Ambon war trials

Creed, D. Discusses two Rabaul trials in which the accused were hanged for the rape R1 and torture R35 of Chinese residents. Ward, I. Deals with the Parit Sulong massacre trial LN2. Tanaka, Y. Deals in general with Japanese war crimes in the Australian theatre and in particular with the Sandakan-Ranau, Banka Island, Tol, Kavieng and Akikaze massacres and cannabalism.

See entry in English-language bibliography, above. Katayama, H. He was sentenced to death at Morotai M43 and executed at Rabaul on 23 October This is a remonstrance against the injustice of the trials and specific acts of ill-treatment of the war criminals in Australian custody at Labuan, Fauro, Torokina, Morotai and Rabaul, addressed to the Australian Attorney-General, Dr H. Evatt, by Katayama on the day of his execution.

Imamura, H. This is the autobiography of the Japanese theatre commander at Rabaul who was sentenced to ten years imprisonment R He deals with his trial and the treatment of the prisoners in custody at pp Toyoda, J.

This author chose to write his well researched account of the Ambon case M45 in the form of fiction. Aoyama, S. He writes of his trial HK3 and imprisonment. Ninomiya, Y. A little time later and with about forty executions carried out, subordinate 1st Class Seaman Nakamura borrowed Kanamoto's sword following which he beheaded four Dutch in quick succession on the nearest side of grave 'A'. A short time later 1st Class Seaman Ikezawa took Kanamoto's sword and similarly beheaded three more prisoners, this time Australians.

According to Kanamoto, Ikezawa then passed his sword to another subordinate name not recalled to behead more prisoners on the far side of grave 'A'. Two further decapitations were successful, but the third attempt required two sword strokes, a strange sound and sparks concluded the sword's use.

Kanamoto claims that he then recovered his sword which, upon inspection by torchlight, was found to be nicked at several places and slightly bent. After watching a dozen more beheadings and feeling somewhat uncomfortable witnessing such mass butchery, Kanamoto avers that the constant shouts of jubilation from watching marines mixed with ribald scorn as some prisoners begged for their lives.

Kanamoto avers that he admitted, when asked by W. Fukada if he had beheaded any of the POWs, that he had. Conversely and to this investigating officer, Kanamoto pleaded that this false admission to Fukada was to avoid losing face in front of the latter. Kanamoto then stated that he and his subordinates returned to the Victoria Barracks at Ambon by launch at about hours.

During luncheon the following day, Kanamoto heard that all the POWs amended to had been punished executed and that the incident was not completed until hours in the ensuing morning.

He admitted, to avoid confusion, that though the two massacres paralleled each other at Laha Airfield, the dates were different and so far as the second massacre was concerned, the number of prisoners executed were far greater.

Kanamoto was unable to provide the names of any of the executioners there were so many of them , except those of his two subordinates. However, he did know that the crew of a destroyed Japanese minesweeper No.

Kanamoto strongly denied the adverse allegations made against him by other surviving members of Kure No. I , SNLP and contributed such mendacity to their malevolent spite because it was known by them that he had broken the code of silence about the incidents.

It is accepted by this investigating officer that Kanamoto is no doubt genuinely correct in his assertion, but the opinion is also held that Kanamoto may be deceitful in his denials of having taken no part in the beheading of prisoners which, by no stretch of the imagination, should be described as punishments or incidents. It is also noted that Kanamoto answered most questions in a paraphrastic and circumbagious manner. This investigating Officer appends his name to this report for the final time and for reasons known to -.

COFEPOW cannot say or prove for certain which account is correct and which is not, but feel we should publish Mr Oglethorpe's account of what he claims is the truth, below in order that the viewer can read both versions of this account regarding Ambon and Sado Island and following further research they can then judge the truth for themselves. No massacre occurred. The Tokyo-based war crimes investigator J.

