MacKay’s Betrayal:
Solving the Mystery of the “Sado
Island Prisoner-of-War Massacre”
✩
Gregory Hadley and James Oglethorpe*
Abstract
Betrayal in High Places, a book written in 1996 by the late James
MacKay, has created debate among World War II historians and former prisoners of war (POWs) because it claims to reveal suppressed Allied reports of Japanese war atrocities, such as the
massacre of 387 American, Australian, British, and Dutch POWs in
a gold mine at Aikawa on Sado Island, Japan, in 1945. Our investigation finds that the Sado massacre report is an intentional forgery,
and that MacKay’s book is a spurious historical source. We explain
why he sought to deceive the public and contrast his fiction with the
historical truth about Sado Island.
I
N his book Betrayal in High Places, published in 1996, New Zealand
author James MacKay claimed to have discovered a cache of secret
military reports on atrocities committed against Allied prisoners of war
(POWs) by the Japanese during the Second World War. MacKay asserted
that these files had been preserved by the late Captain James Gowing
* We wish to thank the following: José M. da Costa, Sally Godwin, Michio
Hayashi, Teizo- Hirose, Masahiro Kawai, Arthur Lane, Rod Miller, Honkyo Saito, David
Sissons, Ian Smith, Albert Speer, Dr. Michael Steiner, John Symons, Dr. Spencer
Tucker, Toshihide Uemura, and Patricia Wadley. Without their help, this article would
not have been possible.
Gregory Hadley is a Professor of English and American Cultural Studies at
Niigata University of International and Information Studies, Japan. His latest
book, Field of Spears (Sheffield, U.K.: Paulownia Press, 2007), documents the
oral histories of both Japanese villagers and American B-29 crewmen who survived the downing of their plane near Niigata City in 1945.
James Oglethorpe is an Industrial Engineer with an interest in World War II historical research. He is a Member of the Royal United Service Institution of New
South Wales, Australia.
The Journal of Military History 71 (April 2007): 000–00
© Society for Military History
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GREGORY HADLEY & JAMES OGLETHORPE
Godwin, a New Zealander and former POW who had been attached to
the Second Australian War Crimes Section (2AWCS) in Tokyo from 1947
to 1950. MacKay said that Godwin had been compiling a book based
upon these reports when his health began to deteriorate, and that
MacKay had taken over this task just before Godwin’s death in 1995.1
The most sensational of the reports in Betrayal in High Places, “File
125M,” provides startling detail of an alleged postwar Japanese and
American conspiracy to cover up the massacre of 387 American, Australian, British, and Dutch POWs in the mines of Aikawa on Sado Island,
Japan, on 2 August 1945.2 It supposedly records the interrogation, by
Godwin in 1949, of a former officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, Lieutenant Yoshiro Tsuda, second-in-command of the POW camp at that
time.3
Fig. 1—Sado Island and Niigata Prefecture, Japan.
Reproduced opposite is Tsuda’s alleged testimony, as published by
MacKay in a book-review pamphlet in 1998.4 MacKay claimed that these
photostats showed the “original” File 125M; this version is slightly longer
than the 125M transcript in Betrayal in High Places.
In the eleven years since MacKay first published it, File 125M has
received ongoing international exposure. Although Betrayal in High
Places had only limited print runs in Australia and the United Kingdom,
it was translated into Chinese and circulated widely in both Taiwan and
1. James MacKay, Betrayal in High Places (Stockport, U.K.: A. Lane Publishing,
1996), dust jacket, viii, 262–63.
2. Aikawa Village has recently been joined with several surrounding villages to
become Sado City. For the sake of clarity, however, we will refer to present-day Sado
City as Aikawa, which is the closest village to the gold mines on Sado, and the placename used in numerous documents pertaining to this research.
3. MacKay, Betrayal, 249–53.
4. James MacKay, Tasman Books—International Book Review, December 1998
(Auckland, N.Z.: Tasman Books, 1999), 34–36.
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Fig. 2(a)—MacKay’s photostat of File 125M, Page 1
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Figure 2(b)—MacKay’s photostat of File 125M, Page 2
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Figure 2(c) —MacKay’s photostat of File 125M, Page 3
the People’s Republic of China. Apparently hundreds of thousands of people have viewed File 125M on the numerous Internet websites that have
featured it. File 125M has also been presented as historical fact in a number of recent books dealing with military history, such as Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave’s Gold Warriors,5 Lynette Ramsey Silver’s The
Bridge at Parit Sulong,6 and He’s Not Coming Home by Gillian Nikakis.7
5. Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave, Gold Warriors: America’s Secret
Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold (New York: Verso, 2003), 62.
6. Lynette Ramsey Silver, The Bridge at Parit Sulong (Sydney, Australia: Watermark Press, 2004), 348.
7. Gillian Nikakis, He’s Not Coming Home (Melbourne, Australia: Thomas C.
Lothian Pty., 2005), 216.
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To date, the Sado Island massacre story has found a largely receptive
audience. Given the harsh treatment suffered by Allied POWs in Japan
during World War II, it was easy for MacKay’s readers to believe that
POWs would be sent to the mines in Aikawa, just as they had been forced
to work in mines in other parts of Japan. The publication of File 125M
has caused many people, especially the relatives of missing servicemen,
to wonder whether the skeletons of hundreds of Allied POWs might still
be entombed deep within Aikawa’s “gold mountain.”
