Watanabe, Mutsuhiro , 1918-2003

Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Japanese: 渡邊睦裕, 18 January 1918 – April 2003) – nicknamed "the Bird" by his prisoners – was a known war criminal and Imperial Japanese Army soldier in World War II, who served in a number of military internment camps. After Japan's defeat, the US Occupation authorities classified Watanabe as a war criminal for his mistreatment of prisoners of war (POWs), but he managed to evade arrest and was never tried in court.

Watanabe served at POW camps in Omori, Naoetsu (present day Jōetsu), Niigata, Mitsushima (present day Hiraoka) and at the Civilian POW Camp at Yamakita. While in the military, Watanabe allegedly ordered one man who reported to him to be punched in the face every night for three weeks, and practiced judo on an appendectomy patient. One of his prisoners was American track star and Olympian Louis Zamperini. Zamperini reported that Watanabe beat his prisoners often, causing them serious injuries. It is said Watanabe made one officer sit in a shack, wearing only a fundoshi undergarment, for four days in winter, and that he tied a sixty-five-year-old prisoner to a tree for days. According to Hillenbrand's book, Watanabe had studied French, in which he was fluent, and had interest in the French school of nihilist philosophy which holds that life and human existence hold no objective meaning.

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