"To me the war in the Far East was a brutal and bloody one, and as far removed from the war in Europe as it was in distance" Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

The fist thing that you should know was that one of the combatants never signed the Geneva Conference on the treatment of Prisoners of War. 

They did not need to, from their point of view they was no such thing as a Prisoner of War, to be caught whilst still being able to fight was a crime to the Japanese warrior. The only accepted way was to be killed in battle, unless you had fought bravely and were in no physical state able to strike another blow.

The Shogun inheritance

In this the Japanese were duplicitous, in their eyes even if you had gone this far down they would still deny you your life, as those in Alexandra Hospital were.

The Japanese entered the front of the hospital, rounded up all the doctors and nurses and killed every one, from that then went around the rest of the hospital ward by ward bed by bed and bayoneted those they could find. My father only just escaped this carnage.

When eventually the surrender was announced the killing did not stop, anyone considered an enemy of Japan was either shot or were beheaded, my father witnessed one such beheading that of a Chinese who was one of those trained by STS101. 

"They entered the hut that he was in, dragged all of the occupants out and grabbed him and made him kneel in front of his wife and children, the Japanese officer then drew his sword and delivered the fatal blow".

A Japanese soldier must die for the Emperor.

The war in the Jungles of Burma and Malaya was a long and dirty one, it was fought in the swamps and jungle that stifled those that took part, the constant attacks by mosquitoes, the leeches that sucked the blood out of them, the heat that drained them. Any scratch you had soon became infected; diseases such as Wet and Dry Berry Berry, Dysentery and Dengue fever took their toll.