Internment Camp 371 question

[Epsilon IX]

Something about this place that crossed my mind recently, and no this has nothing to do with why the Dominion didn't destroy the runabout instead of conveniently leaving it parked in orbit in order for our heroes to make their escape etc, etc, but anyway I digress.

For those not familiar with the episodes 'In Purgatory's Shadow' and 'By Inferno's Light', Worf, Garak and Bashir are detained in a prison camp on an asteroid in the GQ called Internment Camp 371, along with General Martok, Enabron Tain and various other aliens. Whilst here either Changling imposters of them are causing all sorts of merry hell back in the AQ, whilst at the same time some of them (Martok and Worf in particular) are having the living beaten out of them by the Jem Hadar in order to learn of their fighting methods in order to be prepared for the upcoming conflict.

Anyway enough exposition. I noticed that the name of the place, Internment Camp 371, bears a strong resemblance (albeit with the first two numbers inverted) to another fictional POW camp, Squadron 731, in a very gruesome movie from 1988 called Men Behind The Sun (aka Hei tai yang 731) in which Japanese soldiers round up Chinese and Russian POWs and take them to the aforementioned camp, where they horribly torture and perform experiments on them to test new biological weapons (anyone who looks at this film's profile on IMDB.com will notice that everyone likes to make a lot of fuss over a cat!). I was wondering whether the writers were making a reference to this film (Memory Alpha doesn't make any mention if it)?

 

[R. Star]

Well that's an interesting parallel. Only way you'd ever know for sure is to ask the writer, but seems like the sort of thing a lot of writers would do to subtly set some atmosphere for those who are paying attention.

 

[Photon]

Something about this place that crossed my mind recently, and no this has nothing to do with why the Dominion didn't destroy the runabout instead of conveniently leaving it parked in orbit in order for our heroes to make their escape etc, etc, but anyway I digress.

For those not familiar with the episodes 'In Purgatory's Shadow' and 'By Inferno's Light', Worf, Garak and Bashir are detained in a prison camp on an asteroid in the GQ called Internment Camp 371, along with General Martok, Enabron Tain and various other aliens. Whilst here either Changling imposters of them are causing all sorts of merry hell back in the AQ, whilst at the same time some of them (Martok and Worf in particular) are having the living beaten out of them by the Jem Hadar in order to learn of their fighting methods in order to be prepared for the upcoming conflict.

Anyway enough exposition. I noticed that the name of the place, Internment Camp 371, bears a strong resemblance (albeit with the first two numbers inverted) to another fictional POW camp, Squadron 731, in a very gruesome movie from 1988 called Men Behind The Sun (aka Hei tai yang 731) in which Japanese soldiers round up Chinese and Russian POWs and take them to the aforementioned camp, where they horribly torture and perform experiments on them to test new biological weapons (anyone who looks at this film's profile on IMDB.com will notice that everyone likes to make a lot of fuss over a cat!). I was wondering whether the writers were making a reference to this film (Memory Alpha doesn't make any mention if it)?

Question about the Runabout, who knows. Sometimes DS9 writers make it a little too convenient. Perhaps, the Jems were wanting to tear it down for some super secret or whatever. It would have made more sense if Garak had formed a SF-type beacon, and the Defiant beamed them out from extreme range.

Realistically, 371 could have called up a wing of fighters and blown the runabout outta the sky....geez

 

[R. Star]

Something about this place that crossed my mind recently, and no this has nothing to do with why the Dominion didn't destroy the runabout instead of conveniently leaving it parked in orbit in order for our heroes to make their escape etc, etc, but anyway I digress.

For those not familiar with the episodes 'In Purgatory's Shadow' and 'By Inferno's Light', Worf, Garak and Bashir are detained in a prison camp on an asteroid in the GQ called Internment Camp 371, along with General Martok, Enabron Tain and various other aliens. Whilst here either Changling imposters of them are causing all sorts of merry hell back in the AQ, whilst at the same time some of them (Martok and Worf in particular) are having the living beaten out of them by the Jem Hadar in order to learn of their fighting methods in order to be prepared for the upcoming conflict.

Anyway enough exposition. I noticed that the name of the place, Internment Camp 371, bears a strong resemblance (albeit with the first two numbers inverted) to another fictional POW camp, Squadron 731, in a very gruesome movie from 1988 called Men Behind The Sun (aka Hei tai yang 731) in which Japanese soldiers round up Chinese and Russian POWs and take them to the aforementioned camp, where they horribly torture and perform experiments on them to test new biological weapons (anyone who looks at this film's profile on IMDB.com will notice that everyone likes to make a lot of fuss over a cat!). I was wondering whether the writers were making a reference to this film (Memory Alpha doesn't make any mention if it)?

