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Banpong
We left the Railway in March. The thirty of us were collected by a young lieutenant and a dark-skinned interpreter in a Japanese uniform, who seemed to be a Tamil. I don't know whether he could speak Japanese, he certainly did not know much English. We were put in trucks and taken by road back to Kanchanaburi.
We were put in a school for the night, given quite good Japanese food. and asked if anyone was sick. We all were, or less. For two hours we were attended by a Japanese medical corporal with the lightest, most delicate touch of any nurse I have ever encountered, treating ulcers, disinfecting cuts, putting ointment on skin complaints, and giving pills for fevers or intestinal problems.
The following morning we were taken to Banpong, where we had originally arrived by train from Singapore. The other ranks - but not the officers - were put through a driving test. Some were RASC heavy goods vehicle drivers. We were filled with doubt as to what we, the officers, would be used for; we had little control over the other ranks, none of whom we even knew. I suggested to a sergeant among them that it might be good for our solidarity and morale if the men were to salute their officers and call them 'Sir'. He looked at me as I were mad.
We were addressed by a more senior English-speaking officer. He told us that the other ranks, were to work around the camp, and on the lorries, but not to drive them. We felt, I suppose, like dogs who had been whipped, and then fed and treated kindly.
We stayed at Banpong for about a month. The camp we were in was neither well guarded nor fortified — just a bamboo fence. But there was no point in trying to escape. We were able to travel into the town with the lorries, and could buy food in the markets. I ate about twelve duck eggs a day, and from being in very poor condition. became about as fit as I had ever been. However two officers and two other ranks were sent away to hospital, because of their previous health, and died. I was left with Tony Graham, a regular Artillery captain. our senior officer. Our work consisted of organising our men for various details. One of these was lavatory cleaning, and I was surprised when they complained about not getting this duty often enough. It transpired that they were able to sell unused disinfectant to the local Thais. Moreover. when they went on water fatigues to a well across the road, they were selling petrol and spare parts. Some of them were going to Thai prostitutes. This scared me, because the area was watched by plain clothes Kempeitai (military police); and one of their sergeants drew me aside, and told me to warn my men not to go to the well for the next two days. Sure enough, there was a raid, and several Japanese soldiers were pulled in.
The transport unit was called Tamotsu Yuso-tai. and was Japanese Army, not POW administration. What they carried we did not know. The lieutenant in charge was called Kameyama.
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Lieutenant Kameyama
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He was always polite, if distant. We got to know some of his men rather better. The Tamil interpreter disappeared. I was then given a grammar entitled Tadashii Nippon-go 'Correct Japanese'. more precisely, 'How to speak Japanese politely.' I did not take very kindly to this at first. However, out of sheer necessity, I began to learn it, a thing I had not previously thought of doing.
In the early months I made good progress, for a beginner. I began to feel it was not nearly so difficult as was generally believed. The sounds are not as difficult as in, say, Arabic, and it is not a tonal language, as Chinese is, except in a very limited degree. While few of the sounds are exactly like those of European languages. if one can pronounce Italian, one can make a good shot at them. There are however distinctions between long and short vowels. which can alter the meaning of some words.
Of course, in the early stages I was driven by sheer need. None of our guardians spoke any English. Looking back, I don't really know how much progress I did make. I can remember discussing some relatively complicated subjects, such as religion and politics. I cannot have done it very well. It, must have sounded strange to those to whom I spoke.
The parts of speech are not really like European languages. There are no articles, but there are difficult and numerous particles. Personal pronouns are largely omitted, being understood from the context. So are plurals. The endings of verbs and adjectives are fairly simple. Relative clauses are lacking; instead there are cumbersome phrases before the noun. Word order is more as in German, with the verb at the end.
Everything that is said has a status and class implication. There are differences in speaking to one's own sex as opposed to the opposite sex, differences not only in grammar and manner, but in some cases in vocabulary. However, these differences are not now as great as they used to be.
For me, the important differences were those of status. It did not take long to discover the hierarchical nature of the language. The very title of the grammar, 'How to Speak Japanese Politely'. showed the need for polite social attitudes. Although that book did not make it very clear, there are many distinctions in the level of polite or impolite language that can be used between different people. There is a little of this in English; a man might refer to his own wife as 'my old girl' but would not refer to someone else's wife that way. This did not worry me much. With Indian troops I was used to the idea that officers and other ranks did not speak to each other in the same way. And our experience on the railway had left us with no illusions: the Imperial Japanese Army considered us to be the lowest of the low, who did not really deserve to be alive. This introduced a very strong class distinction! I might myself use correct forms of speech, but my captors used other forms. not shown in my grammar. As it happens, Japanese is not a language with any strong blasphemous or obscene vocabulary. The language of abuse is restricted to irony, sarcasm, and to calling other people several kinds of fool or idiot. The Japanese soldiers treated us accordingly, speaking to us much as their officers spoke to them. Prisoners of war were the lowest of the low; but I was an Army captain, a rank with higher status in the Japanese army than in ours, usually held by men much older than me. Hence, it seemed wrong to many Japanese soldiers to address me in humiliating terms. Very occasionally I was addressed in the honorific form, Taii Dono, which they would use for their own captains. Some just used my surname, as adapted to Japanese, Eriotto. More usually I was just addressed as Taii or perhaps Taii San, 'Mr Captain'. Sometimes I myself would use familiar forms of speech with Japanese soldiers, and usually I got away with it. Some reacted badly, but more often they would simply complain rather plaintively that I was not addressing a superior person in the correct way.
