Episode Recording -- "United States POW in Japanese Internment Camps"

00:00-00:27 Topic and Speaker Introduction

Here is where Mason Cogswell will introduce himself as the podcast leader and introduce the topic of: Were the Japanese Internment Camps in the US worse than the American POW camps in the Pacific Theatre? The thesis statement of the podcast states: “while both Japanese and American POW camps were morally wrong and committed atrocities, Japanese POW camps treated their prisoners far worse.” This is the section where the thesis statement can be found and will set up the course for the rest of the podcast.

00:27-03:39  Which Camps had Worse Housing

Mason Cogswell discusses the differences between the housing that was occupied by the prisoners of the opposing camps. This section goes into privacy and comfort levels of both and how they play into the everyday lives of the prisoners. While the Japanese Internment Camps in the US had rough living conditions, similar to that of a prison, the living conditions in the American POW camps of the Pacific Theatre were awful in comparison. The Japanese made sure that the living conditions of their prisoners were awful to keep them submissive to their rule.This is the first supporting point to proving the thesis.

03:39-06:16  Comparing the Food of the Prison Camps

In this section, Mason Cogswell discusses the differences in the food and how this played a critical role in the survival of the prisoners. In the American POW camps they were only fed watery rice each day, which is supported by many primary sources. The POWs in the Japanese camps were subject to severe malnutrition causing many deaths. On the other hand, food was not a major issue in the Japanese Internment camps due to the fact that the US army kept them fed. The real issue came with the lack of sanitary practices within the mess hall such as the lack of clean dishes often leading to the outbreak of diarrhea throughout the prison camps. The Japanese were however, able to receive food and drink items through a black market that ran through most of the camps. This is backed up by many primary sources as well. The food was an issue in both camps, but the American POWs were treated to far worse in terms of food.

06:16-08:32 Which Group was Treated Worse?

This section is where Mason Cogswell highlights the differences of the ways the prisoners were treated in each prospective camp. In the American POW camps in the Pacific, they were often shot or beaten for reason. The POWs were treated like slaves to continue the Japanese war machine. They were required to bow to their captors and they were even sometimes used as target practice for Japanese pilots. The worst event in the war was the Bataan death march where the Japanese forced the American POWs to march for six days without food or water, killing about six hundred and fifty prisoners a day. On the other hand, the Japanese internment camps never had a recording case of beating within the prisons, but they were forced out of their homes and could only bring what they could carry to the internment camps. The Japanese families were able to work while the children went to school, they were able to attend concerts and sports games. Life within the camp was very much so still prisonlike. In the end, evidently the Japanese were much worse to their prisoners in terms of treatment than the Americans were.

08:32-09:27 Outro

This section is where Mason Cogswell recaps his subject and wraps up his podcast. He restates his thesis and recaps how his main supporting points back his thesis up. This is also the section where Mason teases his next episode on the end of WWII in the Pacific Theatre.

• 00:00-00:26

            Good afternoon everybody my name is Mason Cogswell and I will be today's sit in historian for our podcast discussing the differences between the Japanese internment camps in the US and the American internment camps in the Pacific Theatre. Today we're going to discuss that while both Japanese and American POW camps were morally wrong and committed atrocities, Japanese POW camps treated their prisoners far worse.

• 00:26-03:39 Which Camps had Worse Housing

Startinging with our first point here, the Japanese POW camps had far worse housing if any housing at all, compared to American internment camps. We're first going to discuss housing in the living conditions of the Japanese POW camps versus the American POW camps.To start we will dive into the American POW camps. The POWs were usually divided into a 10 man barracks for living quarters. If one of those men were to escape, then the other nine were shot. They were often forced to sleep on the ground with little to no cushion, and it has been compared to the same treatment as in the Soviet gulags or work camps. The men and women prisoners often used the  restrooms in ditches that they dug right outside of their barracks, so this means they were sleeping right next to their rushroom or often, you know, right almost in their restroom. These POWs were often woken up in the middle of the night for roll call, if they did not make it to roll call, once again, they were either severely beaten or shot. The structure of their barracks was usually fairly poorly constructed. These structures would let in all of the elements, such as the rain, the heat, and the cold for those that were imprisoned in northern Japan. Living in these conditions often led to serious outbreaks of disease such as malaria and dysentery, and if one cannot make a swift recovery, and can no longer work are often executed because the Japanese did not care or have the resources to take care of the sick.

