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DEATH ON TANOURA BEACH
American airmen shot down during bombing raids on Rabaul, New Britain, were incarcerated in a house, a former tailors shop in Chinatown and now the headquarters of the 6th Field Kempetai under the command of the Japanese Navy. On March 2nd, 1944, the house was demolished in a bombing raid. Fortunately all the prisoners had been transferred to a shelter across the road, prior to the raid. While in the shelter, another seventeen prisoners were brought in bringing the total of sixty-two. (these prisoners were from the 5th, 13th Airforce and the 1st and 2nd Wing Marine Air Corps) Next day the sixty-two men were trucked out to a tunnel like cave at Tanoura, a few miles from Rabaul. Packed together in the narrow cave like sardines, they were allowed two buckets of water each day, but only after the guards had washed their dishes in it. Two days later, twenty names were called out to proceed to waiting lorries. Later, more names were called and the lorries departed. The prisoners were under the command of Warrant Officer Zenichi Wakabayashi. According to evidence given by him at the Rabaul War Crimes Trials the prisoners were told they were being transferred to a camp on Watom Island, a few miles off shore. Assembled in a shelter on Tanoura Beach waiting for sea transport, the prisoners were subjected to a rain of bombs from eight US bombers flying high overhead. A direct hit on the shelter caused the deaths of most of the prisoners, five were seriously wounded and died a short time later. That evening, all thirty-one bodies, or parts of bodies, were cremated in a huge funeral pyre on the beach. Some of the ashes were gathered together and eventually handed over to members of the Australian Army at the end of hostilities. At the War Crimes Trial questions were asked as to why the bodies were cremated when other Allied deaths usually resulted in burial in mass graves. Why was the camp commander on Watom Island, Colonel Kahachi Ogata, never informed that prisoners were about to be transferred from the mainland? Could it be that the thirty one prisoners were deliberately massacred to ease the crowded conditions in the tunnel camp, and to hide their crime, the Japanese had the bodies burned? There is no real evidence to either of these incidents. Were the prisoners massacred or did they really fall victim to 'Friendly Fire'? In 1948, Wakabayashi was again interrogated but maintains he is telling the truth.
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MURDER ON WAKE ISLAND
(Jan. 12, 1943)
The Japanese invasion of Wake Island, a small atoll some 2,000 miles west of Hawaii (area 6.5 sq kms) cost them dearly, 11 naval craft, 29 planes and around 5,700 men killed. The stubborn defence of the island by the tiny garrison of 388 US Marines and 1,200 civilians workers lasted for fourteen heroic days. On December 23, 1941, Major James P.S. Devereux of the 1st. Defence Battalion, US Marine Corps, and Commander Winfield Cunningham of the Naval Air Station, realizing that the odds were hopelessly stacked against them, called for a cease fire, raised the white flag and surrendered the island. The loss of Wake Island left the US with no base between Hawaii and the Philippines. In January, 1942, the US Marines, numbering 1,187, were herded into the cargo holds of the 17,163 ton Japanese luxury liner Nitta Maru, for transportation to Yokohama and then to Shanghai. Those left behind included the civilians and the wounded Marines. A year passed and on the night of January 12, 1943, the Japanese accused the civilians of being in secret radio communication with US naval forces. The 98 American civilians still on Wake were marched to the beach and there lined up with their backs to the ocean and brutally murdered by machine guns. After the war, the Japanese commander on Wake, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara, and eleven of his officers, were sentenced to death by a US Naval Court at Kwajalein.
