DRIVEN TO SUICIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 July 1942, Page 4

DRIVEN TO SUICIDE

VICTIMS OF JAPANESE DETAILS OF APPALLING BARBARITIES. BRITISH WOMEN OUTRAGED & SLAUGHTERED. (By Telegraph—Preste Association— Copyright) LONDON, July 27. Twelve Britons were driven to suicide by the Japanese after internment, says “The Times” correspondent at Lourenco Marques. They included Mr E. W. Stagg, manager of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank at Yokohama; Mr L. Sykes, manager of the Chartered Bank of Yokohama; and Mr John Watson, manager of British real estate interests at Harbin, who was father-in-law of the British vice-consul. Mr K. F. Krugher, marine adjuster, died in prison as a result of exposure, and Mr J. A. Hewitt, a missionary, died in an insane asylum after imprisonment. Fourteen Britons are known to have died in Hong Kong, and others face death from malnutrition. Mr Otto Tolischus, former Far East correspondent of the “New York Times,” says that the fate of officials was enviable compared with that of civilians, scores of whom were thrown into prison and many were tortured. All the American newspaper men and Miss Phyllis Argali, a London newspaper woman, were examined with violence. Miss Argali was tied up and her face was slapped till the skin broke. The Japanese police said: “All newspaper men are spies because they discover the truth.” Mr Tolischus declares that British and American wounded at Hong Kong and Wake Island were massacred, and that British women and girls, including war hospital nurses, were raped and slaughtered. One hundred thousand war prisoners in Japanese camps urgently need food, clothing, and medicines, especially the Americans in Japan and the British in Hong Kong and Singapore.