In “Prisoner Number 600001”, Tessa Morris-Suzuki argues that Matsushita Kazutoshi, a Japanese soldier who became a prisoner of war to both China and Korea, shows the harsh truth of the treatment of prisoners of war by the forces of the United Nations. Most people don’t think about all of the things that prisoners of war had to go through and how the things that they had to do would scar them for life. They were forced to fight in wars that they had nothing to do with and fulfill any other needs that they had. Suzuki shows Kazutoshi’s life journey through his time as a POW, which also sheds a light on how deeply involved each country was involved in its neighbors’ business during the wars.
What makes this article interesting is how ironic Kazutoshi’s …show more content…
The prisoners were grouped according to nationality while in the camps. The experiences that they went through are things they will never be able to forget, especially the women. While the men had to deal with the horrors on the battlefield, the women had to stay back and deal with the Chinese men. Suzuki elaborates on what exactly women POWs had to do during war times when she says,“Purportedly quoting Matsushita, two national newspapers proclaimed not only that 200,000 Japanese were being trained in Kamchatka but also that most of the Japanese women remaining in China had been forced into working as “comfort women” in Chinese military brothels”. During this time women were not seen as equals, they were only sexual objects; instead of providing aid during the war, they were being forced to give pleasure to foreign men. The second women were captured from neighboring villages, they were sentenced to a life of abuse, exploitation, and hardship. What makes this article so interesting is that Suzuki shows her audience different sides of POWs; most people don’t think about what happens to the women that are captured by foreign countries, many think they are just killed or raped but the truth is they are enslaved into sexual labor which is much worse than death itself to these