HOW TARO DIED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 21, 5 November 1943, Page 3

HOW TARO DIED

JAPANESE SUICIDE HUGGEJD HAND GRENADE Taro Yamada. whose gold-starred red badges proclaimed, him a firstclass private in the Imperial Japanese Army, will not be returning to his home in Osaka. He will not be going home to his father, the foreman in the great silk I'actoryV who was so proud of his upstanding son in his grey school uniform and. German cap, prouder still Avhen he graduated into an ofT-ikhaki uniform and. helmet, and shouldered a not very efficient rifle, to go off overseas and fight the unenlighteTied. Chinese, the barbarian Australians, and the plundering Americans in the sacred wars of the Son of Heaven. Taro will not be going home even in a. little white box. He did not die yelling defiance on the bayonets of the foes of the Son of Heaven. He did not die like a samurai, with the words of the. Kimigayo on his lips and the Sun Elag wrapped around his breast and his life and his bowels split out on the point of a sword. It was no hero's death that 'laro died in the swirling waters of the Busu River lloAving into the Huon Gulf, where barbarian gunfire heralded the. approach of Australian soldiers to Lac. Tapped Grenadte on Head Cut off and, alone, a straggler in utter terror of the late lie thought mlist await liini as a prisoner he stood up to his armpits in the sea, tapped a grenade, against his head to release the spring, hugged it to his chest, and blew his head off. Of two other Japanese cut off in the same circumstances and about the same time and place, one was shot by Australian ride (ire and another blew himself to pieces with a grenade. Stories of such suicides are„ in fact, becoming commonplace here, and there, is every evidence that they indicate, not devotion unto deathy but sheer terror and broken spirit. Weapons and equipment we have captured from the Japanese are new and suggest we are lighting fresh troops. This fact, taken in conjunction with the suicide of troops before we have ever encircled them, betokens loss of confidence, as well as lack of courage and'pm>r" morale, both individually and collectively. We have the word of natives also who have escaped from Lae upon reports of the advance ol the Australians that the Japanese, when our shells and bombs begin to burst among them from sea, land or air, abandon their defences and go out into hiding until the air is clear.— Allan Dawe.s in the Melbourne Herald.