Japs Discovered In
pp. 73-74 · Read in the full issue
Butaritari
Suva, Feb., 8.
ONLY recently more than 15 months after the surrender of Japan two Koreans were captured on one of the islets of Butaritari atoll, in the Gilberts, and sent away to Tokio.
Late in 1946, reports were received through native channels that there were strange men suspected Japanese on the most southerly islet of the atoll. A police party investigated, and they found a roughly made hut with beds for four men. Searching further, they encoun
tered two armed Japs, who tired upon them. The police were not armed, and retired. When they returned, with arms, they found the bodies of the Japs, who had suicided. They could find no one else.
Weeks later, a party of Gilbertese came suddenly upon two men fishing.
The strangers fled into the bush. Police hunted them up, and found they were two Koreans, who had been brought to the lagoon by the Japs during the war, as labourers.
En route from New York to Brisbane, the British freighter “Cressington Court" made an unscheduled call at Pitcairn Island to pick up mail. The island had been without a ship for a long time. An engineer on the “Cressington Court” said that 60 islanders had swarmed all over the ship to barter for stores, tools, bolts, nails, hack-saws and any manufactured article the ship had to spare.