I feel very keenly that 1, as 'commanding officer of the unit, was responsible for their medical attention. I can offer no justification for the great number of deaths from illness which occurred. And then again, it could be looked upon as unavoidable in view of the situation in which the enemy attack became more intense each day and the air attack continued incessantly so that we had no rest and could not give the prisoners, who were debilitated when they arrived on the island, rest and medical attention that we wanted to give them. The supply problem on that isolated island in the combat area became more difficult each day. Moreover, there was a shortage of personnel, I was overburdened and mentally exhausted by the incessant demands of the military situation and by the construction of the airfield which was behind schedule. I received no instructions or order, even until the end, concerning at the handling of prisoners; I feel now that the prisoners should have been employed in appropriate work in the vast, non combat area beyond RABAUL. I think it was wrong and unreasonable to have forced the prisoners to live among the concentration of troops in the combat areas where the fighting continued day and night, just to utilize their insignificant labour.
As for the matter of the disposal of the corpses, we at firsts disposed most of the bodies at sea, because the consensus was that existence of grave posts all over the island would, in view of the large concentration of troops engaging in hard labour, be a demoralizing influence. However, because of the rapid decomposition of the bodies due to the tropical heat, the opinion arose that it was not proper to subject the deceased or those charged with disposal to such an unbearable situation. Therefore we buried them from that time on.
The reason that we did not cremate the bodies was that smoke would have weakened the security of our air defence; it was not because of lack of fuel.
- Third of the important problems. I believe that it was during the night in the middle of March 43 that there was a sudden air raid, in which the areas of the army, the prisoners and TAKAHASHI’s Company were heavily bombed. These areas had been practically free from damage until this occasion. In this raid the place where the prisoners were quartered was directly hit by three large bombs, which caused 280 or so deaths of prisoners. (I do not know the exact number, but it should be recorded in the reports.) The reason for the heavy casualty was that the area was far from the air approach to the airfield, and until the, it had not been bombed so that the majority of the occupants felt secure and did not take shelter. If I am not mistaken, the death of Company Commander, Lieutenant (jg) TAKAHASHI of the Navy, occurred during the raid.
- Fourth of the important problems. I do not remember the exact date but one evening, in the latter part of March or the beginning of April 1943, the headquarters at BUIN sent an urgent telegraphic message which was approximately as follows: "Several enemy destroyers and cruisers are manoeuvring offshore of MONO ( ) Island. They are planning an invasion. Therefore, all units will prepare immediately for the enemy invasion.". At that time the number of prisoners dropped to not more than 90 men (At any rate the number was below 100), and except for those dealing with cooking, the majority looked exhausted. From the viewpoint of the condition of military equipment as well as from the topography of the land, I could say without hesitation that we would have been annihilated rather than gaining a complete victory, if a strong enemy had attacked us; that is the reason that I was of the opinion that psychologically, it would not have been unreasonable to prepare ourselves to die together. According to the fixed defence plan, the entire above-mentioned prisoners were already stabbed with bayonets by the company in charge (the name of the company is not known). (I believe that hand grenades were not used.) Every regiment was making arrangements for the eventual enemy's surprise landing and attack and were working hard all nights
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