Japanese soldiers rape, kill new mothers: confession

A Japanese war criminal confessed to raping 17 Chinese women during World War II, including new mothers, according to an account of the crimes that he wrote.

Noboru Miyamoto also raped, tortured and killed a new mother in east China's Shandong Province in 1943, just because his trousers had been splattered by the woman's blood, he wrote in the 1954 confession, which was released by the State Archives Administration on Wednesday.

The archives has been releasing a document every day since the middle of last month as China marks the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.

Miyamoto, who was born in Tokyo in 1920 and came to China in 1940, killed four Chinese civilians in 1944 by setting them on fire, including a two-year-old baby and a boy aged about five or six. His fellows also "threw a children into a well and smashed him over his head."

He also participated in the gang-rape of four Chinese women and killed another four Chinese men, all civilians, according to his confession. Endi