大象传媒

My name is Ralph Cooper and I was born in Bombay in 1931, I was probably about 8 when the war broke out. My memories are of lots of troops in Bombay because, there is the old song that goes, 'there is a troop ship leaving Bombay bound for old blighty shore' the troops use to come to Bombay because it was a huge port and then go on embarkation to places like Poona and then shipped out. Basically the war in that part of the world was after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and the Japanese came into the war and they invaded Burma. Of course then the Far East war took place and this year we are celebrating the 60th anniversary of that war. The Japanese war ended on the 15th August. The famous names that came out of there were the Chindits that fought in the Burma war, they were a group of soldiers formed by a chap called General Ord Wingate, although they were not conscript, but volanteers from the Army who fought in the Burma war as he needed specialist fighters in the jungle. Most people do not think in this Country about the Far East war unless you were a soldier and fought then, but that was one of the most horrendous there must have been fought in the jungle because they were not use to jungle conditions and there were all the diseases that were rampant in the jungle, there were horrible insects such as leeches and snakes and which our western troops had never really encountered. Another famous name from that day is the Burma Railway, the death railway as it was known, because the Japs made the prisoners build the railway. Another abiding memory is my father sitting listening to the 大象传媒 faithfully every night, I think it was 9 o clock and nothing could disturb that time for him, he had to listen to the 大象传媒 news telling him about the war in Europe which didn't affect him one bit, but he wanted to know what was happening over there. He would also have his chotapeg which was another Indian term that was used which was a little tot of whiskey. You still hear old soldiers using that term today. Lots of Indian names have come into the English language which were brought in by the troops then. A very well known one is going 'Do Laly', it's a hill station near Poona called Do Laly where the troops were sent before they were embarked to return home and the wait in the camp before you embarked to return home use to drive them mad and they use to call this going 'Do Laly', a lot of people don't know this but it is an actual place that exists near Poona. Other things are like the Burma Refugees, a lot of them were driven in when Burma was invaded by the Japanese they obviously left in their thousands out of Burma, and strangely enough a lot of them ended up in Bombay for some reason which is right across the sub-continent of India but they arrived in Bombay and of course we weren't use to seeing Burmese in Bombay because they hadn't actually come that way before. They brought with them their traditional dress which is called a longi, which Burmese men wear and is like a kind of skirt and was very strange in our view we were use to men wearing doeties, and women wearing saries, but to wear a longi was so different and the facial aspect of the Burmese is quite different, plus the language. There are lots of other words that came into the English language such as chi is another word for tea brought by the old sweats. Bungalow is another one, it was brought back from India. I live in a bungalow but the name actually comes from India. Gymkhana comes from India too so India and this Country have tremendous affinities. The soldiers that fought there never ever forget that time and in some sense they were a Forgotten Army, because even now the big celebrations go on for VE day and you don't hear much going on for VJ day which technically was the end of the war. It is a strange feeling because that was an horrendous war, I know that the war in Europe was bad certainly but other very famous battles were the battles of Imphal and Kohima which if you ask an old solier who fought there would tell you that they were tossing grenades across tennis courts at each other in the Commissioners gardens which was on the border of Burma and India, that is how close they fought. They were trying to cut the route for the supplies coming through at those two stations. If you ask anyone who fought there they would tell you that some of the bloodiest war took place in those two areas.

The other factor I remember as I have a great love for music was the big band music and swing music which came from the days of Radio SEAC, which stands for South East Asia Command. There was a station in Ceylon, which was then called Ceylon now Sri Lanka, which was called Radio SEAC and there was a famous Disc Jockey called Desmond Carrington who manned it, he was later in Emergency Ward 10, but he was a Disc Jockey then and I remember him and of course they played swing music. If you went to dances in those days it was all jitterbugging in the Gymkhana's and so on. Lots of Americans obviously came into that. Radio SEAC was my beginnings of the love of big band music and there were some big swing bands around in those days. The American Army bands were featured a lot then. I remember listening to the music on the radio whilst I was studying.

