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.

A Childs War (Part Seven)

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 4 - FUKUSHIMA INTERNMENT CAMP 1942. (PART TWO)

After about a week we gradually became aware of what a desperate situation we were now in, having to endure a regime that revelled in cruelty, harshness and intolerance which was in stark contrast to the fairly benign conditions of the Germans, who being a Christian Western Power, had thought processes and a culture similar to our own. Here we had instead a ruthlessly authoritarian regime that revelled in orders and rules. There were for a start some 130 camp regulations which would be implemented to the very letter by routinely harsh punishments such as slapping, kicking on the shins, or being made to stand motionless in the main hall outside the guards room for hours at a time. In severe cases they would make prisoners kneel for a hour or two on the hard floor, so that the pain became so numbing with the blood flow restricted that one would cry with pain, and when released finally from the ordeal one could barely move. These punishments were regularly and savagely carried out with the sole and express purpose of breaking our spirit, women included so that we would become little better than cowed animals. Even children such as myself aged 11 and others such as Howard Guy who was two years younger were no exception, and we all regularly had to endure 鈥減unishment鈥� stands on average for an hour or two, or otherwise half an hour kneeling on the hard floor. This happened about once a week or fortnight for trivial offences such as not bowing low enough (kiri) when meeting a guard or not being deferential enough..

Men and women were kept permanently separate for the same reason, in order to break their spirit. During the first 20 months of captivity husbands and wives were only allowed to meet in the main common room five times to just converse with each other. To the Western mind such treatment today seems totally incomprehensible, as it was to us then, but all one could do when powerless was to just put up with the regime, grin and bear it, be buoyed up by ones inmates鈥� loyalty and solace and not allow the devils to win by us buckling down.

During the first week each internee was interviewed by the commandant and details such as nationality, sex, race, occupation etc. were all painstakingly entered in a book. Also prisoners were ordered at the same time to hand over all ornaments containing gold, silver or platinum. So each had to forgo and yield over treasured possessions such as wedding rings, ear rings, brooches etc. Mother was glad that she had nothing, all her family trinkets being held, wisely she hoped in the German Embassy.
We were soon to discover during that first year, not only did we have a ruthlessly unpleasant and arrogant Commandant, but that his unpleasantness was compounded by the Interpreter who was a Japanese American named Mr Midorikawa who had lived most of his life in San Francisco and loathed Americans like poison. Although there were none in our camp, the British were the next best thing, and so when interpreting to the commandant or a senior official, he would put our polite requests from our representatives like Capt. Stratford, and have them expressed through translation in the rudest and most vulgar manner. At the same time he would also twist things round, so that the Commandant would become apoplectic with rage, and thus tighten the screws still further each time making our lives just a bit more unpleasant and harsher than they already were, compounding our ordeal and misery.
Another problem which had a serious bearing on day to day life in the camp was the food. After our initial soup, the meals prepared by the Japanese cook Mr Takahashi became uneatable because they were hardly ever cooked. Beans, cabbage cucumber, and the large Japanese radish were all served completely raw and in spite of protests, would not be cooked at all, until a year later, when with a change of commandant it was agreed that some of the Greeks be allowed to prepare the food. This they did well, and our diet suddenly improved , but then coincidentally food was also becoming harder to obtain, a situation that was going to steadily worsen, until towards the end of the war, it became so desperate that we were forced to eat weeds, roots or anything vaguely edible just to survive.

So although food was plentiful during the first year, most prisoners lost about 20 lbs in weight because of the diet. Fruit too would arrive in cartons in large quantities, and not be distributed at all, would then rot and be thrown out on the rubbish pit never having been offered. Grovelling amongst the waste and rotting produce in the snow, I would then find a few tangerines or apples that were reasonably sound to eat. It was criminal, the waste that was allowed to develop that first year when produce was abundant, and being paid for by the Germans, all the more especially, as the camp was situated in the middle of a fruit growing and market gardening area. All protestations to the commandant through the Interpreter Midorikawa were disregarded with customary abuse.

In our room we all got on well together. Phyllis Hercombe who was very attractive in her mid thirties, told Mother that whilst on the Nankin she had a affair with an Army Major. In the intervening two months she had missed a couple of periods, and confided her problems in case she was pregnant. Although married for ten years, she had no children as her husband John was against them. She would spend hours looking at her tummy which had developed a bit of a tubby paunch, which Mother would explain was quite common with a lot of the other women from eating so much bread on the German boats. She was petrified of her husband鈥檚 likely reaction, and would spend hours discussing her worries. It was my first experience of 鈥済rown ups鈥� sexual problems, and was naturally intrigued with all the discussions, and I would lie on my bed pretending to be fast asleep, but in reality looking through half open eyes to see what was going on as they talked.
鈥淚s the boy asleep?鈥� she would ask.

鈥淵es of course he is, and in any case he is far too young to understand what you are talking about鈥� Mother would add.

Meanwhile my ears would flap and I would eagerly await the latest development the next evening. Needless to say she was not pregnant, and her tummy soon came down with the raw vegetable diet.

About a month after we had arrived, we had our first death with old Hemmy Vincent one of the seamen passing away with peritonitis probably as a result of the diet, and a month later the elderly Chief Steward McIntyre died of a stroke in the middle of September. Earlier that month we had suddenly woken up with a start at one o鈥檆lock in the morning with the whole building rocking about with a really severe earthquake. Everyone rushed into the corridors and the Captain and Interpreter came around to calm everyone down. There were innumerable small quakes every few weeks but about once a year we would get one that was really quite frightening, but the Japanese were accustomed to the unstable nature of their ground and were not over anxious. Also our building, built on a steel frame had the natural flexibility to withstand the usual shocks that were a normal occurrence in that unstable part of the world.

In September I started work with one of the missionaries an elderly plump woman with a hair bun who started to school me by starting a diary which has been invaluable in writing this account. She was a kind lady who amazed me by saying that Darwin鈥檚 Theory of Evolution were the teachings of the devil, and against the Bible. It was my first experience of meeting someone whose idea of history was dominated by faith rather than reason. At home both Father and Mother were supremely rational. Father in particular, because my Grandad had fallen on hard times, and had never been to a proper school, had been forced to pick up his education from extensive reading and from his time as an officer in the Army in the first world war. Mother too was very much an intellectual rationalist influenced a lot by the 鈥淏loomsbury set鈥� of which she was an avid fan.

Cont/鈥ee A Child鈥檚 War part eight

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