FAR EAST WAR CRIMES

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25023, 4 November 1946, Page 3

FAR EAST WAR CRIMES

PROSECUTION BRINGS EVIDENCE CABLE FROM ROOSEVELT DELAYED IN 1941 TOKYO, November 1. The associate prosecutor, Mr Carlisle Higgins, told the Far East War Crimes Tribunal that captured Japanese Cabinet and Privy Council documents would be produced showing that President Roosevelt’s special priority cable to the Emperor Hirohito, sent through the United States Ambassador (Mr Joseph C. Grew), was, on “deliberate orders,” delayed by'the Japanese postal authorities for more than 10 hours, in his cable Mr Roosevelt made a personal appeal to the Emperor to avert war Furthermore, the former Foreign Minister, Togo, had lied to Mr Grew about the time he gave the cable to the Emperor Hirohito. Prosecuting counsel said that To jo summoned a conference on September 6, 1941, at which it was decided to proceed with war preparations. At the same time it was also decided to continue the Washington parleys and that, if they proved unsatisfactory by October, Japan would The documents showed that Japanese grand strategy planned ■ the conquest of China, the Philippines, the East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The prosecution introduced affidavits by natives declaring that the Japanese began fortifying the mandated islands, the Marshalls, Caro 7 lines, Marianas, and Palaus in the early nineteen thirties. The affidavits said guns were emplaced, ammunition sorted, airfields constructed, and entrenchments- dug at an accelerating pace from 1930 onward; Troops, aeroplanes, and additional stores arrived in 1940 and 1941.

Papers seized at the N.Y.K. Line’s Honolulu office showed agents were instructed to tell passage applicants that bookings were full and no accommodation was available in the islands. Thenceforth,' non-Japanese were not permitted to visit the mandated islands. The prosecution said the Emperor Hirohito had advance knowledge of the plan to attack Pearl Harbour, but the envoys, Admiral Nomura and Mr Kurusu. and other Japanese officials in the United States were not informed of it. _ . The Yokohama War Crimes Tribunal has sentenced three Japanese to be hanged and four to terms of imprisonment. Those sentenced to hanging were Lieutenants Masao Nichizawa and Takeichi Chisuwa, successive commanders of Prisoner of War Camp No. 1, who were charged with atrocities and responsibility for the deaths of prisoners, and Private Hiroshi Kawamura, who was found guilty of torturing prisoners.