Janice Anderson - War Crimes and Atrocities

The original plan was to murder each one, but through the intervention of Rear Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka, their lives were spared. They were given food and water, despite the fact that it had been contaminated by the heat and the unclean gasoline drums. Their clothes were returned to them and Kajioka read out a proclamation that said, ‘The Emperor has gracefully presented you with your lives.’ They were marched back to their barracks and for the first time the Japanese treated their captives with due consideration.

This was not to be the case for 98 contract workers, because fearing an imminent invasion, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara ordered their execution. They were all blindfolded and gunned down before being buried in a mass grave. One of the captives managed to escape and carved an inscription on a large coral rock near the site of the grave. It said, ‘98 US PW 5-10-43’. This inscription is still visible today on Wake Island and has become a famous landmark. This unknown American was captured again within a few weeks and personally beheaded by Sakaibara.

The Japanese finally surrendered to US marines on 4 September, 1945, and all the officers were taken into custody. While some of them committed hara-kiri, others told of the massacre. Sakaibara and his immediate subordinate were convicted of war crimes, and Sakaibara was hanged on Guam while his subordinate had his sentence commuted to life. Until the end, Sakaibara maintained, ‘I think my trial was entirely unfair and the proceeding unfair, and the sentence too harsh, but I obey with pleasure.’

The Andaman Islands are located 960 km (596 miles) off the east coast of India, and they make up a group of more than 200 islands. The islands, which share history and traditions with each other, are inhabited by ancient tribes that today remain some of the most traditional in the world. Today Port Blair, the main town for the islands, is a prime tourist spot, offering luxurious hotels along with fascinating rainforests and unspoilt beaches.

During World War II, Port Blair was the main military objective on Andaman, consisting of 300 Sikh militia and 23 British officers, boosted in 1942 by a Gurkha detachment. After Rangoon fell to the Japanese on 8 March, the British became aware that Port Blair was becoming impossible to safeguard. When the Gurkhas withdrew to the Arakan peninsula on 10 March, the garrison at Port Blair were even more exposed. With only the one British company to maintain law and order, the islands did not have any elaborate defence structures and, with no hope of defending the island, the British evacuated, leaving a skeleton staff.

Wishing to secure their sea defences, the Japanese sent a sizeable force to seize the islands on 23 March. They met no resistance from the British or the local population, and within hours the Sikh militia were disarmed and placed under captivity without the firing of one single bullet. The British militia were sent to Singapore as prisoners of war, while the officers were held on the island in Port Blair’s prison, the Cellular Jail. The prison is named after the shape of its construction, which was started in 1896 and completed in 1906. It was built with seven wings with a central tower and turret. Connected to this were seven wings, each three storeys high, with 698 isolated cells.

The Japanese soon started to assume their control of the islands, with the army commander taking the position of governor of the civilian population. At first, the Japanese were welcomed by the islanders, many finding new and higher positions that had been vacated by the British officers. In return, the Japanese treated them with respect and paid fair prices for goods purchased in their shops.

After one year in occupation, the Japanese established the ‘Andaman Miniseibu’, with the prime objective of:

To protect the local population and also to promote their welfare, maintenance of public peace and order, development of industries, repairing of roads and prevention of epidemics in the islands but its main work to increase the production of food stuff, by establishing a self-sufficient system, on the other hand recognizing their religious freedom much attention was given to education and also attempts were made to make the local people happy by encouraging whole sale amusement…

A Japanese school was opened as well as the Government High School, which was originally run by the British. Roads were constructed across the island, and the previously unfinished airstrip was finished within three months. However, underneath their seemingly friendly facade, there is evidence that the Japanese committed many atrocities during their term of occupation.

Although some of the evidence is a little vague, due to the fact that the Japanese destroyed all their records when they left the Andaman Islands, there are reliable stories of people who witnessed the atrocities. The first victim came after just four days of Japanese occupation. A young man, by the name of Zulfiqar Ali, became enraged when some Japanese soldiers chased some of his chickens into his house. After Ali fired an airgun at the soldiers, he was taken captive and marched in front of the Browning Club, where his arms were twisted until they broke and then he was shot.

Over the next few months the situation for the locals deteriorated as the Japanese soldiers started holding unthinkable orgies in the towns and villages, with young girls being forcibly raped and young boys sodomized. In Port Blair, eight high-ranking Indian officials were tortured and then buried up to their chests in pits, which they had been forced to dig themselves. Each time a Japanese soldier walked past the men, they prodded their heads and eyes with bayonets, and after a few hours the helpless victims were pumped full of bullets.

In an effort to try and protect the local civilians, a group of locals (mostly officials and doctors) were encouraged to become members of Rash Behari Bose’s Indian Independence League. They formed a Peace Committee, headed by Dr Diwan Singh, which made every effort to try and alleviate the pain and suffering of the population at the hands of the Japanese. However, their efforts were to little avail, and Dr Singh was arrested along with approximately 2,000 of his Peace Committee associates. They were taken to the Cellular Jail, where they were subject to water torture, electric shocks and many other unimaginable forms of torture for a period of 82 days. Any survivors were taken off the island and shot and buried.

One of the British captives, Major A. G. Bird, who had imprisoned in Singapore, was used as an example by the Japanese. They used a fellow convict, Sarup Ram, to set Bird up in front of an improvised ‘trial’, where he was accused of spying. Wireless parts had been planted in the house where Bird had been held prisoner. Bird was found guilty, and his arms and legs were twisted and broken before he was decapitated by a sword in the hands of Colonel Bucho.

After the massacre of the majority of the Peace Committee, the Japanese resorted to inflicting terror on the women. They were abducted from their homes and taken to the officers club, where they would be raped by high-ranking officers. Shiploads of Korean girls were also brought in to appease the sexual appetite of the Japanese soldiers.

Towards the end of their three and a half years of occupation, the Japanese resorted to more desperate measures. It is believed that about 700 people from the south of Andaman were deported to an uninhabited island to grow food. According to one of the survivors, almost half of these people died as a result of drowning or being eaten by sharks, as they were pushed out into the darkness in inadequate boats. Others died of starvation or at the hands of Burmese pirates. A rescue mission went to the island after the Japanese left, and although they found only 12 survivors more than 100 skeletons were lying along the edges of the shore.