YELLOW RIVER FLOOD (1938)
During the Sino-Japanese war, as Japanese forces moved west
towards the railroad junction of Chengchow, there to meet up with
other Japanese units advancing on Hankow, the Chinese Nationalists
blew up the flood dykes of the Yellow River. The resulting flood
inundated three provinces and forty-four counties. Between four and
five thousand villages and eleven towns were flooded. A total of
3,911,354 people were displaced. Altogether 893,303 lives were lost
through drowning. The Chinese Nationalists blamed this atrocity on
the Japanese.
HONG KONG ATROCITIES (December 25, 1941)
The lush island of Hong Kong, thirty-two
square miles in area, was formally ceded to Great Britain by the
Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Around Christmas, 1941, the peace and
tranquillity of this island paradise was shattered when the troops
of General Ito Takeo defeated the gallant soldiers of Britain,
Canada, and India, and detachments of various other nationalities.
Intoxicated with the spirit of victory, the Japanese troops showed
no mercy to their victims. At Eucliff,
fifty-three prisoners were shot, bayoneted, some beheaded and their
bodies rolled down the cliff. On Christmas morning, around 200
drunken Japanese approached St. Stephen's
College, now a sanctuary for ninety-six wounded soldiers.
Barring the front door was the head medic, Dr. George Black. 'You
can't come in here' he called out, 'this is a hospital'. With
deliberate aim, one of the soldiers raised his rifle and shot the
doctor through the head. As the drunken mob surged into the
hospital ward, the body of Dr Black was repeatedly bayoneted as he
lay at the door. In the wards, a massacre of unprecedented ferocity
took place. The Japanese ripped the bandages off the wounded
patients and plunged their bayonets into the amputated arms and
legs before finishing them off with a bullet. In half an hour
fifty-six wounded soldiers had been massacred while the nursing
staff looked on helplessly. The female nurses were then led away,
to a fate one can only imagine. The patients and staff who had
survived the slaughter were then forced to carry the bodies and
bloodied mattresses to the grounds outside where a huge funeral
pyre was prepared and lit from the college desks and cupboards
which had been smashed up for firewood. Similar atrocities was
enacted at the Jockey Club in Happy Valley and at the Salesian
Mission at Shau Kei Wan. Atrocities were committed at various
locations throughout the colony including the rape of thousands of
women and young girls. On this day, any
misconceptions the world had that Japan was a civilized nation,
disappeared into thin air.
THE LAHA AIRFIELD EXECUTIONS (February 9, 1943)
Two graves, about five metres apart, were dug in a wooded area
near the village of Tawiri adjacent to Laha
airstrip on Ambon Island, the defence of
which had cost 309 Australian lives. The graves were circular in
shape, six metres in diameter and three metres deep. Soon after
6pm, a group of Australian and Dutch prisoners of war, their arms
tied securely behind them, were brought to the site. The first
prisoner was made to kneel at the edge of the grave and the
execution, by samurai beheading, was carried out by a Warrant
Officer Kakutaro Sasaki. The next four beheadings were the
privilege of eager crew-members of a Japanese mine-sweeper sunk a
few days previously by an enemy mine in Ambon Bay. This could only
be considered as an act of reprisal for the loss of their ship. As
dusk descended, and the beheadings continued, battery torches were
used to light up the back of the necks of each successive
victim.
The same macabre drama was being enacted at the other round
grave where men of a Dutch mortar unit were being systematically
decapitated. On this unforgettable evening, 55 Australian and 30
Dutch soldiers were murdered. Details of this atrocity came to
light during the interrogation of civilian interpreter, Suburo
Yoshizaki, who was attached to the Kure No.1 Special Navy Landing
Party, at that time stationed on Ambon. A few days later, on
February 24, in the same wooded area, another bizarre execution
ceremony took place. Around the graves stood about 30 naval
personnel who had volunteered for this grisly task, many of them
carrying swords which they had borrowed. When some of the young
prisoners were dragged to the edge of the grave shouting
desperately and begging for their lives, shouts of jubilation came
from those marines witnessing the executions. In this mass murder,
which ended at 1.30am the following morning, the headless bodies of
227 Allied prisoners filled the two large graves. Witness to this
second massacre was Warrant Officer Keigo Kanamoto, Commanding
Officer of the Kure No.1 Repair and Construction Unit. (The remains of those murdered were later disinterred and
reburied in the Australian War Cemetery at Tantoei).
PHILIPPINES MASSACRE
A full account of all massacres of Filipinos by Japanese troops
would fill several books. In Manila, 800 men
women and children were machine-gunned in the grounds of St. Paul's
College. In the town of Calamba, 2,500 were
shot or bayoneted. Around 100 were bayoneted and shot inside a
church at Ponson and 169 villagers of
Matina Pangi were rounded up and shot in cold
blood. At the War Crimes Trial in Tokyo, document No 2726 consisted
of 14,618 pages of sworn affidavits, each describing separate
atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops. The Tribunal listed 72 large scale massacres and 131,028 murders
as a bare minimum.
BANGKA ISLAND MASSACRE (St.
Valentine's Day, February 14, 1942)
On board the liner SS Vyner Brooke
(Captain R. E. Borton, OBE) named after its onetime owner Sir
Charles Vyner Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, and in peacetime had sailed
between Singapore and Kuching, were 65 Australian Army nurses of
the 2/10 and the 2/13th Australian General Hospitals in Singapore
who, together with other civilian women and children, made up the
330 persons being evacuated from the city. In the Banka Strait, a
narrow strip of water between the islands of Bangka and Sumatra,
the Vyner Brooke was bombed and sunk by
Japanese planes. A few lifeboats managed to reach the mangrove
lined shore of Bangka Island. On advice from some islanders they
were advised to give themselves up to the Japanese as there was no
hope of escaping. That night another lifeboat arrived on the shore
containing between 30 and 40 British servicemen from another ship
sunk earlier. The civilian women, some nurses and children, then
set out to walk to the nearest Japanese compound to give themselves
up. When the Japanese arrived at the beach the men and women were
separated, the men were marched into the jungle, never to be heard
of again. The soldiers returned and forced the remaining 22 nurses
to wade out into the sea. There, in waist deep water, they were
machined-gunned to death, leaving only one survivor, Sister Vivian Bullwinkle, who later managed to reach the
island's Japanese Naval Headquarters where she was put to work in
the hospital. For over three years she kept the secret of the
massacre to herself and a few friends. To speak openly about it
would have been a certain recipe for execution. Of the 65 nurses
from the Vyner Brooke, 12 had drowned, 21
shot in the water at Radji Beach and 32 had gone into prison in
Muntok before being shipped to Palembang in southern Sumatra to
serve three-and-a-half years of privation and punishment as
prisoners of war. Sadly, only 24 survived the war. (Sister Bullwinkle died in Perth, Western Australia, in 2000,
aged 84).
