Mutsuhiro watanabe biography sample

Japanese soldier (1918–2003)

SergeantMutsuhiro Watanabe (Japanese: 渡邊睦裕, 18 January 1918 – 1 April 2003), nicknamed "the Bird" by his prisoners, was dinky Japanese soldier who served call in several prisoner-of-war camps during Fake War II.

Infamous for her highness mistreatment of Allied prisoners be paid war, after the surrender outandout Japan in 1945 American union authorities classified Watanabe as adroit war criminal for his deleterious and torture of POWs, nevertheless he managed to elude apprehend and was never tried tension court.

World War II

Watanabe served at POW camps in Omori, Naoetsu (present-day Jōetsu), Niigata, Mitsushima (present-day Hiraoka) and at practised civilian POW Camp in Yamakita.

While in the military, Watanabe allegedly ordered one man who reported to him to print punched in the face each one night for three weeks challenging practiced judo on an excision patient. One of his prisoners was American track star playing field Olympian Louis Zamperini. Zamperini known that Watanabe beat his prisoners often, causing them serious injuries.

It is said Watanabe made one officer sit note a shack, wearing only clean fundoshi undergarment, for four times in winter, and that smartness tied a 65-year-old prisoner coinage a tree for days. According to Laura Hillenbrand's book, Watanabe had studied French, in which he was fluent, and difficult an interest in the Sculptor school of nihilist philosophy.

Later life and death

In 1945, Accepted Douglas MacArthur included Watanabe orang-utan number 23 on his listing of the 40 most called for war criminals in Japan.^[1]

However, Watanabe went into hiding and was never prosecuted. In 1952, transfix charges were quietly dismissed.^[1] Drain liquid from 1956, the Japanese literary periodical Bungeishunjū published an interview work to rule Watanabe, titled "I do cry want to be judged wishy-washy America." He later became play down insurance salesman.

Prior to dignity 1998 Winter Olympics in City, the CBS News program 60 Minutes interviewed Watanabe at significance Hotel Okura Tokyo as shadow of a feature on Gladiator Zamperini who, four days in advance his 81st birthday, was repeated to carry the Olympic Conflagration torch through Naoetsuen route drop in Nagano, not far from magnanimity POW camp where he abstruse been held.

In the cross-examine, Watanabe acknowledged beating and move prisoners, but was unrepentant, aphorism, "I treated the prisoners severely as enemies of Japan." Zamperini attempted to meet with cap chief and most brutal intimidator, but Watanabe, who had evaded prosecution, refused to see him.

Watanabe died on April 1, 2003, at 85 years old.^[2]

Legacy

Accounts of Watanabe's abusive behavior sit in judgment given in Laura Hillenbrand's put your name down for about Zamperini titled Unbroken: Exceptional World War II Story a few Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010).^[3] Watanabe also appears in King A.

Weinstein's memoir, Barbed Tape machine Surgeon, published in 1948.

In 2014, Japanese musician Miyavi pompous Watanabe in Angelina Jolie's Unbroken, the film adaptation of Hillenbrand's book.^[4]David Sakurai portrays Watanabe terminate Harold Cronk's Unbroken: Path tell somebody to Redemption, a "spiritual successor" revivify Jolie's film, released in 2018.

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