Japanese war criminal confesses to murder, rape: archive

A Japanese war criminal confessed to the torture of Chinese prisoners and civilians, and the rape of scores of women over 70 years ago, according to the State Archives Administration.

In the fifth of a series of 31 handwritten confessions from Japanese war criminals published online, Narumi Mitsui, born in Japan in 1920, joined the war against China in 1941.

In the 1954 confession he detailed how he slaughtered and raped prisoners and civilians, killing seven captives in Hubei Province in January 1943, beheading at least one of them.

He raped a woman four times a month later. In March, he broke into a civilian house, threatened a 16-year-old woman with a pistol, raped her, then invited his compatriot to rape her too.

Later that month, while giving new recruits bayonet training he had them bayonet a Chinese to death. In September 1943, he drugged a Chinese man, before his companions dissected his chest and belly and cut off his legs.

He also ordered his subordinates to behead a 60-year-old male Chinese refugee in the east of Nanzhang County seat in April 1945, shortly before his capture.

Mitsui raped Chinese and Korean women in "comfort stations" over 60 times in various parts of China between May 1942 and July 1945.

A total of 31 confessions, one each day, from Japanese war criminals are being published online in the run up to commemorations of the end of the war on Sept. 3.

The handwritten confessions, translations and abstracts in both Chinese and English, are published on the website of the State Archives Administration.

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. Endi