An honorary professor at Hokkaido University obtained it from a descendant of a soldier who hailed from Tokushima Prefecture through good offices of a local historian in the spring of last year.

The solider belonged to the 2nd squad of the 2nd platoon of the 1st company of the 19th battalion of the then Japanese reservists.

According to his diary, there were a great many dead bodies in different parts of Raju when his unit reached there.

It went on:

After questioning peasant soldiers taken prisoner, Japanese soldiers killed over 10 or even 100 every day. There were altogether 680 dead bodies.

One day prisoners of war were ordered to stand in a line and bayoneted to death under the command of an officer, shocking every eyewitness.

Such brutal mass-killings were carried out by the direct orders of the then Japanese prime minister and the diplomatic minister in Korea.

In order to cover up those crimes the Japanese authorities issued an instruction for deleting the reference to the Korean people's struggle against Japanese invaders from the part dealing with the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War of the history textbooks of Japan. And this was supported by the judiciary authorities of Japan.

In the meantime, the Japanese government described its soldiers killed by peasant troops as those who fell in the battles with the Qing troops and added their names to the mortuary tablet on Yasukuni Shrine.

Disclosing the diary, the professor said that it contained many words such as "Capture and shoot them to death", "Cruelly torture", "Shoot them all to death," "Set fire to all Koreans' houses," "Burn them to death" and "Torture and shoot them to death and burn their dead bodies." This bears witness to the cruelty of the then army of Japan, professor added.