War Graves unit exhumed 436 bodies from one mass grave and re-interred the remains in the Bomama War Cemetery at Port Moresby. A total of 188 War Crimes Trials were held at Rabaul after the war. The courts sentenced 93 Japanese war criminals to death, 78 were hanged and 15 were shot by firing squad.
THE 'AKIKAZE' EXECUTIONS (March 18, 1943)
The Mitsubishi built destroyer Akikaze (Lt. Cdr. Sabe Tsurukichi) was ordered to sail to Wewak in New Guinea to remove some German residents who were suspected of using radio transmitters to report ship movements to the Americans. Forty civilians were rounded up, most of them German clergymen, plus a few nuns with two children. About thirty more civilians were picked up when the ship stopped at Manus Island before proceeding to Rabaul. En-route, Captain Tsurukichi received a radio message from the 8th Fleet Headquarters to dispose of all neutrals on board. On the aft deck a wooden scaffold was erected and a sheet hung across the deck to shield the executions from the rest of the prisoners. One by one the victims were led from their cabins, interrogated and blindfolded and taken to the rear of the ship. There, they were hung on the scaffold by the wrists from a rope and pulley and as their feet cleared the deck they were shot by a four man rifle party. Their bodies were then thrown overboard. The two children were taken from the arms of the nuns and thrown into the water. The men were killed first then the women, the whole procedure lasting three hours. At around 10 o'clock in the evening the Akikaze berthed at Rabaul.
THE PORT BLAIR MASSACRES (March 23, 1942)
Japanese forces occupied the British controlled Andaman Islands. They met no resistance from the local population but within hours the 'Sons of Heaven' started an orgy of looting, raping and murder. Unbelievable orgies were perpetrated in the towns and villages with women and young girls forcibly raped and young boys sodomized. In Port Blair, eight high-ranking Indian officials were tortured then buried up to their chests in pits they were forced to dig. Their chests, heads and eyes were then prodded with bayonets after which the pit was sprayed with bullets until the helpless victims were all dead. The Director of Health and President of the Indian Independence League, Diwan Singh, was arrested and nearly 2,000 of his Peace Committee associates incarcerated in the local jail and subjected to the water treatment, electric shocks and other unspeakable forms of torture for eighty-two days. Those left alive were then taken out to the country and shot and buried. After the massacre the Japanese resorted to a reign of terror, women were abducted and taken to the officers club to be raped by the officer elite. A shipload of Korean girls was brought in to participate in this 'sport'. During the three and a half years of Japanese occupation, out of the 40,000 population of Port Blair around 30,000 were brutally murdered. The small islands of the Andamans were left a scene of utter devastation. This was Japan's way of helping India get her freedom from British rule.
A few miles outside the city of Tacloban, the principle city on the island of Leyte in the Philippines, was a prisoner-of-war camp for Allied soldiers. In charge of the prisoners was a senior British officer, Major Cumyns. Considered by the inmates as a strict disciplinarian, arrogant and conceited who used every opportunity to advance his own creature comforts and at the same time to endear himself to the good graces of the Camp Commandant, Captain Yoshishito. In the camp were 44 British and 120 Australian prisoners-of war plus one solitary American. On Christmas Eve, 1943, four Australians made a desperate attempt to escape. Hunted down, with the help of Major Cumyns, the four were eventually captured. Next morning, Christmas Day, the four Aussies were beheaded in front of the assembled prisoners. Hatred towards Major Cumyns spilled over in the hearts of the Australians and around midnight that night a small group of Australian prisoners crept into Cumyns' hut while he slept