The Bangka Memorial
THE PARIT SULONG MASSACRE
In January, 1942, a company of Australian, British and Indian
soldiers were captured by the Japanese and interned in a large
wooden building at Parit Sulong in Malaysia.
Late in the afternoon of January 22, 1942, they were ordered to
assemble at the rear of a row of damaged shops nearby. The wounded
were carried by those able to walk, the pretext being the promise
of medical treatment and food. While waiting at the assembly point,
either sitting or lying prone, their hands tied with signal wire or
rope, three machine guns, concealed in the back rooms of the
wrecked shops, started their deadly chatter, their concentrated
fire chopping flesh and limbs to pieces. A number of prisoners
whose bodies showed signs of life, had to be bayoneted. In order to
dispose of the bodies, which totalled 161, the row of shops was
blown up and the debris bulldozed into a heap on top of which the
corpses were placed. Sixty gallons of gasoline was splashed on the
bodies and then a flaming torch was thrown on the pile. Just before
midnight, the debris of the nine shops had burned into piles of
grey ash two feet high, the 161 bodies totally incinerated. The
perpetrator of this foul crime was Lt-Gen. Takuma Nishimura, 62,
who gave the following order " Instruct the
officer-in-charge to execute all the prisoners by firing squad.
Kill them all. The bodies of the prisoners are to be cremated on
completion of the execution and all traces of their disposal
obliterated"
Nishimura later faced trial before an Australian Military Court
and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was previously convicted of
massacres in Singapore and sentenced to life imprisonment by a
British Military Tribunal on April 2, 1947. After serving four
years of his sentence, he was being transferred to Tokyo to serve
out the rest of his sentence and while the ship stopped temporarily
at Hong Kong he was seized by the Australian Military Police and
taken to Manus Island where his second trial was held. In this
trial he was found guilty and hanged on June 11, 1951.
TOL PLANTATION ATROCITY (February 4, 1942)
On the morning of 22/23 of January, 1942, Japanese forces,
estimated at between seventeen and twenty thousand, landed at
Rabaul on the island of New Britain. Defended by 1,396 men of the
Australian 2/22 Battalion of the 8th Division, AIF, (Lark Force )
The New Guinea Volunteer Rifles and men of the 2/10 Field Ambulance
Unit, they were soon forced to retreat in the hope of escaping via
Wide Bay about 90 kilometres south of Rabaul. On the 3rd of
February, 1942, Japanese troops landed from five barges on the
shore of Henry Reid Bay, an indent on Wide Bay and near the
Tol and Waitavalo plantations. They
immediately set out to round up all Australian soldiers hiding out
in the surrounding jungle. The first ten taken prisoner were
immediately bayoneted to death. The others, worn out and hungry by
their trek from Rabaul, simply surrendered. Their hands were bound
together, their identity discs and other personal items taken off
them and then marched into the bush on the Tol Plantation in groups
of ten or twelve and four separate massacres took place, the
victims shot or bayoneted in a most cruel fashion. At the nearby
plantation at Waitavalo eleven other prisoners were shot from
behind by rifle and machine guns.
The Japanese didn't have the decency to bury these men, only to
throw a few palm fronds over the bodies. Miraculously, six men
survived these killings. When the 14/32nd Australian Infantry
Battalion recaptured the area in April, 1945, they discovered a
number of areas littered with the bleached bones of 158 victims who
had escaped from Rabaul. It is not known how many of the victimes
were civilians. The Japanese unit responsible for the murders was
the 3rd Battalion of the 144th Infantry Regiment commanded by
Colonel Masao Kusunose who was tracked down on December 17, 1946.
It was discovered that he had committed suicide by starving himself
to death during a nine day fast. In Australia, the official
Government report on the massacre was not released until 47 years
later, in 1988. (Of the 1,396 men of Lark Force,
only about 400 returned home).
MASSACRE ON BALIKPAPAN (February 24, 1942)
After the destruction of the Tarakan oil-fields the Japanese
were determined that the same thing would not happen when they
invaded Balikpapan. Two Dutch officers,
captured on Tarakan, were sent to Balikpapan with an ultimatum
stating that if the oil installations are destroyed, all Dutch
personnel in the area would be shot. The two emissaries were
directed by the Dutch commanding officer, Lt. Col. C van den
Hoogenband, to escape to the island of Java after which he gave the
order for the oil-fields to be destroyed. Japanese troops of the
56th Regimental Group, under the command of Major-General Shizuo
Sakaguchi, invaded the island on January 23, 1942 and outraged at
what they saw, proceeded to round up every Dutch soldier and white
civilian they could find. Even eight patients from the local
hospital were among the group of 78 victims marched to a beach near
the old Klandasan Fortress. Two of the victims were then beheaded
on the beach, the other 76 forced into the sea and in an execution
similar to the Bangka massacre, all were shot
one by one, their bodies left to drift with the tide.
THE CHEKIANG MASSACRES
The Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo brought a retaliation
against the Chinese people that staggers the imagination. On April
18, 1942, sixteen twin-engined Mitchell B-25 bombers, each carrying
one ton of bombs, and led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, were
launched from the aircraft carrier USS
Hornet. Their mission was to bomb the Japanese capital,
Tokyo, and then, unable to land back on their
carrier, proceed to friendly airfields in China, 1,200 miles across
the East China Sea. Some of the planes reached their destination
safely but the others ran out of fuel and crashed after their crews
had baled out. Sixty four airmen parachuted into the area around
Chekiang. Most were given shelter by the Chinese civilians but
eight of the Americans were picked up by Japanese patrols and three
were shot after a mock trial for 'crimes against humanity'. The
Japanese army then conducted a massive search for the others and in
the process whole towns and villages that were suspected of
harbouring the Americans, were burned to the ground and every man,
woman and child brutality murdered. When the Japanese troops moved
out of the Chekiang and Kiangsu areas in mid-August, they left
behind a scene of devastation and death that is beyond
comprehension. Chinese estimates put the death toll at a staggering
250,000. Lt. Col. James Doolittle was later awarded the US Medal Of
Honor. (The Chinese Department of Defence claims
that 1,319,659 Chinese soldiers were killed between 1937 and 1945.
It estimates the number of Chinese civilians killed during this
period at over 30,000,000)
ATROCITY ON LUZON
While many atrocities were committed on Luzon, this one stands out for its sheer bloody
mindedness. Fourteen Filipino resistance fighters surrendered to
the Nippon savages after their ammunition was expended. Tied
together neck to neck and with hands tied behind their backs, they
were marched three miles to their place of execution. Ordered to
sit down, another group of prisoners were brought in and forced to
dig fourteen holes two feet wide and four and a half feet deep.
