Confessions reveal Japanese atrocities
Print Edition
CONFESSIONS by 45 Japanese war criminals tried and convicted by military tribunals in China after World War II are being published online in a process that began yesterday.
Handwritten confessions, along with Chinese translations and abstracts in both Chinese and English, will be published one a day for 45 days by the State Archives Administration, its deputy director Li Minghua told a news conference yesterday.
In the first, dated 1954 and 38 pages long, Keiku Suzuki, a lieutenant general and commander of Japan’s 117th Division, admitted ordering a Colonel Taisuke to “burn down the houses of about 800 households and slaughter 1,000 Chinese peasants in a mop-up operation” in the Tangshan area north China in January 1942.
Among a litany of other crimes with a total toll in the thousands, he also confessed that he killed 235 Chinese peasants seeking refuge in a village near Lujiayu by shooting, bayoneting, slashing and burying them alive, cutting open the bellies of pregnant women among them, in October 1942.
He also ordered the Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Squad to spread the cholera virus in three or four villages.
He also ordered to set up comfort stations in regions occupied by Japanese troops, and forced about 60 Chinese and Korean women to serve as “comfort women” in 1945.
Li said the confessions, all signed by the criminals, are scans of the originals.
Suzuki was held by Soviet forces at the end of the war and transferred to Chinese custody in 1950, earlier Chinese documents said, adding that he was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the court and released in 1963.
Japan was guilty of numerous atrocities in China, including the Nanjing Massacre in 1937 and germ warfare and other experiments conducted by the infamous Unit 731 on Chinese people.
“These archives are hard evidence of the heinous crimes committed by Japanese imperialism against the Chinese,” Li said.
Li said the documents were being released to mark the 77th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge incident on Monday.
The July 7, 1937 incident, also known as the Lugouqiao Incident, marked the beginning of China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which lasted eight years.
There were 1,109 Japanese war criminals in custody in China between 1950 and 1956, Li said.
Among them, 1,017 with minor offenses were exempted from prosecution and released in 1956 and 45 received open trials at special military tribunals under the Supreme People’s Court.
The 45 were charged with planning and implementing an aggression policy, making germ weapons, releasing poisonous gas, conducting experiments on living human beings, killing, stealing property, forcible recruitment of “comfort women,” rape and driving locals from their homes.
The 45 were sentenced to prison terms of eight to 20 years.
Li said the administration is sorting out archives of confessions made by the 1,017 who had committed minor offenses and will also make them public.
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