As we will show in this article, however, Betrayal in High Places is
replete with exaggerations and outright lies. We have strong evidence
that File 125M is a cynical hoax created by James MacKay, and that it
does not reflect any aspect of the real history of Sado Island during the
Second World War.
Historical Inaccuracies of Betrayal in High Places
In describing “James Godwin’s major contribution” to Betrayal in
High Places, MacKay wrote that Godwin was
a born archivist and set down on paper his own first-hand
accounts of impressions and honest opinion in comment and
interesting summaries. . . . Consequently Godwin’s personal summations are quoted intact to capture the moment and circumstances of this truly unique part of history.
. . . Fortunately for these chronicles, not only were his official weekly reports [1947–50] dated in faithful sequence, but also
his on-the-spot private writings. Therefore to correlate sequenced
events with official reports providing ready reference, one to the
other, each activity summation—in Godwin’s private capacity—is
dated to coincide and precede the official investigation reports at
the conclusion of this book.8
Our research turned up several key documents highlighting the
extensive inaccuracies in the text of Betrayal in High Places:
1. From the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, a memoir written
in 1998 by the late Beverley Durrant (née Floyd),9 who was on
the clerical staff of the 2AWCS, and who typed many of James
Godwin’s original reports.
2. A typed transcript of James Godwin’s original POW diary that
was submitted to the New Zealand authorities in 1946, currently
held by Godwin’s nephew, John Symons, together with carbon
8. MacKay, Betrayal, 117.
9. Beverley Durrant, “Australian War Crimes Trials and 2 Australian War Crimes
Section (SCAP) Tokyo, Japan 13.3.46–4.1.53,” pp. 136–46, MSS 1641, Australian War
Memorial, Canberra, Australia.
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copies of several of Godwin’s original war crimes investigative
reports in Tokyo.10 MacKay based his book upon this same material.
3. The originals of all of James Godwin’s official “Weekly Investigation Reports” covering his activities at 2AWCS in Tokyo, August
1947 to January 1950, currently held by the National Archives
of Australia.11
The Durrant Memoir
Beverley Durrant had no knowledge of Godwin’s original diary. She
commented only on what she read in Betrayal in High Places. Her
remarks about the book were generally scathing, and she concluded: “to
accept the veracities of these diaries as the literal truth is doubtful.
There appears to be a large element of self-aggrandisement.”12 (Here
Durrant referred to the diaries that MacKay claimed had been written by
Godwin while he was in the 2AWCS.) With clerical efficiency, Durrant
noted numerous errors and outright lies in Betrayal in High Places. The
most significant of these that we have been able to verify are as follows:
1. Major Rafferty, a central figure in Betrayal in High Places, never
existed. Rafferty was alleged to have interacted with Godwin in
Tokyo on many occasions and to have shown him where classified war crimes reports were being held. Durrant wrote that
there was no record of a Major Rafferty in the National Archives
of Australia, and that neither she nor other members of the
2AWCS met a Major Rafferty. We confirmed the fact that no Australian with the surname of Rafferty served as a major in World
War II.13 We also contacted the relatives of the highest-ranking
Raffertys (who were captains during World War II) to confirm
that neither was promoted after the war nor transferred to
Tokyo.
2. In Betrayal in High Places, MacKay portrayed Godwin as “one of
the best linguists and interpreters within the War Crimes Investigation Section of SCAP [Supreme Command for the Allied
10. Godwin Papers, Godwin Family Collection, Napier, New Zealand.
11. All of Godwin’s original (unclassified) weekly investigation reports dating
from 15 August 1947 through 22 January 1950 are available in Item 393090, File
336/1/1965 (Part 4), Series MP742/1, National Archives of Australia, Melbourne, Australia.
12. Durrant, “Australian War Crimes Trials,” 143.
13. A nominal roll of Australians who served in World War II is maintained by
the Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs at http://www.ww2roll.gov.au/
(accessed 1 June 2004).
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GREGORY HADLEY & JAMES OGLETHORPE
Powers].”14 However, Durrant maintained that Godwin was
unable to speak Japanese.15 Durrant also reproduced a letter
from Captain F. M. Wilson, an interrogator who served with Godwin in 2AWCS, who stated that,
The suggestion that Jim Godwin spoke fluent Japanese and
even read it (good grief!) is complete hogwash . . . to my certain knowledge he never at any time spoke any at all, apart
from phrases everyone picked up like ‘sayonara’ or ‘konnichi
wa’. . . . My desk was next to Godwin’s, so I should know!
Godwin’s widow in Sydney also verified that her husband could
not speak fluent Japanese.16
3. Godwin was not an “Intelligence Officer” with the 2AWCS, as
MacKay claimed. He was an Investigating Officer from the New
Zealand military attached to the 2AWCS. In his own reports,
Godwin referred to himself as an “Investigating Officer.”
4. The “Goodwood Park Hotel,” described in Betrayal in High
Places as one of the three main command buildings of the Occupation Powers in Tokyo,17 is fictitious. (Suspiciously, there was a
building of that name in Singapore.)
