mackay's betrayal: solving the mystery of the 'sado island prisoner

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* We wish to thank the following: José M. da Costa, Sally Godwin, MichioHayashi, Teizo- Hirose, Masahiro Kawai, Arthur Lane, Rod Miller, Honkyo Saito, DavidSissons, Ian Smith, Albert Speer, Dr. Michael Steiner, John Symons, Dr. SpencerTucker, Toshihide Uemura, and Patricia Wadley. Without their help, this article wouldnot have been possible.

The Journal of Military History 71 (April 2007): 000–00 © Society for Military History

Gregory Hadley is a Professor of English and American Cultural Studies atNiigata University of International and Information Studies, Japan. His latestbook, Field of Spears (Sheffield, U.K.: Paulownia Press, 2007), documents theoral histories of both Japanese villagers and American B-29 crewmen who sur-vived the downing of their plane near Niigata City in 1945.

James Oglethorpe is an Industrial Engineer with an interest in World War II his-torical research. He is a Member of the Royal United Service Institution of NewSouth Wales, Australia.

MacKay’s Betrayal: Solving the Mystery of the “Sado Island Prisoner-of-War Massacre”

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Gregory Hadley and James Oglethorpe*

Abstract

Betrayal in High Places, a book written in 1996 by the late JamesMacKay, has created debate among World War II historians and for-mer prisoners of war (POWs) because it claims to reveal sup-pressed Allied reports of Japanese war atrocities, such as themassacre of 387 American, Australian, British, and Dutch POWs ina gold mine at Aikawa on Sado Island, Japan, in 1945. Our investi-gation finds that the Sado massacre report is an intentional forgery,and that MacKay’s book is a spurious historical source. We explainwhy he sought to deceive the public and contrast his fiction with thehistorical truth about Sado Island.

IN his book Betrayal in High Places, published in 1996, New Zealandauthor 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 assertedthat these files had been preserved by the late Captain James Gowing

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Godwin, a New Zealander and former POW who had been attached tothe Second Australian War Crimes Section (2AWCS) in Tokyo from 1947to 1950. MacKay said that Godwin had been compiling a book basedupon these reports when his health began to deteriorate, and thatMacKay had taken over this task just before Godwin’s death in 1995.1

The most sensational of the reports in Betrayal in High Places, “File125M,” provides startling detail of an alleged postwar Japanese andAmerican conspiracy to cover up the massacre of 387 American, Aus-tralian, British, and Dutch POWs in the mines of Aikawa on Sado Island,Japan, on 2 August 1945.2 It supposedly records the interrogation, byGodwin in 1949, of a former officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, Lieu-tenant Yoshiro Tsuda, second-in-command of the POW camp at thattime.3

Reproduced opposite is Tsuda’s alleged testimony, as published byMacKay in a book-review pamphlet in 1998.4 MacKay claimed that thesephotostats showed the “original” File 125M; this version is slightly longerthan the 125M transcript in Betrayal in High Places.

In the eleven years since MacKay first published it, File 125M hasreceived ongoing international exposure. Although Betrayal in HighPlaces 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 tobecome Sado City. For the sake of clarity, however, we will refer to present-day SadoCity as Aikawa, which is the closest village to the gold mines on Sado, and the place-name 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.

Fig. 1—Sado Island and Niigata Prefecture, Japan.

GREGORY HADLEY & JAMES OGLETHORPE

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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


the People’s Republic of China. Apparently hundreds of thousands of peo-ple have viewed File 125M on the numerous Internet websites that havefeatured it. File 125M has also been presented as historical fact in a num-ber of recent books dealing with military history, such as Sterling Sea-grave and Peggy Seagrave’s Gold Warriors,5 Lynette Ramsey Silver’s TheBridge at Parit Sulong,6 and He’s Not Coming Home by Gillian Nikakis.7

5. Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave, Gold Warriors: America’s SecretRecovery of Yamashita’s Gold (New York: Verso, 2003), 62.

