ALLIED POWs FLOGGED BY BRUTAL JAPS
AT UNREGISTERED CAMP

Word had gone ahead as we splashed the last miles along a road through paddy fields towards Ofuna, said to be one of Japan's secret war prison camps deep in the mountains.

We were crossing a bridge when some prisoners appeared round a bend. They rushed to greet the first members of the Allied landing forces to reach them. They were shouting hysterically and stumblingly as they came with hands outstretched. For the last week they had had complete freedom in their camp, with a new set of fawning guards. We saw the guards standing in groups inside the gate. They were smiling, nodding, and bowing to the prisoners, and saluted us as we entered. Most of the prisoners were Americans shot down over Japan. There were a few British, but no Australians, although some had passed through the camp.

The camp was not registered, having been kept secret for interrogation purposes. Guards apparently were given a free hand in beating prisoners. Officers did not take part in the ill-treatment, but the prisoners said they knew what was going on.

The prisoners said a Swiss representative who visited the camp a few weeks ago was horrified at the condition of some of the prisoners, who were living skeletons. He ordered the removal of 44 of them to hospital. Seventy per cent of the prisoners were suffering from beri-beri.

The prisoners told a story of Japanese brutality and sadism. Each lot of new prisoners was admitted by an officer they called "the little admiral." He told them they could consider themselves as no longer existing because the outside world would hear nothing of them. Although Ofuna was chiefly an interrogation camp, some of the prisoners were there for as long as two years. They received a starvation diet of half a bowl of plain rice or barley each meal.

During their first few weeks in the camp the prisoners were regularly beaten with batons. At night every time the guard was changed every two hours the new guards would enter the prisoners' cells and make them stand to attention. They would punch them on the jaw, slap their faces, or make them stand naked while they were struck with batons.

Terrible beatings were given for the slightest misbehaviour, such as talking to fellow-prisoners, leaving a magazine on the ground, or failing to bow and say good morning to guards. Three prisoners were said to have died from the effects of the beatings.

A favorite form of punishment was called "Ofuna Crouch." Prisoners were forced to crouch on their toes, with their knees bent and hands up raised, while guards stood behind them ready to thrash anyone who tried to straighten a knee or lower an arm. Prisoners' legs and arms became so numb that they collapsed.

Another regular punishment was to make prisoners run from one end of a corridor to another bent double and pushing a hand mop along the floor. This went on until they collapsed, and then guards would begin to beat them with batons.

Prisoners told us that there was no doctor in the camp. The sick bay attendant was just "a brutal slugger."

Airmen brought in with shrapnel or bullet wounds were left unattended until the wounds were in a terrible condition. Men with fractured legs were given no treatment, and limbs and bones consequently set in distorted shapes.

One prisoner whom we brought out of camp back to our base was a British Fleet Air Arm pilot, Lieutenant Don Cameron, of Wellington (NZ). Shot down over the Sakashimas in May, he drifted to Ishigahki Island, where he was captured. The Japanese forced him to march through the village while the towns people beat and stoned him. Taken to Formosa, he escaped from prison with three other air arm airmen, but was recaptured and flown to Japan via Shanghai, bound, gagged, blindfolded, and tied to his seat. He suffered severe beatings for a week. Lieutenant Cameron said that Sundays the Japanese guards would bring their girl friends to camp, turn out the prisoners and show off by drilling them for hours, despite their weakened condition.

They were allowed two cigarettes a day for a period. They could earn an extra cigarette by catching 100 flies. They were put on parade and had to show the bodies of the flies. If they did not have 25 dead flies they went without their rice. The sick bay attendant escaped a few nights ago. He was an opium addict, and would frequently vent his temper on prisoners.

Survivors of HM destroyer Encounter, which was sunk in the Java Sea in 1942 with HM cruiser Exeter, were taken to Ofuna.

An Australian naval officer at the camp at the time was charged with having taken his towel out to wash it without having been ordered to do so. Three drunken guards flogged him at the same time. He took the beating manfully, but collapsed afterwards. His back was a mass of weals.

Some airmen in Ofuna had been attacked by civilians when they parachuted from their aircraft. One flier showed me scars on his shoulders - scars of bullet and bayonet wounds inflicted by the Japanese when he landed. They wrapped him in his parachute, fired two shots into him, and stabbed him. When they found he was still alive they brought him to the camp.