When the digging finished the fourteen Filipinos, with their neck
ropes removed, were forced to jump into the holes while the other
group shovelled the earth back into the hole and stamped it down
hard until only the head and neck of the victims were visible above
ground. Their repugnant duty finished, the grave diggers were then
lined up and shot in cold blood. The attention of the Japanese was
now focused on the fourteen heads awaiting decapitation. A few
soldiers had gone behind some bushes to defecate and after scraping
together their excreta on to banana leaves they returned to the
buried victims and kneeling down offered each head a last meal.
Unable to move, the helpless men could only shake their head from
side to side whereupon the Japanese soldiers stuffed the revolting
faeces into their mouths amidst peals of laughter from their
comrades. After they had their fun, the serious business of
execution commenced as an officer drew his sword and with deft
strokes separated the fourteen heads from the bodies. No one was ever punished for this foul deed.
THE TRUK MASSACRE (February, 1944)
During the American attack on the island of Truk in the Carolines, around 100 women, (most of them
'Comfort Women' girls forced into prostitution by the Japanese
Army) took shelter in a dugout behind the Naval base where they
worked. With defeat staring them in the face, the Japanese, fearing
that the 'comfort women' would be an encumbrance and an
embarrassment, should they fall into American hands, decided to
dispose of them. During a lull in the fighting, three ensigns were
sent to the dugout. Armed with machine guns, they approached to
find a few women emerging from the pitch-dark interior. They were
immediately shot on the spot. Entering the dugout with guns
blazing, they fired randomly in the darkness. When the screams of
the women had died down and only the moans of the wounded could be
heard, the ensigns flicked on their torches to find around seventy
bodies, drenched in blood, lying on the floor. (After the war the
US occupational authorities allowed continued use of a number of
these Comfort Women still alive, as prostitutes for their own GIs
stationed on the island)
DEATH ON TANOURA BEACH
American airmen shot down during bombing raids on Rabaul, New Britain, were incarcerated in a house, a
former tailors shop in Chinatown, now the headquarters of the 6th
Field Kempetai under the command of the Japanese Navy. On March
2nd, 1944, the house was demolished in a bombing raid. Fortunately
all the prisoners had been transferred to a shelter across the road
prior to the raid. While in the shelter, another seventeen
prisoners were brought in bringing the total of sixty-two. (these
prisoners were from the 5th, 13th Airforce and the 1st and 2nd Wing
Marine Air Corps) Next day the sixty-two men were trucked out to a
tunnel like cave at Tanoura, a few miles from Rabaul. Packed
together in the narrow cave like sardines, they were allowed two
buckets of water each day, but only after the guards had washed
their dishes in it. Two days later, twenty names were called out to
proceed to waiting lorries. Later, more names were called and the
lorries departed. The prisoners were under the command of Warrant
Officer Zenichi Wakabayashi. According to evidence given by him at
the Rabaul War Crimes Trials the prisoners were told they were
being transferred to a camp on Watom Island, a few miles off
shore.
Assembled in a shelter on Tanoura Beach
waiting for sea transport, the prisoners were subjected to a rain
of bombs from eight US bombers flying high overhead. A direct hit
on the shelter caused the deaths of most of the prisoners, five
were seriously wounded and died a short time later. That evening,
all thirty-one bodies, or parts of bodies, were cremated in a huge
funeral pyre on the beach. Some of the ashes were gathered together
and eventually handed over to members of the Australian Army at the
end of hostilities. At the War Crimes Trial questions were asked as
to why the bodies were cremated when other Allied deaths usually
resulted in burial in mass graves. Why was the camp commander on
Watom Island, Colonel Kahachi Ogata, never informed that prisoners
were about to be transferred from the mainland? Could it be that
the thirty one prisoners were deliberately massacred to ease the
crowded conditions in the tunnel camp, and to hide their crime, the
Japanese had the bodies burned? There is no real evidence to either
of these incidents. Were the prisoners massacred or did they really
fall victim to 'Friendly Fire'? In 1948, Wakabayashi
was again interrogated but maintains he is telling the
truth.
MURDER ON WAKE ISLAND (January 12, 1943)
The Japanese invasion of Wake Island, a
small atoll some 2,000 miles west of Hawaii (area 6.5 sq kms) cost
them dearly, 11 naval craft, 29 planes and around 5,700 men killed.
The stubborn defence of the island by the tiny garrison of 388 US
Marines and 1,200 civilians workers lasted for fourteen heroic
days. On December 23, 1941, Major James P.S. Devereux of the 1st.
Defence Battalion, US Marine Corps, and Commander Winfield
Cunningham of the Naval Air Station, realizing that the odds were
hopelessly stacked against them, called for a cease fire, raised
the white flag and surrendered the island. The loss of Wake Island
left the US with no base between Hawaii and the Philippines. In
January, 1942, the US Marines, numbering 1,187, were herded into
the cargo holds of the 17,163 ton Japanese luxury liner
Nitta Maru, for transportation to Yokohama
and then to Shanghai. Those left behind included the civilians and
the wounded Marines. A year passed and on the night of January 12,
1943, the Japanese accused the civilians of being in secret radio
communication with US naval forces. The 97 American civilians still
on Wake (actually 98 but one was caught stealing food and was
beheaded) were marched to the beach and there lined up with their
backs to the ocean and brutally murdered by machine guns. After the
war, the Japanese commander on Wake, Rear Admiral Shigematsu
Sakaibara, and eleven of his officers, were sentenced to death by a
US Naval Court at Kwajalein. Sakaibara was
transported to Guam to await his fate. There, on 19
June 1947, he was executed by hanging. The murdered civilian
POWs were later buried in Honolulu Memorial, Hawaii.
KOKOPO AND BALLALAE MASSACRES
In November, 1942, six hundred British POWs were marched from
their prison at Changi to the docks at Singapore to board a 6,500
ton cargo ship. On November 5 the ship entered Simpson Harbour at
Rabaul, New Britain. The P.O.W.s were transferred to Kokopo to start building a new airstrip. Three weeks
later, 517 of the prisoners were shipped to a camp on Ballalae Island in the Solomon's, there to start work on
another airstrip for the Japanese. One prisoner died en route. The
82 men left behind at Kokopo were very badly treated by their
captors. Kicked, beaten, punched, thrashed and clubbed on a daily
basis they were soon in a terrible state. Gravely ill with
dysentery, malaria and berri-berri, they soon succumbed to death
and by the end of February, 1945, only 57 were still alive. By
April, only 21 of the original 82 were alive. Some had developed
diphtheria scrotum which, because of a vitamin deficiency, causes
the testicles to swell to the size of pineapples. Eventually the 21
sick prisoners were transferred to the Watom Island camp where they
were made to dig tunnels to be used by the Japanese as air-raid
shelters. Soon two more died and on September 6, 1945, when 89,291
Japanese military and civilian men and women surrendered to the
Allies, the 18 survivors were freed and boarded the destroyer
HMAS Vendetta for a hospital on Lae, then on
to Australia and home.
