The Fallen: A True Story of American POWs and Japanese Wartime Atrocities - Hardcover

Landas, Marc

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471421197 ISBN 13: 9780471421191

Publisher: Wiley, 2004

Synopsis

unspeakable crimes.
undeniable proof.
unattainable justice.

"A gripping account of one of the darkest secrets of World War II: the systematic torture and vivisection of American pilots by Japanese scientists for biological warfare research. Almost sixty years after the fact, revisionists continue to deny these horrors, but The Fallen provides indisputable evidence that Japan had indeed subjected American POWs to live medical experiments-such as mutilating their organs, draining their blood, and pumping seawater into their veins. The postwar decision by the U.S. government to protect Japan's Josef Mengele--like criminals is almost as shocking as the atrocities themselves."
-Iris Chang, the New York Times bestselling author of The Rape of Nanking and The Chinese in America

"A riveting and horrifying tale. Landas's meticulous and imaginative detective work reconstructs a long-buried investigation that implicates not just a few rogue soldiers but Japanese scientists, professors, and politicians, abetted by an American cover-up at the highest levels. An important book that fills a gap in the story of World War II. The best part of the story is the courage of a lone American flier, loyal to his comrades even in the face of torture, whose ordeal unfolds with vivid immediacy."
-Philip Gerard, author of Secret Soldiers

About this title

About the Author

MARC LANDAS is a freelance writer who has written for numerous Internet and print publications, including FOXNews.com and The Source. He has contributed extensively to various urban market magazines as a political reporter and book reviewer. Landas is currently writing a history of professional tennis. He lives in New York.

From the Back Cover

unspeakable crimes.
undeniable proof.
unattainable justice.

"A gripping account of one of the darkest secrets of World War II: the systematic torture and vivisection of American pilots by Japanese scientists for biological warfare research. Almost sixty years after the fact, revisionists continue to deny these horrors, but The Fallen provides indisputable evidence that Japan had indeed subjected American POWs to live medical experiments–such as mutilating their organs, draining their blood, and pumping seawater into their veins. The postwar decision by the U.S. government to protect Japan’s Josef Mengele—like criminals is almost as shocking as the atrocities themselves."
–Iris Chang, the New York Times bestselling author of The Rape of Nanking and The Chinese in America

"A riveting and horrifying tale. Landas’s meticulous and imaginative detective work reconstructs a long-buried investigation that implicates not just a few rogue soldiers but Japanese scientists, professors, and politicians, abetted by an American cover-up at the highest levels. An important book that fills a gap in the story of World War II. The best part of the story is the courage of a lone American flier, loyal to his comrades even in the face of torture, whose ordeal unfolds with vivid immediacy."
–Philip Gerard, author of Secret Soldiers

From the Inside Flap

When a rumor first crossed Special Agent Philip Cheles’s desk in November 1945, there was no way to imagine the horror he would soon discover. Determined to uncover the truth behind an informant’s report of a downed B-29 plane–and the assertion that one or more of the survivors had perished at the hands of local villagers–Cheles ultimately learned that nine soldiers had been captured and placed in the custody of the infamous Kempei Tai, the much-feared Japanese police. Further details surfaced about American POWs and their shocking fate. A benign investigation eventually exploded into the most sensational war crimes trial to come out of Japan.

The Fallen at last reveals the full story of these terrifying war crimes, which grew out of the little-known inner workings of Japan’s World War II biological warfare program. In frank, riveting detail, Marc Landas unravels the story of thirty-nine American POWs who were beheaded by the Japanese military; of the B-29 crew, who suffered an even worse fate at the hands of Japanese scientists; and of the sole American survivor, Marvin Watkins, who refused to forget about his lost comrades even when his own country simply wanted to move on.

Drawing on meticulous research, Landas deftly traces the course of the investigation, from the elaborate cover-up by Japanese soldiers to Watkins’s return to occupied Japan and his role in uncovering the crew’s ultimate fate. Landas reveals the wretched conditions of Japanese POW camps, the astonishing witness testimony at the trial, and the awful truth about the missing G.I.s–that they had served as guinea pigs in unspeakable experiments by Japanese doctors. Landas pieces together the crewmen’s horrific fate and in the process sheds new light on Japan’s biological warfare program during World War II.

To compound the tragedy, the U.S. authorities released the convicted perpetrators for political gain. Landas explains how the push to establish a lasting friendship with Japan led to the cover-up of data and the granting of clemency. The result today is that the Japanese war crimes tribunal–and, indeed, the Americans who gave their lives–have all but been forgotten.

The Fallen at last reveals the truth about an episode that both Japanese and American authorities would rather have us overlook, offering an appalling, eye-opening tale of misguided science, corrupt justice, and man’s inhumanity.

Reviews

In the summer of 1945, 31 American airmen captured by the Japanese were summarily beheaded, and another eight died in the course of medical experiments in which their internal organs were removed and seawater was injected as a blood substitute. These macabre atrocities led to a post-war war-crimes prosecution that included allegations of cannibalism and threatened to implicate civilian scientists in Japan’s infamous biological-warfare program, as well as U.S. occupation authorities who were involved in the bio-warfare cover-up. Unfortunately, journalist Landas structures his plodding study of the crimes as an investigative procedural that chronicles the efforts of American agents to piece together events, identify victims, assign guilt, unravel cover-ups and pursue the case’s many twists, turns, false leads and blind alleys. The result is a disorganized, sloppily edited exposition that often relies on lengthy and tedious reconstructions of conspiratorial dialogues, interrogations and trial proceedings; it doles itself out in the same confusing dribs and drabs that the investigators experienced. To juice things up, Landas inserts overwritten recreations of victims’ inner monologues-"Heaven and God and paradise were all up there, hidden and waiting to reveal themselves," muses one doomed airman, before deciding that, in fact, "nothing but hell existed between the clouds"-and as well as shallow interpretive riffs on "the Eastern philosophies and kokutai ideologies that granted the Japanese a transcendental hall pass to cruelty and savagery against fragile-skinned gaijin underlings." It’s a gripping story, but Landas’s treatment doesn’t do it justice. Photos.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471421197
• ISBN 13: 9780471421191
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304