大象传媒

This is Michael Charnaud鈥檚 story: it has been added by Pauline Colcutt (on behalf of the Fernhurst Centre), with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

An unusual and true story of a young boy who with his mother became a prisoner of both the Germans and the Japanese May 1942 - August 1945

CHAPTER 5 鈥� FUKUSHIMA 1943 TO END OF 1944 .(PART TWO).

It was an early social education to learn of these feelings first hand through living and sharing my life with these simple folk, and also to be a small part of the news transmission from one side of the camp to the other, and also to have a real personal interest in the progress of the War as the advances of the Allies meant our confinement and ordeal would soon be over.
As 1943 drew to a close, one morning in the clear cool autumn air of early November, in a bright blue cloudless sky, flying high at probably 20,000 ft or more, was our first view of a B.29 bomber. As it passed slowly overhead across the sky were four vapour trails, a clear sign that this was no Japanese plane, as they did not possess any four engined aircraft. Most probably the plane had flown from a base in China and was on a photography mission as there was no other possible means of a plane reaching Japan from any other direction until Saipan in the Marianna鈥檚 was captured and the great naval battle of Leyte Gulf had taken place a year later. That first sight of an American plane though was a wonderful harbinger of things to come and seemed to break our complete isolation, as we followed the battles of Guadacanal and New Guinea and the American bases grew closer we knew that the War was turning in our favour. Mother wrote at the time:

Lone Eagle from the outer world,
With your strong hearts that beat as one,
I glimpsed you as through space you hurled,
A symbol of the end begun,
Your four white plumes did sign a name,
To Freedom鈥檚 Charter writ in flame.

All during that summer of 1943, things went on much as before. Chess championships were arranged with practically everyone taking part. The absolute champion turned out to be a tall Somali seaman Yusuf Ahmed with an ebony black skin and glistening snow white teeth. His front tooth though was slightly chipped following a fight, but the contrast of the snowy white teeth and jet black skin colouring was spectacular. He admitted that he knew of no one language properly, but he could converse freely in English, Arabic, French, Italian and Greek, all of which he had picked up by word of mouth working on ships and coming from a land under Italian jurisdiction. But when he sat at a chess board however he showed that he had a brilliance of mind, that one wondered just what such a brain could have accomplished if only he had the chance in his youth to have had a good education! His other almost as good sparing partner was the 16 year old John White from the Gloucester Castle who equally, could also give him a good run and would be runner up camp champion.. Chess sets were made by carving pieces of branch from the garden with a sharp knife. The problem was getting hold of a knife, as all had been confiscated by the Germans. Eventually it was discovered that some of the ladies had high heeled or 鈥渃ourt鈥� shoes and there was a strip of high quality tensile steel supporting the heel in a shallow S shape. By extracting that and fashioning a handle and sharpening one side, razor sharp knives were possible. With them chess pieces, model ships etc could be carved, and I used to make lorries and trucks with the same tools, which were lent and passed around for various people to utilize and share. The Greeks were particularly good at such handicrafts, and I still have on my mantelpiece a ship made for me by them in this way, as well as a chess set the black pieces stained with dye made from wild poppy petals which gave a good black ink dye.

Of the other nationalities the four Arabs from Aden I found most perplexing. When approached and tapped on the shoulder from behind they had a reflex of putting their right hand to their left chest as though to pull a knife and swinging round on one. So naturally for a while we kids would cruelly test them on this reflex until one day the Australian padre Rev. Boyle warned us in case we got injured. In contrast the four Cape Coloureds from Cape Town, Mannering Erasmus, Molphy and Phillips were a cheerful and jolly lot, naturally musical and were forever singing songs so that I would become familiar with such classics at Sarah Marie etc. I learnt from them for the first time of the iniquities and injustices of segregation and white superiority but they would say:
鈥淎fter the War is over America will say
鈥楬ey White Man stop abusing all the Blacks and Coloured and be Fair or I will use a Big Stick on you鈥�.

