BRUTAL TREATMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 May 1942, Page 3

BRUTAL TREATMENT

OF PRISONERS TAKEN AT HONG KONG NEW ZEALAND AIRMAN’S ACCOUNT. BOLD ESCAPE FROM ENEMY HANDS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW DELHI, May 2. A New Zealand officer of the Royal Air Force, after swiinining through a hail of bullets to escape from Hong Kong, has arrived in India. He staggered into Chungking with a companion 60 days after the escape from the'island. They had trekked 1200 miles and were exhausted and half-starved.

The New Zealander said: “After the Japanese captured our aerodrome we fought in the Allied lines as machinegunners till Hong Kong surrendered. We were taken prisoner and, with 6000 men, were marched to a camp. Some of the prisoners were so weak they had to jettison their belongings. A British officer tried to get a rickshaw for a sick man, and a Japanese officer struck the Briton in the face.

“The conditions in the camp were appalling. There was no bedding, or utensils in which to cook the daily ration of two bowls of rice; and there were 170 cases of dysentery at the time of our escape. “We swam to the mainland and hid in hills in which Japanese troops were operating. Bandits twice attacked us on the way to Chungking, stealing our money and watches but leaving us our maps, with which we worked our way through 600 miles of Japanese-occupied territory. We then fell in with Chinese guerillas, who dressed us in Chinese clothes and guided us through dangerous hills, passing us from one guerilla band to another.” JAPANESE INDICTED ASSURANCES GIVEN & BROKEN. REFUSAL TO DISCLOSE NAMES OF PRISONERS. x LONDON, May 2. The Australian Minister of External Affairs, Dr Evatt, who has arrived from America, said in an interview today that lack of cooperation by the Japanese was holding up aid for the British prisoners and internees in the Far East. An official leaflet which sets out the position states that though. Japan gave an assurance that she was willing to transmit information, only two short lists totalling 12 names of personnel who died of illness were received. After further urgent representations, another promise to provide lists was received, but no names of prisoners of war were notified apart from a few in Japanese propaganda broadcasts. Britain is continuing her efforts to obtain the lists.

The Japanese have also failed to consent to a scheme to establish in the s Far East a supply service for the dispatch of food and clothing, but sup- a *- plies are being distributed in the camps at Hong Kong and Singapore through local missionaries, to whom funds have been sent. A move has been made to establish a postal service via the trans-Siberian Railway, which is the only channel, but a reply is still . awaited from the Japanese, though urgent reminders have been sent.