I’ve heard a lot about waterboarding in the news, but haven’t really payed a lot of attention about it. But I did find it interesting that back in 1947 the U.S. charged a Japanese officer with war crimes for carrying out waterboarding on a U.S. civilian, and that the Washington Post had a front page photograph of U.S. soldiers using the technique back in 1968.
While the American version of water boarding is in general an inducement of the sensation of drowning and not intended to be fatal.
The Japanese version as it was widely practiced in China is much more full strength; water is forced into the stomach via preferably a high pressure hose, any interrogation would be conducted at this stage, when the stomach is fully distended then a board (hence named water boarding) is placed over the body and jumped upon, inducing an even and general rupture of the internal organs. Death is slow and agonizing.