A Japanese war criminal confessed to torturing and performing vivisections on Chinese people during Japan's War of Aggression against China, according to a written archive released Monday.[Special coverage]
The State Archives Administration (SAA) published the hand-written confession by Tokokichi Nagata, who was born in 1920 and joined the invasion of China as a medic in 1942. He was captured in August 1945.
According to the document, Nagata said when he was learning anatomy at the Training Team for Medical Recruits of Jinan Army Hospital in east China, he witnessed the surgeon "dissect two Chinese peasants with a scalpel and kill them in a brutal way." A medic sergeant then "took out the internal organs, such as the liver, spleen, pancreas and kidneys, to use as teaching materials."
Nagata confessed that, after breaking into a civilian house in Beijing in 1943, "I found a Chinese man aged around 50 suffering serious cholera. When he reached out his hand for help, I grabbed his hand, threw him to the ground, kicked him and locked the door from outside with a hemp rope, thus locking the man inside his home and killing him".
In April 1944, Nagata said he "tied a Chinese peasant to a door plank, beat him with club and force-fed him ten liters of cold water during interrogation." He then told his companions to bayonet him to death. In the same month, he arrested two Chinese soldiers, tortured them and ordered the companions to "bayonet them to death".
Nagata also confessed to raping four young Korean women and one Chinese woman several times during 1944.
This was the 21st of 31 written confessions by Japanese war criminals to be published on the SAA website to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.
