Takashi Nagase, was an interpreter of the Ministry of War of Japan, he was one of the officers in charge of the construction of the "Death Railway" which ran between Thailand and Burma, and is known for the use of forced labour of Allied prisoners of war, a prisoner of war, enemy prisoner of war (EPW) or "missing-captured, is a person, whether combatant or non-combatant, who is held in custody by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict, the arliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war", dates to what year?
Takashi Nagase Takashi Nagase (永瀬 隆 , Nagase Takashi , c. 1918/19 – 21 June 2011) was an interpreter of the Ministry of War of Japan. He was born in 1918/19 in Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan. He learned English from an American Methodist in a college in Tokyo. He was one of the officers in charge of the construction of the "Death Railway" which ran between Thailand and Burma and included the famous bridge over the River Kwai, and is known for the use of forced labour of Allied prisoners of war, though the majority of the labour (and resultant deaths) was incurred by "romusha", or local civilians pressed into labour.
Trading of East German political prisoners Häftlingsfreikauf (literally "Sale of prisoners' freedom") is the term used in Germany for an informal and for many years secret series of transactions between the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the German Federal Republic (West Germany) between 1962 and 1989. The object of the transactions was the release of nearly 34,000 East German political prisoners for which West Germany paid East Germany, generally in cash or goods, an average amount of approximately 40,000 Deutsche Marks per person. Political prisoners whose freedom had been purchased could choose to be expelled directly from their place of detention to West Germany, and frequently were given no notice or opportunity to communicate with their families nor to say good bye to fellow prisoners before crossing the Inner German border to West Berlin.