MANY EXECUTED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20914, 14 October 1942, Page 3

MANY EXECUTED

MALAYAN STUDENTS RESISTANCE TO JAPS. GRIM FOOD SHORTAGE (9.30 a.m.) NEW YORK, Oct. 13. Executions figure largely in the vigorous Japanese campaign to “Nipponise” the Straits Settlements, according to the first Chinese to reach Chungking from Malaya since the fall of Singapore, after seven months’ dangerous travel through Thailand, Indo-China and occupied China. He said that in Singapore and Penang the Japanese arrested a large number of persons, particularly students. Many were executed because they rejected the Japanese “friendly moves.” The majority of the rubber plantations and tin mines were still shut down. There was a serious shortage of food, particularly in south-east Malaya, where thousands were threatened with starvation. There was frequent friction between the Japanese and the inhabitants of Thailand and Indo-China because of the invaders’ economic plundering. The South Seas inhabitants lived in dread of Allied bombings. “Among the 70,000,000 people in the Dutch East Indies there is not a single Quisling,” declared the former Governor of East Java, Dr. Charles Van der Plas. “Even now the Japanese are unable to get a Quisling and have been forced to appoint a Japanese Mayor in Sourabaya. The Indonesians are still fighting the invader on Timor and Borneo, and underground forces are active in Java. Many Japanese are being killed nightly.