Memorializing Prisoners of War in Japan: Local Activism, War Criminals, and Reconciliation

Abstract

During the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific theatres, 36,000 Allied Prisoners of War (POWs) were held in camps across Japan’s home islands. After the war, twenty-five memorials were built for these POWs. This paper analyses a selection of these memorials that together reveal major factors that have shaped POW memorials in Japan. Many were created by local activists, and emerged in cooperation with former POWs and their descendants to foster reconciliation, or forged links to nuclear bomb victims and forced Asian labour. Some were built by companies for their own interests or reflected tensions between sympathy for POWs and executed prison guard personnel.