 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. Sakaibara was transported to Guam to await his fate. There, on 19 June 1947, he was executed by hanging. The murdered civilian P.O.W.s were later buried in Honolulu Memorial, Hawaii.
ATROCITIES ON GUAM
An island in the Marianas group and a US territory since 1898. Invaded by a Japanese naval force on December 10, 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, it was the first US territory to be captured in WW11. In less than twenty four hours the US Garrison of 540 men was forced to surrender. Now under Japanese control for the next thirty two months, the islanders suffered unimaginative cruelties in which thousands died. On July 15, 1944, residents of the town of Merizo were rounded up and 25 men and 5 women (all schoolteachers) were selected form the group and taken to a cave in the nearby hills and murdered by hand grenades thrown into the opening. Fifteen victims survived by pretending to be dead. Another massacre occurred next day at the nearby Faha Caves when a group of 31 men were killed in similar circumstances but in this case no one survived. Many such killings took place during the Japanese occupation. In the town of Sumay, all residents were evicted from their homes while the Japanese troops moved in. During the move, 5 young women were raped. Some houses were requisitioned for brothels to allow 'Comfort Girls' a place to live and work while servicing the troops. Most of the male population were used as slaves, constructing airstrips and Pillboxes and such. When US forces retook the island on July 21, 1944, they found, in Yigo, 51 mutilated bodies and the beheaded bodies of another 30 men were found in the back of a truck. A total of 14,704 residents of Guam, all bearing the scars of war, survived the Japanese occupation.
KOKOPO AND BALLALAE MASSACRES
In November, 1942, six hundred British P.O.W.s were marched from their prison at Changi to the docks at Singapore to board a 6,500 ton cargo ship. On November 5 the ship entered Simpson Harbour at Rabaul, New Britain. The P.O.W.s 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 Solomon's, there to start work on another airstrip for the Japanese. One prisoner died en route. 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 on to Australia and home.
The surrender of Japanese forces in Rabaul and surrounding islands was formally signed on board the British aircraft carrier HMS Glory (Captain W. Buzzard) anchored off Rabaul on September 6, 1945. 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 P.O.W.s were killed during an Allied bombing raid and when the airstrip was completed at the end of March, 1943, the remaining prisoners were lined up and executed by bayonet and sword. In December, 1945, an Australian 