JAPANESE POLICE
ARE ACCUSED OF
TORTURING BRITONS
By Associated Press.
SHANGHAI, Monday, Nov. 2.—
Details of the "fingernail torture"
of three British sailors by Japanese police were disclosed today by
officials of the British Asiatic naval
headquarters here.
The officials said a fountain
pen was jammed under the fingernails of one sailor and then
ink was forced into the wounds to make him sign a "confession" sought by the Japanese.
The incident, which caused Vice
Admiral Sir Charles Little, commanding the British Far East
Naval Forces, to postpone a visit
to Japan, occurred at Keelung, Formosa, October 7.
Lieutenant Reported Insulted
According to British naval officers, three seamen from British
naval craft, then stationed at Keelung, were arrested by Japanese
police, accused of nonpayment of
taxicab fare.
Upon protesting, British officers
here said, the three sailors were
pinned down by four Japanese police and beaten in the face by
additional Japanese plain clothes-
men to "persuade" them to sign a
confession of their refusal to pay
the taxicab fare and also of resisting the police.
At the height of the assault, British officials said, Lieut. T. C. Pack-
ersford, of His Majesty's Ship
Bruce, arrived on the scene and requested that the sailors be released.
In the course of the argument,
it was asserted, the Japanese said
to Lieutenant Packersford:
"You say you're a British officer. We say you're not. You're
nothing but a drunken sot. Get out of here!"
The Japanese threatened Lieutenant Packersford with imprisonment if he did not depart, officers
here said, and after he left, the
Japanese assertedly resumed the assaults on the three seamen and disclocated the jaw of one of them.
British naval authorities announced they possessed indisputable proof that the sailors had paid their taxi fare.