The Japanese soldiers who risked death

[Pete]

The Japanese soldiers who risked death to break out of prison: Historic photos capture the biggest prisoner escape attempt during WWII at a regional Australian war camp

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2729441/The-Japanese-soldiers-risked-death-break-prison-Historic-photos-capture-biggest-prisoner-escape-attempt-WWII-regional-Australian-war-camp.html#ixzz3BB6DDrl5
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In the dead of the night 70 years ago, more than 1,000 Japanese men stormed the barbed wire perimeter fences of Cowra prisoner of war camp in central NSW.

Armed with improvised weapons including baseball bats and sharpened kitchen knives, hundreds of Japanese prisoners overcame machine gun posts in what would become the biggest POW escape of World War II.

The mass breakout at the detention camp on August 5, 1944 resulted in a 10-day manhunt as Australian soldiers and police searched for hundreds of armed escapees roaming the Cowra countryside, 300km west of Sydney.

The Great Escape Japanese Style or the biggest POW break you never heard of.

[The Reaper]

Considering how they treated Allied POWs and how they themselves were being treated, I have a really hard time working up much sympathy for them.

TR

[PRB]

If you look at the way Japanese Commanders treated/used their own troops they showed about as much compassion for them as they did our PW's in camps.
The code of Bushido is brutal in many ways.
From their perspective it is what those that surrendered deserved.

[Sdiver]

The Japanese soldiers who risked death to break out of prison: Historic photos capture the biggest prisoner escape attempt during WWII at a regional Australian war camp

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2729441/The-Japanese-soldiers-risked-death-break-prison-Historic-photos-capture-biggest-prisoner-escape-attempt-WWII-regional-Australian-war-camp.html#ixzz3BB6DDrl5
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

In the dead of the night 70 years ago, more than 1,000 Japanese men stormed the barbed wire perimeter fences of Cowra prisoner of war camp in central NSW.

Armed with improvised weapons including baseball bats and sharpened kitchen knives, hundreds of Japanese prisoners overcame machine gun posts in what would become the biggest POW escape of World War II.

The mass breakout at the detention camp on August 5, 1944 resulted in a 10-day manhunt as Australian soldiers and police searched for hundreds of armed escapees roaming the Cowra countryside, 300km west of Sydney.

The Great Escape Japanese Style or the biggest POW break you never heard of.

I wonder, If they would have dug tunnels instead, would they have named them, Tom, Dick, and Hally ???

[Pete]

Just posted as one of those WW II FYI stories that most people have never heard of.

Like most folks never knew German (or was it Italian) POW's built the Old Officer's Club at Ft Irwin.

[Talo]

While we're on the subject of little known WWII stories, how about that time German and American forces fought together?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/12/world-war-ii-s-strangest-battle-when-americans-and-germans-fought-together.html

This should be a Hollywood movie.

[Monsoon65]

http://www.amazon.com/Stalag-Wisconsin-Inside-Prisoner-Camps/dp/187856983X

My wife bought me this book when she was giving a lecture at the University of Wisconsin.

One of the stories they mentioned was back during WW2, there were a high percentage of Germans living in Wisconsin that were fresh off the boat from Germany. One day, a farmer gets a knock on the door. Opens it up and there's a US Army MP escorting a POW. It's his nephew, now a German Heer Soldat, over for a visit. Guy had gotten rolled up in North Africa.