Description

During the course of World War II, Japanese forces captured over 140,000 Allied military personnel, a sizeable percentage of which were from the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and the Dominions.  Additionally, thousands of Allied Western civilians were apprehended.  These unfortunate people were interned in camps all across the Japanese-occupied Far East and Southeast Asia, often under appalling conditions.  Thousands of others were forced into hard labour, while some were sent to Mainland Japan to compensate for domestic manpower shortages.  Starvation, torture and exposure to disease were commonplace, as the Japanese behaved with gratuitous, animal-like barbarity, violating all international treaties and rarely allowing their captives to be visited by the Red Cross.  The mortality rate of Western POWs in their charge was 27.1%, seven times a higher than that for Western Allied POWs held by Germany.  At the end of the war 37,583 British-Commonwealth prisoners survived to return home.

The present map depicts all of the Far East and Southeast Asia, much of which was still controlled by Japan at of the beginning of 1945.  The map is important for being one of the few authoritative geographic records of the Japanese internment camps system during this period.  The ‘References’ (lower left) explains the symbols sued to denote ‘Prisoners of War Camps’ (red dots surrounded by red circles); ‘Civilian Internment Camps’ (red squares surrounded by red squares); and ‘Other Towns’ (where internees might be held).

The dozens of internment camps are dotted in virtually all places across Eastern and Southeast Asia, with particular concentrations in Japan proper (which is further detailed in the inset map in the upper left-hand corner).  The registers along the righthand side of the map list the camps by ‘Groups’ (sorted by countries or regions), while the boxes along the bottom feature grid references for locating the camps.  While the most locations were well known, due to the Japanese penchant for secrecy and a lack of international oversight, some uncertainty lingered.  For instance, the transit camp at Moulmein (Burma) features the note ‘Continued existence doubtful’, while in Manchuria, there are ‘some civilian camps’ but their locations are ‘uncertain’.  Of note is the ‘Sime Road Military Camp’, formerly ‘Changi’ in Singapore, which was one of the largest and most brutal of the facilities.

The map also shows the line of the ‘Rly.’, being the Thailand-Burma Death Railway, upon the construction of which so many Allied prisoners perished.  The ‘Old Burma Road’, the route from Rangoon to Chunking (Chongqing) formerly used by the Allies to supply the Chinese Nationalists is also shown.

The present map was issued early in 1945 (it is noted as being ‘Revised up to January 1945’) by the British Prisoners of War Relatives’ Association, a relief-lobbying group set up to aid the cause of the British and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians held by the Japanese.  They lobbied Westminster to propose prisoner exchanges with Japan (something that the Japanese refused to entertain) and raised funds to send care packets (via the Red Cross) to the internees.  They did their best to expose the horrific treatment that that the POWs in Asia endured, although often only scant information about their conditions were available.  The map was intended to inform the family members of the POWs’ and civilian internees’ of the supposed locations of their loved ones; that the map could be bought for the price of ‘Price 1/-; By post ½’ (lower right corner) in order to raise to funds for the Association.

A Note on Rarity

As such ephemeral broadside maps have a very low survival rate, it is perhaps not surprising that we can trace only 2 institutional examples, held by the Library and Archives Canada and the State Library of New South Wales.

References: Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (Ottawa): CPG/GPC CartoG7801.F86 1945.B74; State Library of New South Wales: M2 405/1945/1;

OCLC: 1048247328 / 1007198738.