There was no shortages as such, there was no rationing in India because most of the stuff was readily available. Bombay was quite far away from the actual theatres of war. If you were in Calcutta you were closer to the Asamm border which was in the north east of the region and main theatre of war so things were harder to get there.

Burma was actually devastated, I don't think Burma has ever recovered as after the war it went communist. I think it has remained communist to this day from what I know of it. It is a beautiful country from all accounts, not that I have ever been there.

One major incident I remember, which coincided with my school days but I didn't realise it at the time, was that I read years later in an article in the Reader's Digest about a huge ammunition ship which blew up in Bombay harbour which killed a lot of people and devastated a lot of that area of the port of Bombay. It was an ammunition ship which should not have been in the harbour and they didn't take it out and it blew up in the Port of Bombay. I can remember hearing it, we were sitting in our classroom and we heard this bang from 20 km away and that was the ammunition ship blowing up. It is recorded somewhere. It is an historical fact. It was a British ship as far as I am aware.

There were a lot of servicemen's children in my school. It was run by the Spanish Jesuits, all schooling then was paid for and all institutions were run by Church Authorities, like Anglicans or Catholics. Generally the Jesuits, more often than not were Spanish Jesuits, why Spanish Jesuits I don't know and Irish Christian Brothers were another group. The schooling was of a very high standard and it followed the English lines of education for the public examinations. We did matriculation in those days, which is different compared to GCSE's or GCE's, because in matriculation you had to pass all your subjects to matriculate. If you failed a subject then you failed your matriculation. It seems a different way of thinking to now adays. Basically they were British, but there were Australians and New Zealanders all around. Lots of Gurkas coming from that part of the world. Very prolific Gurkas because they fought in the war and from my memory of it, they were the most feared troups of the lot by the Japanese. They found it difficult to handle the Gurkas as they were good at close range fighting. Jungle warfare, they were good at that because they were use to the conditions over there, especially the heat. The heat killed off most of the people over there and of course malaria was rife and if you got that you were in dead trouble.

Bombay is a lovely Victorian City, ugly in parts because of poverty, but in the good areas beautiful Victorian, Edwardian architecture and famous museums, most of them were manned by the British. The very prosperous areas are beautifully landscaped bordering the sea, as Bombay is a sea port. You get the sub-tropical vegitation so it makes it very beautiful in places. One of the most famous hotels is the Taj Hotel in Bombay which has been listed as one of the 100 best hotels in the world, taking its name from the Taj Mahal.

My dad worked on the railways, he was in charge of the presses, so he was quite high up in the British Railways. In those days there was only two railways in India, the BB & CI, which was the Bombay Beroda and Central India Railways and the GIP which was the Great Indian Penninsular which went down the spine of India. For me I was lucky because my family were entitled to travel first class anywhere free on Indian railways. When we went on holiday we had a first class carriage allocated to us completely to go wherever we wanted to in India which was rather nice, but that is what privilege is about. One of the most famous stations is the Victorian Terminus in Bombay which still exists now. There is still a great affinity between the British and Indians. Some of the names they are trying to change, to Indianise them but the people don't take any notice they still call it by the old traditional names. You have Flora Fountain and Back Bay Baths and they are still there now. Breech Gandi which was where all the Europeans use to stay and Marine Drive. They won't change them and people love them. The market is called Crawford Market. It's Rudyard Kipling country. I think he was actually buried in Bombay. His father was Editor of the Times of India then. There is a big history of someone like Kipling in India.

I don't remember any Burmese children coming to our school, I remember them being in the area, but I don't remember them coming to the school. I remember one name that sticks out in my mind and the name is Reggi Briganza, why he had an English name I don't know. He was very Burmese and he became a family friend as he must have lived down the road somewhere from us. I don't remember too many others.

