Japanese soldiers burned Chinese civilians to death: confession

Photo released on Aug 30, 2015 by the State Archives Administration of China on its website shows the image of Japanese war criminal Hoichi Matsui.[Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - Japanese World War II soldiers burned Chinese civilians to death and raped numerous women during their invasion of China, according to a war criminal's confession published by the State Archives Administration on Sunday.

Hoichi Matsui and his fellows set light to 100 houses in a village in Laiwu county, East China's Shandong province, in 1941 and burned 50 men, women and children, to death, he wrote in the 1954 confession, part of a series of such documents being released by the archives as China marks the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.

Matsui, stationed in Shandong from 1940 until his capture in August 1945, also brutally tortured and buried Chinese soldiers alive. He confessed to ordering troops to stab five Chinese as a part of a sword skills training exercise.

He raped at least five Chinese women and asked his subordinates to gang-rape another two Chinese women. He also raped seven women from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, according to his confession.