5. Durrant did not specifically mention File 125M in her critique of
Betrayal in High Places. (In fact, she made no comment on the
technical accuracy of any of the war crime reports printed in the
book. Her extensive criticisms all stemmed from her own personal experience of 2AWCS and of life in general in Japan at that
time.) However, she stated that all of the documents in Chapter
10 of Betrayal in High Places were “unclassified,” which contradicts MacKay’s assertion that these documents were “highly classified.” Durrant maintained that neither Godwin nor any of the
other officers who interrogated prisoners handled “highly classified” documents. Testimony to support Durrant’s claim was provided by Captain Wilson: “I never handled, or even saw any
‘highly classified’ documents, and can think of no reason why
Godwin should have. The only documents we handled as interrogation officers were our own routine reports of our ongoing
investigations.”18
We discovered many other historical inconsistencies throughout
Betrayal in High Places. For example, in a diary entry dated 27 January
1950, Godwin is purported to have written that the massacres of POWs
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
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MacKay, Betrayal, 93.
Durrant, “Australian War Crimes Trials,” 138.
Sally Godwin, Letter to James Oglethorpe, 5 November 2004.
MacKay, Betrayal, 90.
Durrant, “Australian War Crimes Trials,” 138.
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at Sandakan (Borneo) and Aikawa on Sado Island had been kept classified, and that the perpetrators of the Sandakan massacre were “still at
large.”19 In fact, the appalling Sandakan massacre of 2,400 British and
Australian POWs had been fully investigated in 1946. Eight Japanese
perpetrators had been executed for this atrocity and fifty-five others
imprisoned.20 It is highly unlikely that Captain Godwin would have been
unaware of these events, especially since he was personally involved in
the investigation of war crimes against Australian service personnel in
Southeast Asia. It was only after we carefully studied Godwin’s original
POW diary that we discovered that the responsibility for these puzzling
errors lay squarely with MacKay and not Godwin.
Godwin’s Diary and Betrayal in High Places
The typewritten transcript of Godwin’s original POW diary is eighteen pages long. It was retyped by Godwin shortly after the war, and submitted to Allied war crimes investigators. Three additional pages, in
Godwin’s handwriting, appear to be evidence of an abortive attempt to
resume his memoirs, some time after the original transcript was typed.
Godwin’s diary dealt with only the first few months of his captivity
in 1944. Nothing was written about the further fourteen months of his
imprisonment, during which time he was eventually transferred to
Omori Camp, Tokyo Bay, and Niigata Camp 15B, where he worked as a
forced laborer.21 Ironically, from the Niigata docks, Godwin would have
been able to view the snowcapped peaks of Sado Island, without any
inkling that his name would become famously linked with that place
sixty years later.
Godwin’s family assured us that he had not written any other memoirs about his time as a POW. Godwin testified to this fact in a police
report after his return to New Zealand in 1946:
19. MacKay, Betrayal, 220.
20. Australian War Memorial essay “Sandakan,” http://www.awm.gov.au/
stolenyears/ww2/japan/sandakan/index.asp (accessed 14 April 2004). Photographs of
Warrant Officer William Hector Sticpewich at the 1946 Tokyo War Crimes Trial concerning the Sandakan Massacre can be found under the ID Numbers P02289.001 and
P02289.002, on the Australian War Memorial Collection website, http://www.awm.
gov.au (accessed 10 July 2004).
21. Interview with James Godwin (Radio New Zealand, MP3 Recording,
J126–127, Sound Archives/Nga- Taonga Ko-rero, 1947); Lawrence Watt, “Godwin,
James Gowing 1923–1995,” in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 5 (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2000), http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/
dnzb/default.asp?Find_Quick.asp?PersonEssay=5G12 (accessed 4 July 2004).
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I went from Ofuna Camp to a registered prison camp in [Tokyo
(Omori)] where I remained until 1st March, 1945. From the
1st March until the 6th September I was in Camp 15D in
Niigata. I was released from this Camp. The notes submitted to
the Army authorities by me were notes kept by me during the
first three months of my confinement . . . I have no personal
notes of my observations in these camps. The ones I have submitted had to be kept secretly during my confinement.22
In Betrayal in High Places, MacKay takes eighty pages to deal with
the first few months of Godwin’s captivity (the period covered by the
diary). The remaining fourteen months of Godwin’s captivity are then
inaccurately described in just a few paragraphs. We are sure that if Godwin had written much of the manuscript for Betrayal in High Places, as
MacKay stated, there would not have been such a discrepancy.
Later in Betrayal in High Places, MacKay wrote over 130 pages
about Godwin’s time in Tokyo as a war crimes investigator, including
many breathtaking “hearsay” accusations against the Japanese Royal
Family and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. MacKay presents all of this material as
having originated with Godwin, yet the Godwin family papers contain
absolutely no diary records covering the three years that Godwin worked
in the 2AWCS in Tokyo. The only papers from this period are Godwin’s
own carbon copies of the official weekly investigation summaries that he
compiled, which actually contain no political accusations.