My mother was a Music Teacher, there was no such thing as a housewife in India. They were ladies of leasure so to speak as we had the servants. I was brought up in the Raj and only knew that way of life. I was brought up by an Ia, an Ia is a maid servant, or a nurse. We had a cook who stayed in his own quarters in the garden he had his own room which was selfcontained. My dad never did any gardening, so I refuse to do any gardening now! The gardener was called a Marli. My mother never did any cleaning it was all done for her. There was never any flush system in the thirties, this came later in the forties. They had sweepers and this was part of the class system coming in. The sweeper class was the lowest class and they would be the ones who would come and clean the toilets. It was a very large house. There were three flats contained underneath it. We owned our own house, I don't think there was any mortgage or anything like that. I didn't know how it worked in those days, I never asked any questions but people lived at that level. You didn't take any notice of it everyone was the same. You went to the Gymkhana and the Catholic Church, the cricket was there, it was all there. A field was called a lie down and outside our house we all had fields around where we played cricket and football apart from what we did at school. It was a wonderful open air life there.

The climate there was beautiful, apart from the monsoon season, in Bombay this would break in about June and July and by October it would all be over. That is when you can expect the rain and heavy cyclones coming in at that time. That is the only time you see any water the rest of the time is wall to wall sunshine. It is very hot and humid just before the monsoon starts, not such a nice time as it is very sticky and hot. If you want good weather you need to visit there from October to about March, April it is brilliant holiday weather. You have all the hill stations to go to when it gets too hot. The British invented the hill stations so you could go into the hills where it was cooler. That is why all the hill stations such as Poona, Simla, Kandhla, Mussooree all these places were made by the British for families to go to if they got too hot.

During the war years you could travel around India, there were no restictions. Probably if you got near Calcutta and the Assam border then there would be restrictions, but in the Bombay area and that part of the western side of India there was no restriction at all from what I remember. You were only seeing it from the eyes of a young person, you were not really seeing it from the eyes of an adult. As I remeber it, there wasn't the air raids and the rationing and seeing people coming back with limbs missing, we didn't see any of that. You knew it happened but they were shipped straight away to Poona and the hospitals and so on. They were Military Stations they were posted to and then presumably shipped home.

I had one brother and four sisters, there were six of us, a big family. All families in those days were big from what I remember. We all got on very well. When we go back now to visit the family all get together.

The soldiers were embarked from Bombay to come back to 'Blighty' as they called the UK.

The war was never really talked about in school, we heard about it and knew we didn't like the Germans or the Japs as they were known then. I remember there was a German family who lived not far from us and they had been there many many years and they were interned because they were German. I don't know what happened to them they must have been allowed home after the war, but I never found out.

There was never any racism then. Even the servants were treated well. Some may have been taken advantage off, but if they didn't have them they would have been on the road doing nothing. They were not normally treated unfairly. They were paid and were very loyal to the family they worked for. Some of the servants children were given a good education.

I left India just after the independence of India in 1948. Independence of India was in 1947.

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My name is Carol, I'm an Essex girl - and proud of it. I was born in Barkingside in Ilford in 1938. I remember a few bits and pieces of the war like when we were kids we had an Anderson shelter which most people had at the end of their garden, but ours was inside the house, whether it was because there were five children I don't know, but it was inside the house. We use to play with bits of paper rolled up in balls to throw to each other and when the Anderson shelter was taken away after the war there were all these bits of paper tucked in the corner.

Dad was never in the war, he had some sort of problem, but I didn't know what it was. He was a builder, decorator and he was an ARP Warden during the war and consequently we had a great big 'W' painted on the outside of the house for everyone to know that he was an ARP Warden, so that if anybody needed him they knew where to find him.

My mum was a Nurse. Although having 5 children it was difficult working during that time but she subsequently went back to Nursing, she was a Mental Nurse.

My school days were wonderful, I loved school. My school was only three doors away from us. I started when I was 5 and finished when I was 15. but my parents couldn't afford for me to stay on. I wanted to stay on but I had to go out to work.

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