BROADCAST FOR JAPANESE

Evening Star, Issue 25894, 11 September 1946, Page 5

BROADCAST FOR JAPANESE

COUSENS AFRAID OF TORTURE SABOTAGE ATTEMPTS CLAIMED SYDNEY, September 10. He would have accepted a clean death by shooting or beheading at the hands of the Japanese, but lie was afraid of torture. He had reached the end of his tether. _ These statements were made in evidence by Major Charles Hughes Cousens in h’is second 41 day in the box during the hearing of the charge of treason against him. Cousens told the court of efforts made by an official of Japan’s Board of Information to get him to broad* cast. These included blows and threats of execution. When it was suggested that he would be handed to the secret I police for punishment, Cousens Admitted to the court that he was at the end of his tether. “I knew that in my then condition it would only take at the most a day or two of Kempeitai torture before they had reduced me to a condition , in which I felt no white man should ever appear before an Asiatic,” he said He submitted because he had thpughts, of sabotaging the Japanese broadcasting system, and he knew that if he refused other officers would be

subjected to the same treatment. He was ordered to attention before another Japanese officer, and a series of orders was read to him in a menacing voice. They were that he would obey the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army on pain of death. He bowed because he knew that prisoners who did not were bashed until they did. He later signed these orders. He tried to sabotage the broadcasting scripts by reading too quickly and in a monotone. When he read the first an official grabbed him by the collar and screamed at him. Subsequently it appeared that several English-speak-ing Japanese were sympathetic towards him. He kept up his sabotage attempts. It,was nonsense to say that he had extolled the virtues of the Japanese.