Godwin did not investigate Sado Island on 16 December , or on any other dates. Sado Island in Japan is 5, kilometres from Ambon, Indonesia. Concerning Ambon itself; my own research shows that Godwin never investigated Ambon. The Laha Massacres. He worked on war crimes investigations only in Tokyo, several years after the Laha massacres had already been investigated in Indonesia, not Japan and the perpetrators executed and imprisoned. The purported quotation of Godwin is a forgery.

The details of the account of Ambon, lack any historical veracity when compared with the Australian War Crimes Trials documents compiled on Ambon, other than having the main town-name and a very small proportion of the Japanese perpetrator names correct.

The above account only mentions two of the four actual massacres, and it gets the dates, identities, numbers of POW victims, and even times of day, wrong. Sissons a highly respected Australian historian , gives an accurate account of Ambon that does not in any way underplay the brutality of those appalling acts. More particularly, the Sissons account lays the blame squarely on the correct individuals, rather than the fictional names in the account above.

I should point out that in Australia, the Sado Island story has unfortunately been linked with the worst POW disaster in Australia's history, the sinking of the Hellship 'Montevideo Maru'.

A national TV program in carried a combination of rumour and speculation that some of the POWs survived the sinking, ended up in Japan, were sent to Sado Island where they perished. Originally this caused great consternation amongst families of more than 1, 'Montevideo Maru' men, and despite efforts to publicise the truth about Sado Island many family members still have lingering, but thoroughly undeserved, doubts about how their loved ones perished.

Re-new Membership 12 Month August to end of July. Single Monthly. Home About. More links. Over three-quarters of the Australian prisoners there died in captivity. The perpetrators of the atrocities were tried and convicted in one of the largest post-war war crimes trials. A total of 93 Japanese personnel were put on trial for war crimes by an Australian military tribunal, which was convened at Ambon.

The man who actually ordered the massacre, Rear Admiral Hatakeyama died before standing trial, but the camp commander, Kunito Hatakeyama, who oversaw the massacres, was sentenced to death by hanging. Although Captain A. Mackay sat as president in only one of the Singapore cases—a Burma-Thailand railway case heard on 10 and 12 March 82 —he had built up some expertise as the prosecuting officer in eight earlier cases, five of them concerning crimes committed on the railway.

He then continued to prosecute cases in Hong Kong. Brock and Major Henry J. The breadth of experience gained in different postings gave these individuals the opportunity to develop some perspective and may be a partial explanation as to why later sentences were more lenient than earlier ones for very similar crimes. Inconsistency was also apparent in the tariffs awarded to senior officers as compared with the junior officers who had carried out their orders.

At a trial in Rabaul in April , two non-commissioned officers and seven Formosan civilians were sentenced to death for the execution of sick Chinese prisoners of war. Whitelaw, and a recommendation from the JAG that such a long detention awaiting death should justify commutation, the five Formosans were reprieved—too late for the four men already hanged.

Although there are some well-known cases where either the finding or the sentencing tariff seems questionable, as in the Katayama case discussed earlier, many apparent injustices were caught by the review process. When Private Fukushima was found not guilty of murdering an Australian prisoner at Ranau in Borneo, a new court, with different personnel, 87 was assembled the next day and he was re-tried on the same charge but as a civilian.

The second court found him guilty. A blatant miscarriage of justice, however, was averted when the JAG pointed out that the principle of double jeopardy still applied to war crimes suspects. He advised Sturdee not to confirm the sentence. There are other examples where the review process provided a safety net. In the first cannibalism trial at Wewak, Lieutenant Tazaki admitted that he had mutilated and cannibalized the body of a dead Australian soldier when severely malnourished and suffering from malaria.

Although his defending officer Captain Jack Watson argued that he was temporarily insane at the time, he was sentenced to death by hanging, the first death sentence to be awarded in the whole series of Australian-run trials. Luckily for Tazaki, the reviewing officer, Brigadier Alan S. Lloyd, recommended commutation on several grounds, including the conditions facing Tazaki at that late stage of the war, and that recommendation was followed. The Director of Legal Services would examine court proceedings and advise whether the court was legally convened and properly constituted, the charges properly drawn and whether the sentence was valid and should be confirmed.

