CSDIC is best known for the transcripts of prisoner conversations it generated through covert listening. Yet these dialogues stand largely on their own: they contain no material to explain why particular prisoners and conversations were monitored. The chapter argues that to understand the purpose of these transcripts, we need to look beyond them, to the other kinds of reports CSDIC produced that were not derived from microphones. Numbering roughly 2,500 documents, these reports chart a transformation in the information Britain sought to extract from these prisoners. The chapter shows how CSDIC was initially concerned with military information, but that it soon expanded in both reach and ambition, moving from tactical and operational intelligence to more specialised studies aimed at understanding enemy morale and shaping post-war occupation planning. Alongside these efforts, its microphones were also capturing references to atrocities and a growing awareness among some soldiers of the genocidal intent behind them. Yet such revelations remained subordinate to institutional priorities about protecting CSDIC’s methods even after 1945.

The chapter examines violence and the Japanese empire from the beginning of the empire’s existence in the late nineteenth century to its collapse in 1945. The chapter analyzes not only the war crimes initiated by the Japanese empire, but also the various individual recipients and perpetrators of violence from 1937 to 1945. Both the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) and the Pacific War (1941-45) tore apart the lives of millions of individuals. All involved were exposed to extreme violence, and every individual had to endure such periods of violence in one way or another. Chinese and Korean forced laborers, women forced into sexual servitude, Japanese leftists killed in the prison, American and European prisoners of wars, and Japanese and Korean suicide pilots are among those who addressed in this chapter. My essay attempts to illuminate complicated aspects of the wars that Japan experienced and provide a better understanding of these wars and their effects on various individuals in Asia and the Pacific.