The surrender of Japanese forces in Rabaul and surrounding
islands was formally signed on board the British aircraft carrier
HMS Glory (Captain W. Buzzard) anchored off
Rabaul on September 6, 1945. Meanwhile, on Ballalae
Island, the prisoners suffered the same horrendous
conditions as those at Kokopo. Sadly, not a single one of the 516
prisoners survived the war. In 1943, after the island was captured
by the 3rd New Zealand Division, natives revealed that hundreds of
POWs were killed during an Allied bombing raid and when the
airstrip was completed at the end of March, 1943, the remaining
prisoners were lined up and executed by bayonet and sword. In
December, 1945, an Australian War Graves unit exhumed 436 bodies
from one mass grave and re-interred the remains in the Bomama War
Cemetery at Port Moresby. A total of 188 War Crimes
Trials were held at Rabaul after the war. The courts sentenced 93
Japanese war criminals to death, 78 were hanged and 15 were shot by
firing squad.
THE 'AKIKAZE' EXECUTIONS (March 18, 1943)
The Mitsubishi built destroyer Akikaze
(Lt. Cdr. Sabe Tsurukichi) was ordered to sail to Wewak in New
Guinea to remove some German residents who were suspected of using
radio transmitters to report ship movements to the Americans. Forty
civilians were rounded up, most of them German clergymen, plus a
few nuns with two children. About thirty more civilians were picked
up when the ship stopped at Manus Island before proceeding to
Rabaul. En-route, Captain Tsurukichi received a radio message from
the 8th Fleet Headquarters to dispose of all neutrals on board. On
the aft deck a wooden scaffold was erected and a sheet hung across
the deck to shield the executions from the rest of the prisoners.
One by one the victims were led from their cabins, interrogated and
blindfolded and taken to the rear of the ship. There, they were
hung on the scaffold by the wrists from a rope and pulley and as
their feet cleared the deck they were shot by a four man rifle
party. Their bodies were then thrown overboard. The two children
were taken from the arms of the nuns and thrown into the water. The
men were killed first then the women, the whole procedure lasting
three hours. At around 10 o'clock in the evening the Akikaze berthed at Rabaul.
THE PORT BLAIR MASSACRES (March 23, 1942)
Japanese forces occupied the British controlled Andaman Islands.
They met no resistance from the local population but within hours
the 'Sons of Heaven' started an orgy of looting, raping and murder.
Unbelievable orgies were perpetrated in the towns and villages with
women and young girls forcibly raped and young boys sodomized. In
Port Blair, eight high-ranking Indian
officials were tortured then buried up to their chests in pits they
were forced to dig. Their chests, heads and eyes were then prodded
with bayonets after which the pit was sprayed with bullets until
the helpless victims were all dead. The Director of Health and
President of the Indian Independence League, Diwan Singh, was
arrested and nearly 2,000 of his Peace Committee associates
incarcerated in the local jail and subjected to the water
treatment, electric shocks and other unspeakable forms of torture
for eighty-two days. Those left alive were then taken out to the
country and shot and buried. After the massacre the Japanese
resorted to a reign of terror, women were abducted and taken to the
officers club to be raped by the officer elite. A shipload of
Korean girls was brought in to participate in this 'sport'. During
the three and a half years of Japanese occupation, out of the
40,000 population of Port Blair around 30,000 were brutally
murdered. The small islands of the Andamans were left a scene of
utter devastation. This was Japan's way of helping
India get her freedom from British rule.
REVENGE MURDER
A few miles outside the city of Tacloban,
the principle city on the island of Leyte in the Philippines, was a
prisoner-of-war camp for Allied soldiers. In charge of the
prisoners was a senior British officer, Major Cumyns. Considered by
the inmates as a strict disciplinarian, arrogant and conceited who
used every opportunity to advance his own creature comforts and at
the same time to endear himself to the good graces of the Camp
Commandant, Captain Yoshishito. In the camp were 44 British and 120
Australian prisoners-of war plus one solitary American. On
Christmas Eve, 1943, four Australians made a desperate attempt to
escape. Hunted down, with the help of Major Cumyns, the four were
eventually captured. Next morning, Christmas Day, the four Aussies
were beheaded in front of the assembled prisoners. Hatred towards
Major Cumyns spilled over in the hearts of the Australians and
around midnight that night a small group of Australian prisoners
crept into Cumyns' hut while he slept, slipped a leather cord
around his neck and strangled him to death. From then on the
British POWs refused to have anything to do with their Aussie
mates. On the 20th of October, 1944, units of the United States 6th
Army liberated Leyte and the POW camp. There were 120 survivors in
the camp who were eventually shipped to Brisbane, Australia.
Interrogated by officers of the Judge Advocates Office regarding
the death of Major Cumyns, the full story came to light.
Nothing came of the inquiry, the whole episode was
covered up by the British and Australian governments.
MASSACRE ON ANDAMAN (August
14, 1945)
Situated midway between the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean,
lie the tranquil Andaman Islands. As the food
shortage became acute during the last month of the war, the
Japanese occupiers decided to exterminate all those who were no
longer useful or employable. All were deprived of their personal
possessions and household goods before being embarked on three
boats. About two kilometres from the shore of the uninhabited
Havelock Island they were forced to jump into
the sea and swim to the beach. Most of them, around a hundred,
drowned on the way and those who made it were abandoned to die of
starvation. Of the original 300 who landed only eleven were alive
six weeks later. The next day, 800 Indian civilians were rounded up
and transported to another uninhabited island, Tarmugli. Transferred to the island in small boats, they
wandered aimlessly on the beach waiting for further orders. Soon, a
detachment of 19 Japanese troops arrived and what followed was one
of the most heinous crimes in the annals of the Pacific war. It
took the detachment just over an hour to slaughter all but two of
the 800 victims by shooting and bayoneting. Next day, August 15,
1945, the day of the Japanese surrender, a burial detail of troops
arrived to remove all traces of the massacre. Within twenty-four
hours all 798 bodies were collected and burned in funeral pyres
until only fragmented bones and ashes remained. The ashes were then
buried in deep pits dug on the beach. In a gross
miscarriage of justice, the Japanese officer responsible was
sentenced to only two years in prison by a British Military
Court.
MASSACRE ON PALAWAN (December 14, 1944)
One hundred and fifty American prisoners of war, were
incarcerated in a POW enclosure situated on top of the cliffs
overlooking the Bay of Puerto Princesa on the island of
Palawan in the Philippines. While working on
the construction of an airfield they were made to dig three
trenches 150ft long and 4ft 6ins deep within the camp. They were
told that the trenches were air-raid shelters and practice drills
were carried out. The shelters were small and cramped, the
prisoners sitting bunched up with their knees under their chins.
