In the history of World War II, it wasn't just soldiers who fought. Countless media people holding cameras have also stepped onto the battlefield without hesitation. Most of them are not military personnel and have no combat missions. But they still braved the gunfire and walked into the world of blood and fire with cameras and pens and paper. It is also these people who record history.
These people are war correspondents, who are tasked with transmitting everything from the battlefield back to the rear, and who are also tasked with recording history truthfully. The camera lens in their hands also left countless classic photos. These photos have no fine composition, no lighting, but each one is so unforgettable.
And during World War II, there was such a picture. It became the most famous execution photograph circulating in Western society, both because of the object of execution and because it showed cruelty. In the photo, a white man with his upper body tied up is blindfolded and kneels on the ground, while behind him is a Japanese officer holding a katana.
Behind the two of them, there were many Japanese troops watching. What the officer holding aloft the katana would do afterwards was a clear matter. The Japanese troops who were watching from behind were all smiling at the corners of their mouths. And this process was recorded by a war correspondent who commented on the news about the white man on his knees:
"He was a brave man. Although the daily bombardments of the enemy filled me with hatred, ordinary human feelings made me pity him. ”
The white man who was beheaded was an Australian special operations soldier named Leonard Siffleet, born in Gunnida, New South Wales, Australia in 1916. Originally he was a college student who was about to graduate, and it was planned that he would enter the bank after graduation. And after three years, he married his wife and lived an ordinary and ordinary life.
But in 1942, the Japanese "air raid on Darwin" happened. It was the largest air raid in Australian history, and the number of bombs exceeded the number of Japanese air raids on Pearl Harbor. After this incident, the anti-Japanese sentiment of the Australian people began to spread, gradually deriving into hatred of Japan.
At that time, all continents were in urgent conscription, so Leonard signed up for the army out of patriotism. He received emergency combat training and special training in radio technology. With excellent results, he was sent to the battlefield. In 1943 he was tasked with leading his team into a Japanese base on the island of New Guinea and bringing back reconnaissance reports.
But unfortunately, when he entered the island, he was caught by the locals and handed over to the Japanese army. Leonard and his companions thus fell into the clutches of the Japanese army, who interrogated him. After weeks of interrogations and beatings, and various tortures, Leonard was reluctant to reveal any information about the Australian military.
So on October 24 of that year, Leonard and his members of the investigation team were sent to the island's Aitape Beach, ready to be publicly executed to kill chickens and monkeys. After this photo was taken, it was not originally sent. But in 1944, the Battle of New Guinea ended.
Only then did the U.S. military find this execution photo in the pocket of an officer on the battlefield. The photo was immediately featured in Life magazine and reprinted by Australian media outlets. This has provoked the anger of the peoples of the West. Because even though the Japanese were notorious for their cruelty to prisoners of war, this photograph is indeed the only one documenting the execution of Western prisoners of war by the Japanese.
Westerners refer to the executioner officer as "Yasano chikao," and Japanese Vice Admiral Michiaki Kamada, who gave the order to execute whites, was convicted of torturing prisoners of war and torturing civilians in the postwar BC-class war criminals trial. In October 1947, he was sent to gallows in Indonesia.
As for the "Yasano chikao" executioner, there are two theories on the Australian side. One is to say to die before the end of the war, while the other is to be tried and died after the war. However, there are no records on the Japanese side. In court-martials at the end of World War II, Australia executed nearly 150 Japanese war criminals, more than our country executed.