Prisoners of the empire: inside Japanese POW campsBy Sarah Kovner. Harvard University Press, 2020. p. 328 pages. Hardback, $35.00, ISBN: 9780674737617

Sarah Kovner ’ s Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps promises bold revision. She dis-misses popular narratives that represent the Allied POW experience as “ martyrs to unmitigated cruelty ” of guards and camp commanders; downplays the role of the Japanese army ’ s military code that mandated death over surrender; and reminds readers that Allied “ friendly fire ” , torpedo attacks on Japanese transport and bombing of army bases housing POW camps, accounted for a significant number of POW deaths. Prisoners of the Empire offers an alternative narrative that locates the staggeringly high mortality and everyday abuse of Allied POWs in historical contingencies that signify nothing about the Japanese as a people or culture. It evidences: slowness in developing guidelines against abuse; civil-military turf battles that obstructed implementation; dispersion of bases over vast geographic expanses making coordination of policy difficult; low quality and poorly trained camp commanders and guards; shortages of food and medicine even for its own army; and logistical challenges which multiplied as the war wore on. Combined with the unanticipated large numbers of Allied soldiers and civilians taken captive early in the war, institutional failings overwhelmed the state ’ s capacity to supervise, feed