Confessions of Japanese war criminals published in China
Xinhua 2015-08-12 16:28
Photos of war criminals displayed at the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Beijing, July 8. (File photo/CNS)
A total of 31 confessions from Japanese war criminals will be published online starting Tuesday to expose crimes committed by Japan in China during and prior to the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), which became a theater of World War II.
Handwritten confessions, along with Chinese translations and abstracts in both Chinese and English, have been published on the website of the State Archives Administration, said an unidentified official with the administration. One confession will be published per day from Aug. 11.
"These archives are hard evidence of the heinous crimes committed by Japanese imperialists against the Chinese," the official said.
The confessions, which have never been released before, detail crimes perpetrated by the Japanese occupiers, including the killing, enslavement and poisoning of Chinese people, as well as the use of biological and chemical weapons on live human subjects.
The first in the series features a confession by Kenzo Sugishita, who was born in 1901 and took part in acts of aggression against China in 1932.
On Feb. 3, 1932, at a village about eight kilometers south of Tianle Temple in Shanghai, the squadron gave the instruction to shoot all on sight, resulting in the killing of an estimated 30 Chinese people, Sugishita said in the confession.
"On Feb. 19, 1932, I caught a child of about six years old escaping from the fire at Lujia Bridge, laid him on a stone in front of the door, beat him to death with stones, and threw the dead body into the burning house," he added.
