JAPANESE BRUTALITY

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 7, 9 July 1945, Page 5

JAPANESE BRUTALITY

PRISONERS BEATEN AND STARVED

SYDNEY, July 8

Australian and American prisoners, both officers and men, on Labuan Island, Borneo, were cruelly beaten with walking sticks wielded by their Japanese •captors to extract the last ounce of labour from them. Correspondents now with the Australians report that the prisoners dared not speak to each other or laugh without incurring a thrashing. They were poorly ied and were refused blankets and clothing by their tormentors. A plot of unnamed graves by a fetid swamp indicates that not all survived the brutalities and starvation. A Malayan told how he had seen his brother flogged and starved to death and his mother unmercifully beaten. He said the Japanese cruelly beat Australian and American prisoners in trying to extract more work from their starving and emaciated frames in road making, stone breaking, building airstrips, and otfier coolie labour. According to native survivors, Japanese troops at Belik Papan shot many natives through the feet to prevent them .escaping into the jungle. Natives who refused to salute the Japanese were shot through the hands. Survivors are now being cared for by the Dutch authorities in a • huge "hospital camp." ' Many are so thin after three years of Japanese oppression that they are too weak to stand. Some are beyond aid.