Something Knew Japan

First published by The Japan Times （Community/2015/03/04） Today, no one would deny that the following case is a war crime and that these acts represent some of the most serious violations of international humanitarian and human-rights laws. Capt. X, an officer with an invading army, came across two young sisters on the battlefield. He sexually assaulted the older girl before taking the small amounts of cash the pair had on them, and their clothes and underwear. He confined these two young women to his company’s living quarters for seven weeks, and organized or tolerated the abuse and rape of the sisters by his subordinates. After seven weeks of this ordeal, the sisters were shot dead. This account can be found in official documents preserved in the National Archives in Tokyo. The captain was a Japanese soldier, 28 years old, while the two victims were French sisters, the youngest aged 14. It happened in March 1945 during the Japanese invasion of Indochina, France’s colony i