A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps,
challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire
systematically mistreated Allied prisoners. In only five
months, from the attack on ...Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to the
fall of Corregidor in May 1942, the Japanese Empire took prisoner
more than 140,000 Allied servicemen and 130,000 civilians from a
dozen different countries. From Manchuria to Java, Burma to New
Guinea, the Japanese army hastily set up over seven hundred camps
to imprison these unfortunates. In the chaos, 40 percent of
American POWs did not survive. More Australians died in captivity
than were killed in combat. Sarah Kovner offers the first portrait
of detention in the Pacific theater that explains why so many
suffered. She follows Allied servicemen in Singapore and the
Philippines transported to Japan on "hellships" and singled out for
hard labor, but also describes the experience of guards and camp
commanders, who were completely unprepared for the task. Much of
the worst treatment resulted from a lack of planning, poor
training, and bureaucratic incoherence rather than an established
policy of debasing and tormenting prisoners. The struggle of POWs
tended to be greatest where Tokyo exercised the least control, and
many were killed by Allied bombs and torpedoes rather than
deliberate mistreatment. By going beyond the horrific accounts of
captivity to actually explain why inmates were neglected and
abused, Prisoners of the Empire contributes to ongoing
debates over POW treatment across myriad war zones, even to the
present day.
Vital Enemies Santos-Granero, Fernando
2009, 20090101
eBook
Analyzing slavery and other forms of servitude in six non-state indigenous societies of tropical America at the time of European contact, Vital Enemies offers a fascinating new approach to the study ...of slavery based on the notion of “political economy of life.” Fernando Santos-Granero draws on the earliest available historical sources to provide novel information on Amerindian regimes of servitude, sociologies of submission, and ideologies of capture. Estimating that captive slaves represented up to 20 percent of the total population and up to 40 percent when combined with other forms of servitude, Santos-Granero argues that native forms of servitude fulfill the modern understandings of slavery, though Amerindian contexts provide crucial distinctions with slavery as it developed in the American South. The Amerindian understanding of life forces as being finite, scarce, unequally distributed, and in constant circulation yields a concept of all living beings as competing for vital energy. The capture of human beings is an extreme manifestation of this understanding, but it marks an important element in the ways Amerindian “captive slavery” was misconstrued by European conquistadors. Illuminating a cultural facet that has been widely overlooked or miscast for centuries, Vital Enemies makes possible new dialogues regarding hierarchies in the field of native studies, as well as a provocative re-framing of pre- and post-contact America.
The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal ...battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantanamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantanamo is simply - and alarmingly - the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law.Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider's view of the detention of enemy combatants and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running. In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power.
By the time of the Vietnam War era, the “Mexican American Generation” had made tremendous progress both socially and politically. However, the number of Mexican Americans in comparison to the number ...of white prisoners of war (POWs) illustrated the significant discrimination and inequality the Chicano population faced in both military and civilian landscapes. Chicanos were disproportionately “grunts” (infantry), who were more likely to be killed when captured, while pilots and officers were more likely to be both white and held as POWs for negotiating purposes. A fascinating look at the Vietnam War era from a Chicano perspective, “I’m Not Gonna Die in this Damn Place”: Manliness, Identity, and Survival of the Mexican American Vietnam Prisoners of War gives voice to the Mexican American POWs. The stories of these men and their families provide insights to the Chicano Vietnam War experience, while also adding tremendously to the American POW story. This book is an important read for academics and military enthusiasts alike.
Over 185,000 British military servicemen were captured by the Germans during the First World War and incarcerated as prisoners of war (POWs). In this original investigation into their experiences of ...captivity, Wilkinson uses official and private British source material to explore how these servicemen were challenged by, and responded to, their wartime fate. Examining the psychological anguish associated with captivity, and physical trials, such as the controlling camp spaces; harsh routines and regimes; the lack of material necessities; and, for many, forced labour demands, he asks if, how and with what effects British POWs were able to respond to such challenges. The culmination of this research reveals a range of coping strategies embracing resistance; leadership and organisation; networks of support; and links with 'home worlds'. British Prisoners of War offers an original insight into First World War captivity, the German POW camps, and the mentalities and perceptions of the British servicemen held within.