According to Godwin’s widow, MacKay never met James Godwin.23
There is no possibility that Godwin passed any verbal recollections to
MacKay. It is obvious that MacKay manufactured vast sections of
Betrayal in High Places from his own imagination. Even when MacKay
did present material from Godwin’s actual POW diary and war crimes
reports, he dramatized and distorted it to the point of making Godwin’s
words his own, injecting them with the venom of his own malice. Typical examples are shown opposite.
MacKay’s Forgery of File 125M
As we examined genuine examples of Godwin’s weekly status reports,
it became increasingly obvious that there were many inconsistencies of
format between the genuine reports and the photostats of File 125M reproduced in MacKay’s book-review pamphlet of December 1998. In particu22. Prosecution of War Crimes: Far East: Lieut. James Gowing GODWIN
(Wellington, N.Z., Police Department, D.339/1/139/A), 2 May 1946, p. 4, in Godwin
Papers.
23. Sally Godwin, Letter to James Oglethorpe, 5 November 2004.
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Table 1: Comparison of Godwin’s POW Diary with Betrayal in High Places
Godwin Diary, pp.17–18
Betrayal in High Places, pp. 77–78
I travelled up on train in shorts
and shirt, no shoes. We were very
thirsty on train, nothing to drink
for over 15 hours. We were given
some biscuits (dry) to eat and
some left overs of tinned fish and
meat (very salty) on train. It was
damned embarrassing to be
pushed around on train and station, to be led at lengths of ropes
carrying those Nip’s luggage etc.
Once aboard a waiting train and at 2300 hours,
they commenced a journey to Ofuna, a centre
near Tokyo. Wearing thin tropical clothing and
accustomed to the heat of the tropics, the prisoners felt the cool night air as being akin to being
quite cold.
We soon got over it and ignored
the Japanese civilians—what a
mouldy, dirty, poverty-stricken
looking bunch of people I have
ever seen. The sight of such creatures in normal times I am certain
would have made me vomit. The
guards were not over-kind in their
treatment on train especially
when they found the populace
were enjoying.
Hundreds of impassive slant-eyed Japanese
stared at us as though we had come from another
planet. A few spat on us or threw stones. If it was
an expression of hate it was hard to tell. Their
features remained inscrutable. To many of us the
densely crowded streets and the alien environment, created the impression in our minds that it
was we who were on another planet.
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Thirst as ever afflicted them all. Repeated pleas to
stony-faced guards for water was a sheer waste of
time, however, and after fifteen hours, the thirsting prisoners were given some dry biscuits to eat
and some leftovers of very salty tinned fish. It was
damned embarrassing to be led through the
streets of Kobe with ropes around our necks and
handcuffed, Godwin wrote.
A lasting impression shared by all the prisoners
was the sheer density of people and to the point
of being as prolific as ants. For the small size of
the country it seemed over-populated. Could this
partly be the reason for Japan’s war of expansion
we wondered between ourselves? At least it
explained Japan’s ability to pour millions of soldiers into its war of aggression and with the obvious capacity to treble its Armed Forces from such
a vast human resource. This thought was chilling.
Godwin summarised in his diary though he did in
typical fashion, add his impressions of the population in general and as follows:
“What a mouldy, dirty, poverty-stricken looking
bunch they appeared. If their Armed Forces were
reasonably well-fed, the civilians didn’t look it.
Small of stature and thin, they looked somewhat
pitiful in their mended rags. How could the West
fear such pitiful creatures? Even in my weakened
state I could have mixed it with six of them in
unarmed combat.”
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GREGORY HADLEY & JAMES OGLETHORPE
lar, the typeface used for File 125M is not the same as that used in original 2AWCS documents preserved in the National Archives of Australia.
Fig. 3—Formatting and Typeface of Genuine Godwin Weekly Report Dated
16 December 1949 from National Archives of Australia
Fig. 4—Comparison of File 125M Typeface and Format
The differences in typeface are particularly clear when comparing
numbers and dates, but another telling fact is that the alignment of characters in the genuine weekly report is slightly uneven due to the manual
typewriter, whereas MacKay’s photostat shows the neater alignment of
letters that is characteristic of an electric typewriter.
There are many formatting differences. Note in particular the formatting of the typist’s initials at the top left-hand corner. The genuine
Tokyo document shows a standard format: “JGG/bej,” which denotes the
author (J. G. Godwin) and the typist (Sergeant B. E. Jackson). In comparison, MacKay’s “JGG:BMP” is not in the standard Australian Army
format, and does not refer to the initials of any typist who actually
worked with 2AWCS in Tokyo.
Also, as shown in Fig. 5, the typeface of MacKay’s File 125M matches
that of an editorial comment that MacKay made with his own typewriter
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in his book-review pamphlet immediately below the photostat of File
125M.
Figure 5—MacKay’s Editorial Comment in the same typeface as File 125M
Figure 6—Signature on the 125M Photostat (Left) versus Authentic
Godwin Signature from the National Archives of Australia (Right)
Finally, comparing the photostat signature with the Godwin signature from the National Archives of Australia, we could clearly see several
discrepancies.
