Case History 111
Tokyo Military Prison Fire
Attachment E
INFORMATION ON DECEASED
U.S. FLIERS OF
TOKYO MILITARY PRISON
Page 1
Below are emails sent to and from my B-29 contacts
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The pages comprising Attachment E are taken from the Ellingson IDPF . The first document on this page will also be found in the Recovery 1947 section. In this first document the dimensions of each compartment is stated as 5 x 6 feet. The last document on this page states that there were 17 rooms 12 x 6 feet, totalling 1224 square feet. If the figures in the first document are used, the 65 men occupied 340 square feet. My overall impression of Attachment E is not favorable. There is no indication of date written nor who wrote this. I come away with the old feeling of CYA. |
| Thanks, Doug. CYA for sure. The writer claims that 7 of 17 rooms in Jail #4 were unlocked. If true, that means about 28 US prisoners were let out. Funny then that none of those 28 survived while almost all of the Japanese prisoners survived. Doesn't hold water. I'm more inclined to believe the original story I heard years ago, which is that many of the men who got out of their cells were killed by the guards, even beheaded in some cases, with swords. A proper forensic examination of any bones which remained should reveal any sword cuts. But I don't know if any such examination was conducted. One more thing, the claim that the US prisoners were given the same rations as the Japanese prisoners doesn't fit with the experience of surviving US airmen. My research has indicated that B-29 crewmen were treated as "special prisoners", which meant among other things that they received only half rations, which basically meant slow starvation. |
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