6. Lynette Ramsey Silver, The Bridge at Parit Sulong (Sydney, Australia: Water-mark Press, 2004), 348.

7. Gillian Nikakis, He’s Not Coming Home (Melbourne, Australia: Thomas C.Lothian Pty., 2005), 216.

Figure 2(c) —MacKay’s photostat of File 125M, Page 3

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To date, the Sado Island massacre story has found a largely receptiveaudience. Given the harsh treatment suffered by Allied POWs in Japanduring World War II, it was easy for MacKay’s readers to believe thatPOWs would be sent to the mines in Aikawa, just as they had been forcedto work in mines in other parts of Japan. The publication of File 125Mhas caused many people, especially the relatives of missing servicemen,to wonder whether the skeletons of hundreds of Allied POWs might stillbe entombed deep within Aikawa’s “gold mountain.”

As we will show in this article, however, Betrayal in High Places isreplete with exaggerations and outright lies. We have strong evidencethat File 125M is a cynical hoax created by James MacKay, and that itdoes not reflect any aspect of the real history of Sado Island during theSecond World War.

Historical Inaccuracies of Betrayal in High Places

In describing “James Godwin’s major contribution” to Betrayal inHigh Places, MacKay wrote that Godwin was

a born archivist and set down on paper his own first-handaccounts of impressions and honest opinion in comment andinteresting summaries. . . . Consequently Godwin’s personal sum-mations are quoted intact to capture the moment and circum-stances of this truly unique part of history.

. . . Fortunately for these chronicles, not only were his offi-cial weekly reports [1947–50] dated in faithful sequence, but alsohis on-the-spot private writings. Therefore to correlate sequencedevents with official reports providing ready reference, one to theother, each activity summation—in Godwin’s private capacity—isdated to coincide and precede the official investigation reports atthe conclusion of this book.8

Our research turned up several key documents highlighting theextensive inaccuracies in the text of Betrayal in High Places:

1. From the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, a memoir writtenin 1998 by the late Beverley Durrant (née Floyd),9 who was onthe clerical staff of the 2AWCS, and who typed many of JamesGodwin’s original reports.

2. A typed transcript of James Godwin’s original POW diary thatwas submitted to the New Zealand authorities in 1946, currentlyheld 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 WarMemorial, Canberra, Australia.



copies of several of Godwin’s original war crimes investigativereports in Tokyo.10 MacKay based his book upon this same mate-rial.

3. The originals of all of James Godwin’s official “Weekly Investiga-tion Reports” covering his activities at 2AWCS in Tokyo, August1947 to January 1950, currently held by the National Archivesof Australia.11

The Durrant Memoir

Beverley Durrant had no knowledge of Godwin’s original diary. Shecommented only on what she read in Betrayal in High Places. Herremarks about the book were generally scathing, and she concluded: “toaccept the veracities of these diaries as the literal truth is doubtful.There appears to be a large element of self-aggrandisement.”12 (HereDurrant referred to the diaries that MacKay claimed had been written byGodwin while he was in the 2AWCS.) With clerical efficiency, Durrantnoted numerous errors and outright lies in Betrayal in High Places. Themost significant of these that we have been able to verify are as follows:

1. Major Rafferty, a central figure in Betrayal in High Places, neverexisted. Rafferty was alleged to have interacted with Godwin inTokyo on many occasions and to have shown him where classi-fied war crimes reports were being held. Durrant wrote thatthere was no record of a Major Rafferty in the National Archivesof Australia, and that neither she nor other members of the2AWCS met a Major Rafferty. We confirmed the fact that no Aus-tralian with the surname of Rafferty served as a major in WorldWar II.13 We also contacted the relatives of the highest-rankingRaffertys (who were captains during World War II) to confirmthat neither was promoted after the war nor transferred toTokyo.

2. In Betrayal in High Places, MacKay portrayed Godwin as “one ofthe best linguists and interpreters within the War Crimes Inves-tigation 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, File336/1/1965 (Part 4), Series MP742/1, National Archives of Australia, Melbourne, Aus-tralia.

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).

MacKay’s Betrayal

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Powers].”14 However, Durrant maintained that Godwin wasunable to speak Japanese.15 Durrant also reproduced a letterfrom Captain F. M. Wilson, an interrogator who served with God-win in 2AWCS, who stated that,

The suggestion that Jim Godwin spoke fluent Japanese andeven read it (good grief!) is complete hogwash . . . to my cer-tain knowledge he never at any time spoke any at all, apartfrom phrases everyone picked up like ‘sayonara’ or ‘konnichiwa’. . . . My desk was next to Godwin’s, so I should know!