Careful scrutiny of the 125M photostat strongly suggests that the
manuscript signature, the dotted line, and the name “J. G. Godwin” have
seemingly been cut from an original Godwin report and then pasted onto
a freshly typed document. The name “J. G. Godwin” is typed in a different font from the rest of the document, and has been trimmed at the bottom. The dotted line is misaligned with “(Capt)” and rumpled, and the
signature obscures part of the letter “I” typed below it. (Manual “cut and
paste” was the method used by MacKay to compile his book-review pamphlets, which were then reproduced by photocopying.)
We can conclude that MacKay created File 125M on his own typewriter and then pasted in Godwin’s signature.
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The full text of Godwin’s genuine weekly report for the week ending
16 December 1949 (see Appendix 1)24 makes no mention of Sado Island,
or of any conspiracy to cover up the massacre of Allied POWs. Rather,
the report shows Godwin investigating two cases: the execution of Australian POWs in Burma, and the massacre of Australian POWs at Parit
Sulong, Malaya.
Why the Deception?
In the preface to Betrayal in High Places, MacKay stated that his
earlier book, The Allied-Japanese Conspiracy, had been criticized for its
(unsubstantiated) claims that the U.S. government conspired with the
Japanese to cover up war atrocities. Then MacKay wrote:
quite astonishingly . . . further material came into my possession that I
can only describe as incredible. It supports all the allegations and references identified in the first published book, and removes beyond
doubt the suggestion of conjecture and hypothesis.25
MacKay’s motivation is thus clear. Betrayal in High Places provided
the “evidence” needed to support MacKay’s own political views on what
he believed to be the injustice of Article 14 of the 1951 San Francisco
Peace Treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers (which disallowed
Allied ex-POWs from claiming damages from the Japanese) and to
indulge his perception that the United States was too lenient towards
those accused of war crimes.26
MacKay died in March 2004 before we could confront him with our
findings, and unfortunately his daughter destroyed most of his papers
very soon after his death. However, the MacKay family granted us access
to what remained of MacKay’s papers. These revealed that in 1996
MacKay had been appointed to an advisory position by an American special interest group that had been lobbying Congress to obtain compensation for former prisoners of the Japanese. We also obtained further
copies of letters entrusted by MacKay to the Australian historian Albert
Speer, including MacKay’s correspondence with the Japanese Ambassador to New Zealand, publishers in Taiwan, and political figures in New
Zealand. These showed that MacKay frequently mentioned File 125M as
proof that Japan had been let off lightly by the American government,
24. Godwin’s original (unclassified) weekly investigation reports dating from 15
August 1947 through 22 January 1950, Item 393090, File 336/1/1965 (Part 4), Series
MP742/1, National Archives of Australia.
25. MacKay, Betrayal, viii; James MacKay, The Allied-Japanese Conspiracy
(Edinburgh, U.K.: Pentland Press, 1995.
26. MacKay, Betrayal, x–xiv.
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and that former POWs deserved reparations for the suffering they had
experienced during their captivity in Japanese labor camps.
Besides perceiving Article 14 as unfair, many ex-POWs strongly
believe that all Allied POWs in Japan were scheduled to be executed if
the Japanese mainland was invaded. Based upon the brutality of the
Japanese military at the time, such an act is certainly believable. However, no direct evidence of this plan has ever surfaced, with the exception of a 1944 memo discovered in Taiwan, asking for clarification on the
methods for executing large numbers of prisoners.27 Notwithstanding
this, File 125M specifically asserts that such an “Imperial Army Extermination Order” existed. MacKay’s intention appears to have been to
provide some “historical evidence” to bear on this modern-day political
argument. His personal papers showed that he passed copies of Betrayal
in High Places, with special emphasis on the Sado Island “Massacre,” to
lobbyists in the United States, including Members of Congress (see
Appendix 2).
MacKay himself did not fight in the Second World War alongside his
contemporaries. However, near the end of his life, he was basking in the
praise of ex-POWs. Even the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Robert Muldoon, saw MacKay as championing their cause.28 MacKay wrote what
many wanted to hear. Given the existence of so many other true cases of
Japanese war atrocities, no one thought it necessary to question his
claims about Sado Island until eight years after his book had been published.
Damage Caused by MacKay’s Betrayal
We personally know of numerous researchers around the world who
have dedicated significant time to investigating the mystery of the Sado
Island massacre. The effort and resources applied by these researchers—
purchasing materials, searching through archives, traveling to Sado
Island, and alarming the local residents of Aikawa—could have been better spent elsewhere.
The suffering of those who were prisoners of the Japanese deserves
far greater public recognition, but not through deception such as that
practiced by MacKay. Memoirs written by ex-POWs who survived their
ordeal in Japan, as well as our own interviews with former Japanese
camp guards and ex-POWs from Niigata, recount tales ranging from
27. “Document 2701, Exhibit O,” War Crimes, Japan, Box 2015, Record Group
(RG) 24, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.,
available at http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/Formosa/taiwandocs.html
(accessed 22 May 2004).
28. MacKay, Betrayal, xv.
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GREGORY HADLEY & JAMES OGLETHORPE
vicious cruelty to criminal neglect in Japanese POW camps.29 MacKay’s
book muddies the waters for serious historians studying Japan’s wartime
past. Sadly, File 125M serves as a rotting plank for those who wish to see
more recognition of the atrocities committed by the former Japanese
Empire.