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KOKOPO AND BALLALAE MASSACRES
In November, 1942, six hundred British POWs were marched from their prison at Changi to the docks at Singapore to board a 6,500 ton cargo ship. On the 5th Nov. the ship entered Simpson Harbour at Rabaul, New Britain. The POWs were transferred to Kokopo to start building a new airstrip. Three weeks later, 517 of the prisoners were shipped to a camp on Ballalae Island in the Solomons, there to start work on another airstrip for the Japanese. One prisoner died enroute. The 82 men left behind at Kokopo were very badly treated by their captors. Kicked, beaten, punched, thrashed and clubbed on a daily basis they were soon in a terrible state. Gravely ill with dysentery, malaria and berri-berri, they soon succumbed to death and by the end of February, 1945, only 57 were still alive. By April, only 21 of the original 82 were alive. Some had developed diphtheria scrotum which, because of a vitamin deficiency, causes the testicles to swell to the size of pineapples. Eventually the 21 sick prisoners were transferred to the Watom Island camp where they were made to dig tunnels to be used by the Japanese as air-raid shelters. Soon two more died and on September 6, 1945, when 89,291 Japanese military and civilian men and women surrendered to the Allies, the 18 survivors were freed and boarded the destroyer HMAS Vendetta for a hospital on Lae, then to Australia and then home. The surrender of Japanese forces in Rabaul and surrounding islands was formally signed on board the British aircraft carrier HMS Glory anchored off Rabaul. Meanwhile, on Ballalae Island, the prisoners suffered the same horrendous conditions as those at Kokopo. Sadly, not a single one of the 516 prisoners survived the war. In 1943, after the island was captured by the 3rd New Zealand Division, natives revealed that hundreds of POWs were killed during an Allied bombing raid and when the airstrip was completed at the end of March, 43, the remaining prisoners were lined up and executed by bayonet and sword. In December, 1945, an Australian War Graves unit exhumed 436 bodies from one mass grave and re-interred the remains in the Port Moresby War Cemetery. (For full details of this and other massacres see Peter Stone's "Hostages to Freedom")
A total of 188 War Crimes Trials were held at Rabaul after the war. The courts sentenced 93 Japanese war criminals to death, 78 were hanged and 15 were shot by firing squad.
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THE 'AKIKAZE' EXECUTIONS
(March 18, 1943) The Mitsubishi built destroyer Akikaze (Lt.Cdr.Sabe Tsurukichi) was ordered to sail to Wewak in New Guinea to remove some German residents who were suspected of using radio transmitters to report ship movements to the Americans. Forty civilians were rounded up most of them German clergymen plus a few nuns with two children. About thirty more civilians were picked up when the ship stopped at Manus Island before proceeding to Rabaul. En-route, Captain Tsurukichi received a radio message from the 8th Fleet Headquarters to dispose of all neutrals on board. On the aft deck a wooden scaffold was erected and a sheet hung across the deck to shield the executions from the rest of the prisoners. One by one the victims were led from their cabins, interrogated and blindfolded and taken to the rear of the ship. There, they were hung on the scaffold by the wrists from a rope and pulley and as their feet cleared the deck they were shot by a four man rifle party. Their bodies were then thrown overboard. The two children were taken from the arms of the nuns and thrown into the water. The men were killed first then the women, the whole procedure lasting three hours. At around 10 o'clock in the evening the Akikaze berthed at Rabaul.
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THE PORT BLAIR MASSACRES
March 23, 1942, Japanese forces occupied the British controlled Andaman Islands. They met no resistance from the local population but within hours the 'Sons of Heaven' started an orgy of looting, raping and murder. Unbelievable orgies were perpetrated in the towns and villages with women and young girls forcibly raped and young boys sodomized. In Port, eight high-ranking Indian officials were tortured then buried up to their chests in pits they were forced to dig. Their chests, heads and eyes were then prodded with bayonets after which the pit was sprayed with bullets until the helpless victims were all dead. The Director of Health and President of the Indian Independence League, Diwan Singh, was arrested and nearly 2,000 of his Peace Committee associates incarcerated in the local jail and subjected to the water treatment, electric shocks and other unspeakable forms of torture for eighty two days. Those left alive were then taken out to the country and shot and buried. After the massacre the Japanese resorted to a reign of terror, women were abducted and taken to the officers club to be raped by the officer elite. A shipload of Korean girls was brought in to participate in this 'sport'. During the three and a half years of Japanese occupation, out of the 40,000 population of Port Blair around 30,000 were brutally murdered. The small islands of the Andamans were left a scene of utter devastation. This was Japan's way of helping India get her freedom from the British.
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