The Other Holocaust of World War II

The most shocking revelation [came in] late 1999, when Japan’s war files were finally opened under the Freedom of Information Act, and the Author found her cover art, designed to span the years of growing up in China, had become prophetic. She learned, to her profound horror, that the primary reason the United States had hurriedly dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was that American intelligence had intercepted a directive from the Japanese high command to all prison camp commandants, ordering them to execute every military and civilian prisoner of war . . . and to leave no trace!

Excerpted from the Preface to The Mushroom Years

Research by historians of China and the Far East, including the Allied Powers, came up with these carefully calculated civilian death figures during the Japanese occupation of that region (1931-1945). Although these victims weren’t exterminated in gas ovens as were the six million Jews and five million non-Jews in Europe during the same period, they were brutally executed en masse, starved in contrived famines and forced labor, and used for medical experimentation.

In 1931 the Japanese invaded Manchuria and spent the rest of the decade trying to subjugate it. From 1937 to 1945 the Japanese occupied China, including Southeast Asia, Burma, Thailand, and the Philippines. Although Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, that country staunchly resisted Japanese domination through the decades and its civilian deaths are listed here.

Holocaust Victims of Japan

China	12,390,000
Southeast Asia, Burma, Thailand, and Korea	7,440,000
The Philippines	500,000
Total Victims (Estimated)	20,330,000

Updated August 2011