Blackest Far East Atrocity of War

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 269, 14 November 1945, Page 7

Blackest Far East Atrocity of War

JAPANESE AWAIT TRIAL LONDON, Nov. 12. British and Australian officers have discovered six men who are the only known survivors of 1800 Allied war i prisoners now known to have been ! murdered by the Japanese in Borneo, says the Daily Mail correspondent in Singapore. It was the blackest atrocity in the Fax East during the war. One party of Allied prisoners of war was massacred only two months before the capitulation. The men were all killed in a series of “forced marches” through the jungles and mountains of Central Borneo. They were, in fact, death marches, clearly intended to kill all who took part. Starving, crippled and sick prisoners, men suffering from malaria, beri-beri and dysentery were paraded and started off on a march across Borneo. None was spared. They were driven under the lash of the whip and at the point of the bayonet. The Japanese guards shot, bayoneted and beat them to death when they could not carry on, and left the bodies in the jungle. Every one of the Japanese involved is now in British hands in -Borneo awaiting trial.