Japanese war criminal confesses to dozens of rapes

Photo released on Aug. 17, 2015 by the State Archives Administration of China on its website shows a picture of Japanese war criminal Ikuma Yamamura. The State Archives Administration (SAA) published the seventh of a series of 31 handwritten confessions from Japanese war criminals online. Ikuma Yamamura, born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, in 1919, confessed how he raped Chinese women and killed Chinese civilians from 1940 to 1945. He raped at least 21 women aged between 13 and 50 while invading Hubei, Hunan and Guangxi. He also raped another 27 women 43 times in so-called "comfort stations," according to a confession he made in 1954. He recounted that in August 1944, he saw four Chinese women taking refuge in a tea grove in Leiyang County, Hunan Province. He chased one of them towards the valley and she fell from a 30-meter cliff and died. He caught another woman aged around 23, threatened her with handgun and raped her, according to his confession. (Xinhua)