James Godwin’s reputation has also suffered. Beverley Durrant was
not the only person who blamed Godwin for the lies written by MacKay.
In later years, other writers and historians have blamed Godwin for willfully manipulating war-crimes affidavits in order to secure the execution
(in 1951) of Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura for the massacre of
Australian POWs at Parit Sulong in Malaya in 1942.30 This accusation originated with Ian Ward’s influential 1996 book on this subject, Snaring the
Other Tiger.31 However, it is now clear to us that Ward depended on documentation provided by James MacKay. The Godwin papers and “diary
entries” reproduced by Ward in his book are definitely fabrications.32
The Truth about Sado Island during World War II
Given the international dissemination of MacKay’s hoax, we feel it is
important to outline what really happened on Sado Island during the
Second World War. Below are several facts uncovered during the course
of our research.
Fact: A Forced Labor Camp, But No Allied POWs
In the MacKay forgery, Allied POWs were alleged to have worked at
an undeclared forced labor camp. In fact, a forced labor camp did exist
at Aikawa in the closing stages of World War II, but it utilized Korean
laborers who had previously been contracted employees of the mine.
When the Mitsubishi Mining Company took control of the Aikawa
gold mines in 1918, Korean laborers were offered employment on Sado
Island to supplement Mitsubishi’s Japanese workforce. Not until 1944,
29. Kenneth Cambon, Guest of Hirohito (Vancouver: PW Press, 1990); Howard
Chittenden, China Marine to Jap POW (Paducah, Ky.: Turner Publishing Company,
1995); Fiske Hanley, Accused American War Criminal (Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press,
1997); interview with Toshio Watanabe by Gregory Hadley (MD Recording, Sanjo
City, Japan, 8 November 2003); interview with Douglas Idlett by Gregory Hadley (MD
Recording, Herndon, Va., 25 March 2004).
30. Watt, “Godwin, James Gowing 1923–1995.” See also W. Barton, “NZ Hero’s
Motives Questioned,” Dominion newspaper, 3 December 1996, p. 11.
31. Ian Ward, Snaring the Other Tiger (Singapore: Media Masters, 1996).
32. First revealed by respected Australian historian David Sissons in “Weekly
Investigation Reports by J. G. Godwin Reproduced in Snaring the Other Tiger pp.
331–33—Forgeries?”; unpublished manuscript [PDF] (in D. C. S. Sissons possession,
1997).
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when Mitsubishi Mining was required to dedicate all of the copper ore it
produced to the war effort, did the Aikawa mines truly become a forced
labor camp. Security was increased to prevent the Koreans from escaping, work contracts were summarily annulled, and the pay of the Korean
laborers was drastically reduced. At the end of the war, about 580 Korean
laborers at Aikawa were repatriated.33
This situation was common knowledge among local historians and
senior citizens on Sado Island. However, Mitsubishi repeatedly denied
running a forced labor camp until 1991, when secret company documents that contained information about cigarette rations to Korean
laborers were leaked to the public.34 For a short time, these documents,
which were part of an unpublished manuscript written by a retired engineer from Mitsubishi Mining, were available for public reading at the
Niigata Prefectural Library. However, they have now been placed in a
section reserved for classified materials far away from the prying eyes of
researchers.35
In over two years of research, we have encountered only one published Japanese account asserting that there were “Prisoners of War” on
Sado Island. Ki-Ichi Toya recorded his wife’s memory of prisoners, joined
by ropes, loading coal at a power station on the Aikawa waterfront.36
However, it is unlikely that this refers to Europeans. During the war, the
Japanese word horyo, which later became associated with Caucasian
POWs, was a general term used to denote war prisoners (of any race)
doing forced labor. It was only after the war that the term hikyo-sei renko-sha, meaning “forced laborer,” was used to distinguish Allied POWs
from Chinese and Korean slave laborers.
Toya’s account does not clarify whether the “POWs” in his wife’s
memory were Caucasian or Asian. The restraint of the prisoners by
ropes certainly suggests that they were Korean slave laborers, since the
Koreans had a history of escaping, hiding among the Sado population,
and trying to get back to Korea by fishing boat. In comparison, Caucasian POWs in Japan had nowhere to hide. None of the former Niigata
POWs that we have interviewed have ever reported being roped together
while working on the docks.
33. Teizo- Hirose, “Sado Kinsan to Chosenjin Ro-do-sha (1939–1945)” [Sado’s
Gold Mountain and Korean Laborers (1939–1945)], Niigata University of International and Information Studies Research Reports 3 (2000): 1–12.
34. Angus Waycott, Sado: Japan’s Island in Exile (Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge
Press, 1996), 81.
35. Interview with Teizo- Hirose by Gregory Hadley (MD Recording, Niigata City,
Japan, 21 July 2004).
36. Ki-Ichi Toya, Genbaku . . . Niigata: Watashi no Shu-sen [Atom Bomb—
Niigata: My End of the War] (Osaka: Adeka Keibunsha, 1984), 253–54.
