Prisoner of war and internee camps in the Far East

Rare c.20th map by the Australian Red Cross Society detailing the prisoner of war and internee camps in South East Asia, showing international boundaries and populated places with an inset of Three islands of Japan, at top left.

The map includes a key at lower left of the location of the camps.

Over 140,000 Allied military personnel were taken prisoner by the armed forces of Imperial Japan during the Second World War. They were held in a network of over 500 POW internment camps that stretched from Rangoon (Burma-Myanmar) down through Malaya, Singapore, Sumatra, and across Indonesia (Dutch East Indies) as far east as Rabaul in the Solomon Islands. Hundreds of camps also stretched north through the Celebes, Borneo, the Philippines, Hainan Island, Taiwan and Korea. In Japan alone, over 160 POW slave labour camps existed at the time of surrender and many more were located in areas of mainland China including the notorious camps in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Towards the end of the war, more and more prisoners were transported to mainland Japan as the need for domestic slave labour increased.