[riehwvfbk]

Or another (and I think the most likely possibility, given what we know about human nature): one of the guards ran a profitable little side business selling basic machined parts in town made with free labor. In exchange, the prisoners got to make stuff they needed also. Only the high-ranking prisoners were in on the scheme. The rest were told the story about "deception", which is what we see relayed here.

[smabie]

You literally just made this up and you say it's the most likely explanation?

[riehwvfbk]

The other explanation is a little too much like a comic book. Real life tends not to resemble Batman storylines.

I mean, it's a great feel-good story and we want to believe it. Americans oh-so-smart, their Japanese captors as dumb as Darth Vader's henchmen, the perfect setting, and the machine shop was used to produce prosthetics. It's so saccharine my teeth hurt.