Japanese soldiers burn Chinese civilians to death

Photo released on Aug 19, 2015 by the State Archives Administration of China on its website shows the Chinese version of an excerpt from Japanese war criminal Kiyoshi Shimosaka's handwritten confession. [Photo/Xinhua]

His companion "took the victim' s brains" and "ordered another soldier to scorch the brains to make medicine from it," according to the confession.

In August 1944 in Yichang county, companions used eight residents as "live targets" in shooting and bayoneting training of 50 cadets of the regiment, thus brutally killing them all, he wrote.

The SAA is publishing a confession a day in the run-up to commemorations of the end of the war on Sept 3. The handwritten documents come complete with translations and abstracts in both Chinese and English.

The confessions detail crimes including murder, enslavement and poisoning of Chinese people, as well as the use of biological and chemical weapons on live human subjects.