Operation Clean Up

Operation Clean Up( Sook Ching Operation )

During the early days of the Japanese occupation, an extensive clean-up operation to purge anti-Japanese elements -- including former members of Dalforce,Force 136, and supporters of the China Relief Funds -- known as Sook Ching was undertaken. The massacres were executed under the supervision of the Kempeitai with the Hojo Kempei ("auxiliary military police") being employed to carry out the actual shooting under orders of a Kempeitai officer. Although the exact figures will never be fully known, it was estimated that a total figure between 25,000 and 50,000 victims were massacred according to the post-war trial testimonies in 1947.
^{Masanobu Tsuji} identified by Japanese army commanders as the man responsible for the Sook Ching massacre during the Singapore Chinese Massacre Trial in 1947 ^.Tsuji was appointed as the Chief Planning and Operations Officer of the 25th Army, which was led by Tomoyuki Yamashita during the Malayan Campaign. He had close links with the Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo and enjoyed certain privileges that officers of more senior ranks were not allowed.

Overstepping his authority, he had issued orders during the massacre of thousands of Chinese civilians in Singapore and Malaya with Yamashita's knowledge but without his approval. He was also responsible for the slaughter of thousands of American and Filipino prisoners-of-war in the Philippines. Tsuji was in Myanmar at the time of Japan's unconditional surrender to British forces in August 1946 and made his getaway to Thailand disguised as a wandering Buddhist monk. He later spent a short spell in China during its the Chinese Civil War. He was pursued by the British but they were unable to get him, as he was sheltered by the United States for political reasons when he resurfaced in Japan in 1947. He was cleared of any war crimes in 1950 and later became one of Japan's most prominent post-war parliamentarians. In 1961, Tsuji disappeared mysteriously in Indochina and was officially declared dead in 1968.

^{Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kempeitai_East_District_Branch (Date accessed : 11/02/2013 )}