Citations:

1. Concord Oral History Program, Henry John Wilayto, and Renee Garrelick, “Henry John Wilayto Oral History Interview conducted by Renee Garrelick, 1940,” Henry John Wilayto Collection, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.02940/
2. Diane Burke Fessler, “Japanese Internment Camps Philippines 1941–1945 Prisoners of War: ‘You Don’t Know What Freedom Is until You Lose It,’” in No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II, 79–104, East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 1996, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt13x0p49.10
3. Glenn Frazier, “I Needed Revenge – Four Years in a Japanese Prison Camp,” Memoirs of WWII, August 2, 2019, 12:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezKfWZW_DJs
4. Gravitas Documentaries, “Forgive Don’t Forget – When Japan Surrendered to the U.S.,” Gravitas Documentaries, July 9, 2023, 03:42, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY2Kvyyl26g
5. Theresa Kaminski, Angels of the Underground, New York, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 127-160.
6. Veterans Memorial Museum, Rebekah Adams, John L. Stensby Sr., and Stephen Poniatowski, “John L. Stensby Sr. Oral History Interview conducted by Rebekah Adams, Stephen Poniatowski, and John L. Stensby Sr., 1939,” John L. Stensby Sr. Collection, Veterans Memorial Museum, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.00454/

All right, now we're gonna move on to the Japanese internment camps, particularly the Manzanar camp. So to start, we're going to talk about the Manzanar camp that was a Japanese American Internment camp in the California desert. Manzanar was one of 12 permanent Internment camps around the US. Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga  was a prisoner within in this camp that described the living conditions. He arrived by train and then by bus to the hot dusty camp. The prisoners when they arrived were given a sack that they would fill with hay, and that would become their mattress. Manzanar was in a desolate landscape and had frequent trential dust storms. There was often a severe lack of privacy in the housing units. They were built like army barrackses for the Japanese. There was no insulation, so one could often hear everything from other families and neighboring quarters. For example, we have a quote here from Ayo, “these barracks were built so quickly and with poor quality wood, if someone sneezed an apartment one, you could hear it an apartment five.” The sanitation in these Japanese internment camps was awful as well. Internment camp guards would rarely wash them mess hall dishes within the camp. This would often lead to serious diarrhea outbreaks, and the communal bathrooms, which would create a very unsettling position for all those involved as the bathrooms usually lacked curtains and privacy at all. These bathrooms also lacked a necessity for women, which was, there were no women's products in these bathrooms, leaving women to find other solutions. These communal bathrooms often had no curtains and rarely had hot water.

Citations:

1. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, “Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Oral History Interview conducted by Emiko and Chizuko Omori, March 20, 1994,” Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, https://densho.org/
2. Andrew Maginn, “World War II,” History 202: History of the United States II, class lecture, Sewanee, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, February 28, 2025
3. Mikiso Hane, “Wartime Internment,” The Journal of American History 77, no. 2 (1990), 569–75, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079186
4. Osamu Mori, “Osamu Mori Oral History Interview conducted by Richard Potashin, April 14, 2010,” Manzanar National Historic Site Collection, Densho Digital Archive, Segment 8, https://densho.org
    