When an American convoy was sighted heading for Mindoro an air-raid
alarm was sounded. The Japanese guards, thinking the island was
about to be invaded, herded the prisoners into the covered trenches
and then proceeded to pour buckets of petrol into the entrances
followed by a lighted torch to ignite the gasoline. As the
prisoners stormed the exists, their cloths on fire, they were mown
down by light machine-gun fire or bayoneted, shot or clubbed.
Dozens managed to get through the barbed wire fence and tumble
down the fifty foot high cliff to the water's edge only to be shot
at by a Japanese manned landing barge which was patrolling the
shore. Only five survived by swimming across the bay and reaching
the safety of a Filipino guerrilla camp. One prisoner, who tried to
swim the bay, was re-captured and brought back to the beach. There,
he suffered the agony of having petrol poured on his foot and set
alight. His screams delighted the guards who then deliberately set
fire to his other foot while at the same time prodding and stabbing
his body with bayonets until he collapsed. His body was then doused
with petrol and cremated. His remains, and the bodies of the other
dead on the beach, were then buried in the sand. US Forces captured
Puerto Princesa on February 28, 1945, and weeks later discovered 79
skeletons within the enclosure. They were given a proper burial by
the men of 601 Quartermaster Company of the US Army. In all, 145 Americans had died.
THE PIG BASKET ATROCITY
When the Allies capitulated to the Japanese in East Java in
1942, around two hundred Allied soldiers took to the hills around
Malang and formed themselves into groups of
resistance fighters. Eventually they were rounded up by the
Kempetai. The captured soldiers were squeezed into three foot long
bamboo pig baskets and transported in five open lorries, under a
broiling 38 degree sun, to a rail siding and then transferred in
open railway goods wagons to the coast. (Eye witness to this
transfer was a 15 year old girl, Elizabeth Van Kempen, who
witnessed this while standing together with her father, on a nearby
ridge of the mountain Semeru. They could
plainly hear the prisoners screaming for help and water. Miss
Kempen's father was later killed by the Kempetai at Malang on March
25, 1945, for hiding weapons and ammunition. (Elizabeth Kempen now
lives, as of 2004, in Tilburg, Holland)
Half dead from thirst and cramp, the captives were carried on
board waiting boats which then sailed out to the shark infested
waters off the coast of Surabaya. There, the
unfortunate prisoners, still enclosed in their bamboo cages, were
thrown overboard to the waiting man-eaters. The commander in chief
of Japanese forces in Java, General Imamura, was later acquitted of
this atrocity in a Netherlands court for lack of evidence.
A subsequent Australian Military Court found General
Imamura responsible and handed down a sentence of ten years
imprisonment.
THE KALAGON MASSACRE
British paratroopers, operating with the Burmese guerrillas,
were the object of a search and destroy mission by the 3rd.
Battalion, 215 Regiment of the Japanese 33rd. Division, in June
1945. Believing that the paratroopers were operating with the help
of the local inhabitants, the 3rd.Battalion, accompanied by a
detachment of the Kempei Tai, surrounded the village of
Kalagon near Tenasserim. By 4pm all the
inhabitants were rounded up, the men confined in the local mosque,
the women and children locked up in adjoining buildings. That
evening, eight of the younger women were taken out by the Kempei
Tai and brought to their headquarters for the pleasure of their own
officers. They were never seen again. The next morning, a
conference was held and orders given to destroy the village and all
the inhabitants to be killed. The massacre began that same morning,
the villagers being taken out in batches of five to ten,
blindfolded and then bayoneted or shot. Their bodies were then
thrown down a number of deep wells around the village and as the
wells filled up the bodies were pounded down with bamboo poles to
make more space for the next batch of victims. In this way the 3rd
Battalion disposed of around 600 bodies. Two victims who
miraculously escaped, were to give evidence at the trial of the
battalion commander and thirteen others before a British Military
Court held in Burma after the war. Their plea of
'superior orders' and 'military necessity' was not accepted by the
court.
LOA KULU MASSACRE (July 30,
1945)
After surrendering to overwhelming numbers of Japanese troops,
around one hundred members of the Netherlands East Indies Army were
disarmed and for a while permitted restricted freedom in the town
of Samarinda, in Borneo, where most of the
soldiers lived with their families. Early on the morning of July
30, all prisoners, including their families, were rounded up and
taken before a Japanese officer who summarily sentenced them all to
death. No reason was given as they were bundled into lorries and
taken to Loa Kulu just outside the town. There they had their hands
tied behind their backs and as the men and children watched, the
women were systematically cut to pieces with swords and bayonets
until they all died. The screaming children were then seized and
hurled alive down a 600 foot deep mine shaft. The men captives,
forced to kneel and witness the butchery of their wives and
children, and suffering the most indescribable mental torture, were
then lined up for execution by beheading. When the grisly ritual
was over, the bloodied corpses and severed heads of the 144 men
were then thrown down the mine shaft on top of their murdered wives
and children. The horror of Loa Kulu was discovered by Australian
troops who had earlier started a search for the missing Dutch
soldiers.
RETALIATION IN INDONESIA (1945/46)
After the Pacific war ended, Holland made a major effort to
regain her lost territories, in the Netherland East Indies
(Indonesia). When the Dutch Colonial Army took over the area they
found around 2,000 Japanese soldiers still on the island. They had
stayed behind to help Indonesia gain her independence in case Japan
lost the war. In the first nine days of the reoccupation the Dutch
soldiers brutally murdered 236 Japanese soldiers in retaliation for
the treatment they (the Dutch) had received in Japanese
prisoner-of-war camps. Hundreds who were not killed were interned
in slave labour camps in Timor and Java where they tried to
recreate the same atmosphere as in the Japanese POW camps. There
the Japanese soldiers were tortured and beaten to death when they
could no longer work. In a short time the death toll had risen to
over 1,000. Those prisoners who survived the retaliation were set
free to find their own way back to Japan. Holland
and Japan have since exchanged apologies for each other's cruel
behaviour towards the prisoners in their care. (In the Netherlands
East Indies, now Indonesia, 26,233 Dutch nationals perished between
1942 and 1945 during the Japanese occupation).
