I wish to remind Prime Minister Abe of the beheadings of so many Aussies
by Japanese at the Laha Airfield Massacre February 1942
This ghoulish event, which killed more than 300 Australian and Dutch POWs, followed the
Japanese capture of the Indonesian island of Ambon. Allegedly as an act of reprisal after the Allies destroyed one of their
minesweepers, the Japanese randomly selected
prisoners and executed them via beheading and bayonet near the island’s
airfield. They then repeated the process three more times during the month.
The magnitude of this atrocity was enough for an
Australian military tribunal to prosecute more than 90 Japanese officers and
soldiers after the war in one of the biggest war crime trials in history. The tribunal sentenced
four of the accused to death and handed out a range of sentences for the
others.
Also: Alexandra
Hospital Massacre February 14–15, 1942
Just a day before the British surrendered
Singapore, Japanese soldiers stormed Alexandra Military Hospital and slaughtered its occupants, including the medical staff and patients. Even those undergoing
surgery were not spared.
Following the massacre, the Japanese forced those
left to clean up the mess and then herded them into cramped rooms. When morning came, the Japanese rounded up the 200
survivors (some died during the night) and bayoneted them in the courtyard.
In another case of POW massacre, the Japanese
stationed in Palawan Island, Philippines tried to kill all their American
prisoners after wrongly assuming Allied forces had invaded. After driving the prisoners into makeshift air raid
shelters, the Japanese burned them alive.
Those who fled the burning structures were
bayoneted, shot, or bludgeoned to death. A few dozen managed to make it as far
as the shoreline and hide there; the Japanese
caught, tortured, and executed almost all of them. Of the 150 prisoners, less
than a dozen survived to tell the tale, the lucky few somehow finding
the strength to swim across a bay to safety.
Even the small South Pacific island of Nauru did
not escape the horrors of the war. During their occupation of the island, the
Japanese committed a string of atrocities, and a few stood out for their brutality.
After a raid on the island’s airfield by American
bombers on March 1943, the Japanese beheaded and
bayoneted five interned Australians in retaliation.
Singapore & Sook Ching Massacre February–March 1942
Following the Fall of Singapore, the Japanese
wanted to mop up all remaining resistance, especially among the Chinese living
in the region. To accomplish this, the notorious Japanese secret police
Kempetai initiated Operation Sook Ching (“purge through cleansing”) in February
1942.
Singapore was the first to be purged. After
interning and interrogating the city’s entire Chinese population, the Kempetai herded those they deemed as dangerous into
military vehicles. They then transported them to the city’s outskirts and
executed them all. This purging operation soon found its way into other
parts of Malaya as well.
The manpower shortage and rush made the Kempetai
especially merciless toward those in rural areas. They eliminated entire
villages on mere suspicion of subversive activity. Although we have no official
casualty figures, estimates range from 5,000–6,000 (Japanese sources) to a high
of 30,000–100,000 (Singaporean and Chinese sources).
AND One of Japan’s most
notorious submarines, the I-8, is best remembered for sinking two Allied
ships and for the crew’s terrible conduct in the aftermath.
On March 26, 1944, the sub spotted and sank the
Dutch freighter Tsijalak hundreds of miles off the coast of Colombo, Sri
Lanka. The Japanese took 103 survivors onboard and
massacred them with swords and sledgehammers. They then bound those still alive
and left them on deck as the submarine dove below. Only five survived the ordeal.
Just a few months later, the Japanese destroyed the
US cargo ship Jean Nicolet and subjected the survivors to the same
brutal treatment. The Japanese tortured and killed their prisoners by making
them pass through a gauntlet of swords and bayonets before throwing their
bodies overboard.
BURMA RAILWAY
The Japanese sought an alternative supply line to
maintain their forces in Burma. This culminated in the construction of a
415-kilometer (300 mi) railway between Burma and Thailand. The railway used
60,000 Allied POWs and 200,000 Asian conscripts for slave labor.
During the year-long construction, thousands died
from the grueling working conditions and inhumane treatment. A total of 13,000 POWS along with approximately
80,000–100,000 Asian laborers died constructing the railway
Most modern Japanese do not accept the
ill-treatment of subject peoples and prisoners by their forebears, even where
supported by overwhelming evidence, and those who do acknowledge it incur the
disdain or outright hostility of their fellow-countrymen for doing so.
It is repugnant the way they still seek to excuse,
and even to ennoble, the actions of their parents and grandparents, so many of
whom forsook humanity in favour of a perversion of honour and an aggressive
nationalism which should properly be recalled with shame.
The Japanese nation is guilty of a collective
rejection of historical fact. As long as such denial persists, it will remain
impossible for the world to believe that Japan has come to terms with the
horrors it inflicted.
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