TARAWA

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 39, 15 August 1945, Page 8

TARAWA

LET US MOT FORGET The Pacific War is over, but the Pacific war trials are not. Let us not forget the tragedy of Tarawa, when 22 Europeans were murdered: 17 ot those were New Zealanders: It was a mass murder without show or sign of justification. On October 15, 1942, guns and aircraft of the American navy bombarded Japanese installations on Tarawa, in the forced building of which these Europeans, captured on various of the overrun islands and concentrated at Tarawa, had laboured. The cruiser withdrew. The murders followed. The Japanese saved face. Americans and British later collaborated in erecting a memorial, on which is engraved: "In memory of 22 ■ British subjects, murdered by the Japanese at Bettio on October 15. 1942. "Standing unarmed at their posts, they matched brutality with gallantry, and met death with fortitude." It has been reported that the Japanese commander at Tarawa was blown to pieces by a shell burst during the two-day battle, and it is probable, too. as the marines wiped out the Japanese on Tarawa down to the last score, that Mr Fraser's promise of unrelenting inquiry and search will not unearth other Tarawa murderers. Beside the murder, rape and mass abominations of Nanking, the death march from Bataari. the authenticated accounts of "hell-ship" and prisoner-of-war shootings and biudgeonings and tortures, the murders on Tarawa, and the stories of maltreatment, starvation, and callous neglect told by New Zealanders now safely returned to their own peaceful country are perhaps small, in the total horror of war. yet. at this time, when th.- Japanese turn from arrogant brutality to honour—as th<=y interpret honour—in defeat, it is very necessary to remember.