They
ran to us, while we stood and waited. At last they saw who I was, and when
they came near they apologized very gracefully for their blunder. "It was
fortunate that you shouted when you did," said one ugly-faced young rebel,
as he slipped his cartridge back into his pouch; "I had you nicely covered
and was just going to shoot." Some of the soldiers in this band were not
more than fourteen to sixteen years old. I made them stand and have their
photographs taken.

By noon I arrived at the place from which the Korean soldiers had been
driven on the day before. The villagers there were regarded in very
unfriendly fashion by the rebels, who thought they had betrayed them to the
Japanese. The villagers told me what was evidently the true story of the
fight. They said that about twenty Japanese soldiers had on the previous
morning marched quickly to the place and attacked two hundred rebels there.
One Japanese soldier was hurt, receiving a flesh wound in the arm, and five
rebels were wounded. Three of these latter got away, and these were the
ones I had treated earlier in the morning. Two others were left on the
field, one badly shot in the left cheek and the other in the right
shoulder. To quote the words of the villagers, "As the Japanese soldiers
came up to these wounded men they were too sick to speak, and they could
only utter cries like animals--'Hula, hula, hula!' They had no weapons in
their hands, and their blood was running on the ground. The Japanese
soldiers heard their cries, and went up to them and stabbed them through
and through and through again with their bayonets until they died. The men
were torn very much with the bayonet stabs, and we had to take them up and
bury them." The expressive faces of the villagers were more eloquent than
mere description was.

Were this an isolated instance, it would scarcely be necessary to mention
it. But what I heard on all sides went to show that in a large number of
fights in the country the Japanese systematically killed all the wounded
and all who surrendered themselves. This was not so in every case, but it
certainly was in very many. The fact was confirmed by the Japanese accounts
of many fights, where the figures given of Korean casualties were so many
killed, with no mention of wounded or prisoners. In place after place also,
the Japanese, besides burning houses, shot numbers of men whom they
suspected of assisting the rebels. War is war, and one could scarcely
c