The Tokyo Trials Sworn Deposition by Major KATSURA, Shizuo

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INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL
FOR THE FAR EAST
Court House of the Tribunal
War Ministry Building
Tokyo, Japan Date: Friday, 25 April, 1947
Sworn Deposition by Major KATSURA, Shizuo, Deputy Commander of Gun Company of the 2nd Regiment of the Japanese China Garrison Army
(Def. Doc. No. 1139, translated by Defense Language Branch)
Having first duly sworn on oath as on attached sheet and in accordance with the procedure followed in my country I hereby depose as follows:
I was formerly a major and lives at present at Nomi, Sencho village, Izumi, Chiba Prefecture. I acted in behalf of the commander of the infantry Gun Company, dispatched on rescue duty to Tung-Chow in July, 1937. I arrived at Tung-Chow at 2:30 a. m. July 31, and, driving the enemy from the scene, saw many traces of the slaughter of the Japanese residents there. I relate here what I saw, and also submit some photographs I took at that time.
1. I went to the Kinsuiro Hotel about 8 a.m., July 31. When I got to the gate, I was surprised to see that hotel was greatly changed, and felt disgusted at the stench from the corpses. I could see the interior of the house even from the gate because the porch-doors, shoji and furniture were all smashed to pieces.
At the entrance, I found a corpse of a woman who seemed to have been the hostess of the Kinsuiro Hotel. Nearly naked, she was lying on her back along the passage near the entrance, with her feet stretched toward the door and with a sheet of newspaper placed over her face.
She seemed to have made a strong resistance, for she was lying on the floor, stripped off her clothes. I remember that both the upper and lower halves of her body were exposed, revealing four or five bayonet wounds, which I thought to have been fatal to her.
Her private parts seemed to have been scooped out with a sharp instrument, for there were scattered marks of blood. The counter and kitchen were so much ransacked that there was no room for me to step in, showing unmistakable signs of looting.
I saw four corpses of Japanese women who appeared to be maid servants laying in
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the maid servants’ room on the right side of the passage. It seemed that they had died in an extreme agony, but they were lying one upon another, in comparative order perhaps on account of shooting, except one lying dead on her back with her private parts exposed. The room was in such disorder that we could not step in. When we entered the counting room and the kitchen, where a man and two women were found lying dead on their face or back. I didn’t know whether they had outraged or not, but were evidences of struggles having been made; the man had his eyes gouged out and the upper half of his body honeycombed with bayonet thrusts and two women had on their backs marks of bayonet stabs.
Next we stepped into the passage. In a room downstairs two corpses of women were seen lying nearly naked, with marks of bayonets thrusts on their private and other parts.
Next, we found several corpses upstairs. They were comparatively — and covered with a quilt. Their feet, heads and hands were seen extruding but I did not dare to remove the quilt.
There were seen a few corpses floating in an adjacent pond, but we have not time to approach them.
2. At a certain café in the city.
I went to the café where I had been a year before. When I opened the door, I felt relieved to see the room in its usual condition. But stepping into the room, I found in a box a women’s corpse, nearly naked and strangled with a rope.
At the back of the café was a Japanese house, where a child and its parent had been cruelly murdered and the former had all its fingers cut off.
3. Corpses on the road.
There was a Japanese shop near the southern castle gate. A corpse of a man who seemed to be the master of the shop was lying on the road, having been dragged out and killed. He had his bones exposed on the breast and belly, and his entrails scattered about.