Japanese war criminal Kiyoshi Shimosaka confesses brutality in China

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. In the ninth of a series of 31 confessions from Japanese war criminals published on the State Archives Administration website as China marks the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Kiyoshi Shimosaka detailed his brutality in China between 1940 and his capture in August 1945. According to the 1954 confession, Shimosaka, born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan in 1919, together with one companion, barricaded a 30-year-old Chinese woman and her two sons, aged seven and four, in a house and lit straw with a match in May 1940 in Suixian County, Hubei Province. They burned down the house, killing the mother and sons. According to Shimosaka, his companions killed three captives "in order to see how sharp the katana was." He also confessed to arresting a peasant aged around 30 and a woman of similar age in July 1940 in Hubei's Jingmen County. Together with companions, Shimosaka threatened them with a bayonet and forced them to have sexual intercourse, and "during the sexual intercourse, a companion bayoneted them at the back and killed them." (Xinhua)