The Photograph That Exposed War

War strips away everything except the raw truth of human courage. In 1943,

Australian commando Leonard Sifleet knelt blindfolded on foreign soil in Aitape,

Papua New Guinea. Behind him stood Japanese officer Yasuno Chikao, sword raised.

Around them, silent witnesses formed a circle of stillness, their faces carved

from stone, forced to watch history's darkest theater unfold. Sifleet was twenty-seven

years old. Days earlier, his reconnaissance team had been ambushed by local Papuans

working with Japanese forces. Captured, interrogated, and now facing execution,

he became one of countless soldiers whose final moments were frozen in time by a camera's unblinking