Discipline in a POW camp

I thought about this watching KING RAT and other WWII/POW camp movies. Even though they're all in a Japanese (or in STALAG 17, German) prison camp, and yet the prisoners' military hierarchy still is in effect. What was to keep someone like, say, King Rat telling his own officers to go stuff it? "Listen, you may have been a commanding officer on the outside, but here there's only one power--the Japanese." I mean, what could his officers do to him? Did the Allied officers have some deal with their captors that the captors would back the officers in the case of insubordination?