大象传媒

Incidents during World War 2

Much has been said about hardship and suffering that our men had to put up with while slaving as Prisoners of war under the Japanese during the last World war. The Characteristics that helped them through were their sense of humour, initiative and as my old bosses wife put it a 鈥榥atural sense of cunning鈥�. It also helped if possible to appeal to the Japanese sense of humour too, in order to make them forget their sadistic tendencies.

One illustration of this happened when I had taken a short cut through the perimeter fence at Chungkai instead of going through the main gate. At the time I had got permission to go outside the camp to collect wood for the cookhouse but had not checked with the guard at the main gate. I was caught on the way back in and made to stand to attention in front of the Japanese guardhouse. It was dusk at the time and I was only wearing a loin cloth. After standing there for sometime a swarm of biting midges and mosquito鈥檚 decided to descend on me for their evening meal. I put up with them as long as possible, and then started waving them away with my hands. One of the Jap guards immediately came forward and pricked my back with his bayonet, shouting 鈥楤ugareo鈥� which is a swearword. I turned round to face him and said 鈥楢rugatto鈥� ( this means thank you in Japanese). At this, both he and his companions burst out laughing, this brought the guard commander out who also started to laugh when they told him what had happened. He must have been one of the more human Jap officers for he told me to clear off back to my hut. In fact we worked under one officer who had been brought up in a Christian missionary School, he treated us with quiet dignity, letting us get on with our task without all the beating with bamboo sticks and swearing, which nine out of ten of the others did.

Soon after the surrender of Singapore, after piling our firearms in a heap we were told to congregate in the grounds of a bombed out hospital, then told by our officers to go searching round and bring back any food or equipment that we could find. The hospital was built on brick pillars with the space underneath enclosed on three sides. It had been used as an air raid shelter for the hospital patients, whose beds were all laid out directly onto the ground. They had been evacuated in a hurry so most of their belongings were still scattered around. I started searching around for food or other useful; commodities. I couldn鈥檛 see much under there as it was dark after coming in from the bright sunlight, but noticed another man searching around who had found a torch, he was right inside at the back so I stumbled over the beds on the ground to where he was. I said 鈥榊ou鈥檙e lucky to find a torch鈥�, but he merely grunted. I managed to find some sugar, two sheets, some soap, a bottle of Dettol antiseptic liquid and a tin of Zam-buk ointment, before deciding to go back to see what was going to happen next. When I got outside once more the other man followed me, he was a Japanese soldier, who鈥檚 only English consisted of 鈥極.K鈥�, no wonder he had only grunted when I spoke to him. He had an armful of tin food which he proceeded to try and sort out. As there was only written labels on them, with no pictures, he showed me them and asked if they were 鈥極.K.鈥�? I son found out that he only wanted the sweet stuff such as tinned fruit etc., he passed all the others over to me. I thought to myself, 鈥業 would like some tinned fruit too鈥� so told him that the tins labeled 鈥榮nails, pickles or asparagus were peaches, pineapple or beans. I wouldn鈥檛 have liked to been around when he opened the tins, I went back loaded, to our food dump.

We were marched off and lined up in three ranks, and then some Jap soldiers came along the lines collecting up all the wristwatches, rings and other valuables they could pinch from us. One of them had wristwatches on his arm from wrist to elbow. I did not have a watch but still had my engagement ring on, so put it quickly into my mouth, intending to swallow it if necessary and retrieve it at some later date, after it had passed through my body. They were also searching our packs and kitbags, so as I was in a rear rank which happened to be near some trees and bushes, I gradually worked my way backwards until I could get among them, in all the confusion they did not notice me, so I moved along until I could get back into the line which had already been searched. Some of the other lads were also passing their packs along to other men that had already been searched. I held onto the ring for over two years after this, before deciding to sell it, in order to buy food, this decision no doubt helped save my life out there.

At one camp, half a dozen of us were taken by lorry to help in the Japanese cookhouse; of course we needed no telling a second time. The Jap cook put us onto spud bashing and veg peeling all the morning and in the mean time had got two great iron qwallies (stew pans), each holding sixteen gallons, simmering over wood burning fires. We had to keep these going as well as doing the other jobs.

