Photo released on Aug. 27, 2015 by the State Archives Administration of China on its website shows an excerpt from Japanese war criminal Yasuji Kaneko's handwritten confession. The seventeenth in a series of 31 handwritten confessions from Japanese war criminals published online, the confession features Yasuji Kaneko, who was born in 1920. He joined the Japanese War of Aggression against China in 1940, and was captured in August 1945. Kaneko and his companions arrested two Chinese peasants in Laiwu County of Shandong Province, "tied their hands behind the back and hung them on wooden stakes, and then lit straw below the stakes, thus burning them to death." Kaneko also confessed to the purge of a village in Xintai County of Shandong in October 1941, with 150 people being killed by his squad. "I launched one canister of tear gas and lit a pile of straw beside the wall to set fire in the village. I also shot seven bullets from a rifle, killing three peaceful peasants running out from the village," he said in the confession. In August 1942, together with two companions, Kaneko sexually assaulted and killed one woman aged around 30 in Yanggu County of Shandong. Kaneko also confessed to shooting around 31 people, including old people, children and women, who tried to seek refuge, in Guantao County in May 1943. (Xinhua)
