 cremated, the ashes placed in small urns to be returned to their families in Japan.
The striking memorial, built on the site of the Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp on Luzon, includes a Wall of Honour on which are inscribed the names of around 3,000 Americans, many of them survivors of the Death March, who died at Cabanatuan. On the night of January 30, 1945, a secret raid was organized to free the remaining prisoners at Cabanatuan. A team of US Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas attacked the camp and liberated 517 prisoners. The raiding teams suffered only three fatalities the Japanese around 1,275.
TOKYO PRISON ATROCITY
Towards the end of the Pacific War, the execution of captured Allied aircrews became almost automatic. Courts-martial were dispensed with on orders from the Military Police Headquarters. In the Tokai Military District, twenty-seven airmen were executed by firing squad, but often, less humane methods were used. In the Japanese Army Prison in Tokyo all the buildings were built of wood and into this prison were crammed 464 Japanese soldiers serving sentences. Also confined in the prison were 62 American airmen who earlier were shot down and captured. During the night of May 25, 1945, Tokyo was heavily bombed by the US Air Force and the prison was hit by incendiaries. In the conflagration which followed, all the 62 airmen were burned to death. A significant factor in this incident was that none of the Japanese prisoners or any of the prison guards suffered a similar fate. The failure of the Japanese to release the 62 flyers could only have been deliberate.
KYUSHU UNIVERSITY ATROCITY
After a bombing mission over southern Japan on May 5, 1945, the crew of a B-29 bomber had to bale out after being rammed by a Japanese suicide plane. The B-29 crashed near the town of Takete. After landing, the crew were taken into custody and transported to Kyushu University in Fukuoka about one hundred miles north of Nagasaki. In the university's anatomy department they were subjected to the most horrible medical experiments imaginable. One prisoner was shot in the stomach so that Japanese surgeons could get practice at removing bullets. Amputations on legs and arms were practiced while the victims were still alive. One was injected with sea water in an experiment to find out if sea water could be substituted for saline solution. One badly wounded American, thinking he was going to be treated for his wound, was anaesthetized and woke up to find that one of his lungs had been removed. He died shortly after. Others had part of the liver removed to see if they could still live. Only one airman, the pilot of the B-29, Captain Marvin Watkins, was taken to Tokyo for interrogation but survived the war. The other eight all died at Fukuoka. After the war, twenty three doctors and hospital staff were arrested, tried and found guilty on various charges by the Allied War Crimes Trials held at Yokohama. Five were sentenced to death, the others to terms of imprisonment. When the Korean war started in June, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur reduced most of the sentences. The death sentences were never carried out. All were released by 1958. This was the only instance where Americans were used in bizarre medical experiments in WWII, except perhaps at Mukden.
MASSACRE ON THE HIGH SEAS
On quite a number of instances, massacres have taken place at sea. In the Atlantic, on March 13, 1944, the Greek registered freighter SS Peleus was torpedoed and sunk by the U-852 (KL Heinz-Wilhelm Eck) Survivors on the life rafts were machine-gunned while other submarine crew members threw hand grenades into the rafts. Thirty two of the survivors were killed, only three were alive when rescued. Eck and three of his crew were sentenced to death by the War Crimes Court in Hamburg and on November 30, 1945, were shot. On the merchant ship Daisy Moller, 53 of her crew were machine-gunned to death by the crew of the Japanese submarine RO-110 on March 18, 1944, after the submarine had rammed the lifeboats. Only 16 crew members survived. The Nancy Moller, 