THE CHERIBON ATROCITY (July, 1945)
In the port of Cheribon in northern Java,
a Japanese submarine took on board ninety civilian prisoners. All
were European and included women and children. As dusk fell on that
day in late July, the submarine set sail. It travelled on the
surface, the ninety prisoners standing outside on deck. From the
top of the conning tower two machine guns, aimed fore and aft,
could be plainly seen. Fearing the worst, many of the women started
crying but were helpless to do anything. Clinging to each other for
stability in the gently rolling sea, the ninety captives waited and
prayed. After about an hour the submarine suddenly slowed and dived
without warning. The machine guns were never used. Swept off the
deck as the ship slid beneath the sea the prisoners faced their
worst nightmare. Schools of sharks attacked the screaming mass of
humanity as men women and children were torn to pieces in a feeding
frenzy. There was only one survivor who, minus an arm and right
foot to the sharks, stayed alive long enough to be picked up by
three Javanese fishermen. After relating his story he lost
consciousness through loss of blood and died from his injuries a
short time later. His body was then committed back to the sea. The
three fishermen were fully aware of their fate should they return
to port with the body of an European who was supposed to disappear.
After the war this atrocity was reported to the
authorities but as all naval files and records of ship movements
had been destroyed by the Japanese, the identity of the submarine
and its crew was never established.
THE HOSPITAL MASSACRES
Directly in the path of the invading Japanese hordes lay
thePrincess Alexandria Hospital in Singapore.
Guarded by a detachment of Ghurka troops they were ordered by a
Japanese officer to lay down their arms. The Ghurka NCO replied
that this was not a military target but a civilian hospital.
Angered by their refusal to disarm, the Japanese officer ordered
his men to seize and kill two dozen of the Ghurkha guards. This
order was promptly carried out and the Nippon soldiers then entered
the hospital. The wholesale slaughter which followed defies
description, sick and dying patients being butchered in their beds.
Some were just shot, others clubbed and bayoneted and not a few
were beheaded by the sword. A number of the victims were survivors
from the Prince of Wales and Repulse. The scene of carnage
resembled an abattoir, disembowelled patients sprawled everywhere.
Doctors and medical orderlies were then killed as were the nurses
who were first raped in a most brutal fashion. A similar atrocity
occurred in Manila when the Headquarters of the Filipino Red Cross
in General Luna street was captured. Some seventy civilians, sick
patients and a number of children were put to death in the same
brutal and sadistic way. In Burma, on the afternoon of February 7,
1944 an Advance Field Hospital was overrun by the Japanese who
first wiped out the protective guard of West Yorkshires then killed
every doctor and medical orderly they could find. The sick and
wounded were massacred where they lay after their personal
possessions were stolen. In all, thirty-one
patients, nine orderlies and four doctors were brutally put to
death. After the Japanese takeover the city was renamed
'Shonan'.
GENOCIDE IN SINGAPORE
Collectively known as the 'Chinese Massacres', this peaceful
city was subjected to acts of savagery, in many cases beyond
anything the Nazis had dished out. The soldiers of Nippon had but
one thing on their minds in Singapore, to
exterminate the entire Chinese population of this great city.
Reliable estimates put the final number killed at between nine and
twelve thousand. After interrogation by the Kempetai they were
obliged to hand over all their personal possessions, rings,
watches, jewellery, money etc. before being forced on to captured
British lorries and driven to the Tanjong Pagar Wharf where most
were beheaded or bayoneted. Others were roped together and taken on
barges out to sea where they were thrown overboard. The slaughter
continued for twelve successive days as boats from Singapore
Harbour brought even more Chinese civilians to the execution
site.
In the Geylang district, thousands of Chinese were herded into
the grounds of the Teluk Kurau English School. Altogether, 3,600
persons were then interrogated by the Kempe Tai. In groups of two
hundred, they were taken by truck to the crest of a hill off Siglap
Road and there they were killed by shooting, beheading or
bayoneting. All but one of the Teluk Kurau School victims,
perished. In another massacre, seven hundred Chinese were taken to
an area just east of Changi and murdered in the most disgusting
manner. Their headless bodies were then thrown into already dug
mass graves. The victims heads were piled up on the back of a
waiting lorry and carted away. Next morning, the sight that greeted
the Singaporean was something that they will never forget.
Everywhere, mounted on the tips of long bamboo stakes, were the
severed heads of murdered Chinese. The first heads to appear on
spikes were eight Chinese looters caught red-handed by the military
just after the occupation began. After the war, a British Military
Court sentenced the commanding general of Japanese troops in
Singapore, Lt. Gen. Takuma Nishimura, to life imprisonment, but at
a later trial for other crimes, an Australian Military Court handed
down a death sentence. He was hanged on June 11, 1951. Around 15,000 British troops were captured in Singapore, 14,972
Australian troops plus some 37,000 Indian troops and
Malaya voluhteers. These troops felt very badly let down by the
powers that be in London and began to hate the name 'Churchill'
whose persuasive speeches led them to believe that they were sent
there to defend the great 'Fortress' of Singapore. The fact was
that Singapore was no fortress but a poorly defended outpost of the
British Empire. Even the big guns provided for it's protection were
placed pointing the wrong way, the Japanese attack came from
behind. The end came on Sunday, February 15, 1942, when
General Percival surrendered the garrison to the Japanese
commander, General Yamashita.
THE HANKOW REPRISAL
Every criminal act known to man was inflicted on Chinese
civilians by the soldiers of Nippon during their occupation of
Manchuria. Indiscriminate killings, beheadings, bayoneting of live
victims and the vicious raping of tens of thousands of women and
young girls, were the order of the day. Living with this constant
terror and barbarity the civilian population could offer but little
opposition. However, on August 19, 1945, four days after the
surrender, a civilian group managed to capture twenty six Japanese
soldiers and executed them near the town of Hankow in north-east China. Four of them were beheaded,
four were tied to posts and shot through the back of the head,
another four had their arms and legs broken and then crudely
amputated, four more were found minus hands and feet and had their
genitals stuffed into their mouths. The remaining ten had their
eyes gouged out and then bayoneted to death. In this act of
reprisal, the past methods of killing by the "Sons of Heaven" had
been copied to the letter.
SAN FERNANDO CEMETERY (1944)
On the 23rd of December, fifteen American prisoners of war, who
were too sick to work, were taken from their prison cells and
driven to the outskirts of San Fernando,
Pampanga, in the Philippines. There, in a small cemetery, a hole
fifteen square feet was dug. Guards from the truck then took up
positions around the hole. One by one, the POWs were brought to the
edge of the hole and ordered to kneel. They were then bayoneted and
decapitated. After the war, the guard commander, Lt. Junsabura
Toshino, was brought to trial, sentenced to death and hanged.
