Abstract
Betrayal in High Places, a book written in 1996 by the late James MacKay, has created debate among World War II historians and former prisoners of war (POWs) because it claims to reveal suppressed Allied reports of Japanese war atrocities, such as the massacre of 387 American, Australian, British, and Dutch POWs in a gold mine at Aikawa on Sado Island, Japan, in 1945. Our investigation finds that the Sado Island massacre report is an intentional forgery, and that MacKay’s book is a spurious historical source. We explain why he sought to deceive the public and contrast his fiction with the historical truth about Sado Island.
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Cite this article
Gregory Hadley and James Oglethorpe, “MacKay's Betrayal: Solving the Mystery of the 'Sado Island Prisoner-of-War Massacre,',” The Journal of Military History 71, no. 2 (April 2007): 441–464.