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The World War 2 Japanese Prison Diaries of
Alexander John James
Korea
Keijo
It took no less than seven hours for our freight train to cover the twenty-five miles to Keijo. However, on our arrival at the camp, a crowd of cold, weary, and rather haggard-looking individuals, we were given a warm reception by the officers whom we had known on the “Fukai Maru”.
Within a few days we were all quite settled down to a routine existence, which, to all intents and purposes, was just the same as at Jinsen. The four-storey brick building – an old cotton mill – in which we were housed, was more weather proof than our later quarters, but we were more cramped, and the lighting was very bad indeed. Thirty six of us were quartered in a room dimly lit, and ill-ventilated, by four very small windows. At night the three heavily shaded electric lights gave insufficient light for reading outside a radius of five or six feet from each bulb. The camp area as a whole, and the exercise ground in particular, was much smaller, and altogether more squalid than at Jinsen.
With new people to talk to, and new books to read, time slipped by fairly quickly. About the middle of March gardening began. The garden was situated some three miles from camp. The normal route took us through a mile and a half of suburban streets, the remainder being a rough unmade road running alongside the river that runs through Keijo. This walk was always interesting, in spite of being very hot in summer, and in spite of the frequent high-pitched choruses of small dirty, and usually stark naked children, yelling “Eya jin – no- tenko-wa”. (A rude reference to our [comparatively] long noses!) We left camp after breakfast, and did not return until the late afternoon. Apart from being a congenial occupation, and an excellent way of keeping as fit as possible under the circumstances, the garden was no great advantage to ourselves, as the Japs pinched the best of the produce and left little worth having for us.
Early in May however, the garden assumed a new importance. Until that time, our sources of news and newspapers had nearly all been within the camp, but one day a successful contact was made with a Korean youth, who lived close to the garden. He rapidly proved to be the most efficient contact we had ever had. Almost every day until we left the country, in exchange for a packet of American cigarettes, he delivered, right under the noses of the guard, a Japanese newspaper. The daily supply was so regular (also for security reasons – Japanese interpreters were always snooping) that it was referred to as the ‘milk’, and the Korean boy was known as the ‘milkman’. Two sentries who had previously been contacts inside the camp, but who were now dropped, were naturally very suspicious, but although they knew that the transaction took place on the garden, their efforts to detect the new source were unsuccessful.
It made a tremendous difference to our lives to be right up to date with the news. The daily bulletins gave us something to look forward to, and provided ample scope for discussion. We owed a great debt of gratitude to George Baker, an officer with a remarkable gift for languages, who did the translating. Had anyone in the chain of delivery slipped up, everyone concerned, especially George would have received very severe punishment.
By the end of July we had almost completely given up hope of a capitulation by Japan. The papers were filled with rubbish about ‘fighting on to final victory’, and although there were frequent references to the ‘grave situation’, various measures that were being taken led us to believe that they really would fight on. It came out later that the Japanese in Korea were all of this opinion, and all were prepared to fight it out to the end. Consequently it was a greater surprise to them than to ourselves when the great news came.
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