Anchor Marco Werman tells us about Captain Chase Nielsen, a World War II prisoner of war who was subjected to waterboarding. He testified about the experience at a war crimes trial in 1946.
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MARCO WERMAN: The United States has some history of prosecuting cases of water-boarding, but from a different perspective, that of the victim. In World War Two, American prisoners of the Japanese were subjected to the infamous "water torture." One prisoner was an aviator, Captain Chase Nielsen. He was captured after a daring raid on Japan soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, Captain Nielsen gave a graphic description of water boarding at the war crimes trial of Japanese General Shigeru Sawada in 1946. "I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death," Nielsen told the court. Sawada was ultimately acquitted of responsibility in that case. But other Japanese soldiers did go to prison for water-boarding. One military police sergeant got a life sentence for torturing Philippine civilians, chiefly by water-boarding. Captain Nielsen died in 2007 at the age of 90. The year before his death, he said he hoped men and women in the service today will live "their lives in accordance with the military rules and laws of war.â€
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