• 03:39-06:16 Comparing the Food of the Prison Camps

 All right, onto our second point, we are going to be discussing the food each group received. Now, once again, we are gonna start with how the Japanese POW camps had far worse rations than the American internment camps. Japanese soldiers usually gave the USPOWs just enough to keep them alive and working. However, each time the US army would take an island, the Japanese would feed the prisoners less due to the fact that they had to provide their own soldiers with more food, and they wanted to punish the prisoners for their former army progressing. Now, this led to severe malnutrition and starvation running rampant in these POW camps. Prisoners were often only served 24 ounces of watery rice a day. This is around 12 grams of protein. The body needs around 70 grams of protein a day to sustain itself, far more than they were getting. US men typically lost up to 50 pounds during their imprisonment due to this malnutrition. American families that were stationed in the Philippines that were captured, would usually turn to giving their children their food so that their children would survive. They themselves would then die due to malnutrition. A quote from John L. Stenby, an American POW, states, “we were getting a scoop of rice twice a day, 10 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We didn't have any food.” And then another quote saying, “we'd come back from work for supper and there wouldn't be any. We usually get a fourth of what everyone else got.” That comes from Henry John Wilayto, and finally another quote from Wilayto: “We marched for six days with no food and very little water. It was hard to find water because you couldn't drink from any ordinary strain because there was usually dead animals or people in them.” So that just goes to show you how bad the food and the water conditions were within these Japanese POW camps in the Pacific.

Citations:

1. Concord Oral History Program, Henry John Wilayto, and Renee Garrelick, “Henry John Wilayto Oral History Interview conducted by Renee Garrelick, 1940,” Henry John Wilayto Collection, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.02940/
2. Diane Burke Fessler, “Japanese Internment Camps Philippines 1941–1945 Prisoners of War: ‘You Don’t Know What Freedom Is until You Lose It,’” in No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II, 79–104, East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 1996, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt13x0p49.10
3. Glenn Frazier, “I Needed Revenge – Four Years in a Japanese Prison Camp,” Memoirs of WWII, August 2, 2019, 12:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezKfWZW_DJs
4. Gravitas Documentaries, “Forgive Don’t Forget – When Japan Surrendered to the U.S.,” Gravitas Documentaries, July 9, 2023, 03:42, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY2Kvyyl26g
5. Theresa Kaminski, Angels of the Underground, New York, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 127-160.
6. Veterans Memorial Museum, Rebekah Adams, John L. Stensby Sr., and Stephen Poniatowski, “John L. Stensby Sr. Oral History Interview conducted by Rebekah Adams, Stephen Poniatowski, and John L. Stensby Sr., 1939,” John L. Stensby Sr. Collection, Veterans Memorial Museum, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.00454

Now in the American internment camps it's a little bit different, they did receive food, but often their plates from the mess hall were rarely washed, which would lead to food poisoning and diarrhea outbreaks in these communal bathrooms that have little privacy. This often led to the Japanese prisoners trying to cook their own food. The problem was, the barrackses were not built to have stoves, so it was often pretty rare that one was able to cook their own meal due to the fact that the barracks usually did not come with a stove or the prison guards did not allow them to have stoves. They would often make use of black market trade within these camps. The black market would often smuggle sake and other liquors into the camp along with cooking materials. Now, there was a severe lack of water which mothers with babies and senior citizens suffered heavily from due to this lack of water.

Citations:

1. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, “Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Oral History Interview conducted by Emiko and Chizuko Omori, March 20, 1994,” Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, https://densho.org/
2. Mikiso Hane, “Wartime Internment,” The Journal of American History 77, no. 2 (1990), 569–75, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079186
3. Osamu Mori, “Osamu Mori Oral History Interview conducted by Richard Potashin, April 14, 2010,” Manzanar National Historic Site Collection, Densho Digital Archive, Segment 8, https://densho.org

• 06:16-08:32 Which Group was Treated Worse?