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GREGORY HADLEY & JAMES OGLETHORPE
Further confirmation that there were no Europeans on Sado Island
comes from Robert Groh, a retired New York State Supreme Court Justice. He was one of the first American war crimes investigators stationed
in Niigata in late 1945. Groh and his team scoured Niigata Prefecture for
POW camps. He stated that his investigative team never came across any
evidence of Allied POWs on Sado Island, although it was plentiful for the
other camps in Niigata Prefecture.37
We also contacted a respected local historian in Aikawa, Honkyo
Saito. Mr. Saito has devoted himself to the study and preservation of
Aikawa’s mining heritage.38 On our behalf he spoke discreetly with
elderly residents in Aikawa to find out if they had heard of Allied POWs
working in the mines. He reported that nobody recalled Caucasians ever
being in Aikawa during the war.39 Equally revealing is the testimony of
Michio Hayashi, a Buddhist priest living near Aikawa. He has devoted
many years to creating a local action group that promotes dialog
between former Korean slave laborers and the residents of Aikawa. In
1998, an American teacher of English gave him a copy of Betrayal in
High Places. Disturbed and concerned for the repose of the spirits of
dead POWs in the mines, he spoke to numerous former Korean slave
laborers and residents of Aikawa to discover if any remembered seeing
Caucasian POWs in the mines, but again, neither Koreans nor Japanese
residents of Aikawa ever remembered seeing POWs at any time on Sado
during the war.40
We believe that the lack of any local memory of Allied POWs is quite
significant, since the presence (and subsequent disappearance) of a large
number of foreigners would definitely have caused a huge stir in such a
remote place. As well, there will always be some evidence left behind
wherever a POW camp existed, be it a postcard, an individual POW who
had been transferred out of the camp (a common occurrence by the end
of the war), or documents (as with the Koreans’ cigarette rations). In the
case of Aikawa, however, no such evidence has ever been discovered.
Niigata academic Teizo- Hirose has added several further interesting
facts. Mr. Hirose has intensively studied the historical documents related
to forced laborers at Aikawa, but has not found any mention of Allied
POWs being sent there. Nor had he heard of File 125M until approached
by us. Hirose, who is fluent in Korean, has interviewed Korean survivors
37. Telephone interview with Robert Groh by Gregory Hadley (MD Recording,
Quogue, New York, 15 September 2004).
38. Honkyo Saito. “Heritages of Modernization at Sado Gold and Silver Mine in
the Early Meiji Era,” http://www.e-convention.org/imhc/papers/Saito_e.pdf (accessed
27 July 2004).
39. Honkyo Saito, e-mail to James Oglethorpe, 6 March 2004.
40. Michio Hayashi, e-mail to Gregory Hadley, 18 February 2005.
41. Interview with Hirose; Hirose, “Sado Kinsan to Chosenjin Ro-do-sha,” 9.
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of the Aikawa mines. None has ever mentioned seeing Allied POWs in
the mines.41
Hirose also told us that several volumes of documents pertaining to
forced laborers and POWs have recently been quietly declassified by the
Japanese government. These were compiled by the department that allocated forced labor within the highly bureaucratized central government
of Imperial Japan. Hirose observes that, according to these documents,
the most difficult and dangerous forms of labor were assigned to Korean
and Chinese workers, who, as subjects of the Japanese Empire, were
considered expendable. Allied POWs performed comparatively less fatal
forms of labor, such as coal mining, dock work, or factory labor. Although
Allied POWs were sent to the major urban centers of Niigata Prefecture,
where there was a shortage of semiskilled labor, the documents show
that Koreans were used to perform the most dangerous tasks in the
mines of Aikawa.42
File 125M states that Allied POWs were at Aikawa in 1942. Such a
date could technically have been possible, since 300 Australian POWs
were sent to a half-constructed camp in Naoetsu of Central Niigata Prefecture on 10 December 1942.43 Forced labor did not begin until later in
1943, which coincides with the time that both ex-POWs and Japanese
historians remember the first major influx of British, Dutch, American,
and Australian POWs to Niigata Prefecture.44 The majority of these POWs
were assigned to Niigata City in September 1943, where they worked on
docks hauling coal and cargo, or in small factories making machine parts
for engines. They were sent in response to a request a year earlier from
shipping and manufacturing companies for additional laborers to replace
Japanese workers who had been sent abroad to fight the war.45 Hirose
writes that over 600 Korean laborers and 700 Japanese workers were
already in the Aikawa mines by 1943. In our interview, he concluded that
it would have been impractical to send Allied POWs to remote, sparsely
populated Aikawa, when they could be more easily managed in an urban
center such as Niigata City. Other local historians, such as Toshihide
Uemura and Akira Fujitsuka, agree that POWs were sent to Niigata City
rather than Aikawa because that was where labor shortages occurred.46
42. Interview with Hirose.
43. Committee for the Creation of a Peace and Reconciliation Memorial of the
Naoetsu POW Camp, Taihei-yo ni kakeru hashi [Bridge Across the Pacific] (Naoetsu,
Niigata: Saito Publishers, 1996), 192.
44. Cambon, Guest of Hirohito, 51-55; City of Niigata, Senjo Toshite no Niigata
[Battlefield Niigata] (Niigata City: Bunkyu-do, 1998), 52.
