The war crimes trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo meted out the Allies' official justice; Lord Russell of Liverpool's sensational bestselling books on the Axis' war crimes decided the public's opinion. The Knights of Bushido, Russell's shocking account of Japanese brutality in the Pacific in World War II, describes how the noble founding principles of the Empire of Japan were perverted by the military into a systematic campaign of torture, murder, starvation, rape, and destruction.

Notorious incidents like the Nanking Massacre and the Bataan Death March emerge as merely part of a pattern of human rights abuses. Undoubtedly formidable soldiers, the Japanese were terrible conquerors. Their conduct in the Pacific is a harrowing example of the doctrine of mutual destruction carried to the extreme and begs the question of what is acceptable and unacceptable in total war.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• FOREWORD TO THE 2016 EDITION
• THE KNIGHTS OF BUSHIDO
• I FROM MUKDEN TO PEARL HARBOUR
• II THE CHINA INCIDENT
• III THE GENERAL TREATMENT OF PRISONERS OF WAR
• IV THE MURDER OF CAPTURED AIRCREWS
• V LIFE AND DEATH ON THE BURMA-SIAM RAILWAY
• VI THE MASSACRE AND MURDER OF PRISONERS OF WAR
• VII THE PRISON HULKS
• VIII THE DEATH MARCHES
• IX THE PRISON CAMPS
• X THE CIVILIAN INTERNMENT CAMPS
• XI WAR CRIMES ON THE HIGH SEAS
• XII CANNIBALISM, VIVISECTION AND MUTILATION
• XIII ATROCITIES AGAINST THE CIVILIAN POPULATION UNDER JAPANESE OCCUPATION
• XIV THE KEMPAI TAI
• XV RETRIBUTION
• APPENDIX: SOME LEGAL ASPECTS OF WAR CRIMES TRIALS
• Plate section