He then told us to start opening a pile of tins that were stacked in a corner. Like the tins in my previous story, they were not marked at all, so until we had opened them we had no idea of their contents. The cook told us to put all the contents in the stew, regardless. As usual in this situation we managed to eat quite a lot before pouting it in the stew. This included such goodies as tinned peaches, beans, snails, soy sauce, strawberry jam and all kinds of exotic food stuff. One of my mates said 鈥楾hat stew must taste peculiar鈥�. After a while, the cook dipped a ladle in the stew and asked us to taste it, it tasted awful, so we made a face. He looked annoyed and tasted it himself, but he also made a grimace, then said 鈥楾his is o.k. very good for Japanese soldier鈥� then proceeded to fry king prawns in the batter and sweet potato scallops saying 鈥楾his better than stew eh鈥�?, so we all sat down together to eat the best meal we鈥檇 had for about six months, washed down with sweet tea. Of course we got our own back on the Jap鈥檚 in various ways, for instance, during the building of a new hut for the Japanese Camp Commandant, our men filled match boxes with bugs and lice every night, from their own infested huts, then released them inside the Commandants new hut every morning, remarking 鈥榃e like to share everything with our friends鈥�.

The Japanese were very touchy about losing face, especially the officer, who the ordinary rank and file treated like gods who could do no wrong, they therefore thought that our officers felt the same way, so when one of ours had been found carrying out some small misdemeanor, the Jap鈥檚 thought it would be a good idea to march him round the camp, with a Jap guard on either side and with a trumpeter leading, to draw attention for all the camp to see, in order to ridicule the officer and make him lose face. The Japanese had found out the meaning of our marching song 鈥楥olonel Bogey鈥�, to our dismay, and with much swearing and bashing, so they thought that it should be the tune played by the trumpeter, thinking that it would make our officer lose a lot of face. In actual fact it had the opposite effect, as we were all rolling about with laughter, which the Japs thought was directed towards our officer when we were actually laughing at them. The officer being paraded round had a hard job to control his own face, trying to look annoyed while in reality he was bursting with laughter.

One dangerous task we were made to carry out was pile driving whilst building the bridge over the Kwai River. Twenty men pulling on four ropes hauled the great iron pile hammer, weighing about five hundredweight ( two hundred and fifty kilogram鈥檚), to the top of the driver, then let go so that it would go smashing down onto the wooden pile, driving it into the river bed. In order to co-ordinate our efforts we war told to count in Japanese, in a sing song chant, 鈥業chi, Nee, Go sio鈥� which means 鈥極ne, Two, Three, Pull鈥�. We used to make up our own versions of this such as 鈥楬aul the blighter higher鈥�, 鈥楽ling him in the fire鈥� (The Jap Guard) and 鈥楾ojo is a liar鈥�, while the guard wondered what we were laughing at. All went well until one guard came along who understood English, then there was all hell to pay, with head bashing and swearing going on all around, when he told his mates what we had been chanting. Several times the ropes caught round our arms and legs resulting in the helpless victims being hauled to the top of the pile driver gantry by the hammers weight, when the other men let go. Once we found that the pile would not drive in, so had to move it along further. When the river went down later on we saw that we had been trying to drive the pile through and unexploded 1000 pound bomb, dropped by the allied planes. So once again my guardian angel had been looking after me.

At another camp where were working at cutting down teak trees, then chopping them into logs to be used in the steam engines on the railway. We loaded the logs onto light railway trucks which we then had to push about half a mile to the main railway where they were stacked ready for use. On the way back it was mostly downhill, so we got onto the trucks and rode back using the force of gravity to do so. On one occasion we came roaring round the bend only to discover that two elephants were being driven towards us by a Japanese and Thai, who were of course riding them. What with the unfamiliar noise of the trucks, us shouting, and the sudden surprise, the elephants were frightened and stampeded off into the jungle, throwing their drivers, flying through the air as they went. Needless to say, we did not stop till we reached the end of the track, and then dispersed back, to where we carried on cutting the trees down. A Jap officer made an appearance sometime later to make enquires to try and find out who the culprits were who had been riding the trucks. Of course we assured him that it was not our party, so he went off looking elsewhere.

Another funny incident took place at a Camp in Korea, where a foot of snow had fallen overnight. The following morning one of the more humane Japanese officers decided to let the prisoners have a roll call inside their huts instead of in the snow. He proceeded with this followed by his orderly corporal and interpreter. After the roll call they headed for the cookhouse. About eighty feet in front of the cookhouse door was a deep pit about three feet square which collected drainage from the cookhouse and other waste such as sour rice, veg peelings etc. This was emptied about twice a year by a native Korean who used a wooden bucket on the end of a long pole, the sludge then emptied into an oxcart. The top of the pit was covered with a boxwood cover which was flat to the ground. The snow completely covered this making it invisible. From their huts the prisoners watched as the officer stepped right on the thin wooden cover and disappeared from sight. He was submerged into the sludge up to his chin. He proceeded to haul himself out, scrape as much muck as he could from his uniform and out his ears, straighten his cap, then march onto the cookhouse, as though the incident was all part of his everyday routine. He did not display any anger or surprise as by doing so would have caused him loss of face. For this reason both his companions did nothing to help him out of his difficulty, but waited for him until he was ready to continue. To have shown that they had witnessed his downfall would have courted instant chastisement or worse. Of course the men looking out of the hut windows were doubled up with laughter and the whole camp soon got to hear of it.

