Massacred!

New Report on Fate of NG Missionaries

A CORRESPONDENT in Madang, New Guinea, says that an authentic re port of the fate of a large number of missionaries of that district has at last been received. They were known to have been sent away on a Japanese ship in March, 1943. It now is reported that they were massacred.

In previous issues of “PIM,” these missionaries have been listed as “Missing —presumed dead.’’ Native rumours as to their fate were many and contradictory.

One rumour was that they were landed on an island in the Manus group and then lined up and shot into the sea. This seems now to' have a bearing on the truth.

The official report from the War Crimes Commission states: “On March 16, 1943, 26 missionaries were brought aboard the destroyer Akisaki as it lay off the shore of Kariru, near Wewak.

“The destroyer then sailed north eastward some 300 miles to Manus and halted at the port of Lorengau, at the east end of the island, where another 30 to 40 Europeans and Asiatics were taken aboard.

“Some time after steaming away from Lorengau, the ship’s captain received orders from the headquarters of the Eighth Japanese Fleet, at Rabaul, to clear the Akisaki’s deck of all enemy aliens.

“Missionaries and other civilians were lined up at the ship’s stern and bound with ropes to the rail. Japanese soldiers took aim with rifles and machine-guns.

Orders barked. Guns rattled. Bodies fell.

“One by one the slain were hurled overboard in the churning wake of the Akisaki. One Chinese child is known to have been thrown into the sea alive.”

The full investigation of the War Crimes Commission has not yet been completed, however. It is known that 38 missionaries are missing—the fate of only 26, as stated above, has been established.

There are, as well, five missionaries who were evacuated from the Sepik River to Wewak about this time and who also disappeared.