JAP. STRAGGLERS

Evening Star, Issue 25070, 11 January 1944, Page 2

JAP. STRAGGLERS

EMACIATED CORPSES IN MOUNTAINS DEATH FRoTsTARVATION (N.2.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent! (Rec. 11.2 a.m.) SYDNEY, Jan. 11. The Japanese ' forces retreating before the Australians on the Huou Peninsula, New Guinea, have stripped native gardens of all food and have endeavoured to catch women folk and impress the men as carriers. Poignant stories of the Japanese shooting in cold blood of three native boys and a native woman were told by terrified natives to members of an Australian fighting patrol. Several other natives narrowly escaped the same fate. ' ■

An Australian patrol moved through the inland sector of the Peninsula' to discover any enemy concentrations in the mountains and eliminate Japanese stragglers. During the patrol nine Japanese were killed, and the bodies of 14 others who had died from starvation were counted, When the Australians reached the former Lutheran mission at Kalasa, used by the enemy as a camp, more than 40 natives who had fled into the jungle to escape the Japanese came out of their hiding places. Half-starved, they told how, when the retreating Japanese first came through their village, they stripped the gardens of all edible fruits and roots, leaving nothing for the weaker troops following them. The villagers fled to the jungle when the Japanese endeavoured to seize their women and force the men into service as carriers, but later hunger forced one party to return and search 1 for food. The natives were digging in a garden when enemv soldiere fired on them, killing three men and women. The others fled.

Throughout the Australians' patrol conclusive evidence was found that Japanese stragglers were in dire straits. Every deserted native village had been stripped of food, and the emaciated bodies of enemy soldiers who died of privation during the retreat were found along the way. .