Godwin’s widow in Sydney also verified that her husband couldnot speak fluent Japanese.16

3. Godwin was not an “Intelligence Officer” with the 2AWCS, asMacKay claimed. He was an Investigating Officer from the NewZealand 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 HighPlaces as one of the three main command buildings of the Occu-pation Powers in Tokyo,17 is fictitious. (Suspiciously, there was abuilding of that name in Singapore.)

5. Durrant did not specifically mention File 125M in her critique ofBetrayal in High Places. (In fact, she made no comment on thetechnical accuracy of any of the war crime reports printed in thebook. Her extensive criticisms all stemmed from her own per-sonal experience of 2AWCS and of life in general in Japan at thattime.) However, she stated that all of the documents in Chapter10 of Betrayal in High Places were “unclassified,” which contra-dicts MacKay’s assertion that these documents were “highly clas-sified.” Durrant maintained that neither Godwin nor any of theother officers who interrogated prisoners handled “highly classi-fied” documents. Testimony to support Durrant’s claim was pro-vided by Captain Wilson: “I never handled, or even saw any‘highly classified’ documents, and can think of no reason whyGodwin should have. The only documents we handled as inter-rogation officers were our own routine reports of our ongoinginvestigations.”18

We discovered many other historical inconsistencies throughoutBetrayal in High Places. For example, in a diary entry dated 27 January1950, Godwin is purported to have written that the massacres of POWs

14. MacKay, Betrayal, 93.15. Durrant, “Australian War Crimes Trials,” 138. 16. Sally Godwin, Letter to James Oglethorpe, 5 November 2004.17. MacKay, Betrayal, 90.18. Durrant, “Australian War Crimes Trials,” 138.



at Sandakan (Borneo) and Aikawa on Sado Island had been kept classi-fied, and that the perpetrators of the Sandakan massacre were “still atlarge.”19 In fact, the appalling Sandakan massacre of 2,400 British andAustralian POWs had been fully investigated in 1946. Eight Japaneseperpetrators had been executed for this atrocity and fifty-five othersimprisoned.20 It is highly unlikely that Captain Godwin would have beenunaware of these events, especially since he was personally involved inthe investigation of war crimes against Australian service personnel inSoutheast Asia. It was only after we carefully studied Godwin’s originalPOW diary that we discovered that the responsibility for these puzzlingerrors 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 eigh-teen pages long. It was retyped by Godwin shortly after the war, and sub-mitted to Allied war crimes investigators. Three additional pages, inGodwin’s handwriting, appear to be evidence of an abortive attempt toresume his memoirs, some time after the original transcript was typed.

Godwin’s diary dealt with only the first few months of his captivityin 1944. Nothing was written about the further fourteen months of hisimprisonment, during which time he was eventually transferred toOmori Camp, Tokyo Bay, and Niigata Camp 15B, where he worked as aforced laborer.21 Ironically, from the Niigata docks, Godwin would havebeen able to view the snowcapped peaks of Sado Island, without anyinkling that his name would become famously linked with that placesixty years later.

Godwin’s family assured us that he had not written any other mem-oirs about his time as a POW. Godwin testified to this fact in a policereport 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 ofWarrant Officer William Hector Sticpewich at the 1946 Tokyo War Crimes Trial con-cerning the Sandakan Massacre can be found under the ID Numbers P02289.001 andP02289.002, 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 (Welling-ton, 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 the1st March until the 6th September I was in Camp 15D inNiigata. I was released from this Camp. The notes submitted tothe Army authorities by me were notes kept by me during thefirst three months of my confinement . . . I have no personalnotes of my observations in these camps. The ones I have sub-mitted had to be kept secretly during my confinement.22

In Betrayal in High Places, MacKay takes eighty pages to deal withthe first few months of Godwin’s captivity (the period covered by thediary). The remaining fourteen months of Godwin’s captivity are theninaccurately described in just a few paragraphs. We are sure that if God-win had written much of the manuscript for Betrayal in High Places, asMacKay stated, there would not have been such a discrepancy.

