It was in Thailand that we were stationed and with the end of the war were dispossessed there of our arms and interned. Japanese troops in French Indo-China (Vietnam), Malaya, Sumatra, Java, The Philippines and Burma comprising the southern regions’ war theatre and the zone occupied by the Japanese Army, were all at war-end dispossessed of their arms mostly in Thailand, as we were, and interned together with Japanese overseas residents in various centres like Bangkok, Singapore, Soerabaya and so on. Men attached to Army units, soldiers, gunzoku, all without distinction were treated alike as prisoners-of-war and of course were employed on work for them. It was notable that in the cases of Allied Forces ex-prisoners-of-war, who now had direct control, that they received retaliatory treatment. Apart from Army units in positions on battlefields, there were also Japanese overseas civilians. For them the Allied Forces’ policy was that they were to be repatriated but first their assets had to be administered by the Allied Forces and they were under regulations laid down about how they behaved during internment, the freedom of the individual being greatly restricted.

In the Thai-Burma area, many of the prisoners had been shipped to Japan after the railway opened to traffic, but there were still a number left in the area. For them, in each prisoner-of-war camp, there was the sudden reversal from Japanese management to their own. In this unexpected reversal of affairs, there were disorders at every camp and one cannot deny there was a revengeful spirit among them. The Japanese units themselves carried out the instructions of the Allied Forces and were coerced into various procedures. Those who understood English were used as interpreters.

Japanese troops on the whole complied with the Edict of His Imperial Majesty by ‘enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable’ and obeyed the instructions of the Allied Forces, kept alive their hope of repatriation, and were interned. Some, however, unable to bear the disgrace of defeat, committed suicide and some, unwilling to live under British conditions, escaped. (As did Colonel Tsūji Masanobu, the fanatical architect of the doro nawa training camp in Taiwan in which he laid down the principles of action in General Yamashita Tomoyuki's campaign to capture Singapore, to whom he was chiefof-staff.