SANDAKAN DEATH MARCH (1945)
Sandakan, the prison compound in British
North Borneo (now Sabah) held 2,434 Australian and British POWs,
captured when Singapore fell. They were transported in a decrepit
tramp steamer, the Yubi Maru, to Sandakan to
help build a military airstrip for the Japanese. When their labour
was no longer required, they were confined to the prison compound
where they slowly died from starvation, disease and brutalities. As
the Allies approached the islands, over 1,000 prisoners, still
alive, were force marched in groups of 50 to another camp in the
jungle near the village of Ranau, about 120
miles away. The 291 prisoners, including 288 stretcher cases, who
were too sick to march and left behind at Sandakan, were massacred
soon after, many dying after undergoing diabolical torture. In
June, 1945, of the 455 prisoners that left Sandakan for Ranau on
the first march, only 140 reached Ranau alive, the remainder had
died or were shot during the march. Prisoners were shot out of
hand, their bodies littering the route. On the second inhumane
death march, 536 POWs left Sandakan but only 189 were still alive
when they reached their destination, 142 of these were
Australians.
Another march, the third, consisting of 75 prisoners and about
100 Japanese guards, left Sandakan on July 10 on the different
northern route but none of the prisoners or guards arrived at
Ranau. The mystery remains to this day. Did they all fall victim to
the many hostile blowpipe tribes that inhabited the area? During
their short stay at Ranau, four Australians managed to escape,
another two escaped during the actual march, the rest were either
shot or died from exhaustion, or illnesses such as malaria,
beriberi, and dysentery. Of the six escapees, three died later and
only three from the original 2,434 were alive to bear witness at
the War Crimes Trials which followed at Rabaul and Tokyo in 1946 in
which fourteen Japanese officers, convicted of war crimes in
Borneo, were executed. (The last of the three escapees, Owen
Campbell, died in Adelaide on July 3, 2003, aged 87) Captain
Hoshijima Susumu, the Sandakan prison commandant was found guilty
and hanged at Rabaul on April 6, 1946. Altogether, 1,381 Australian
prisoners-of-war died at Sandakan in the most heinous atrocity of
the Japanese against Australian troops in the entire Pacific war.
Of the British prisoners, 641 had died. The 4,000 imported Javanese
slave labourers who worked on the airstrip, less than half a dozen
were alive at wars end yet their fate is hardly mentioned in
history books. Only 25 Australians escaped from Japanese prison
camps to come home again to their homeland. These escapes were from
Borneo and Ambon.
Around the same number escaped but were recaptured and executed.
The number of deaths during the Sandakan marches were four times
greater than the Americans who died during the Bataan Death
Marches.
Today, the Sandakan War Memorial Park, with its
two Australian memorials, is beautifully laid out on the former
site of the notorious prison camp.
OPERATION 'KINGFISHER'
The code name for the rescue operation planned to liberate the
Australian and British prisoners of war confined at Sandakan. In the planning stage for months under the
direction of Australian General Sir Thomas Blamey and the Special
Reconnaissance Department (SRD) the operation was bungled from the
start owing to ineptitude, incompetence, petty jealousies and lack
of decision making. The egosticistical US General Douglas MacArthur
(not very popular in Australia) nevertheless gave it his
unqualified support, but history has wrongly blamed MacArthur who
became the scapegoat for Kingfisher's failure. Blamey stated that
aircraft and ships were not available for the rescue operation,
that MacArthur needed them for 'other purposes' (no doubt, the
proposed invasion of Japan). After thirty years the Kingfisher
files were released for public access. They show that the RAAF had
a pool of around 40 Dakota DC-3s and B24 Liberators in hand and
that only 30 were needed for the paratroop assault on Sandakan for
which 800 paratroops had trained in the Atherton Tablelands in
Queensland. (although they were never told for what purpose)
After months of planning, the rescue operation never
took place and so, 2,428 Australian and British
POWs...died.
When the war ended, 14,526 Australian POWs were
liberated from Japanese prison camps. The Allied occupation of
Japan formally ended on September 8, 1951.
THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH (April 1942)
On April 9, 1942, US Major General Edward P. King, commander of
the Bataan Garrison on Luzon, formally surrendered his troops to
the Japanese invaders commanded by General Homma. After four hard
months of combat, the troops were now exhausted, low on ammunition,
low on food (most of their meat ration coming from horses, mules,
caribou and water buffalo) and many suffering from malaria,
dysentery and other diseases. The American and Filipino defenders
of Bataan were now in no condition to
continue the struggle. It was near the town of Mariveles in the
southern tip of the Bataan Peninsula that the infamous Bataan Death
March began on April 10, 1942. Each morning, in groups of several
hundred, the prisoners were herded on to the main road that led
north to Camp O'Donnell their first prison camp, about ten days and
sixty miles away. Hungry and thirsty, sick and tired, it was every
man for himself, few helped one another. If anyone fell behind he
was shot, bayoneted or beheaded and their bodies left in full view
of the following column. Between Mariveles and Cabcaben the column
of prisoners was shelled by their own guns on Corregidor. A few
days and 100 kilometres further on, the first column arrived at San
Fernando where they were forced into railroad boxcars. Packed like
sardines, suffocating in the summer heat, and those suffering from
dysentery defecating on each other, many died 'standing up'. Four
hours later they detrained at Capas and were forced to march the
remaining ten kilometres to Camp
O'Donnell.
Around 9,300 Americans survived the Death March, between 600 and
650 died or were killed on the way. The Filipino prisoners,
numbering around 45,000, arrived at the camp after completing the
March, about five thousand had lost their lives during the March.
The first forty days at Camp O'Donnell
saw the deaths of around 1,500 more Americans and by the end
of July at least another 20,000 Filipinos had died. On June 6,
1942, the surviving Filipino prisoners were granted complete
amnesty and released. The extremely high death rate, the highest of
any POW camp anywhere, compelled the Japanese to move most of the
prisoners to another camp at Cabanatuan,
north of O'Donnell. It was at Cabanatuan that the Death March
survivors met up with their fellow countrymen captured on
Corregidor and who fortunately did not participate in the March but
had suffered the humiliation of being marched through the main
streets of Manila in front of thousands of Filipinos who had been
ordered out to watch the procession. After the fighting on
Corregidor, some American POWs were forced to do a most distasteful
duty. Divided into work parties they were ordered to cut the right
hand off every Japanese soldier found dead. Some bodies had been
lying in the hot sun for days. The dead bodies were
then burned and the hands cremated, the ashes placed in small urns
to be returned to their families in Japan.
The striking memorial, built on the site of the
Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp on Luzon, includes a Wall of Honour
on which are inscribed the names of around 3,000 Americans, many of
them survivors of the Death March, who died at Cabanatuan. On the
night of January 30, 1945, a secret raid was organized to free the
remaining prisoners at Cabanatuan. A team of US Army Rangers, Alamo
Scouts and Filipino guerrillas attacked the camp and liberated 517
prisoners. The raiding teams suffered only three fatalities the
Japanese around 1,275.