45. City of Niigata, Senjo Toshite no Niigata, 52–54.
46. Interview with Toshihide Uemura and Akira Fujitsuka by Gregory Hadley
(MD Recording, Niigata City, Japan, 16 July 2004); Hirose, “Sado Kinsan to Chosenjin Ro- do-sha,” 10; interview with Hirose.
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Fact: MacKay’s Depiction of the Mine Is Incorrect
MacKay’s story described the mine as sloping into the side of the
mountain, but since 1875 the Aikawa mine has had a vertical shaft with
conventional winding gear at the top.47 In 1946, a team from the U.S.
Occupation Forces was sent to Aikawa to evaluate the condition of the
mine and reported that it was still operating, directly contradicting
MacKay’s story that the mine had been destroyed the previous year.48
The first author has also visited the mine, and has confirmed that the
site does not fit the description in MacKay’s book.
Fact: The Gold Mine Was Viable
In File 125M, MacKay wrote that the gold mine at Aikawa had
become unproductive by August 1945, but it actually remained in production until 1989. Little gold was produced during World War II, when
production was deliberately shifted to copper, a strategic metal.
Fact: Occupation Troops Were Stationed at Aikawa
MacKay wrote that it “could take a very long time” to find evidence
of the buried POWs on distant Sado Island. He was unaware that, in addition to the specialist U.S. team that inspected the mine, more than 7,000
U.S. troops were stationed in Niigata Prefecture after the war.49 An American radar base with about 50 military personnel for monitoring North
Korean and Russian aircraft was established within a mile of the mine in
October 1948.50 Older residents of Aikawa clearly remember the arrival
of these Caucasians, as U.S. military personnel maintained bases near
Aikawa for almost twenty years before turning them over to the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in the mid-1960s.
Fact: Japanese Officers Listed in MacKay’s Forgery Never Existed
MacKay’s fictional account named the mine commandant, Major
Masami Sadakichi, and second-in-command, Lieutenant Yoshiro Tsuda.
MacKay has Lieutenant Tsuda explain that the officers of the camp had
been officially listed as “killed” or “missing-in-action” in order to aid
their escape from prosecution. If so, their names should still be on file.
Strangely, the name that MacKay gave the commandant, Sadakichi,
is a highly improbable Japanese family name; it is normally used only as
a man’s first name. A name so unusual should be easy to find in the
47. Saito, “Heritages of Modernization.”
48. Waycott, Sado, 81.
49. Niigata Prefectural Police Historical Committee, Niigata-ken keisatsu shi
nenpyo: Showa [A Chronology of Niigata Prefectural Police, Showa Era, 16 October
1945], in Niigata Prefectural Library, Niigata City, Japan.
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archives. However, when the historian Albert Speer requested a search
for material pertaining to the names Masami Sadakichi or Yoshiro Tsuda
at the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo, he was told that
there was no military record on file for either of these names.51
MacKay wrote that Yoshiro Tsuda was being held in Sugamo Prison
in 1949, but our exhaustive search of the Sugamo Prison records
revealed that no such person had ever been held there by the Occupation forces.52 In addition, public records show that the person in charge
of Mitsubishi Mining from 20 June 1945 until 23 June 1948 was a civilian named Masahiro Ogata.53
Conclusion
We may never know why MacKay chose Aikawa as the setting of his
story. Possibly he came across some reference to prisoners working
there in the past, since the history of the Aikawa gold mine goes back to
the early 1600s. Japanese convicts had definitely been used to pump
water there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and 1,800
died.54 Perhaps MacKay heard about the new evidence that had surfaced
in Aikawa in 1991 about the Korean forced labor camp near the mines.
Regardless of these questions, the mystery of whether Allied POWs
were massacred at Sado Island has now been solved: there were no Allied
POWs on the island during the Second World War, and no massacre took
place in the mines of Aikawa. While there was a forced labor camp at
Aikawa, it was populated by Korean slave laborers, who never sighted an
Allied POW and who largely survived the war.
James MacKay’s Betrayal in High Places can now be seen to be a
completely unreliable historical source. The story of the Sado Island
massacre, the showpiece allegation of Betrayal in High Places, is a hateful fantasy that MacKay created on his own typewriter. Through his dishonest actions, motivated by egotistical and political goals, James
MacKay has slandered the residents of Sado Island, besmirched the
memory of Captain James Godwin, and created a damaging distraction
for historians who seek to reveal the true experiences, and the largely
unrecognized sacrifices, of POWs in the Second World War.
50. Aikawa History Compilation Committee, Sado Aikawa no Rekishi Tsushihen Kin Gendai [Complete History of Aikawa, Sado—Modern and Contemporary
Periods] (Aikawa: Dai-Ichi Printing Company, 1995), 772–74.
51. Masahiro Kawai, letter to Albert Speer, 14 June 2004.
52. List of Sugamo Prison Records in Order of Box Number (with Alphabetical
Index), RG 338, NARA, in Tokyo National Diet Library, Tokyo, Japan.
53. Aikawa History Compilation Committee, Sado Aikawa no Rekishi Tsushihen Kin Gendai, 875.
54. Waycott, Sado, 79.
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APPENDIX 1
Authentic Godwin report showing his actual activity
in the week ending 16 December 1949
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23
APPENDIX 2
Endorsement of James MacKay by Congressman Robert Dornan.
(MacKay private papers)
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