Later in Betrayal in High Places, MacKay wrote over 130 pagesabout Godwin’s time in Tokyo as a war crimes investigator, includingmany breathtaking “hearsay” accusations against the Japanese RoyalFamily and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Com-mander for the Allied Powers. MacKay presents all of this material ashaving originated with Godwin, yet the Godwin family papers containabsolutely no diary records covering the three years that Godwin workedin the 2AWCS in Tokyo. The only papers from this period are Godwin’sown carbon copies of the official weekly investigation summaries that hecompiled, 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 toMacKay. It is obvious that MacKay manufactured vast sections ofBetrayal in High Places from his own imagination. Even when MacKaydid present material from Godwin’s actual POW diary and war crimesreports, he dramatized and distorted it to the point of making Godwin’swords his own, injecting them with the venom of his own malice. Typi-cal 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 offormat between the genuine reports and the photostats of File 125M repro-duced in MacKay’s book-review pamphlet of December 1998. In particu-

22. 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 GodwinPapers.

23. Sally Godwin, Letter to James Oglethorpe, 5 November 2004.



I travelled up on train in shortsand shirt, no shoes. We were verythirsty on train, nothing to drinkfor over 15 hours. We were givensome biscuits (dry) to eat andsome left overs of tinned fish andmeat (very salty) on train. It wasdamned embarrassing to bepushed around on train and sta-tion, to be led at lengths of ropescarrying those Nip’s luggage etc.

We soon got over it and ignoredthe Japanese civilians—what amouldy, dirty, poverty-strickenlooking bunch of people I haveever seen. The sight of such crea-tures in normal times I am certainwould have made me vomit. Theguards were not over-kind in theirtreatment on train especiallywhen they found the populacewere enjoying.

Once aboard a waiting train and at 2300 hours,they commenced a journey to Ofuna, a centrenear Tokyo. Wearing thin tropical clothing andaccustomed to the heat of the tropics, the prison-ers felt the cool night air as being akin to beingquite cold.

Thirst as ever afflicted them all. Repeated pleas tostony-faced guards for water was a sheer waste oftime, however, and after fifteen hours, the thirst-ing prisoners were given some dry biscuits to eatand some leftovers of very salty tinned fish. It wasdamned embarrassing to be led through thestreets of Kobe with ropes around our necks andhandcuffed, Godwin wrote.

Hundreds of impassive slant-eyed Japanesestared at us as though we had come from anotherplanet. A few spat on us or threw stones. If it wasan expression of hate it was hard to tell. Theirfeatures remained inscrutable. To many of us thedensely crowded streets and the alien environ-ment, created the impression in our minds that itwas we who were on another planet.

A lasting impression shared by all the prisonerswas the sheer density of people and to the pointof being as prolific as ants. For the small size ofthe country it seemed over-populated. Could thispartly be the reason for Japan’s war of expansionwe wondered between ourselves? At least itexplained Japan’s ability to pour millions of sol-diers into its war of aggression and with the obvi-ous capacity to treble its Armed Forces from sucha vast human resource. This thought was chilling.Godwin summarised in his diary though he did intypical fashion, add his impressions of the popu-lation in general and as follows:“What a mouldy, dirty, poverty-stricken lookingbunch they appeared. If their Armed Forces werereasonably well-fed, the civilians didn’t look it.Small of stature and thin, they looked somewhatpitiful in their mended rags. How could the Westfear such pitiful creatures? Even in my weakenedstate I could have mixed it with six of them inunarmed combat.”

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


lar, the typeface used for File 125M is not the same as that used in origi-nal 2AWCS documents preserved in the National Archives of Australia.

The differences in typeface are particularly clear when comparingnumbers and dates, but another telling fact is that the alignment of char-acters in the genuine weekly report is slightly uneven due to the manualtypewriter, whereas MacKay’s photostat shows the neater alignment ofletters that is characteristic of an electric typewriter.

There are many formatting differences. Note in particular the for-matting of the typist’s initials at the top left-hand corner. The genuineTokyo document shows a standard format: “JGG/bej,” which denotes theauthor (J. G. Godwin) and the typist (Sergeant B. E. Jackson). In com-parison, MacKay’s “JGG:BMP” is not in the standard Australian Armyformat, and does not refer to the initials of any typist who actuallyworked with 2AWCS in Tokyo.

