WOUNDED ARMED
GRENADES UNDER CORPSES ENEMY HOSPITAL IN PAPUA Sydney, Jan. 21. Before evacuating a field hospital in the Sanananda (Papua) area, the Japanese hid grenades and booby traps under the bodies of their own dead. The pins had been removed so that the grenades would explode when the corpses covering them were moved. Seriously-ill patients who were left in the hospital had knives as well as grenades with which to fight. Some Japanese lay amid the dead waiting for a chance to shoot the United States troops who captured the hospital.
"I would never have believed such things were possible," said an American major. "I still find it hard to believe they are true."
"This hospital seemed designed to kill patients rather than cure theni," writes the Sydney Sun's war correspondent. "It illustrated again the fatalism of the Japanese. The wards were ramshackle shelters and convalescents lived in tiny cubicles protected from torrential tropical rains only by flimsy banana leaves."
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19430126.2.60
Bibliographic details
Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13056, 26 January 1943, Page 7
Word Count
161WOUNDED ARMED Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13056, 26 January 1943, Page 7
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Bay of Plenty Times. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons New Zealand BY-NC-SA licence . This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.