GRIM STORY OF JAP CRUELTY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 93, 23 April 1946, Page 5

GRIM STORY OF JAP CRUELTY

WAR CRIMES REPORT CONDITIONS OF SLAVERY WERE NO WORSE. Canberra, April 20. “It would be difficult to find in conditions of slavery in any country at any time anything worse than the Japanese conduct towards their prisoners of war,” states the second report of the War Crimes Commission, signed by the Chief Justice of Queensland, Sir William Webb, and Mr. Justice Mansfield and tabled in Parliament. - “It was in the interests of slave F owners to keep their slaves in working condition, but it would have appeared to have been the purpose of many Japanese in control of prisoners of war to ensure their slow deaths by a maximum of work on a minimum of food, and otherwise under heart-breaking conditions. Men normally of splendid physique rapidly declined in health and strength, contracted nutritional disease and finally died deaths of black despair. Not all died from diseases; many died from violence.” The report, which consists of 148 foolscap pages and 1098 pages of evidence of sadism, torture and sustained brutality, quotes hundreds of cases of atrocities, included among which are ill-treatment of General Percival, commander at Singapore, and Lieutenant-General Wainwright, who defended Corregidor. In officers’ camps, face slapping and beatings were common. Officers were beaten for having a button undone, or for sitting on beds. Australian Major-General Callaghan’s weight fell from 1881 b to 1171 b. BRIGADIER’S STORY. Brigadier A. S. Blackburn, V.C., said he was in camp with Allied generals, governors and chief justices, including Generals Percival and Wainwright. He saw Japanese guards strike all these men. General Percival was severely beaten by a private for allegedly having dirty fingernails. Blackburn himself was punched, kicked and starved and confined to a narrow cell, without a cover in bitter cold, until he signed an undertaking to obey Japanese orders without question. Although on one occasion he stood to attention and bowed when Japanese sentries appeared, he was beaten until he fell, and then kicked. The report states that an attempt to escape was to incur execution without trial, often after frightful corporal punishment lasting sometimes for weeks. There was reason to believe that many prisoners killed for attempting to escape were victims of revenge, or of a savage desire to kill. The report gives an account of sadistic torture designed to make offi-. cers talk. An officer was told ta drink a drugged cup to loosen his tongue. If refused, his teeth and nails were drawn and the drug poured down his throat through a funnel. Crushed ice would follow, and then boiling water if the officer complained of cold. Flogging with rubber truncheons was next. 1 and heavier torture would follow. The I victim’s bones would be broken one by one with hammers of varying weight. ’ White hot coals would then be placed against the soles of the feet. Then followed a “system to change the sex of the culprit.” Death would be caused bv the use of a red hot poker and lighted cigarettes. Among tortures described in the report are preventing the circulation of the blood and so causing frostbite and amputation of limbs, forcing men to ®at a large quantity of rice, and then drink water, causing fearful nain; the holding of live electric wires to the body. SIX OF 1800 SURVIVE. Of 1800 British and Australian prisoners who took part in a forced march at Sandakan Rapau in February, 1945, only six survived. Those who dropped were shot, clubbed or bayoneted to death. As a man dropped he knew his fate and banded his little bit of food to those surviving. Sick were singled out for snecial maltreatment, and several hospitals were simply death camps. Lieut.-Colonel A. E. Coates had to amputate with a butcher’s saw and a table knife.

“The spectacle of emaciated skeletons and oedematous, water-logged wrecks living m pain and misery, many of them with rotting, gangrenous ulcers, emitting a nauseating stench, was such as I never wish to see again,” said Lieut.-Colonel Coates.