Question about the Runabout, who knows. Sometimes DS9 writers make it a little too convenient. Perhaps, the Jems were wanting to tear it down for some super secret or whatever. It would have made more sense if Garak had formed a SF-type beacon, and the Defiant beamed them out from extreme range.

Realistically, 371 could have called up a wing of fighters and blown the runabout outta the sky....geez

Even Sloan calls Bashir on how awfully convienent that was in Inquisition. He had a point and I was actually wondering if Bashir really was a sleeper agent without knowing it in that one.

As for the Defiant? They were sorta busy deploying against the phantom Jem'Hadar/Cardassian fleet that was advancing on Bajor to mount a rescue mission really. The whole prison escape was a big plot hole, but with an otherwise good episode you can overlook that.

 

[DS9forever]

I suppose the scene could have featured Jem'Hadar on the runabout who Bashir, Garak would have had to overpower; the episode was nearly over and the writers probably wanted to focus on the scene between Sisko and Dukat, as well the Changeling impersonating Bashir trying to destroy the Bajoran star.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

I've no idea about this particular episode but Ron Moore and other DS9 writers got ideas from movies and used them on DS9.

 

[Mage]

Seiously guys??? The topicstarter specifically states that this topic is NOT about the entire runabout-issue, asks a question that has never been asked before, one person makes a comment about the original subject, and everybody starts talking about the runabout again....

 

[SchwEnt]

I noticed the OP mentions "another fictional POW camp, Squadron 731"
It was more commonly known as Unit 731 and it wasn't fictional at all.

This Japanese unit carried out all sort of atrocities and heinous medical experiments and all manner of horrible tortures.

Anyway, I don't see this DS9 internment camp as any fictional equivalent of the real life Unit 731. The Dominion wasn't torturing or experimenting on any of the prisoners. It was harsh and brutal as a POW camp, but there weren't atrocities.

So that just leaves the digits 371/731. If the writers wanted to invoke the Jap Unit 731, they could have simply used 731. Instead, I'd attribute the 371 to coincidence.

 

[ILOVETREK1701]

^^^^^^ I agree with the above.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't see this DS9 internment camp as any fictional equivalent of the real life Unit 731. The Dominion wasn't torturing or experimenting on any of the prisoners. It was harsh and brutal as a POW camp, but there weren't atrocities.

And the Jem'Hadar - their First, in particular - acted honorably, in a fashion. They fought Worf, but didn't torture him. And Ikat'ika even yielded! "I cannot defeat this Klingon. I can only kill him. And that no longer holds my interest."

 

[Epsilon IX]

I noticed the OP mentions "another fictional POW camp, Squadron 731"
It was more commonly known as Unit 731 and it wasn't fictional at all.

This Japanese unit carried out all sort of atrocities and heinous medical experiments and all manner of horrible tortures.

Anyway, I don't see this DS9 internment camp as any fictional equivalent of the real life Unit 731. The Dominion wasn't torturing or experimenting on any of the prisoners. It was harsh and brutal as a POW camp, but there weren't atrocities.

So that just leaves the digits 371/731. If the writers wanted to invoke the Jap Unit 731, they could have simply used 731. Instead, I'd attribute the 371 to coincidence.

^Sorry my bad. I think this shows I need to do my research a bit more before I submit a thread. Extensive though my knowledge of history is (for example I could tell you the English Royal Line of Sucession from 802 AD onwards off by heart), I wasn't aware about this one. This is one of those things about the Second World War that seldom gets a mention, and is largely overshadowed by other events such as the Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, Pearl Habour, D-Day, Hiroshima, The Holocaust etc.

The reasoning behind my original thinking was that maybe the writer was thinking of a sufficiently evil sounding number for the camp. For want of comparison think of 'Order 66' in Revenge of the Sith. Here it was apparent that Lucas was thinking of '666', the devil's number, which would have sounded too obvious, and calling it 'Order 6' would have implied that the clone troopers didn't get that many orders to begin with. When it came to writing this episode maybe the writers thought of this place, but thought to use the original name would sound a bit too obvious to history buffs, or possibly insulting to the memory of the people (and cats)who were there, so they changed it slightly.

I hope this clarifies things a bit more, and once again apologies for my ignorance about history just there. To many I probably sounded like those who, for want of example, thought that the RMS Titanic disaster was merely a movie, and not documented fact.

 

[Jono]

Someone has brought this up on MA before as seen in the article's talk page.

I agree with those who have said it's more likely a coincidence. I might believe that if it was originally Camp 731 that maybe someone with a sense of WWII history might have changed the numbers to prevent people forcing some sort of connection to the real world that was never attended.