Source: NARA RG 389, Box 2123; files: Fukuoka #4, Moji Military Hospital (YMCA)
Richard Bland Williams, US Naval Hospital, Guam, Lt. USN Med Corps
NOTE: This actually applies not to the Kokura Hospital but the Fuk-04B-Moji Camp (YMCA)

R(ichard) Bland Williams, Lt., USN Medical Corps, Serial #22650
136 Harvard Street
Norfolk VA

Affidavit of Lt. R. Bland Williams, Lt., USN Medical Corps, Serial #22650, in re Brutalities at Camp #4, Moji, Kyushu, Japan

I was attached to the US Naval Hospital at Guam when I was captured on Guam on 10 December 1941.

Jap mistreatment of, or brutalities toward Prisoners:
While I was at the Moji (YMCA) Prison Camp on Kyushu from November 1942 to August 1943, I witnessed numerous instances of failure on the part of the Japanese authorities who were in charge to provide the prisoners of war with proper medical care and quarters. During the first three weeks at this camp I saw 115 English prisoners of war die because they lacked adequate medical facilities and the proper sanitary conditions. Because of these same sanitary conditions 11 out of a group of Allied medical personnel contracted bacillary dysentery. I was one of those so infected.. The only medicine to treat these men consisted of charcoal, bismuth (1000 grams), magnesium sulfate, 500 grams of sulfanilamide, and a negligible quantity of glucose solution and sodium chloride solution. The sulfanilamide proved useless. It was represented by the Japanese doctor Yoshida as sulfapyridine, which had been requested because it was known by the Allied personnel that the Japanese had this drug.

The work of the Allied Medical personnel is this camp was entirely controlled by a Japanese sergeant dermatologist, Dr. Yoshida (previously mentioned), and several orderlies under him. These men displayed no knowledge of or interest in the cases of sick prisoners. Yoshida, for example, insisted on giving magnesium sulfate in repeated doses to men suffering from severe diarrhea for several weeks with dehydration. On my arrival in this camp, men were sleeping side by side on blankets on wooden platforms; blankets and floors were soaked with excreta, the only bedpans available were small wooden boxes in the aisles which were overflowing with excreta.

The medical group, of which I was a member, was given a small section of a wooden platform, but no facilities for separate messing were available. During these first three weeks the Japanese were kept carefully away from the sick. In addition to bacillary dysentery, diphtheria and tuberculosis were also present. The Japanese made no provision for segregation of cases, and it was impossible to secure permission for transfer to a Japanese hospital for any surgical or medical condition.
The sick men were transferred under Japanese orders, and despite the protest of the Allied medical personnel, to the ground floor platform which was both cold and damp. I fully believe this transfer contributed to the death of a number of these men.

In January 1943, Red Cross medical supplies, which I believed had been in the country a long time, were brought to the camp. Sergeant Yoshida was removed from the camp; and a Japanese doctor, medically honest and qualified in my opinion, named MIAKAWA (2nd Lieutentant), came to the camp and did the best he could, I believe, with the facilities available. The Japanese commandant was changed in January 1943, and was replaced by Lieutenant Takeda. He went to Princeton University Seminary in the US, I believe. Approximately two months after Takeda arrived, American Naval Hospital Corpsmen (sent to this camp to treat the sick cases) were ordered by Takeda to work as stevedores on the ships in Moji Harbor, which work they were forced to continue until the first of July 1943.

On one occasion, these same corpsmen were forced to work for 26 hours with only a short time out for meals. Permission for working these men had to be granted the stevedoring company, I think, by the camp commander, Lt. Takeda.
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