Please tell me now: you English I have always been told are fair and just people: whatever other faults we all think you have; we have always looked upon you as a just people.
You know I am not afraid to die.
You know that after what has happened to my country I shall be glad to die tomorrow.
Look, I have shaved the hair off my head, I have taken a bath of purification, rinsed my mouth and throat, washed my hands and drunk the last cupful of water for the long journey.
I have emptied the world from my head, washed it off my body, and I am ready for my body to die, as I have died in my mind long since.
Truly you must know, I do not mind dying only, only, only, why must I die for the reason you give?
I don’t know what I have done wrong that other soldiers who are not to die have not done.
We have all killed one another and I know it is not good, but it is war.
I have punished you and killed your people, but I punished you no more and killed no more than I would have done if you were Japanese in my charge who had behaved in the same way.
I was kinder to you, in fact, that I would have been to my own people, believe it or not, than army rules and rulers demanded.
If I had not been so severe and strict you would all have collapsed in your spirit and died because your way of thinking was so wrong and your disgrace so great.
If it were not for me, Hicksley-Ellis and all his men would have died on the island out of despair.
It was not my that the ships with food and medicine did not come.
I could only beat may prisoners alive and save those that had it in them to live by beating them to greater effort. And now I am being killed for it.
I do not understand where I went wrong, except in the general wrong of us all.
If I did another wrong please tell me how and why and I shall die happy.
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