The Real Tenko by Mark Felton

Author:Mark Felton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2011-09-18T16:00:00+00:00

During the same month on New Guinea a large party of Australian soldiers and airmen was captured and executed by the Japanese. Two female missionaries were captured alongside them. They were separated from the male prisoners and taken to Haruru coffee plantation where the Japanese forced them to dig a hole about 3 feet deep. ‘When the hole was almost finished a Japanese soldier escorting one of the women seized and hugged her. She struggled and almost got out of his grip when he thrust his bayonet deep into her side.’ The missionary screamed in agony as the grunting Japanese soldier pulled his rifle and bayonet clear of her abdomen, and she fell to the ground bleeding profusely while other Japanese soldiers stood by laughing. ‘At that moment the other missionary hid her face in a cloth or towel and the Japanese escorting her drove his bayonet through her neck.’31 The executions were deliberately cruel and barbaric, such acts being much favoured by the Japanese. The women, if they had to die (and they were only killed because they were white) could have been humanely shot. The Japanese soldier appeared to have enjoyed humiliating whites. The Japanese inferiority complex appears to have played a large part in these activities, showing itself constantly through all manner of rules, punishments and arbitrary cruelties designed to degrade and debase whites and their culture. Murdering, raping and looting were often at the forefront of a Japanese soldier’s mind, and coupled with the sadism and capriciousness of the officer class who have often been caricatured accurately as strutting modern-day samurai, the Asian group ethic meant that ordinary soldiers would cooperate in the most appalling and illegal acts of carnage in order not to lose face in front of the group or the punishment of their superiors. There was no place for individuality or morality in the Emperor’s army, for all recruits had been told that an order given by an officer was to be treated as a command from the Emperor himself and therefore could not be wrong. It is hardly surprising that when judgement day arrived for many Japanese officers and men at the various post-war trials for war crimes they all entered a plea of ‘superior orders’.

Although their treatment by the Japanese was initially considerably better than that dished out to white nurses in Hong Kong and Singapore, life for the Australian sisters on New Britain inevitably began to change. One of the problems they faced throughout their long captivity was a serious shortage of kit. When the nurses had been evacuated to Kokopo from Rabaul at the time of the Japanese invasion, they had had little clothing with them to last them through many tough years of imprisonment. ‘We only evacuated with our uniform, our shoes and stockings and a veil. And one set of underclothing,’ recalled Whyte. ‘The nuns gave us a tooth brush and a set of underwear each – nun’s underwear but that didn’t matter. And they also gave us a sheet which we made into clothing.

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