Their analysis was absolutely correct although it was a further half century into the future before it happened!
One thing that also would engage my attention all the time I was in that Camp and which fascinated me, was watching the Japanese farmers till their soil which was quite unlike anything I had seen in Ceylon or Australia and quite different to anything that I would later see in England . In the autumn at the end of the rice harvest, the dry paddy land would be ploughed and cultivated using rotavators . Then winter barley or wheat would be sown, which would grow quickly in the warm autumn air to about four or six inches in height, and then remain dormant during the really cold weather of mid winter. In March with the advent of bright sun and then in the warm April air the corn would grow fast and mature and be ready for harvesting by the end of May or early June. In the meantime however a small corner of one of the fields would be flooded in April and rice sown thick so that by the time of the June harvest, the rice in the seed beds was probably about eighteen inches high. The harvested land from the winter corn would immediately be re-cultivated, the land flooded, and whole armies of women and school children would come and help transplant the rice into straight lines about two foot apart. Once this was completed every available bare space such as the ridges between the paddy fields and the edges would be planted with soya beans. The rice would grow almost three foot high in the hot humid summer air, and each small plant would tiller to produce rapidly a bunch of stems about three inches across. The farmers in the early stages would pull a hoe between the rice clumps to weed them, but once the plants were so large and thick the blanket cover reduced weeds anyway. In September and October the rice would be harvested and the cycle recommence gaining two crops from the one piece of warm fertile volcanic land.

And so now we were in for our second Japanese winter, with limited heating that was only turned on in December for two months. Food was now getting scarcer and we tended to live on a thin gruel made from a long radish or turnip which would be hung on strings to dry in the cold winter air, and then sliced for our meagre soup. The taste was revolting, and every since then I have loathed anything to do with turnips or swedes.

In December 1943 an incident occurred in the deep snow that I will never forget to my dying day, as it was quite the most terrifying ordeal imaginable for a young lad. Us three boys, that is myself aged 12, Graham Sparke a year younger , and Howard Guy then only 8 were playing outside in the snow, when Howard threw a snowball which broke a pane of glass in the front door of the building by the guard鈥檚 quarters. We were instantly hauled inside into their Office Common Room where a group were sitting around a large (about 3 foot across) sand filled charcoal brazier warming themselves from the bitter cold outside. The Commandant Wimoto started to shout and rave at us, and the interpreter Midorikawa then ordered us to lift our shirts and bare our stomachs. Two pokers were placed in the fire to become red hot. He then ordered Captain Stratford and our three Mothers to be brought to the office immediately. When they arrived Wimoto started a tirade against us boys, and also castigated the Mothers for allowing their children to do such a wicked crime, and said that the Mothers would each have to make a circle brand with the red hot poker around our navels.

My Mother pointed out quietly but firmly to Wimoto but with a feeling of absolute venom,

鈥� I am sorry that this small accident took place, but these small kids had already been under tremendous stress having undergone shellfire at sea surviving in open lifeboats, and Graham had been picked up out of the water after an hour in the middle of the ocean at night, and that allowances must be made for trivial offences.鈥�
But Wimoto was implacable and would not budge. He seized the poker and then handed it to Mrs Guy who was in tears and she was told to commence carrying out his orders, which she point blank refused to do. At this point Captain Stratford very quietly and firmly told the Commandant and the Interpreter who had been enjoying the torment and egging him on, that if any child was touched or in any way harmed, the two of them would be reported to the War Crimes tribunal after the War and they could face the most serious punishment with possible execution for attacking and molesting children which in the West was considered a Capital Crime.
Until then Midorikawa had thought the whole episode very amusing, but with Captain Stratford鈥檚 quiet threat of a post war Court action, his countenance immediately changed and his laughter stopped, and he spoke quietly and gravely to the Commandant who then after a harangue picked up a poker and singed each of our hair in turn, despite or more likely trying to cause more terror for us as a final 鈥渃oup de grace鈥�. The smell of burning hair for years afterwards would bring back harsh memories of this incident and remind me of what a close shave we three had undergone No words can ever describe the fear and panic of us three, and whatever else happened in that camp our friendship was for ever sealed by that episode of the red hot poker, which came so very close to being implemented had it not been for the cool threat and strong action by our Captain against two ignorant bullies that had become a slur on their historic nation, and who only just finally realised at the last minute that they too would suffer the severest punishment themselves. Fifty years later as I recount the tale from our notes at the time I still shake with fear but give thanks that none of my children or grandchildren have ever had to undergo such a crisis and such an ordeal at so tender an age, and that they have been brought up in a quiet peacetime environment, and a childhood far distant from any echoes of War. But the incident served to reinforce my intense loathing of bullies whoever they may be and whoever they may try to humiliate! Wimoto The Commandant, and Sato his Head Guard or assistant and the Interpreter were all sentenced for War Crimes in 1947 and given 5 years, which following pretrial detention was reduced to 3years and 4 months!!