Several of our men were used by the Japanese to drive captured British Army lorries to collect rations and other stores from down country; they also had to maintain the vehicles. One lorry broke down and it was found to have electrical trouble caused by a short circuit. When told of this the Japanese guard in charge told our men that in future 鈥楢ll short circuits will be made longer鈥�. He probably meant that all the wiring should be made to last longer and wondered why all our chaps burst out laughing. They dare not tell him why because he would lose face and start beating them up.

At one camp called Takanun, which was two hundred and eighteen kilometers up the Burma/Siam railway in Thailand, I got to my lowest ebb, being racked with Malaria, Diarrhoea and Scabies, after slaving with my mates cutting into virgin rock with cold chisels and sledge hammers, to form a ledge on which the railway could run, round a cliff overhanging the river. The pouring monsoon rain was continuous and all I wore at the time was loin cloth, a green straw Sombrero type hat and wooden sandals with a leather strap over the toes which I had made myself. One day for a change my mates and I were put on the job of unloading barges of food stuff and carting it from the river to the Japanese storehouse, this was built as usual with bamboo walls covered with palm leaf tiles. While inside I noticed a crate of tinned milk which been partly emptied by the Jap鈥檚 so I unobtrusively pushed it up against the palm leaf wall at the far side of the store. That night there was no moon owing to clouds, so about two in the morning I crept from out tent which was about three hundred yards (meters) from the Japanese stores on the other side of a barbed wire fence. I had just reached the stores when the Japanese Camp Commandant came out of his quarters which were right next door, shining a torch, I dodged back into the shadows surmising that he was on his way to the latrines, waited till he returned and gone inside again, he was too busy picking his way over the rough ground to notice me and in any case was blinded by his own torchlight. I then pushed my arm through the palm leaf hut wall, reached in and collected half a dozen tins of milk and quickly made my way back to my tent. (If I had been caught a fate of torture preceding my death would have been my lot, but needs must when the devil drives).

The sequel to this episode came two days afterwards when word had got round that I had some milk to sell. A head popped round the tent door enquiring about it and lo and behold it was one of my old pals who I had knocked about with in Civvy Street, Les White, who I had not seen for about three years, before the War. We had a long chinwag, and then he went back to his tent. This meeting helped our morale no end. The day after, the Jap鈥檚 decided to search our tents because so much was missing from their stores. I noticed how they were going about it when they searched the tent next to ours, so pushed my two remaining tins of milk out beneath the side of the tent which was sagging on the ground at the back of my bed. One Guard stood at the tent door, one walked round the outside to see if anything had been pushed outside and another searched our beds inside, while we stood to attention in the gangway. I was saved by the sagging tent wall covering the tins and also that the Jap鈥檚 were as fed up with the whole procedure as we were and in a great hurry to get back to their own huts on the other side of the boundary fence. This was erected because of the 鈥淐holera鈥� epidemic which was now raging in the Camp and which they were deadly scared of, anyone who crossed the boundary had to wade through a trough of disinfectant. I gave a sigh of relief when they had gone, as I knew that I had just missed a nasty fate once more. It was at this Camp where we were burning up to ten bodies a day, caused by Cholera, Beri, beri, Tropical Ulcers, Malaria and Malnutrition.

At our first camp in Thailand, flood water two feet deep greeted us as we waded in through the gate. In the long bamboo huts it was lapping two inches below our bed boards, so that anyone wading along the gangway caused a bow wave which flopped over the top. This was most disconcerting during the night when it was pitch black. There was an added bonus of nasties such as Snakes, Scorpions, Centipedes and biting ants either floating or swimming around until they reached our beds, where they made themselves comfortable close to our warm bodies. One man woke up screaming when a ten inch long centipede which had wrapped itself round his scrotum had bitten him when he had turned over during the night. It had to be cut away from him. At this camp the latrine consisted of a pit about three meters square and two deep, which was always full of excrement and teeming with myriads of house fly maggots and when out Korean Guard who was the most sadistic, vicious man we had yet come across, did not turn up on parade one morning with his usual screaming orders we wondered why. The Jap鈥檚 were running around in some sort of panic because he had disappeared, they never did find him. We found out later that some of our boys had got fed up with his antics, so one night when he went to the latrines they had hit him over the head and pushed him into the seething morass where no doubt the maggots made short work of him.

Of course our Organisation 鈥淭he Japanese Labour Camp Survivors Association鈥� is still fighting the Japanese, Politics and Economics in order to get Compensation for what we went through out there and for the Widows of the men who did not come back home.

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