Mutsuhiro Watanabe

Mutsuhiro Watanabe
Born	January 1, 1918
Died	April 1, 2003 (aged 85)
Allegiance	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1941?–1945
Rank	Last rank - Sergeant
Battles/wars	World War II

Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Japanese: 渡邊睦裕, January 1, 1918 – April 1, 2003) was an Imperial Japanese Army sergeant in World War II who served at POW camps in Omori, Naoetsu (present day Jōetsu, Niigata) and Mitsushima (present day Hiraoka). After Japan's defeat, the US Occupation authorities classified Watanabe as a war criminal for his mistreatment of prisoners of war (POWs), but he managed to evade arrest and was never tried in court. He was later granted amnesty by the United States in an effort to make peace. ^[1]

Prison guard

Watanabe beat his prisoners often, causing them serious injuries. It is said Watanabe made one officer sit in a shack, wearing only a fundoshi undergarment, for four days in winter, and that he tied a sixty-five-year-old prisoner to a tree for days. Watanabe ordered one man to report to him to be punched in the face every night for three weeks, and that he practiced judo on an appendectomy patient. Watanabe's prisoners nicknamed him "The Bird." One of them was American track star Louis Zamperini, who tells his story in the book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, later adapted into a feature film directed by Angelina Jolie.

Later life

In 1945, General Douglas MacArthur included Watanabe as number 23 on his list of the 40 most wanted war criminals in Japan. However, Watanabe went into hiding and was therefore never prosecuted. In 1956 the Japanese literary magazine Bungeishunjū published an interview with Watanabe entitled "I do not want to be judged by America."

Prior to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, the CBS News program 60 Minutes interviewed Watanabe at the Hotel Okura in Tokyo as part of a feature on Louis Zamperini who, four days before his 81st birthday, was returning to carry the Olympic Flame torch through Naoetsu en route to Nagano, not far from the POW camp where he had been held. In the interview, Watanabe acknowledged beating and kicking prisoners, but was unrepentant, saying, "I treated the prisoners strictly as enemies of Japan." Zamperini attempted to meet with his chief and most brutal tormentor, but Watanabe, who had evaded prosecution as a war criminal, refused to see him.

Legacy

Accusations about Watanabe's abusive behavior are given in Laura Hillenbrand's book about Zamperini titled Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010).^[2] Watanabe also appears in Dr. Alfred A. Weinstein's memoir, Barbed Wire Surgeon, published in 1948. In 2014, Japanese musician Miyavi played Watanabe in Angelina Jolie's Unbroken, the film adaptation of Hillenbrand's book.^[3]

References

1. Gustkey, Earl (19 February 1998). "Former Track Star, POW, Doesn't Get Closure at 81 in His Return to Japan". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 27 July 2011.
2. Hillenbrand, Laura (2010). Unbroken. New York: Random House. p. 473. ISBN 978-1-4000-6416-8.
3. Josh Rottenberg (2014-10-31). "Japanese rock singer Miyavi makes debut in 'Unbroken'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2014-12-03.