Japanese aircrew bailouts, prisoners?

[Brian Bines]

I seem to remember reading, possibly in the Saburo Sakai book, that on offensive flights many Japaese pilots (aircrew?) chose not to wear parachutes. They were not ordered to do this but chose this action as baling out over enemy territory would lead to being taken prisoner. Apparantly chutes were worn and used over the homeland though, Sakai's book was called Samurai but I no longer have a copy,

Brian Bines

Just watched Revi16's YouTube clip did the Japanses pilot kill himslf or did the guy with the pistol shoot him ?

[cpaige5@hotmail.com]

I find the dicussion quite interesting and I'll say my piece.

The two above mentioned books I just recently read and found them good for information. Japanese prisoners of war in India, 1942-46 and The Anguish of Surrender. I found one book I picked out of a New Zealand publishing house Beyond Death and Dishonour. This is a book by a Naval officer who was captured in the Guadacanal area when his ship went down. He talks about his emotions and meeting other crews including airmen and other naval personal from other ships that were sunk. He spent his days in a New Zealand Pow camp.

[Laurent Rizzotti]

One example:

On 8 August 1942, during the Betty attack off Guadalcanal, many bombers were shot down. You will find in several books that the destroyer USS Bagley approached a floating Betty and saw the crew sitting in the wings. The Japanese airmen fired their pistols on the US sailors and then commited suicide. But in the book "the first team and the guadalcanal campaign", I learned that at the same time, US ships captured 9 survivors of the Japanese bombers.

Another:

Tainan Kokutai lost 20 aircraft over New Guinea in 1942 according to one source. I know that at least two pilots were captured, so prisoners are at least 10% of the total losses (not counting pilots that survived being shot down and returned to their unit).

For what is worth, my own opinions is that percentage of Japanese airmen in Allied POW camps is far superior to the percentage in Japanese overall losses (KIA+POW).

[Larry deZeng]

On 8 August 1942, during the Betty attack off Guadalcanal, many bombers were shot down. You will find in several books that the destroyer USS Bagley approached a floating Betty and saw the crew sitting in the wings. The Japanese airmen fired their pistols on the US sailors and then commited suicide. But in the book "the first team and the guadalcanal campaign", I learned that at the same time, US ships captured 9 survivors of the Japanese bombers.

See my post #4, above. Only 49 POWs for all of 1942 and the majority of those were sailors from a heavy cruiser that was sunk.

Tainan Kokutai lost 20 aircraft over New Guinea in 1942 according to one source. I know that at least two pilots were captured, so prisoners are at least 10% of the total losses (not counting pilots that survived being shot down and returned to their unit).

I thought we were talking about air crew, not just fighter pilots. Furthermore, it is really stretching things to extrapolate across the entire war years from one incident involving 20 aircraft and 2 captured pilots in 1942. The U.S. War Department kept very thorough and accurate figures on how many Japanese air crew were captured and the exact circumstances. If you wish to pursue the subject, you should be able to find some books that give that information. I know, for example, that the ATIS submitted a report at the end of the war on this to the Prisoner of War Board in Washington that gave Japanese POW statistics for the entire Pacific war. Very few Japanese air crew were taken prisoner, and those that were captured were usually too badly wounded or injured to take their own lives.

L.

[mars]

Originally Posted by Laurent Rizzotti

Not my best knowledge area, but it seems to me that the percentage of Japanese airmen lost over enemy territory that surrendered was far higher than the percentage of infantrymen in the same situation.One book that may be interesting on the subject (I don't have it):http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/se...ks/STRANG.html

That is exactly my point, the percentage of Japanese airmen lost over enemy territory that became POW were much higher than infrantrymen, and to less extent, this rule also applies to Japanese sailers, if they did not choose to go down whith the ship, then they would much easier to give up, for example, I recall about 20 Japanese sailers lost at sea after their ships sunk in the battle of Middleway, surrendered to US navy without offering any resistance. (Gordon W. Prange's "Miracle at Midway"0

[mars]