Proceedings then went to the JAG. He would advise on whether petitions should be upheld or dismissed and whether there was any reason for not confirming the finding and the sentence. All this legal advice would be considered by the Confirming Authority, Acting Commander-in-Chief General Sturdee, before confirming or changing the finding or sentence. Indeed, the multiple steps of reviewing a case frequently overturned or mitigated a sentence. There were death sentences passed by Australian courts, yet only of these were confirmed.

Bowie Wilson. These particular commutations caused a huge outcry. Returned servicemen and other organizations complained to Members of Parliament. Forde argued that it was just the same as the government not interfering with decisions of the domestic courts. Simpson, who replaced J. Bowie Wilson on 31 March , had a considerably higher success rate in getting Sturdee to act on his recommendations for changes to findings or sentences than did his predecessor.

This difference has an obvious bearing on the perception that the sentencing in the earlier trials was harsher. The Australian acquittal rate was also high compared to the other Allied war crimes trials. The Australian courts acquitted The overall Allied rate of acquittal was In December , F.

Sinclair, Secretary of the Department of the Army, asked his Minister how posterity might judge the Australian-run trials. Apparently Mr Sinclair thinks we owe the same duty to the Japanese guilty of war crimes as we do to our own soldiers guilty of breaches of military discipline.

I respectfully suggest that this is a wholly erroneous view. It is certainly contrary to international law, which merely requires a fair trial for enemies charged with breaches of the rules of warfare. Webb argued that war criminals were like pirates or brigands and that different rules should be applied to them. A surprising number of people involved in the trials—both Australian and Japanese—have left accounts. One of the most detailed was a diary kept by Captain Athol Moffitt, the prosecuting officer in some of the trials held at Labuan in January Written on the same evening or the day after the events described, the diary provides the uncensored views of a young officer, trying to prove that Captain Hoshijima, the commandant of Sandakan camp, was directly responsible for the deaths of over 1, prisoners who died of starvation during his time of command.

However, he expected the Japanese defence to argue that the Allied bombing campaign had reduced rations. He was investing much hope in Sticpewich, one of the six survivors from the Sandakan death marches, who was daily expected at Labuan as a witness.

In the meantime, he thought the Japanese might give a lead. Do you really mean what you have just said? Several of the Japanese convicted published accounts after repatriation to Japan in the s, including memoirs by General Imamura Hitoshi, Commander of p.

He objected to the acceptance of hearsay contrary to the usual rules of evidence in British and Australian law. Lieutenant Katayama Hideo, executed in October , smuggled out volumes of a diary which were subsequently published in Japan after his death. This trial, discussed above, began at Ambon and was completed at Morotai.

Somiya, who was later Defence Counsel at one of the IMTFE trials, wrote an account of the trial which reveals, directly and indirectly, how different were the legal systems of the two countries. He was very impressed during the Ambon section of the trial when the local witnesses were tested in their identification evidence.

The suspects wore different clothing and stood in a different order at repeated identification parades p. The Judge-Advocate, Major J. Bell, asked the prosecutor to stop, citing the right to silence. The Court adjourned and then resumed.

Rather than the long and detailed defence address Somiya had prepared, he recommended calling witnesses as required and cross-examining the prosecution witnesses. Only four of those found guilty received the death sentence. Although Somiya had acquired some experience of procedure in an Australian military court, he still felt uncomfortable coping with an unfamiliar and culturally different system.

In his next case at Morotai, he asked for and received the assistance of an Australian defence counsel, one of the practical ways being developed to compensate for the Japanese disadvantage. Campbell in action in a way that not only reveals his admiration but also is a very good example of what happened in other courts and locations where Australian defence counsel fought as hard for their client as they would have in pre-war civilian law courts.