C8 - Murder of 2 RAAF airmen - Hutton and Lockyer

Flight Sergeants Frank Hutton and Arnold Lockyer of the Royal Australian Air Force were members of the crew of a B-24 Liberator that failed to return from an operation over northern Celebes on or about 27 July 1945. After the aircraft crashed near Tomohon, Hutton, Lockyer and fellow crew member Flight Sergeant J. Orgill were captured by Japanese forces.

Hutton and Lockyer were taken into the custody of the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police. According to the evidence presented after the war, Morimoto ordered that the prisoners be killed. One of the airmen was rendered unconscious with chloroform before being executed, while the chloroform proved ineffective on the other, who was then strangled to death.

As captured members of the Allied armed forces, Hutton and Lockyer were prisoners of war protected by the laws and customs of war. Their deliberate execution without trial constituted the unlawful murder of prisoners of war.

Following Japan's surrender, Australian investigators assembled witness testimony and documentary evidence concerning the killings. Their findings led to Australian War Crimes Trials M27 and M32, in which those responsible for the murders were prosecuted. The case illustrates the continued execution of captured Allied airmen in the Netherlands East Indies during the closing weeks of the Pacific War.