Torture, Thirst, Starvation Described by
Escaped Eyewitnesses; Hopes of Sending
Further Food, Medical Packages Gone
A wave of anger such as the United States has not felt since the war began swept the nation today as the War and Navy Departments issued a.report telling a ghastly story of Japanese atrocities on American and Filipino soldiers taken prisoner on Bataan and Corregidor.
The report, containing sworn statements by three American officers who escaped after a year of imprisonment, said that thousands of prisoners had met death through starvation, slave labor, torture and wanton murder. It was released by the government, according to Stephen Early, President Roosevelt's private secretary, only when it became evident that further relief supplies from the United States could not be expected to reach prisoners, and, according to the Office of War Information, only after most experts on Japan had decided that publication of the official account might bring improvement in the Japanese attitude toward prisoners.
Simultaneously, Anthony Eden, British foreign secretary, delivered to a shocked House of .Commons in London a similar report on Japanese; atrocities committed.
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Highlights of the American and British
reports on Japanese atrocities will be
found on page 2
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upon British prisoners. He added that Japan had withheld permission for neutral inspection of any prison camps.
Enraged U.S. Cries Revenge
Presented under screaming newspaper headlines, the two atrocity reports whipped Americans' wrath to fever pitch, far beyond that which greeted news of the execution of the American air.men who bombed Tokyo.
Heavy police 'guards were thrown around Japanese internment camps for fear of mob retaliatory action. Voices from Washington's Capitol Hill clamored for immediate revenge, demanded that the entire Navy be mobilized for attack and that Japan be "bombed out of existence," 'and vowed that the war would never end until the Nipponese had paid in full for their heart-sickening deeds. •
Secretary of State Cordell Hull, characterizing the Japanese as fiends, answered a reporter's question as- to whether the U.S. planned to protest to Japan through the Swiss government by saying that he had sent one protest after another, but had never received a satisfactory response.
He said- the U.S. was gathering all possible Information so that the Japanese responsible could be punished
after the war.
The American report was based solely on the eyewitness testimony of Cmdr. Melvyn H. McCoy, U.S. Navy; Lt. Col. S. M. Mellnik, Coas.t Artillery, and Lt. Col. William E, Dyess. Air Forces, following
their escape from the Philippines. Dyess later died; in an air crash at Burbank, Cal.. while training to return to
combat against the Japanese. Mellnik is now with Gen. Mac Arthur and McCoy is on duty in the U.S.
Several times-as many prisoners have
(Continued on page 4)
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Most of Bataan Captives
Dead, U.S. Article Says
Three hundred thousand prisoners of war are estimated to be in Japanese hands from American, British and
Dutch territories. Approximately 50,000 American and Filipino ; troops were captured when the Japs took Bataan and Corregidor. ;
Palmer Hoyt, former director of the American Office of War Information, in an i article published in
American Magazine yesterday, coincidentally with the release of thegovernment atrocity reports, said that
"the Japanese brutally murdered most of the prisoners taken at Bataan.
"They marched them through deadly heat without giving them any water, and those who did not die from
heat and exhaustion were crushed when the Japanese drove trucks
through colunmns of the -exhausted men.
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Jap Atrocities on Prisoners
Stir U.S. to White-Hot Anger
(Continued from page 1)
died than the, Japanese have admitted, mostly from starvation, forced hard labor and brutality, the report said. At one prison. Camp O'Donnell. about 2,200 Americans died in April and May, 1942: in another at Cabantuan 3,000 had died up to the end of October. 1942. and still heavier mortality occurred among the
Filipinos, it was said. The report said that the "calculated Japanese campaign of brutality" began soon after Bataan's fall with what the survivors called a "march of death."
Thousands of prisoners were marched 85 miles in six to 12 days through sun without food and water, beaten with sticks and dragged out to almost certain death if they became sick or delirious.
550 Die Each Day
"Our thirst was intense," Col. Dyess testified. "Many of us went crazy and several died." He added that three Filipinos and three Americans were buried while still alive.
When they reached camp, Dyess said, the Japanese commanding officer told them in a speech they were not prisoners of war but captives without any rights or privileges. Officers there were not forced to work, but the enlisted men were, and they were frequently beaten unmercifully, he said. After two weeks the death
rate was 50 a day among Americans and 550 among Filipinos.
The men were literally worked to death, Dyess related. It was not unusual for one-fifth of a work detail to die. and "in one instance three-fourths of them were "killed in that way."
There were thousands of cases of malaria in camp, and men with dysentery "remained put in the weather near the latrines until they died.." Prisoners frequently were forced, for no reason, to line up and stand in the sun for hours.
The sickening stories told by the officers—and the "march of death" was only one of many—aroused the nation's ire to white heat. The United Press reported from Washington that "the two statements have shocked the whole of the United States and brought the man in the street up with a start against the type
of enemy he is fighting."
Mr. Hull, at his press conference, said the U.S. government had sought in vain to find out whether food shipments from the U.S. ever had reached the prisoners. He added that the United States would undertake to continue exchanging prisoners and civilian internees wiih Japan. but that no one in ihe U.S. had any idea how much chance there would be to do so.
Rep. Andrew May. chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, demandedthat the U.S. "blow Tokyo out of existence" and recommended that the entire fleet be mobilized for immediate attack. Sen. Bennett (Champ) Clark, echoing the demand to "bomb Japan out, of existence." said the atrocities were "the most shocking anybody has ever heard of and deserve the greatest punishment any nation has ever had."
Sen. Claude Pepper (D.-Fla.) said: " I hope that this indecency will arouse a:n acute awareness among the American people and make them resolve to stand all the more solidly behind the war
effort.'" " •
Rep. Sol Bloom, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said: hold the Japs responsible for this damnable business. Let those Japanese know it. Tell them in terms they can understand. "We'll hold those rats—from |the Emperor down to the lowest digger ofditches—responsible for a million years if necessary."
Capital 'Half Wiped Out';
Libs Hit Pas de Calais
Without LossAmerican heavy bombers, striking at the enemy in their eighth major operation of the month, attacked military objectives in northern France ! yesterday a few hours after a large force of RAF Lancasters dumped
1,750 American tons (1,500 British , tons) of bombs on Berlin in a concentrated 20-minute assault.
The night attack on the German capital, the 12th heavy bombing since the btattle of Berlin" began last Nov. 18, started numbers of fires which quickly spread to a great conflagration marked by.violent explosions.
Some air observers, calculating that about 23,000 tons of bombs now have been dropped on the capital, suggested that the job of wiping out the city was about half done after Thursday night's attack.
34 British Planes Lost
Other RAF planes, carrying out what German radio described as a feint, attacked Heligoland and northern France about the same time the main bomber formations headed for Berlin. A small force of Mosquitoes 'roared over the German capital about an hour later. In all these operations the British' lost 34 aircraft.
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