Fukuoka POW Camp Headquarters

The Fukuoka Prisoner of War Camp Headquarters (福岡俘虜収容所本所) was the central administrative office for the largest network of Allied prisoner-of-war camps in western Japan during the Second World War. Established on January 1, 1943, the headquarters was initially located within the compound of the Western District Army Headquarters (西部軍司令部) in Fukuoka City, and in April 1945 relocated to the Nagahama Youth School (長浜青年学校) at Nagahama-cho, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka City.

The Fukuoka POW Camp system was one of the main camp groups established by the Imperial Japanese Army across the home islands, alongside those at Hakodate, Tokyo, Osaka and elsewhere (seven main camps existed at the end of the war). The Fukuoka group initially controlled the branch camps throughout Kyushu and in Yamaguchi and Hiroshima prefectures; the latter were later transferred to the Zentsuji and Hiroshima camps. At its peak, the system comprised over 30 branch camps and dispatch facilities, making it the largest POW camp network in western Japan.

Thousands of Allied prisoners of war — predominantly American, British, Australian, and Dutch servicemen captured during the fall of the Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and other Pacific campaigns — were held across the Fukuoka camp system. Prisoners were systematically exploited as forced labor in coal mines, shipyards, steel works, and munitions factories operated by major Japanese industrial conglomerates including Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Nippon Steel. Conditions were brutal: starvation rations, beatings, inadequate medical care, and dangerous working conditions resulted in high mortality rates across many branch camps.

The most notorious branch camps included Fukuoka #17 at the Mitsui Miike coal mine in Omuta — the largest single POW camp in Japan with 1,737 prisoners at the end of the war — Fukuoka #2 at Koyagi near Nagasaki, where POWs labored at the Kawanami Shipyard, and Fukuoka #14 in Nagasaki city (Mitsubishi shipyard), where seven prisoners were killed by the atomic bombing on August 9, 1945. Other significant branches operated at Tobata (steel works), Moji (hospital camp), and dozens of mining and industrial sites across Kyushu.

The Fukuoka camp system was successively commanded by Colonel Ijyu Sugasawa (菅沢亥重大佐) and Colonel Manjiro Fukumoto (福本万次郎大佐). In postwar war crimes trials conducted by Allied military tribunals, Colonel Sugasawa was held responsible, as overall commander, in a case involving the killing of escaped prisoners at a branch camp and was executed. Numerous other camp personnel across the branch camps were convicted, with several receiving death sentences for crimes including the murder of escaped prisoners and the torture and deliberate starvation of inmates.

On June 19, 1945, the Fukuoka headquarters at Nagahama was destroyed during the major American air raid on Fukuoka City. The administrative office was subsequently relocated to Dazaifu Elementary School in Dazaifu-cho (present-day Dazaifu City), Fukuoka Prefecture, where it remained until Japan's surrender. No dedicated memorial marker is known at the former headquarters sites, though the history of the Fukuoka POW camp system is documented at various memorial sites associated with individual branch camps across Kyushu.