TOKYO, July 26 (UPI) -- Recently discovered documents indicate that the Imperial Japanese Army tested cyanide gas on Australian and Dutch East Indies prisoners of war in 1944.
The Kyodo News Service reported Monday that Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a professor at Chuo University, discovered the document in the Australian national archives at Canberra.
Historians say the Japanese army had planned to use cyanide gas as a lethal weapon against the Allies during World War II.
Yoshimi said it is the first piece of evidence to detail Japan's experiments on Australian POWs.
The document says a lieutenant in charge of poison gas in November 1944 threw bottles of cyanide gas intended for antitank warfare on two POWs to see if the gas made four years earlier, was still effective. After the POWs collapsed military police stabbed them to death with bayonets, the document said.
After the war, the lieutenant and a lieutenant colonel were sentenced to death by a military tribunal, the document said.
