The Geneva Convention stated that if a prisoner escaped and was recaptured, he was not to be punished. However, the Japanese did not care. The POWs were forced to sign non-escape oaths soon after they reached the POW camps. They signed at the advice of their officers with the secret understanding that the oaths were not morally binding. Escapes were rare. Any re-captured escapees were executed. Not only were they killed in front of the other POWs, but ten additional POWs were executed as well. While some officers knew the Geneva Convention said it was their duty to escape, many did not know this and the rest did not want to have the POWs left behind to suffer for their actions should they get caught. Therefore, few escapes were attempted. Fewer still succeeded. (52) Successful escapees, such as Dyess, were the rare exception and not the rule.
The Japanese tried to get some POWs to turn on their comrades or tell military secrets. POWs selected would be questioned for hours. Others would receive good treatment for a day, in the hopes that they would be more willing to talk. Most did not cooperate with their captors. (53)
There were over 140,000 white POWs in Japanese prison camps. They received the harshest treatment of all.
One in three died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese, starved to death, worked to death, beaten to death, dead of loathsome epidemic diseases that the Japanese would not treat. From the beginning, what the Japanese did to their prisoners, body and soul, was humanly appalling. Even so, the prisoners stayed and took it. For them the stakes were: try to escape, with the chances of suffering and dying almost a hundred percent, or stay with what turned out to be a two-to-one chance of surviving. The final gross score was: died trying to escape, next to none; died as prisoners, tens of thousands. (54)
According to the Geneva Convention officers were exempt from labor. But those rules did not apply in Japanese prison camps. They did everything from growing crops barefooted in very deep mud to working on the railroad. The POWs usually did not have the proper clothing for their jobs. The prison guards usually confiscated Red Cross supplies. These included food, medicine, and clothing. (55) A civilian underground system was able to smuggle some of these items, plus money, so that the prisoners could buy items on the guard's black-market. This was dangerous, and many civilians caught in this underground movement were tortured and then executed.
As the end of war came near, the POWs were transferred to other prison camps or to the hell-ships. Thousands more died due to these actions. The only ones left behind were those so ill they were expected to die within hours.
