ANIMAL FEROCITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 January 1943, Page 3

ANIMAL FEROCITY

EXHIBITED BV JAPANESE

IN PAPUA * WOUNDED TRY TO KILL CAPTORS BOOBY TRAPS MASKED BY DEAD BODIES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY. January 21. Before evacuating the field hospital in Sanananda the Japanese hid grenade booby traps under the bodies of their own dead. The firing pins had been removed so that the grenades would explode when the corpses covering them were moved. Seriously-ill patients who were left' in the hospital had knives as well as grenades with which to fight, and some of the Japanese lay amid the rotting dead waiting for a chance to shoot United States troops who captured the hospital. “I would never have believed that such things were possible,” declared an American major. ‘‘l still find it hard to believe they are true.” “This hospital seemed designed to kill patients rather than cure’them,’’ writes the Sydney “Sun” war correspondent. “It has illustrated again the animalesque fatalism of the Japanese. The wards are ramshackle shelters, and the convalescents lived in tiny cubicles protected from the torrential tropical rains only by flimsy banana leaves.” PROGRESS IN MOPPING UP. Good progress in the mobping-up operations is reported in General MacArthur's communique today. The two main pockets of enemy resistance are on either side of Sanananda Point and here Australians are attacking while an inland pocket is being stormed by Americans. The Japanese are fighting from stoutly constructed dug-outs and pill-boxes, and the volume of their fire and their fighting tenacity indicate that at least some of the strongpoints still have adequate supplies. Nevertheless, the extermination of these forces is being accomplished rapidly, according to the headquarters spokesman today. Ceaseless attacks are crumpling the Japanese positions. The rapid Allied gains during the past few days have made it impossible to calculate the number of enemy dead, which is estimated by war correspondents at several hundreds. Scores of enemy refugees from the shattered defences are reported to be hiding in the jungles and swamps, and most of them are badly undernourished and ill-equipped, but with their insatiable lust for killing they might easily become dangerous bands. A close watch is being kept over all food dumps, and many Japanese have been killed in such areas. The largest enemy party so far reported numbers about 40. Allied patrols are hunting down' these remnants. Recently enemy barges at night landed rice for the starving garrison at Sanananda Point. Two of the barges are believed to have put supplies ashore, and the others were driven off. At least three barges were sunk. Allied artillery fire also destroyed all except a few bags of the landed rice. ALLIED LOSSES COMPARATIVELY LOW IN NEW GUINEA. LONDON, January 21. The U.S.A. Secretary for War, Mr Stimson, said that in New Guinea there were more casualties among the Australian troops than among the Americans, but the Allied losses generally were comparatively low.