A World War II Japanese soldier kicked a new-born infant to death in north China in 1943, according to a written confession published Monday.[Special coverage]
The document, published by China's State Archives Administration (SAA), was written by Sakajiro Noguchi in 1954. Noguchi was born in Tokyo in 1921, joined the army in 1942 and was captured in China in August 1945.
Noguchi said he came across a crying baby at a train station in Hebei Province in February 1943. The baby had just been delivered by its mother in a toilet on a train, which had stopped at the station, according to his account. He admitted he had kicked the child to death.
He also confessed to raping and torturing Chinese women. One particularly cruel incident occurred in March 1944 in Boshan County in Shandong Province, east China.
Noguchi captured three woman, stripped one of them naked, whipped her with a bandolier and then "jumped onto her crotch ten times in his leather shoes [and killed her by] trampling on it four times". He ordered his subordinates to kill the other two, who were 13 and 16, in the same way.
The document is the 28th in a series of 31 written statements by Japanese war criminals published on the SAA website to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.
