JAPS DROWN THEMSELVES

Grey River Argus, 23 January 1943, Page 5

JAPS DROWN THEMSELVES

On Guadalcanar

AMERICAN OFFICER’S ACCOUNT.

(Rec. 8.40.) NEW YORK, Jan. 21. Colonel Leroy Hunt, who led a victorious assault by United States Marines against Guadalcanal - Island in August last, has told how two hundred Japanese soldiers walked into the sea and drowned themselves. He stated that these Japanese were surrounded, and they apparently preferred drowning to surrender. “I just sat under a palm tree and watched them,” he said. “It was hard to believe, even though I saw it.” These Japanese, he said, were veterans of the East Indies campaign, who had been sent on a flanking movement to trap Americans, but a counter flanking movement trapped them. Colonel Hunt said: “The Americans were slightly jittery at first, but they soon found that the Japanese were no supermen. They overcame their jitters, and they beat the enemy at their own game of jungle fighting. U.S. MINISTER’S COMMENT. WASHINGTON, Jan. 21. Mr. Patterson, U.S. Under-Secre-tary for War, said that in the South--west Pacific, Australian and American troops had almost completed the New Guinea campaign. A Japanese force of fifteen thousand had been literally annihilated. It was heartening that the Australians and {Americans (had proved superior to the Japanese in jungle lighting, wherein the Japanese thought they were masters.