:
**2m
182
8. The Sikh Police were sent back to duty by the Japanese and assisted the Japanese in searching Europeans. The Japanese
attitude to European women in these searches was correct, but the attitude and handling of the women by the Sikhs was most objecticn- able.
體
Miss Harrop confirms that the story of British troops being
roped together at Repulse Bay Hotel and having their arms cut off before being shot or bayonetted to death is correct, but this happened before the capitulation. This sight was witnessed by Col. Ryde, R.A.M.C., who has escaped from Hong Kong and already made his report to the home authorities.
10. Reference Item 8 of the attached Report, Miss Harrop has seen
Mrs. Black since the surrender. She was neither raped nor killed.
Following Mr. Anthony Eden's speech in the Commons, a state of mental pañic has undoubtedly come into existence in the minds of a very large number of European women in India, judging not only by what is written in letters, but by what is being talked about amongst Europeans in torms, and particularly some of the hill stations
I heard a report that an escapee from Hong Kong is reputed to have advised certain friends to shoot first their children and then themselves if the Japanese invaded India.
I feel it is deplorable to allow these inaccurate and terrify- ing accounts to go uncontradicted, as the panic which they must cause is obviously so detrimental to the war effort.
The position as it now stands is in the best interests of the enemy and their propaganda, and I give below a report of an eye witness from Malaya who illustrates this fact:
•
"Just after the evacuation of Penang, two young English women who were living near me, came in one day almost in tears, white and terrified, and said that they had heard that in Penang terrible things had taken place. European women had been stripped naked and raped in the streets, and that several had been sent down insane on the evacuation train and smuggled straight from the trains to ships and sent to Batavia. They said, "Please tell us if this is true" Fortunately, I was able to deny it com- pletely as I had been in the group who met that train, and after all the passengers had been fea etc., I went into every carriage (none of them were locked) to see that no valuables had been left behind, None of the 600 women was in any way ill or collapsed, and no one was concealed any- where. A Mrs. Harvey of the Salvation Army came to me for rest and recovery from her exhausting experience and had told me that nothing of the kind had occurred.
However, one of the two girls had already told her husband who had gone back to the S.S.Volunteer camp and told others. It had shaken him, they said, and other men. I at once told the Special Branch and someone was sent out to deny the story, and I was told, a Sergeant with some sense had al- ready told the men he could get hold of not to believe it.
I am sure the report was part of enemy propaganda because the next day a Chinese was going round Singapore saying that he had escaped from Penang by boat, and that after the occupation the Japanese had restored perfect order and stopped all the trouble. This looks to me very suspicious and "co-Prosperity" inspired.
Our own_natives, Chinese and Indians, behaved very well as far as I saw, in Penang they had nearly all run away, so in any case the story was suspicious."oon six
2.4.1942.
Moon diet
Lt.Col
Senica Ossor
*
Calcutta
8/0041
No 290/CENS