During the Second World War, there were a huge amount of war crimes carried out by the
different armies involved in the conflict.
Some of the most brutal atrocities were conducted by the Japanese Army, and they utilised horrific
torture methods to try and get information from their captives.
Often many who they captured including Allied Airmen were executed in brutal scenes, with
many being executed by sword in front of huge crowds.
But there was one man who during the Second World War underwent a horrific ordeal of torture
as a Prisoner of War, and whilst working on the Burma Railway in forced labour conditions,
he was crucified for 63 hours straight by the Japanese.
This brutal torture could easily have killed Ringer Edwards, but he lived to tell the story
of his horror.
Join us today as we look at ‘The BRUTAL crucifixion of World War 2,’ remember to
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Herbert James Ringer Edwards was born in Fremantle in Western Australia in 1913, and he spent
much of his early life working in the outback on different races.
He gained the nickname Ringer as this was a nickname for a stockman who worked on cattle
stations, and he was considered good at his job.
But on the 3rd September 1939, Australian Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies announced
that the country would become involved in the Second World War, following suit after
Britain, but as the war continued the majority of the Japanese war effort shifted to defeating
not the Nazis, but the Japanese.
The Japanese were considered the big enemies and threats to Australia in the Pacific theatre,
and a large number of Australian POWs would be captured by the Japanese.
Ringer Edwards signed up to join the war effort at Cairns in Queensland in January 1941, and
he was immediately sent to training before being sent to the 26th Infantry Battalion.
These then formed the 27th Brigade and were assigned to the 8th Division.
But as tensions increased between Australia and Japan and the chance of a state of war
between the two countries existing, Ringer’s division was sent to be based in Singapore
in late 1941.
They were sent to garrison and protect this area, and then the group took the fight to
the Japanese in the Malayan campaign and also the Battle of Singpore.
However, the Japanese would spectacularly take Singapore forcing the British and the
defenders to surrender.
With the surrender offer that was made, 80,000 British, Indian, Australian and local forces
became prisoners of war and many of those who were kept in terrible conditions would
die from abuse, neglect or being worked to death.
The fall of Singapore was referred by Winston Churchill as the worst disaster in British
Military History, and it damaged the British reputation briefly during the conflict.
It also made the Japanese seem a very feared enemy, and Singapore was seen of great importance
for the British as a military base to attack in the Pacific.
Ringer Edwards was one of those who was taken as a prisoner of war, and he was then sent
to go and work on the railway that was being constructed by the Japanese Army from Thailand
to Burma.
The Burma Railway was also known as the Death Railway, as the conditions that the prisoners
were kept in were extremely shocking and barbaric.
Alongside 60,000 Allied Prisoners of war who worked on it, up to 250,000 civilian workers
were forced to create the railway.
Because of the harsh conditions around 90,000 civilian labourers died and 12,000 allied
POWs were killed.
The prisoners of war found themselves at the bottom of the system of workers there, and
the living conditions and also working conditions were tragic.
There was a huge degree of poor treatment, sickness, starvation and disease.
Life in the Prisoners of War camp was horrific, and out of all the Australian POWs who worked
on the railway, 22% would be killed.
Many prisoners were poorly fed and the cast a shadow of their former selves, and also
there was horrific slaughter and torture used on prisoners who would not work.
A number of workers would be executed if they could not work hard enough, but if they also
committed other crimes they would be subject to terrible ordeals.
In 1943, along with two other prisoners, Ringer Edwards whilst working on the Burma Railway
killed some cattle.
They were desperate and did this to provide food for themselves and also for other prisoners
as conditions were so dire with relation to food.
But after killing the animals, they were caught by the Japanese soldiers and were actually
sentenced to death for this.
They were planned to be executed, and the method of execution used was one of history’s
most brutal and most infamous.
Ringer Edwards had been sentenced to death to be crucified.
In Japan, crucifixion had been used for a while in the country as a method of execution.
One account of execution inside the country states, ‘Execution by crucifixion included
first of all being paraded about town on horseback, then the unfortunate was tied to a cross made
from one vertical and two horizontal poles.
The cross was raised, the convict speared several times from two sides and eventually
killed with a thrust through the throat.
The corpse was left on the cross for three days.
However, Ringer Edwards despite being crucified would not be killed.
Crucifixion was used by the Japanese military as a form of punishment against POWs, and
after his sentence, Edwards was along with the others bound at the wrists with fencing
wire.
They were then taken to a group of trees, and were suspended from a tree.
Whilst in the air by the wrists with the wire through them they were beaten badly by soldiers
armed with baseball bats.
The men were then tied up to the tree and crucified, but Edwards managed to survive
as he freed his right hand, even though the wire had been driven and hammered through
the palms of his hand.
Being displayed publicly to the other POWs to put them off committing crimes, the sight
of the three men crucified on trees would have been brutal.
The other POWs managed to smuggle food to Ringer Edwards, and this is how he managed
to survive.
These men risked their lives in helping him, but he managed to survive being crucified
for 63 hours before he was then let down.
This would have been enough to kill anyone, and the other two men crucified with Ringer
Edwards were killed by the torture.
After he was let down, he was nursed back to health and was considered finished and
broken by the Japanese.
After the war Ringer Edwards was released and returned back to Australia, and some of
his experiences including his crucifixion became the foundation for British Novelist
Nevil Shute’s character Joe Harman in A Town Like Alice.
He would live the rest of his life in Western Australia and he died in the year 2000 at
the age of 86.
Despite Ringer Edwards, the crucified soldier of the Burma Railway managing to survive his
horrific ordeal, there were two other unknown soldiers alongside him subject to the horrific
execution method that did not survive.
Seeing these men would have been harrowing for the others working on the railway, and
they would have been scared to put a foot out of line.
Through desperation the men killed the cattle to feed themselves, and the Japanese soldiers
pushed them to this with their brutality and lack of food that they gave to the POWs.
There were thousands more who would never get their freedom from Japanese captivity,
and on the Burma Railway alone thousands would succumb to their deaths in great suffering.
Today the stories of the crucified soldiers of the Burma railway remain untold.
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