Leonard George Siffleet

In April 1944, U.S. troops near Hollandia, New Guinea, found a shocking photo on the body of a dead Japanese major in the wake of the battle there. In the photo, a Japanese soldier, his sword aloft, prepares to behead a bound and blindfolded western prisoner of war. It is the only image of its kind, and the unfortunate Australian in the photo is Leonard George (Len) Siffleet.

A sports and adventure lover, Siffleet moved to Sydney to look for work in the late 1930s. He tried to join the police force but was rejected for poor eyesight. He joined the Second Australian Imperial Force in 1941. After training in radio communications at Melbourne Technical College, Siffleet volunteered for special operations in September 1942 and was posted to the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD) of the Allied Intelligence Bureau in Melbourne. After joining Z Special Unit the next month, he transferred to Cairns in Far North Queensland for further operational training. Assigned to the SRD’s Dutch section as a radio operator, Siffleet was promoted to sergeant in May 1943. He moved to M Special Unit the same month to take part in a mission to set up a coast watching station in the hills behind Hollandia. Described by Commander Eric Feldt, director of the Coastwatchers, as “the best type of N.C.O. of the A.I.F., young and competent,” Siffleet joined a party led by Sergeant H.N. Staverman of the Royal Netherlands Navy. Two Ambonese privates, H. Pattiwal and M. Reharing, completed the team, code-named “Whiting.” The team was to work with another group led by Lieutenant Jack Fryer.

Staverman’s reconnaissance group began its mission in northeast New Guinea in July, trekking across mountainous terrain through August and September. At some point Staverman and Pattiwal separated from the others to further explore the countryside, where natives ambushed them. Both were reported killed, but Pattiwal escaped and rejoined Siffleet and Reharing. In early October, Siffleet signaled Fryer to warn him about the hostile natives and Japanese patrols and indicate that he was going to burn his team’s codes and bury its radio. After that, no one heard anything from him or his team.

The three men headed for the Dutch border. But near Aitape, 100 natives ambushed them, and, after a struggle, Siffleet shot and wounded one of the attackers. The natives captured the three and handed them over to the Japanese. Interrogated and tortured, they were confined for approximately two weeks before being taken to Aitape Beach on the afternoon of October 24, 1943. Surrounded by Japanese and native onlookers while bound and blindfolded, they were forced to the ground and decapitated on the orders of Vice Admiral Michiaki Kamada of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Yasuno Chikao, the officer who executed Siffleet, had detailed a private to photograph him in the act. The executioner was sentenced to death after the war but his sentence was commuted to 10 years in prison because he had acted in a subordinate capacity.

The photo, published in Australian newspapers and Life magazine, was at first believed to portray the beheading of Flight Lieutenant Bill Newton VC, who had been captured in Salamaua, Papua New Guinea, on March 29, 1943. Siffleet is commemorated on the Lae Memorial in Lae, Papua New Guinea, along with all Australians who died from action in the region who have no known grave. A memorial park commemorating Siffleet was also dedicated at Aitape in May 2015.

Reflecting the propagandistic rhetoric used at the time, one caption for the photo in an Australian paper read as follows:

Within in a split second of the camera recording the scene, he was dead. He died alone, with his arms tied down to his sides with rope. He died when a Jap officer in lust and hatred swung a samurai sword and severed his neck at a stroke. He was entitled to the protection granted to men taken in war—a man whose simple rights are respected by all civilized peoples. In spite of this they led him out, blindfolded him and butchered him—with a circle of grinning yellow monkeys looking on. This is the enemy we now fight. An enemy without pity—with the bug of madness in his blood. Look long on this picture—and DO NOT FORGET.