, the oil fields of the "Royal Anglo-Dutch Shell Company", a joint venture between the Netherlands and the British in the Kalimantan region, became the main direction of the Japanese army after the Malay Campaign. The remnants of the British, Dutch, American, and Australian armies then joined forces to resist the Japanese, and the British even continued to draw a large number of warships to form a second "Z Fleet", and the Dutch also took out the only fleet strength, but Nanyunzhong sent out a few aircraft carriers and quickly eliminated them in the Battle of Java. At one point, the Japanese took many prisoners from the islands and near the shipwrecks, and the Soldiers of the Dutch Colony were not in the minority.
In the following time, the British army retreated to the Indian Ocean defense, the Japanese army was intercepted in Sri Lanka, but the British captured in Myanmar and other areas on land were not in the minority, and for a while it was almost impossible to resist the Japanese army. Without the help of the American and Chinese expeditionary forces, the Japanese would have been able to rush to India to take prisoners.
The returning American army also returned to the battlefield with newly built warships, and the Netherlands accepted the assistance of the American army as a government-in-exile, participated in many island wars and naval battles in the Pacific, and correspondingly, many fighters became new japanese prisoners.
Throughout the Pacific War, the Japanese captured a considerable number of Allied personnel, and the U.S. army alone captured 100,000 people. For example, according to the death register released by the "Japanese Prisoners of War Research Society" in Tokyo, Japan, among the 3526 Allied prisoners of war, there were 1115 Americans, 1200 British troops, 830 Dutch troops, 192 Australian troops, 136 Canadian troops, 33 British and Indian troops, 1 New Zealand army, 4 Norwegians, 6 Italians, and 9 other nationalities.
In addition, the Japanese prisoner of war in China also retained some information, such as the Fengtian area to hold the British governor and Lieutenant General Wainwright, Percival prisoner of war camps, they also held more than 2,000 American, British, Dutch, australian prisoners of war, the specific number we do not get detailed information, but the British and Dutch prisoners of war are quite a few.
The Japanese army's Yangzhou POW Camp and Hainan POW Camp were the places where the british and Dutch prisoners of war were mostly held, and most of the Yangzhou POW camps were formerly Foreign Expatriates from Shanghai, and the Japanese army imprisoned about 6,200 foreigners in concentration camps. The Hainan prisoner of war camp is a hard-labor camp, mainly imprisoning Australian and Dutch soldiers in the Pacific War, a total of three greenhouses, No. 1 shed is the Australian army, No. 2 shed is the Dutch army, and No. 3 is the "hospital" for the sick and so on.
In addition to China, Japan also had many prisoner-of-war camps in Southeast Asia, more famous is the Dutch East Indies of Ambon camp, this camp was established on ambon island in the south of the Indonesian Maluku Archipelago, since 1942, a large number of British, American, Dutch, Australian prisoners of war have been sent to the island to mine, many suffered inhuman torture, death in the mines abound.
On August 2, 1945, before the end of the war, the Japanese took all the prisoners of war into the mine, forced them into the deepest depths of 400 feet, and then detonated the explosives buried above their heads. Japan did its best to conceal this until the end of the war, even at the expense of giving false testimony to the non-commissioned officers who carried out the order.
In addition, the United Kingdom also has a "Lisbon Maru Incident", which is a passenger ship carrying 2,000 British prisoners, which escorted these British prisoners from Hong Kong to the British mainland, resulting in an Allied submarine attack on the road, the Lisbon Maru began to sink after the mine, but the Japanese army withdrew its own personnel at the same time, but crucified the prisoners' cabins, most of the prisoners of war were killed, only a small number of survivors let the fishermen in Zhoushan, China to save. Later, in order to cover up the smuggling of prisoners of war, the Japanese army also sent special aircraft to bomb the sunken area of Lisbon Maru.
In short, there are prisoners in war, and there are not a few British and Dutch prisoners who fell into the hands of Japan in the Pacific War, and many people even suffered the tragic experience of nine deaths, and I only hope that if these former prisoners of war are still alive in the world, they should teach their descendants what war is and what is the Japanese aggressor.