China publicizes confessions by Japanese war criminals

Photo released on Aug 11, 2015 by the State Archives Administration of China on its website shows the image of Japanese war criminal Kenzo Sugishita.

BEIJING - A total of 31 confessions from Japanese war criminals will be published online starting Tuesday to expose crimes committed by Japan in China during World War II.

Handwritten confessions, along with Chinese translations and abstracts in both Chinese and English, have been published on the website of the State Archives Administration, said an unidentified official with the administration. One confession will be published per day from August 11.

"These archives are hard evidence of the heinous crimes committed by Japanese imperialists against the Chinese," the official said.

The confessions, which have never been released before, detail crimes perpetrated by the Japanese, including killing, enslavement and poisoning of Chinese people, as well as the use of biological and chemical weapons on live human subjects.

The first in the series features a confession by Kenzo Sugishita, who was born in 1901 and joined the Japanese War of Aggression against China in 1932.

On Feb 3, 1932, at a village about eight kilometers south of Tianle Temple in Shanghai, the squadron gave the instruction to shoot all on sight, resulting in the killing of an estimated 30 Chinese people, Kenzo Sugishita said in the confession.

"On Feb 19, 1932, I caught a child of about six years old escaping from the fire at Lujia Bridge, laid him on a stone in front of the door, beat him to death with stones, and threw the dead body into the burning house," he added.