Also, as shown in Fig. 5, the typeface of MacKay’s File 125M matchesthat of an editorial comment that MacKay made with his own typewriter

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



in his book-review pamphlet immediately below the photostat of File125M.

Finally, comparing the photostat signature with the Godwin signa-ture from the National Archives of Australia, we could clearly see severaldiscrepancies.

Careful scrutiny of the 125M photostat strongly suggests that themanuscript signature, the dotted line, and the name “J. G. Godwin” haveseemingly been cut from an original Godwin report and then pasted ontoa freshly typed document. The name “J. G. Godwin” is typed in a differ-ent font from the rest of the document, and has been trimmed at the bot-tom. The dotted line is misaligned with “(Capt)” and rumpled, and thesignature obscures part of the letter “I” typed below it. (Manual “cut andpaste” was the method used by MacKay to compile his book-review pam-phlets, which were then reproduced by photocopying.)

We can conclude that MacKay created File 125M on his own type-writer and then pasted in Godwin’s signature.

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)

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The full text of Godwin’s genuine weekly report for the week ending16 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 Aus-tralian POWs in Burma, and the massacre of Australian POWs at ParitSulong, Malaya.

Why the Deception?

In the preface to Betrayal in High Places, MacKay stated that hisearlier book, The Allied-Japanese Conspiracy, had been criticized for its(unsubstantiated) claims that the U.S. government conspired with theJapanese to cover up war atrocities. Then MacKay wrote:

quite astonishingly . . . further material came into my possession that Ican only describe as incredible. It supports all the allegations and ref-erences identified in the first published book, and removes beyonddoubt the suggestion of conjecture and hypothesis.25

MacKay’s motivation is thus clear. Betrayal in High Places providedthe “evidence” needed to support MacKay’s own political views on whathe believed to be the injustice of Article 14 of the 1951 San FranciscoPeace Treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers (which disallowedAllied ex-POWs from claiming damages from the Japanese) and toindulge his perception that the United States was too lenient towardsthose accused of war crimes.26

MacKay died in March 2004 before we could confront him with ourfindings, and unfortunately his daughter destroyed most of his papersvery soon after his death. However, the MacKay family granted us accessto what remained of MacKay’s papers. These revealed that in 1996MacKay had been appointed to an advisory position by an American spe-cial interest group that had been lobbying Congress to obtain compen-sation for former prisoners of the Japanese. We also obtained furthercopies of letters entrusted by MacKay to the Australian historian AlbertSpeer, including MacKay’s correspondence with the Japanese Ambas-sador to New Zealand, publishers in Taiwan, and political figures in NewZealand. These showed that MacKay frequently mentioned File 125M asproof that Japan had been let off lightly by the American government,

24. Godwin’s original (unclassified) weekly investigation reports dating from 15August 1947 through 22 January 1950, Item 393090, File 336/1/1965 (Part 4), SeriesMP742/1, 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 hadexperienced during their captivity in Japanese labor camps.

Besides perceiving Article 14 as unfair, many ex-POWs stronglybelieve that all Allied POWs in Japan were scheduled to be executed ifthe Japanese mainland was invaded. Based upon the brutality of theJapanese military at the time, such an act is certainly believable. How-ever, no direct evidence of this plan has ever surfaced, with the excep-tion of a 1944 memo discovered in Taiwan, asking for clarification on themethods for executing large numbers of prisoners.27 Notwithstandingthis, File 125M specifically asserts that such an “Imperial Army Exter-mination Order” existed. MacKay’s intention appears to have been toprovide some “historical evidence” to bear on this modern-day politicalargument. His personal papers showed that he passed copies of Betrayalin High Places, with special emphasis on the Sado Island “Massacre,” tolobbyists in the United States, including Members of Congress (seeAppendix 2).

MacKay himself did not fight in the Second World War alongside hiscontemporaries. However, near the end of his life, he was basking in thepraise of ex-POWs. Even the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Robert Mul-doon, saw MacKay as championing their cause.28 MacKay wrote whatmany wanted to hear. Given the existence of so many other true cases ofJapanese war atrocities, no one thought it necessary to question hisclaims about Sado Island until eight years after his book had been pub-lished.

