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 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