TOKYO PRISON ATROCITY
Towards the end of the Pacific War, the execution of captured
Allied aircrews became almost automatic. Courts-martial were
dispensed with on orders from the Military Police Headquarters. In
the Tokai Military District, twenty-seven airmen were executed by
firing squad, but often, less humane methods were used. In the
Japanese Army Prison in Tokyo all the
buildings were built of wood and into this prison were crammed 464
Japanese soldiers serving sentences. Also confined in the prison
were 62 American airmen who earlier were shot down and captured.
During the night of May 25, 1945, Tokyo was heavily bombed by the
US Air Force and the prison was hit by incendiaries. In the
conflagration which followed, all the 62 airmen were burned to
death. A significant factor in this incident was that none of the
Japanese prisoners or any of the prison guards suffered a similar
fate. The failure of the Japanese to release the 62
flyers could only have been deliberate.
KYUSHU UNIVERSITY ATROCITY
After a bombing mission over southern Japan on May 5, 1945, the
crew of a B-29 bomber had to bale out after being rammed by a
Japanese suicide plane. The B-29 crashed near the town of Takete.
After landing, the crew were taken into custody and transported to
Kyushu University in Fukuoka about one
hundred miles north of Nagasaki. In the university's anatomy
department they were subjected to the most horrible medical
experiments imaginable. One prisoner was shot in the stomach so
that Japanese surgeons could get practice at removing bullets.
Amputations on legs and arms were practiced while the victims were
still alive. One was injected with sea water in an experiment to
find out if sea water could be substituted for saline solution. One
badly wounded American, thinking he was going to be treated for his
wound, was anaesthetized and woke up to find that one of his lungs
had been removed. He died shortly after. Others had part of the
liver removed to see if they could still live. Only one airman, the
pilot of the B-29, Captain Marvin Watkins, was taken to Tokyo for
interrogation but survived the war. The other eight all died at
Fukuoka. After the war, twenty three doctors and hospital staff
were arrested, tried and found guilty on various charges by the
Allied War Crimes Trials held at Yokohama. Five were sentenced to
death, the others to terms of imprisonment. When the Korean war
started in June, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur reduced most of
the sentences. The death sentences were never carried out. All were
released by 1958. This was the only instance where
Americans were used in bizarre medical experiments in WWII, except
perhaps at Mukden.
MASSACRE ON THE HIGH SEAS
On quite a number of instances, massacres have taken place at
sea. In the Atlantic, on March 13, 1944, the Greek registered
freighter SS Peleus was torpedoed and sunk by
the U-852 (KL Heinz-Wilhelm Eck) Survivors on the life rafts were
machine-gunned while other submarine crew members threw hand
grenades into the rafts. Thirty two of the survivors were killed,
only three were alive when rescued. Eck and three of his crew were
sentenced to death by the War Crimes Court in Hamburg and on
November 30, 1945, were shot. On the merchant ship Daisy Moller, 53 of her crew were machine-gunned to death
by the crew of the Japanese submarine RO-110
on March 18, 1944, after the submarine had rammed the lifeboats.
Only 16 crew members survived. The Nancy
Moller, en route from Durban to Colombo, sunk by the I-165
on March 18, 1944. Thirty two of the crew were killed by pistol and
machine-gun fire. The SS Ascot sank on
February 29, 1944, after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in
the Indian Ocean. Survivors were machine-gunned on the rafts and in
the water. Of the 52 crew who had abandoned ship, only eight
survived.
The American Liberty ship Jean Nicolet,
was torpedoed on July 2, 1944, while en route from Fremantle to
Colombo. Her complement of 100 were taken on board the foredeck of
the Japanese submarine I-8 and one by one led
to the stern of the vessel where they had to run a gauntlet of
Japanese sailors who beat them with clubs, iron bars and bayonets
before being kicked or pushed into the sea. While squatting on the
forward deck waiting their turn, the remaining survivors were
washed overboard when the submarine submerged. Of the 100
passengers and crew of the Jean Nicolet only
23 survived to tell the tale. Similar atrocities were perpetrated
on the survivors of the tanker British
Chivalry (February 22, 1944) sunk by the I-37. Survivors in two lifeboats were machine-gunned,
killing 20 crewmembers, the rest drifted for thirty-seven days
before being rescued.
The Dutch ship Tjisalak (March 26, 1944)
torpedoed in the Indian ocean by the Japanese submarine I-8. A
total of 98 crew and passengers (including some British subjects)
were massacred by sword and spanners used as clubs by the
submarine's crew. Only five survived the massacre. The MV Sutley (February 26, 1944) and the SS
John A Johnson (October 29, 1944) both of whose survivors
were fired upon while clinging to rafts. The SS
Mellore, a British ship en route from Australia to Bombay
with general cargo, torpedoed by the I-8 on June 29, 1944. Of the
209 passengers and crew, 79 were killed. During an operation in the
Indian Ocean, ships of the Japanese South-West Area Fleet sunk the
British motor vessel Behar on 18th March,
1944. Seventy-two of her survivors, including twenty-seven
Europeans and forty-five Indians, were taken on board the Japanese
cruiser Tone whose captain had received
orders to 'dispose of all prisoners'. The prisoners were hit in the
stomach with rifle butts or kicked in the testicles and as they lay
squirming on the deck, were then beheaded. The American freighter
David H. Atwater, sunk by the U-552 (Kptlt. Erich Topp) off the coast of Virginia on
April 2, 1942, the crew were machined-gunned as they took to the
lifeboats. Only three of the 27 crew survived the massacre. The
crew of the German destroyer Erich Giese,
sunk during the Battle for Narvik, swimming desperately in the
water, were fired upon by British destroyers trying to prevent them
reaching shore and joining up with German troops already there. The
British cargo ship Kwantung sunk by the I-156
south of Java was carrying 96 crew and some 40 military personnel.
Machine-gunned while in the lifeboats, only 35 survived to be
rescued.
Savage deeds were committed by all armies and
navies during World War II but only when committed by Germans or
Japanese were they classed as war crimes by the Allies.
DEATH ON RAMREE ISLAND (February 19, 1945)
Twelve miles off the coast of Burma (Myanmar) lies the fifty by
twenty mile wide island of Ramree. In the capture of the island by
the British 4th, 26th, 36th and 71st Indian Brigades, RAF and Navy
Task Force units, the Japanese occupiers were driven into the
sweltering and fetid central area of mangrove swamps. In the thick
impenetrable forest of the swamp, the 900 or so Japanese soldiers,
many suffering from tropical diseases, were trapped in deep black
mud, infested with scorpions, millions of mosquitoes and worst of
all, salt water crocodiles. Those trying to escape the swamps were
shot down by Royal Navy marines. In spite of calls to give
themselves up, they refused. With no food or drinking water
hundreds died within days. Many were taken by the crocodiles. The
capture of Ramree Isl