At last as the spring of 1944 approached we could sense the industrial might of America now about thirty months after Pearl Harbour coming into full production and fruition. The second World War for our younger readers who are not so well versed in the history of that time, was above all a war won by the material productive power of the United States. To give an example of the speed of the efficiency of this production capacity, at the battle of Guadacanal in the Solomons in autumn 1942, the Americans had only three carriers afloat. But a year later there were fifty, and by the end of the war there were over a 100 carriers in service. Cargo ships or 鈥淟iberty Boats鈥� were mass produced at such a rate that one ship was leaving the Kaiser yards of the USA every three hours .

The war in the Pacific clearly demonstrated that the most important capital ship in any future navy was going to the aircraft carrier with its ability to project power across thousands of miles of ocean. The first stage of the eventual defeat of Japan was the steady progress made by General MacArthur in gradually conquering New Guinea, from which point finally on the 15th June 1944 the Americans landed on Saipan Island in the Marianas as part of their major island hopping plan to approach Japan with nearby bases. Saipan was the crucial focus for the whole Far Eastern war because once taken and only 1,300 miles from Japan, it could be used as a base from which to bomb her cities and industries for the first time. It was vital therefore that the Japanese stopped this action, and they threw everything possible into the attack but by the first week of July all of the Island had been captured and soon Palau and Morotai were to follow. It had been decided then to attack the large southern island of Mindanao but following clashes, its was discovered that the smaller island of Leyte was virtually defenceless so an attack was made with an easy landing, but the Japanese now attacked in a three pronged drive with their fleets converging on the Americans from the west south and north. In the battle of Leyte Gulf that followed 27 vessels of the Japanese navy including four carriers were sunk so that by the end of of October 1944 the American Naval presence was now dominant south of Japan.
We followed with Fred Garner鈥檚 newspaper translation all these battles closely. It was striking to note that in the Japanese press, whilst the battle for Saipan was raging, their comment was that should it fall, they would have lost the War, was an analysis that was quite correct. Its fall then led to the overthrow of Tojo鈥檚 government, and a winter of unremitting bombing of Tokyo, Yokohama and other large industrial cities. The American fleet meanwhile completely isolated Japan from oil and other raw materials and for the last nine months of the war, everything was in such short supply that people, ourselves included, were starving, there was hardly a motor vehicle ever to be seen, and no aeroplanes ever took to the skies other than American. In the spring of 1944 the Japanese finally decided to put the women to work in the camp finishing off garments from a textile factory such as sewing the ends of gloves and socks etc. The work was not hard but very tedious especially on the low diet and the women grumbled continuously. But then from June 1944 it suddenly ceased through a major bit of relief, in that we had, after two long years, at last been notified to the Red Cross. We first had a visit from the Swiss Legation and from a Representative from the Red Cross who both came together in June to assess conditions in the camp and to ascertain what comforts etc. they could provide and they immediately put a stop to the work. Also for the first time we were able to write one card each to our families at home to give them a brief word of what had happened to us and for them to learn that we were in fact still alive. Until that point all the family knew was that we had been attacked by aircraft in May 1942 from the distress signal that the Nankin had put out. So Mother wrote to her father Dr Chasseaud in Izmir Turkey, as it was a neutral country and the news would get through sooner, which in fact it did, and I wrote to my father in Ceylon. When the Chaseauds鈥� got that initial card they cabled my sister Helen in England, and father on the tea estate.

Cont/鈥︹�ee A Child鈥檚 War part Eleven

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