I hear often about the hell like conditions the Americans endured on the islands but I never heard the other side of the story. Were the Japanese used to it better, did they have weapons better prepared for it or did they suffer just as much?
It depends entirely on which part of the front the soldiers were posted. There was a saying among the Japanese soldiers:
“Java is heaven, Burma is hell, but you never come back alive from New Guinea.”
Burma and New Guinea were scene of heavy fightings against the British and American troops, respectively. So the Japanese soldiers there faced terrible conditions. More so in remote, underdeveloped New Guinea.
Java on the other hand was spared of invasions by MacArthur's leapfrogging. Additionally it had large area of rice fields which could feed the Japanese soldiers. The hardest thing that the Japanese soldiers did in these kind of island is building bunkers, which was a back-breaking works, but heaven nonetheless compared to fighting in tropical, malaria and native-invested New Guinea.