Japanese aircrew bailouts, prisoners?

[mars]

Originally Posted by Larry deZeng

Policy was to NOT be captured! Capture bring great dishonor on self, unit, Imperial forces and most especially on ancestors. Some had a parachute, some did not. That was usually determined within the unit. If shot down or ditched in sea, try to save self. Maybe picked up by friendly vessel or rescue floatplane. If rescue ship or plane turns out to be enemy, kill self to prevent capture. Many, many, many cases of this can be found in the CINCPAC/CINCPOA Bulletins and other documents and narratives. Very difficult to capture Japanese air crew people alive. Most of those taken prisoner were severely wounded and taken before they could kill themselves. This why JN 25 was so valuable to Allies in Pacific. There were so few prisoners for interrogation.

This is correct on theory, but as usual, reality is somehow different, just look into detail combat history, such as "first team" and History of Tainan air group, there are far more Japanese aircrew were captured alive unwounded than we led to believe.

[Larry deZeng]

Then we disagree. When compared on a per capita basis with the armed forces of other participants in World War II, there were very, very few Japanese POWs, and many of those that were captured were not native Japanese but rather Korean or Formosan. There is a great deal of documentation and literature on this subject and I have read a lot of it. But please do not take my word for it. You should be able to spend 2 or 3 days doing an advanced search on Google and come up with a lot of interesting information. In particular, seek out and read the studies and personal memoirs having to do with the gathering and analysis of intelligence by the Navy and Army in the Pacific, ATIS (Allied Translation and Interrogation Service), etc. A good place to start in the literature would be:

PRADOS, John. Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II. New York: Random House, 1995. ISBN: 0-679-43701-0. Pages 495-98, 532, 579, 697-98.

As the author says on p.495: "In all of 1942 only 49 prisoners had been captured in the Pacific Ocean area, most survivors of the cruiser Mikuma." How many Japanese aircraft were shot down in the Solomons between Aug and Dec 1942? How many were shot down over the Coral Sea and over and around Midway?

The number increased in 1943, but not dramatically. It was not until 1944-45 that the total number taken by Allied forces approached some level of significance. The total for 1944 was 9,379 by our Army and Navy and another 2,038 in the first two months of 1945. These figures include about 25% that were Korean, Formosan and other non-mainland Japanese. These are paltry numbers out of the some 8,000,000 who served in the Japanese armed forces during the war. Oh, and very, very few of them were air crew.

L.