The memoir narrates a man's story of being captured by the Japanese during WWII and forced to work on the bridge over the River Kwai amidst unspeakable conditions. He kept quiet about it for over half a century and wrote the memoir as a call to action against the Japanese government's actions.
In this episode, we hear the story of Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese soldier to surrender from WWII, who spent 29 years hiding in a Philippine island jungle, waiting for orders that never came.
The indigenous Fuzzy Wuzzy people of Papua New Guinea helped injured Australian and English troops during WWII, earning a reputation as heroes and angels. The Fuzzy Wuzzies were instrumental in aiding the allies and saving many lives.
The Nanking Massacre was a period of mass murder and war atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against the residents of Nanjing, then capital of the Republic of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Although there were no orders to rape or to exterminate the enemy, there was a take-no-prisoners policy, and Japanese soldiers began to execute Chinese prisoners of war and unarmed deserters who had surrendered.
The Battle of Iwo Jima during WWII was one of the most crowded battlefields in history, with soldiers crammed onto a small island and no way to dig shelter due to the volcanic sand. Survivor and veteran accounts describe it as difficult to put into words.
The Nanking Massacre was a horrific event during the Second World War where Japanese soldiers brutally killed and raped Chinese civilians. However, some of the reported atrocities were later found to be made up by the press for the sake of sensational headlines.