Parit Sulong
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Parit Sulong is a small village in Johor, Malaysia on the Simpang Kiri River, 30 km east of Muar. The historical Parit Sulong Bridge during World War II is a main features in that town.
[edit] Parit Sulong massacre
On January 23, 1942, Parit Sulong was the site of a massacre committed against Allied soldiers by members of the Imperial Guards Division of the Imperial Japanese Army. A few days earlier, the Allied troops had ambushed the Japanese near Gemas and blew up a bridge there.
During the Battle of Malaya, members of both the Australian 8th Division and the Indian 45th Infantry Brigade were making a fighting withdrawal when they became surrounded near the bridge at Parit Sulong. The Allies fought the larger Japanese forces for two days until they ran low on ammunition and food. Able-bodied soldiers were ordered to disperse into the jungle, the only way they could return to Allied lines; for the approximately 110 Australians and 40 Indians who were too badly injured to escape, the only option was surrender.
The wounded prisoners of war were kicked and beaten with rifle butts by the Imperial Guards. At least some were tied up with wire in the middle of the road, machine-gunned, had petrol poured over them, were set alight and (in the words of Russell Braddon) were "after their incineration — [were] systematically run over, back and forwards, by Japanese driven trucks." (Braddon, p. 101) Anecotal accounts by local people also reported POWs being tied together with wire and forced to stand on a bridge, before a Japanese soldier shot one, causing the rest to fall into the Simpang Kiri river and drown
Two wounded Australians managed to escape the ensuing massacre and provide eyewitness accounts of the Japanese treatment of wounded prisoners of war. Official records indicate that 150 wounded men were killed.
Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura was later convicted for his part in the Parit Sulong massacre by an Australian Military Court and was hanged on June 11, 1951. He had been already convicted by a British court to life imprisonment for the Sook Ching massacre. [1]
[edit] References
- Lynette Silver, 2004, The Bridge at Parit Sulong – An Investigation of Mass Murder, The Watermark Press, Boorowa. ISBN 0-949284-65-3.
- Russell Braddon, 1951, The Naked Island, Penguin Books, Melbourne,
- Lionel Wigmore, 1957, The Japanese Thrust – Australia in the War of 1939-1945, AWM, Canberra.
- Iain Findlay, 1991, Savage Jungle – An Epic Struggle for Survival, Simon & Schuster, Sydney.
- Gilbert Mant, 1996, Massacre at Parit Sulong, Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst.