Originally Posted by rpeck350

I don't have any stat's to add but since most Japaneese airplanes were built with none to minor armor that most crew members were killed before they had a chance to bail out.
The air crew I would think knew that and thought parachutes would not help.
Of all the gun camera film I have seen I get the impression most Japaneese planes were on fire to a point of seeing only wing tips fairly quick.
Maybe not much help but just a thought.
Rick

Yes, mostly Japanese airplanes. especially earliy stage of the war, were built with minor armor (some later war Japanese airplanes were well armored), but again it is a misconception that a burst of .50 machine gun fire then that Japanese aicraft would immediately burst into fire and going down. Again you'd better read some book relate to detail combat history of the pacific war. following this an example:

Darwin Spitfires: The Real Battle for Australia
http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Spitfir...f=pd_ys_ir_b_1

[mars]

Come on, Larry, you obviously can not dispute the number of Japanese POW in Mr Rizzotti's post, but of course you have right to have your own opinion to this issue, so how about we just agree to disagree?

[Larry deZeng]

Hi Mars -

That's exactly what I suggested way back in my Post #4.

It is fully obvious to anyone carefully reading this thread, Mars, that Rizzotti and I are in relative agreement.

It is also obvious that you have offered nothing here but opinion. Where is your research, Mars? Anyway, I hope you learned something. Who knows? One of these days I might just bump into you in the NARA College Park research room while you are digging into the boxes and boxes or archive records, or perhaps in the stacks at the Library of Congress while you are looking for the 102-volume set of Senshi Sōsho. I might even let you buy me a beer, too!

Have a good one,

L.

[NUPPOL]

IJN loss april 1942
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/forum/v...php?f=2&t=4965

[Johnny .45]

Sorry, if I'da known this was going to get so many replies, I would have hurried back faster. Yes, Japanese aircrews were often killed outright due to lack of armor, and perhaps many didn't wear parachutes on offensive operations, but I was mostly curious about things like routine patrols, ferry operations, etc, where to loose an engine or run out of fuel and to go down might mean capture. I take it that it depended mostly on who the man was; in theory, most of them would have ditched, and then killed themselves if found by Americans, I guess.
Not all Japanese were as fanatic as they make out, but since they were fed terrifying stories about the awful things Americans did to Japanese prisoners, it would help encourage them to kill themselves. Most of them knew nothing about Americans, and expected to be tortured in unspeakable ways (in addition to being dishonored). If you expected to be subjected to the most gruesome and painful torture imaginable if captured, you'd probably kill yourself as well. Americans POWs were subjected to ill-treatment by Japanese, but nothing like what they expected the Americans to do to them (according to what their officers told them).
As for the video, I watched it, and the answer is he both killed himself and was shot. You can see him pull the pin from a grenade. If they didn't have guns on him already, they pulled them when they saw that. As the thing goes off, you see one or several smaller splashes, that would be the men shooting at him. The delay is either because they didn't have their guns ready, and it took a moment to pull them out and aim them when they saw him pull the pin, or they were already aimed at him and were startled by the explosion and fired at him. In any case, bullets hitting the water don't look like that. That's a single, larger blast from underneath the water, i.e. a grenade held against his stomach. The bullets were just overkill, and I'm not even sure they hit him.
That said, I can't help but wonder if the lack of Japanese prisoners taken early on is solely because they committed suicide, or if it was also because the US troops were shooting them rather than taking them prisoner. There wouldn't be any proof really, but I do know they encouraged them to hate the Japanese ("The only good jap is a dead jap" and all that), so it would not surprise me to find that many were shot in the water. Homicidal racism was the officially promoted doctrine in 1942, as far as I can see. They wouldn't outright tell them to shoot prisoners, but that doesn't mean mean wouldn't take things into their own hand on the rare occasion that an opportunity to take one POW presented itself. I know I've seen footage (maybe from the same reel that the grenade-suicide is from) that strongly appears to show submariners shooting a Japanese man in the water. It might have taken time for them to convince the men that they really NEEDED to keep some of them alive, and by then the Japanese were unwilling to allow themselves to be taken prisoner.
Amazing to think all this happened so recently, in the 20th century. I strongly suspect that humans don't, haven't and won't really change fundamentally.