BARBARIC MURDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 October 1943, Page 4

BARBARIC MURDER

OF YOUNG ALLIED AIRMAN COMMITTED BY JAPANESE AT SALAMAUA PROMISE OF RETRIBUTION AFTER WAR (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. The barbaric murder of a young Allied airman by a Japanese officer is revealed in a diary which was among documents captured at Salamaua. The airman, whose plane was shot down by anti-air-craft fire, was beheaded by. the Japanese officer, after which his body was mutilated and flung into a water-filled bomb crater. The execution was carried out with a ceremonial sword which was then handed to a superior seaman who, to quote the eyewitness, “laid open the abdomen with one sweep.” The diary records that the airman, who was a captain or flight lieutenant from Port Moresby, remained unshaken to the last. It was announced at General MacArthur's headquarters that the officer who committed the atrocity was SubLieutenant (First Class) Komai. The next senior responsible commander was Lieutenant-Commander Tsukioka. The State Department in Washington announced that Japanese officials would have to answer for the atrocity at the end of the war. “The incident should awaken Americans to a realisation of what we are facing in the Pacific,” said Representative Mass, of the House Naval Affairs Committee. “I hope it will arouse the High Command, as well as the public, to the necessity for a major offensive against Japan.”