Japanese soldiers fried, ate human flesh of Chinese civilian: archive

Photo released on Aug 20, 2015 by the State Archives Administration of China on its website shows a picture of Japanese war criminal Kunihiro Nakao. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - Japanese soldiers fried the flesh of a Chinese civilian and ate it during WWII, according to a war criminal who confessed to scores of murders and rapes in a document published by the State Archives Administration (SAA) on Thursday.

In the 10th of a series of 31 confessions from Japanese war criminals published on the SAA website in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Kunihiro Nakao detailed his brutality in China between 1940 and his capture in August 1945.

Nakao, who was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan in 1921, "cruelly killed two anti-Japanese captives, both male, aged between 20 to 22" on 10 April 1940 in Huanggang County, Hubei Province, according to his confession written in 1954.

He said one was "beheaded with a sword" by an army cook and the other was "bayoneted at the same time" by several soldiers and "fell into a pit."

Nakao then "shoveled soil into the pit to bury the man who was still alive, beat him with a round shovel and trampled him to death."

From October to November 1940, in Jingmen county, Hubei province, he "used Chinese people as targets for shooting exercises and shot dead three Chinese" with the companions.

"I ... fired 15 rounds with a light machine gun and a rifle at five or six Chinese, and shot a Chinese person with the light machine gun," he wrote.