Damage Caused by MacKay’s Betrayal

We personally know of numerous researchers around the world whohave dedicated significant time to investigating the mystery of the SadoIsland massacre. The effort and resources applied by these researchers—purchasing materials, searching through archives, traveling to SadoIsland, and alarming the local residents of Aikawa—could have been bet-ter spent elsewhere.

The suffering of those who were prisoners of the Japanese deservesfar greater public recognition, but not through deception such as thatpracticed by MacKay. Memoirs written by ex-POWs who survived theirordeal in Japan, as well as our own interviews with former Japanesecamp 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.

MacKay’s Betrayal


vicious cruelty to criminal neglect in Japanese POW camps.29 MacKay’sbook muddies the waters for serious historians studying Japan’s wartimepast. Sadly, File 125M serves as a rotting plank for those who wish to seemore recognition of the atrocities committed by the former JapaneseEmpire.

James Godwin’s reputation has also suffered. Beverley Durrant wasnot the only person who blamed Godwin for the lies written by MacKay.In later years, other writers and historians have blamed Godwin for will-fully manipulating war-crimes affidavits in order to secure the execution(in 1951) of Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura for the massacre ofAustralian POWs at Parit Sulong in Malaya in 1942.30 This accusation orig-inated with Ian Ward’s influential 1996 book on this subject, Snaring theOther Tiger.31 However, it is now clear to us that Ward depended on doc-umentation provided by James MacKay. The Godwin papers and “diaryentries” 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 isimportant to outline what really happened on Sado Island during theSecond World War. Below are several facts uncovered during the courseof our research.

Fact: A Forced Labor Camp, But No Allied POWs

In the MacKay forgery, Allied POWs were alleged to have worked atan undeclared forced labor camp. In fact, a forced labor camp did existat Aikawa in the closing stages of World War II, but it utilized Koreanlaborers who had previously been contracted employees of the mine.

When the Mitsubishi Mining Company took control of the Aikawagold mines in 1918, Korean laborers were offered employment on SadoIsland to supplement Mitsubishi’s Japanese workforce. Not until 1944,

29. Kenneth Cambon, Guest of Hirohito (Vancouver: PW Press, 1990); HowardChittenden, 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, SanjoCity, Japan, 8 November 2003); interview with Douglas Idlett by Gregory Hadley (MDRecording, Herndon, Va., 25 March 2004).

30. Watt, “Godwin, James Gowing 1923–1995.” See also W. Barton, “NZ Hero’sMotives 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).



when Mitsubishi Mining was required to dedicate all of the copper ore itproduced to the war effort, did the Aikawa mines truly become a forcedlabor camp. Security was increased to prevent the Koreans from escap-ing, work contracts were summarily annulled, and the pay of the Koreanlaborers was drastically reduced. At the end of the war, about 580 Koreanlaborers at Aikawa were repatriated.33

This situation was common knowledge among local historians andsenior citizens on Sado Island. However, Mitsubishi repeatedly deniedrunning a forced labor camp until 1991, when secret company docu-ments that contained information about cigarette rations to Koreanlaborers were leaked to the public.34 For a short time, these documents,which were part of an unpublished manuscript written by a retired engi-neer from Mitsubishi Mining, were available for public reading at theNiigata Prefectural Library. However, they have now been placed in asection reserved for classified materials far away from the prying eyes ofresearchers.35

In over two years of research, we have encountered only one pub-lished Japanese account asserting that there were “Prisoners of War” onSado Island. Ki-Ichi Toya recorded his wife’s memory of prisoners, joinedby ropes, loading coal at a power station on the Aikawa waterfront.36

However, it is unlikely that this refers to Europeans. During the war, theJapanese word horyo, which later became associated with CaucasianPOWs, 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 POWsfrom Chinese and Korean slave laborers.

Toya’s account does not clarify whether the “POWs” in his wife’smemory were Caucasian or Asian. The restraint of the prisoners byropes certainly suggests that they were Korean slave laborers, since theKoreans had a history of escaping, hiding among the Sado population,and trying to get back to Korea by fishing boat. In comparison, Cau-casian POWs in Japan had nowhere to hide. None of the former NiigataPOWs that we have interviewed have ever reported being roped togetherwhile working on the docks.