Finally, we are gonna come to our third supporting point, the treatment of the prisoners. The Japanese treated the American POWs far worse than the Americans treated the Japanese. In the Japanese POW camps, POWs were forced to bow to their Japanese captors. If they didn't, the prisoners were usually shot on the spot or severely beaten. Some men were even strafed with machine gun fire and or bombs for no reason from Japanese planes that were using the men as practice targets. Men were often kicked and beaten by their captors as well for little to no reason. The American men that defended the Philippines were forced to partake in what is known as the Bataan death march. It was an 80 mile march in which thousands would die due to a lack of food, water, and constant beatings. At the beginning of the march, the men were forced to pour all of their water out of their canteens. It was six days and seven nights with no sleep, food or water. Here we have a quote to describe the bataan death march, “any time anybody fell, no one could help them, so that Japanese would shoot them because they had no way of taken care of them. So by the end of it, they were killing around 650 prisoners a day.” This comes from John Wilyato again.

Citations:

1. Concord Oral History Program, Henry John Wilayto, and Renee Garrelick, “Henry John Wilayto Oral History Interview conducted by Renee Garrelick, 1940,” Henry John Wilayto Collection, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.02940/
2. Diane Burke Fessler, “Japanese Internment Camps Philippines 1941–1945 Prisoners of War: ‘You Don’t Know What Freedom Is until You Lose It,’” in No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II, 79–104, East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 1996, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt13x0p49.10
3. Glenn Frazier, “I Needed Revenge – Four Years in a Japanese Prison Camp,” Memoirs of WWII, August 2, 2019, 12:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezKfWZW_DJs
4. Gravitas Documentaries, “Forgive Don’t Forget – When Japan Surrendered to the U.S.,” Gravitas Documentaries, July 9, 2023, 03:42, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY2Kvyyl26g
5. Theresa Kaminski, Angels of the Underground, New York, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 127-160.
6. Veterans Memorial Museum, Rebekah Adams, John L. Stensby Sr., and Stephen Poniatowski, “John L. Stensby Sr. Oral History Interview conducted by Rebekah Adams, Stephen Poniatowski, and John L. Stensby Sr., 1939,” John L. Stensby Sr. Collection, Veterans Memorial Museum, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.00454

Now, on to Japanese internment camps, and their treatment of and the treatment of their prisoners. The Japanese were rounded up after Roosevelt's executive order of 9066, and often subjected to warrantless military searches and unprompted attacks in streets. According to sources, the internees were rarely beaten or struck, but there was a constant military presence in the area keeping the prisoners in line. Japanese children went to school every day, while the parents were given jobs such as farming. The camps would create sports teams, hold concerts, write newspapers, etc. They were able to live lives in the camp, but it was still in prison. prison life also broke down the traditional Japanese family life, though. The prison life made it so the younger generation often took the breadwinner jobs to provide for the family, whereas the elderly would not work. The elderly in the Japanese culture were usually ones that provided for the family and built businesses, but now that the younger Japanese generations were taking over, it destabilized what once was the Japanese familial hierarchy.

Citations:

1. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, “Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Oral History Interview conducted by Emiko and Chizuko Omori, March 20, 1994,” Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, https://densho.org/
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order No. 9066, February 19, 1942, History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5154
3. Mikiso Hane, “Wartime Internment,” The Journal of American History 77, no. 2 (1990), 569–75, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079186
4. Osamu Mori, “Osamu Mori Oral History Interview conducted by Richard Potashin, April 14, 2010,” Manzanar National Historic Site Collection, Densho Digital Archive, Segment 8, https://densho.org
   
    

• 08:32-09:25 Outro

Finally to wrap it all up with our podcast today, the Japanese treated the American POWs with hate and acted far worse towards their prisoners. This was due to a sense of hate towards their prisoners. The Japanese internees were treated as though they were prisoners, but they were not shot or beaten on the premise of not bowing. Now of course, this is not trying to negate the Japanese struggles and traumas of the internment camps as the internees of these camps lost everything and were often subjected to prejudice long after the end of WWII. That is to go ahead and say that the Japanese the captors treated their American POWs far worse, with many former prisoners never recovering from the physical and mental trauma they endured. Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope you'll join us tomorrow for the next episode on the end of World War II in the Pacific. Thank you.