Though only one among hundreds of prison camps in which British servicemen were held between 1939 and 1945, Colditz enjoys unparalleled name recognition both in Britain and in other parts of the ...English-speaking world. Made famous in print, on film, and through television, Colditz remains a potent symbol of key virtues-including ingenuity and perseverance against apparently overwhelming odds-that form part of the popular mythology surrounding the British war effort in World War II. Colditz has played a major role in shaping perceptions of the prisoner-of-war experience in Nazi Germany, an experience in which escaping is assumed to be paramount and ‘Outwitting the Hun’ a universal sport. This book chronicles the development of the Colditz myth and puts what happened inside the castle in the context of British and Commonwealth POW life in Germany as a whole. Being a captive of the Third Reich-from the moment of surrender down to the day of liberation and repatriation-was more complicated and a good deal tougher than the popular myth would suggest. The physical and mental demands of survival far outweighed escaping activity in order of importance in most camps almost all of the time, and even in Colditz the reality was in some respects very different from the almost Boy's Own caricature that developed during the post-war decades. This book seeks to place Colditz-both the camp and the legend-in a wider historical context.
Lost in the Cold War Downey, John T; Christensen, Thomas; Downey, Jack
08/2022
eBook
In 1952, John T. "Jack" Downey, a twenty-three-year-old CIA officer
from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean
War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner
...Richard "Dick" Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next
twenty years, they were harshly interrogated, put through show
trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps,
and toured around China as political pawns. Other prisoners of war
came and went, but Downey and Fecteau's release hinged on the
United States acknowledging their status as CIA assets. Not until
Nixon's visit to China did Sino-American relations thaw enough to
secure Fecteau's release in 1971 and Downey's in 1973. Lost in
the Cold War is the never-before-told story of Downey's
decades as a prisoner of war and the efforts to bring him home.
Downey's lively and gripping memoir-written in secret late in
life-interweaves horrors and deprivation with humor and the
absurdities of captivity. He recounts his prison experiences:
fearful interrogations, pantomime communications with his guards, a
3,000-page overstuffed confession designed to confuse his captors,
and posing for "show" photographs for propaganda purposes. Through
the eyes of his captors and during his tours around China, Downey
watched the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the
drastic transformations of the Mao era. In interspersed chapters,
Thomas J. Christensen, an expert on Sino-American relations,
explores the international politics of the Cold War and tells the
story of how Downey and Fecteau's families, the CIA, the U.S. State
Department, and successive presidential administrations worked to
secure their release.
Victor Hugo meets Papillon in this effervescent
memoir of war, slavery, and self-discovery, told with aplomb and
humor in its first English translation. A pioneering work
of Ottoman Turkish ...literature, Prisoner of the Infidels
brings the seventeenth-century memoir of Osman Agha of
Timişoara-slave, adventurer, and diplomat-into English for the
first time. The sweeping story of Osman's life begins upon his
capture and subsequent enslavement during the Ottoman-Habsburg
Wars. Adrift in a landscape far from his home and traded from one
master to another, Osman tells a tale of indignation and betrayal
but also of wonder and resilience, punctuated with queer trysts,
back-alley knife fights, and elaborate ruses to regain his freedom.
Throughout his adventures, Osman is forced to come to terms with
his personhood and sense of belonging: What does it mean to be
alone in a foreign realm and treated as subhuman chattel, yet
surrounded by those who see him as an object of exotic desire or
even genuine affection? Through his eyes, we are treated to an
intimate view of seventeenth-century Europe from the singular
perspective of an insider/outsider, who by the end his account can
no longer reckon the boundary between Islam and Christendom,
between the land of his capture and the land of his birth, or even
between slavery and redemption.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, an estimated 30,000 German civilians in African and Asian colonies were violently uprooted and imprisoned. Britain's First World War internment of German settlers ...seriously challenged the structures that underpinned nineteenth-century imperialism. Through its analysis of this internment, this book highlights the impact that the First World War had on the notion of a common European 'civilising mission' and the image of empire in the early twentieth century. Mahon Murphy examines the effect of the war on a collective European colonial identity, perceptions of internment in the extra-European theatres of war, and empires in transition during war. Policymakers were forced to address difficult questions about the future rule of Germany's colonies and the nature of empire in general. Far from a conflict restricted to European powers, the First World War triggered a worldwide remaking of ideas, institutions and geopolitics.