33. Teizo- Hirose, “Sado Kinsan to Chosenjin Ro- do-sha (1939–1945)” [Sado’sGold Mountain and Korean Laborers (1939–1945)], Niigata University of Interna-tional and Information Studies Research Reports 3 (2000): 1–12.

34. Angus Waycott, Sado: Japan’s Island in Exile (Berkeley, Calif.: Stone BridgePress, 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.

MacKay’s Betrayal


Further confirmation that there were no Europeans on Sado Islandcomes from Robert Groh, a retired New York State Supreme Court Jus-tice. He was one of the first American war crimes investigators stationedin Niigata in late 1945. Groh and his team scoured Niigata Prefecture forPOW camps. He stated that his investigative team never came across anyevidence of Allied POWs on Sado Island, although it was plentiful for theother camps in Niigata Prefecture.37

We also contacted a respected local historian in Aikawa, HonkyoSaito. Mr. Saito has devoted himself to the study and preservation ofAikawa’s mining heritage.38 On our behalf he spoke discreetly withelderly residents in Aikawa to find out if they had heard of Allied POWsworking in the mines. He reported that nobody recalled Caucasians everbeing in Aikawa during the war.39 Equally revealing is the testimony ofMichio Hayashi, a Buddhist priest living near Aikawa. He has devotedmany years to creating a local action group that promotes dialogbetween former Korean slave laborers and the residents of Aikawa. In1998, an American teacher of English gave him a copy of Betrayal inHigh Places. Disturbed and concerned for the repose of the spirits ofdead POWs in the mines, he spoke to numerous former Korean slavelaborers and residents of Aikawa to discover if any remembered seeingCaucasian POWs in the mines, but again, neither Koreans nor Japaneseresidents of Aikawa ever remembered seeing POWs at any time on Sadoduring the war.40

We believe that the lack of any local memory of Allied POWs is quitesignificant, since the presence (and subsequent disappearance) of a largenumber of foreigners would definitely have caused a huge stir in such aremote place. As well, there will always be some evidence left behindwherever a POW camp existed, be it a postcard, an individual POW whohad been transferred out of the camp (a common occurrence by the endof the war), or documents (as with the Koreans’ cigarette rations). In thecase of Aikawa, however, no such evidence has ever been discovered.

Niigata academic Teizo- Hirose has added several further interestingfacts. Mr. Hirose has intensively studied the historical documents relatedto forced laborers at Aikawa, but has not found any mention of AlliedPOWs being sent there. Nor had he heard of File 125M until approachedby 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 inthe Early Meiji Era,” http://www.e-convention.org/imhc/papers/Saito_e.pdf (accessed27 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.



of the Aikawa mines. None has ever mentioned seeing Allied POWs inthe mines.41

Hirose also told us that several volumes of documents pertaining toforced laborers and POWs have recently been quietly declassified by theJapanese government. These were compiled by the department that allo-cated forced labor within the highly bureaucratized central governmentof Imperial Japan. Hirose observes that, according to these documents,the most difficult and dangerous forms of labor were assigned to Koreanand Chinese workers, who, as subjects of the Japanese Empire, wereconsidered expendable. Allied POWs performed comparatively less fatalforms of labor, such as coal mining, dock work, or factory labor. AlthoughAllied POWs were sent to the major urban centers of Niigata Prefecture,where there was a shortage of semiskilled labor, the documents showthat Koreans were used to perform the most dangerous tasks in themines of Aikawa.42

File 125M states that Allied POWs were at Aikawa in 1942. Such adate could technically have been possible, since 300 Australian POWswere sent to a half-constructed camp in Naoetsu of Central Niigata Pre-fecture on 10 December 1942.43 Forced labor did not begin until later in1943, which coincides with the time that both ex-POWs and Japanesehistorians remember the first major influx of British, Dutch, American,and Australian POWs to Niigata Prefecture.44 The majority of these POWswere assigned to Niigata City in September 1943, where they worked ondocks hauling coal and cargo, or in small factories making machine partsfor engines. They were sent in response to a request a year earlier fromshipping and manufacturing companies for additional laborers to replaceJapanese workers who had been sent abroad to fight the war.45 Hirosewrites that over 600 Korean laborers and 700 Japanese workers werealready in the Aikawa mines by 1943. In our interview, he concluded thatit would have been impractical to send Allied POWs to remote, sparselypopulated Aikawa, when they could be more easily managed in an urbancenter such as Niigata City. Other local historians, such as ToshihideUemura and Akira Fujitsuka, agree that POWs were sent to Niigata Cityrather 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 Chosen-jin Ro-do-sha,” 10; interview with Hirose.

