MASSACRE PLANNED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 256, 27 September 1945, Page 5

MASSACRE PLANNED

DISCOVERY IN BORNEO. ENEMY ESCAPE SCHEME. (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (Rec. 11.0 a.in.) SYDNEY, Sept. 27. The Japanese guards in the Kuching camp, Borneo, planned to massacre 1600 military and civilian prisoners of war on September 15. Dr Marcus Clarke, Government medcal officer in Britsh North Borneo, revealed this on his arrival in Sydney. He said tlie Japanese had planned to escape from tlie advancing Australian troops and march into the mountains, using only 500 of the fittest prisoners as carriers. Dr Clarke discovered the detaiils of the massacre plan ill the baggage of ,a Japanese officer at the Kuching camp after the enemy’s capitulation. He said that when he found the details of the plan he realised the significance of an inspection of prisoners mat]e about six weeks before the Japanese surrendered. The Japanese decided then who would be butchered.

Their plan meant that 30 women and 15 children in the civilian camp would have been among the remaining 1500 victims. After the march into the mountains the 500 selected as carriers would no doubt have been murdered, >dded Dr Clarke.

AUSTRALIANS LOST MISSING PRISONERS. CANBERRA, Sept. 26. Between 700 and 1000 Australian, prisoners of war. who were evac- . uated by the Japanese from Rabaul about June, 1942. appear to have been 'lost. Announcing this in the House of Representatives today, the Minister of the Army (Mr Forde) said it had not been possible to trace the movement of the vessel carrying the troops after its • departure from Rabaul and apprehension was felt that it had failed to reach its destination. Urgent instructions had gone forward to field formations to make inquiries from all possible sources. Interrogation of prisoner-of-war camp commanders, guards and interpreters from Rabaul was proceeding. So emaciated and ill yere 700 Australians who arrived at Brisbane today in the hospital ship Oranje that they could not be interviewed. The men, some of .whom were suffering from tuberculosis brought on by starvation, were prisoners of the Japanese in Singapore for more than three years.

The condition of 100 Queenslanders who were transferred to hospital was such that the Deputy-Director of Medical Services placed a ban on their being interviewed. Relatives were not allowed on the wliarf and only tlie nearest next-of-kin will be permitted to visit them at the hospital today. As the Queenslanders were being taken off the ship into waiting ambulances theie was a rising tide of resentment and disgust among those who witnessed tlie transfer of the emaciated men. ■

Former prisoners who have been reasonably fit Slid well have reached Australia from Japanese camps in recent weeks, but the Oran.je’s arrival gave tlie other side of the picture. The Japanese worked to death at least 150,000 coolies on the SiainBurma railway, said Captain L. Emmerson, a former Indian Army observer, who was a .prisoner of war _in Malaya. Medical officers consider tlie estimate the minimum. They think the precise figure may be as high as 250,000 coolie men, women arid children. Coolie families were crammed into bamboo barracks, in which there was often less than one foot of space for each person.