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Further Japanese Atrocities on Taiwan During WW II Recently Come to Light. . .

      In a letter received in the autumn of 2000, we learned of further atrocities committed against prisoners of war on Taiwan by the Japanese in the closing days of the war.
      We received a letter from Mr. Charles D. Parker of Florida, USA asking for assistance in finding more information on his brother who had been executed by the Japanese in Taihoku in June 1945. This was the first time we had heard anything about other POWs being executed. To our knowledge there were only the two POWs who had tried to escape from the Taichu Camp that had been executed, but Mr. Parker’s letter revealed otherwise.
      It stated that his brother - John Roberson Parker - was part of a crew of 11 in a PB4Y-1 Liberator aircraft called the “Queen Bee” of US Navy Squadron VPB117 that was shot down on January 28, 1945 over the waters south of Taiwan on a routine patrol. Five of the crew died and the other 6 were taken prisoner. They were moved to Taihoku (Taipei) where they were held as POWs after being “interrogated” by the Kempetai.
      One of the group, Ensign John Bertrang was severely injured in the crash of the aircraft and was taken to a local hospital. Later he was sent on to Japan where he finished his days as a POW in hospital there. After the war he was returned to the US Navy Hospital in Chicago where he subsequently recovered. He passed away some years later.
      On June 19, 1945 - less than two months before the Japanese surrender, John Parker, the rest of his crew, and nine other captured Americans were brought before a Japanese “War Disciplinary Tribunal” and found guilty in a brief, mock trial and executed that same day by a Japanese firing squad. In addition to the five Navy crewmen of the Liberator, three other US Navy and six US Army personnel were executed that day.
      The names of the Japanese who committed this mockery of justice are known. The tribunal was comprised of Lt. Col. Naritaka Sugiura, Chief of the Tribunal; Col. Seiichi Furkawa former Chief of the Judicial Dep’t. of Japan’s 10th Army; Lt. Gen. Harukel Isayama, Chief of Staff, 10th Army; and Capt. Yoshio Nakano, Judge.
      All of these facts were obtained in the fall of 1945 by the father of one of John’s crewmates who visited the navy department at that time and received excellent co-operation from them. Copies of official US Navy department documents were obtained, and Charles has sent the TPCMS copies of all this material to us to help verify the story.
       In the past few years Charles Parker has tried to obtain more information about his brother but upon approaching the War Department and the Navy Department he was told that somehow all of the pertinent records had “gone missing” so no information could be given about John Parker or the incident of his trial and execution. It seems not only the Japanese want to cover up these atrocities, but so now does the US government!
       So Charles, who had been referred to the TPCMS by the University of Florida Research Center, turned to us to see if we could find anything more about his brother and the camp in which he might have been interned.
       By examining records obtained from the US National Archives and another source, we found that the Japanese had turned the cremated remains of 15 American military personnel over to the Allies after the Japanese surrender on Taiwan. In a careful check of the Japanese records on the same incident we found that although the names had been badly mis-spelled due to poor phonetic skills, the names on the captured Japanese list matched the list of the men executed in June 1945.
       By checking the POW camp records and from accounts from other POWs, these 14 men were not held in the main Taihoku #6 camp, and the only other camp in the Taihoku area was Camp #5. This would fit as Camp #5 would have been empty at the time the crew of the Liberator were captured in January 1945.
       All the senior officers who had been held there had been moved to China in September 1944, and the only other group of POWs to go there were a group of 14 men who had been sent to Mosak Camp #5 from Kinkaseki in November of that year. They had been moved out in early January, so by then Camp #5 would be empty again. It is most likely that the crew of the Liberator and the other Americans were taken to this camp in late January and remained there until their execution in June of that year.
       We are pleased to be able to help Charles with this information, and very grateful to him for sharing this story with us. Now maybe his brother John and the others will always be remembered.

Postscript - After the war Col. Furkawa and Lt. Col. Sugiura were both executed by an American firing squad, while Lt. Gen. Isayama and Capt. Nakano were sentenced to life in prison. So some justice was done!

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