MacKay’s Betrayal


Fact: MacKay’s Depiction of the Mine Is Incorrect

MacKay’s story described the mine as sloping into the side of themountain, but since 1875 the Aikawa mine has had a vertical shaft withconventional 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 themine and reported that it was still operating, directly contradictingMacKay’s story that the mine had been destroyed the previous year.48

The first author has also visited the mine, and has confirmed that thesite 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 hadbecome unproductive by August 1945, but it actually remained in pro-duction until 1989. Little gold was produced during World War II, whenproduction 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 evidenceof the buried POWs on distant Sado Island. He was unaware that, in addi-tion to the specialist U.S. team that inspected the mine, more than 7,000U.S. troops were stationed in Niigata Prefecture after the war.49 An Amer-ican radar base with about 50 military personnel for monitoring NorthKorean and Russian aircraft was established within a mile of the mine inOctober 1948.50 Older residents of Aikawa clearly remember the arrivalof these Caucasians, as U.S. military personnel maintained bases nearAikawa for almost twenty years before turning them over to the Japan-ese 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, MajorMasami Sadakichi, and second-in-command, Lieutenant Yoshiro Tsuda.MacKay has Lieutenant Tsuda explain that the officers of the camp hadbeen officially listed as “killed” or “missing-in-action” in order to aidtheir 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 asa 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 October1945], in Niigata Prefectural Library, Niigata City, Japan.



archives. However, when the historian Albert Speer requested a searchfor material pertaining to the names Masami Sadakichi or Yoshiro Tsudaat the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo, he was told thatthere was no military record on file for either of these names.51

MacKay wrote that Yoshiro Tsuda was being held in Sugamo Prisonin 1949, but our exhaustive search of the Sugamo Prison recordsrevealed that no such person had ever been held there by the Occupa-tion forces.52 In addition, public records show that the person in chargeof Mitsubishi Mining from 20 June 1945 until 23 June 1948 was a civil-ian named Masahiro Ogata.53

Conclusion

We may never know why MacKay chose Aikawa as the setting of hisstory. Possibly he came across some reference to prisoners workingthere in the past, since the history of the Aikawa gold mine goes back tothe early 1600s. Japanese convicts had definitely been used to pumpwater there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and 1,800died.54 Perhaps MacKay heard about the new evidence that had surfacedin Aikawa in 1991 about the Korean forced labor camp near the mines.

Regardless of these questions, the mystery of whether Allied POWswere massacred at Sado Island has now been solved: there were no AlliedPOWs on the island during the Second World War, and no massacre tookplace in the mines of Aikawa. While there was a forced labor camp atAikawa, it was populated by Korean slave laborers, who never sighted anAllied POW and who largely survived the war.

James MacKay’s Betrayal in High Places can now be seen to be acompletely unreliable historical source. The story of the Sado Islandmassacre, the showpiece allegation of Betrayal in High Places, is a hate-ful fantasy that MacKay created on his own typewriter. Through his dis-honest actions, motivated by egotistical and political goals, JamesMacKay has slandered the residents of Sado Island, besmirched thememory of Captain James Godwin, and created a damaging distractionfor historians who seek to reveal the true experiences, and the largelyunrecognized sacrifices, of POWs in the Second World War.

50. Aikawa History Compilation Committee, Sado Aikawa no Rekishi Tsushi-hen Kin Gendai [Complete History of Aikawa, Sado—Modern and ContemporaryPeriods] (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 Tsushi-

hen Kin Gendai, 875. 54. Waycott, Sado, 79.

MacKay’s Betrayal


APPENDIX 1Authentic Godwin report showing his actual activity

in the week ending 16 December 1949

24 ★

APPENDIX 2Endorsement of James MacKay by Congressman Robert Dornan.

(MacKay private papers)

mackay's betrayal: solving the mystery of the 'sado island prisoner

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