5 SEPTEMBER
‘EVERY NATIVE IS SHOT DOWN LIKE A DOG’
Photo by Charles Edward – CC License – Wikimedia.
[ 5 September 1857 ]
On 5 September 1857, an account appeared in the Illustrated Times of London by a British junior officer stationed at Allahabad in northern India. It was just one of many reports of the wholesale slaughter of rebels and civilians, during the suppression of the Indian mutiny. The officer recalled how in June ‘I went up in a steamer with Captain Harewood to burn villages. We took a 12 lb howitzer with us, and killed an awful lot of people. The country is getting quiet here, but then every native is shot down like a dog.’1
INDISCRIMINATE REPRISALS AGAINST JAPANESE SOLDIERS
[ 5 September 1945 ]
On 5 September 1945, following the surrender of Japanese forces in Singapore the previous day, British officers and soldiers were infuriated to discover the brutality with which their own countrymen had been subjected as prisoners and they began to inflict equally barbarous reprisal punishments on the Japanese soldiers stationed on the island.
FOOTNOTE
- ‘An Escape from Allahabad,’ The Illustrated Times, London, 5 September 1857, p. 168.
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