WWII Japanese officer's confessions published

China has published a Japanese officer's written confession about killing of 1,122 Chinese nationals, including 727 civilians, and rape and torture committed from 1938 to 1945, media reported Monday.

Shuichi Kikuchi was born in Miyagi Prefecture of Japan in 1915 and served in the Japanese army from 1937 to 1945 in northeast China, Xinhua reported.

He took refuge among the troops of a Chinese warlord named Yan Xishan in north China's Shanxi Province after Japan's defeat in 1945 and was arrested in April, 1949.

In the document, Kikuchi recalled approving military surgeon Shinji Kawagen to conduct two brutal vivisections on Chinese civilians in September 1941.

"First, Kawagen cut the throat apart to stop the captive from making a sound. After the appendectomy, he shot at the gut of the captive with a handgun. He then sutured the gut and laid the captive in the dispensary to see the result," Kikuchi wrote.

On the third day after the first operation, Kawagen performed separation surgery on the joints of the captive and shot him in the head while he was still alive, Kikuchi wrote.

He confessed that Kawagen performed a similar surgery on a 16-year-old villager a few days later.

Kikuchi also wrote about stabbing, beating, torturing and shooting people to death, live burials, and using poison gas and bacteria on his victims.

He also confessed to "personally raping 60 people".

China's State Archives Administration (SAA) posted the document on its website Monday.

This is the latest in a series of 45 Japanese war criminal confessions which the SAA plans to publish.

It has been issuing one confession a day since July 3.