Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Tuesday 11 September 1945, page 16


JAPANESE SADISTS WHO SHOULD DIE

Correspondent’s List

From GEORGE H. JOHNSTON

Tokyo

As the trivial beginning of a per-sonal attempt to assist in the coming task those charged with finding and punishing of Japanese war criminals, I submit to Australia a necessarily incomplete list of Japanese who are still at large, but who should be found and tried, and, if necessary, hanged.

They have all been responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the death of many Australian, British, American, French, and Dutch soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians. I am compiling this list now because I am dismayed at the increasing tendency among certain officials, and even more among correspondents, to adopt an attitude of forgive and forget toward Japan. In fact, some correspondents are filing despatches indicating that we have completely misjudged the Japanese, who, they say, are kindly, courteous, gentle people.

These correspondents have not only become victims of Japanese propa-ganda and of the Japanese capacity for using a cloak of suave manners to disguise treachery. They have accepted enemy statements relating to "reasonably good treatment" in prison camps.

They forget that, on August 15, when the Emperor Hirohito an-nounced his willingness to capitu-late, most prison guards became humane officers instead of the fiendish torturers they had been, and living conditions suddenly became tolerable. That is why many re-covered POW's have reached re-patriation ports in reasonably good condition—although many have not —not because they have consistently been well treated by the enemy.

Even now, one of our greatest prob-lems will be finding and bringing to trial many of the barbarians who have fled, even though we obtain full and indisputable evidence of their atrocities. Although uncon-firmed reports are being circulated here that two war criminals—the chief of the Japanese secret police and Meisinger, the German "but-cher of Warsaw," have been arres-ted in Tokyo, I believe that, al-though we have occupied Japan for 12 days, we have not arrested any Japanese war criminals.

Therefore, while my memory is fresh and my notes are intact, here is my preliminary list of Japanese prison camp barbarians:

Sgt Mutsuhiro Watanabe, discip-linary specialist, of Kobe, Mitsu-shima, and Nagoya camps, and one of the principal interrogators and torturers at the hell hole camp of Ofuna, near Tokyo. Watanabe is directly responsible for the deaths of more than 200 Allied prisoners, in-cluding 60 Australians, and he has a long record of unbelievable atroci-ties and torturings.

Captain Sibata, known as "the phantom," commandant of Yokkai-dichi camp, near Nagoya. He was the inventor of a whole fiendish series of terrible tortures, which brought about many deaths and caused men who did not die to be maimed for life or rendered insane. I personally ordered five soldiers to

be beaten to death with sticks and knotted ropes and stood by watching until life had left their bodies. He himself lashed a British officer and a British padre so shockingly that both men are now incurably insane.

Colonel Sakaba, commanding offi-cer of prison camps in the Senzugi area. He is known as "The Beast"

He controlled the terrible mining camp of Aship, where scores of men died of starvation, torture, exposure, and disease while slaving in the

mines.

Ken Sato, who visited Australia in the mid-thirties as leader of a Jap-anese good will mission. He held a high position as an interrogator of Allied prisoners, and was the princi-pal officer in ordering Allied officers to the dreadful Ofuna camp, which was known as the "inquisitorial hell-hole of Japan." He inflicted terrible lashings on Allied officers, and threatened many others with execu-tion without trial.

Captain Motiawa, principal officer responsible for the terrible tortures and privations imposed upon sol-diers of the Australian 8th Division in prison camps in Siam. These sufferings resulted in an enormous death roll. He forced troops to slave on the railway running from Bang-kok into Burma, along which they died like flies. He inflicted terrible tortures and beatings on our troops, and once beat out a British officer's brains with a shovel, laughing as he did so.

Sergeant Yagashagushi, known as "The Animal." He was an inter-preter at Takenishi and Notogawa camps. He is a tiny, evil man. He attended all torturings and execu-tions. He always gave to the com-mandant false translations of what prisoners said, and thus caused more beatings, tortures, and executions. After tortured men had become al-most unconscious, he would thrash them with sticks and ropes, beat them across their faces with the flat of his sword, and kick them. This man was directly responsible for the death of many prisoners.

The commandant of the Onahama mining camp, whose name has never been revealed. More than 100 men died at his camp of malnutrition and pneumonia, caused by indescribable conditions. He stole all Red Cross stores, clothes, and medicines, and left prisoners to die in rags, without

care.

Medical Orderly Corporal Naoki, known as "The Germ," at Neoetz camp, where more than 60 of 300 Australian soldiers died of beatings, tortures, beri beri, exposure, pneu-

monia, and starvation. He made

men wear summer clothes in winter and winter clothes, plus double wrap-

pings of blankets, in summer. He inflicted hideous tortures with lighted tapers. Corporal Korno, interpreter and assistant torturer to Sergeant Watanabe. He invented the torture of lunging at Australians throats with swords of bamboo until the men fell unconscious, and then beat them across their bodies until blood burst through the skin. He killed many Allied prisoners and deliberately

starved others.