Conversations between British and Japanese soldiers could have some amusing aspects. The latter, being naturally polite to strangers, and not possessing themselves much military authority, would tend to use polite forms of speech. Most conversations were almost entirely about where people lived, whether they were married, how many children they had, and what age they and their family were. Such conversations were assisted by the fact that some British soldiers still possessed greatly treasured pictures of their families. Many British soldiers acquired a small Japanese vocabulary, and many Japanese soldiers a little English, thus enabling these exchanges. But things became more difficult when referring to family relationships. The Japanese soldier would politely ask about the British soldier's wife, father or mother, in terms of okusan, o-tösan and o-kääan. The British soldier was thus led to believe that okusan was the correct term for wife — whether his own or anyone else's. This left the Japanese a bit nonplussed — he expected the British soldier to refer to his own wife as kanai. The latter could also become confused by the similarity between the polite forms for wife and mother. Much the same thing happened over the words for children. The British soldier did not understand at all the difference between the terms o-kosan and kodomo, and the former was too much like okusan and o-kösan anyway. So although it went against the Japanese soldier's grain, they usually settled for kodomo as the mutually understood term.
Further groups of POWs from Singapore were being sent up to work on the railway, and would stop over beside our camp. One was the notorious ‘F’ Force, about 7000 men previously considered too unfit. Told they were being sent to a hospital camp in the Cameron Highlands, they loaded on to the train all the material belongings they had, including a piano. Only after passing Kuala Lumpur did the truth become apparent. They had to abandon much of their gear. We were able to pick over it before the looters and black marketeers, taking only what we could carry — there might be a time when we too would have to abandon kit. I found a few bits of clothing, a book or two, a mosquito net, and a Dunlopillo truck seat, which I shortened so that it just supported my hips and shoulders. I kept these till the end.
We were then sent off in smaller groups as pushers, cleaners. and general dogsbodies. I went to establish a staging camp at Kinsaiyok, the camp above Kanyu, where we had been wrongly sent to start with. From there we did several trips to Banpong and back. The rainy season had begun; the roads were bad. It was backbreaking work keeping lorries on the road — in some ways as bad as the railway work. The difference was that we were very much fitter, and we were working alongside the Japanese in a common effort in which their lot was no better than our own. Some of the vehicles were Nissans, a name now well known, but then reckoned as rather poor copies of Dodges.
At Kinsaiyok we had a little camp of our own, outside the main POW camp. A cholera epidemic was raging, and every drop of water had to be boiled. Our men fell sick with various diseases. Not having any chaplain, I buried five of them. I still have the names m my Prayer Book, and the dates: 27 May 1943 (two funerals), 30 May, 16 and 28 June. One began to achieve a bedrock understanding of the relative value of material possessions. By the standards of the times, was a rich man. Among other things I possessed two blankets. When one of our men fell ill, and had no blanket, I gave him one of mine. He died and was buried in it. Then another man fell very ill. Did I give him my remaining blanket? I am afraid I did not. On one occasion we were given about a kilo gramme of pure sugar to divide between a dozen of us. We had a long debate what to do with it. Finally we boiled it up in plain water and shared that. I don't think I ever enjoyed food or drink so much.
I wrote the following account of our final journey back to Banpong soon after our release:-
It was not an easy journey. The rain had been pouring down for days before the convoy left Kinsaiyok. There were four lorries, a Chevrolet, a Marmon Harrington, a Ford and a Nissan, and four of us to help the Japanese drivers. Frequently one or other of the lorries would overheat, and we would have to stop to fill up with water. Or the chains on the driving wheels would come adrift and have to be wired up again. And sometimes the road would be so bad that a detour had to be hacked through the undergrowth. From dawn until well after dusk the backbreaking work went on, pushing, towing, digging out, chaining up, sweating and cursing. From time to time a few spoonfuls of cold rice were snatched, with perhaps a can of vegetables, pinched from a case in one of the trucks, to help it down. With luck, three or four kilometres might be covered in a day.
Corporal Nomura was in charge of the convoy. He had with him another corporal and four drivers. His orders were to get the lorries down to Banpong before the monsoon trapped them in the jungle. As far as the four of us were concerned we were only interested in getting back to Banpong, off this filthy, disease-ridden railroad. Having at least an objective in common with the Japanese we worked and sweated together. But it was hard discouraging work.
Watanabe, one of the drivers, was a squat little fellow with big round glasses and a mouthful of gold-plated teeth. He had his faults, but his best quality was that he never got excited, never lost his temper. Day after day he would plough his Ford three-tonner through the mud of the jungle roads. Whatever happened, he would only grin, with his glasses misted with sweat and his overalls caked with mud, and start getting on with the next job that had to be done. The radiator would be holed by a bamboo stump. and water would gush out. But Watanabe would roar with laughter, slap more mud into the hole, and drive on. When he reached his destination, he would unload, take his lorry down to the river to wash it himself, go to sleep in his hut, and be ready for more next day.
Shibata, the only man in the outfit with any claim to being a mechanic, would start the journey all right, but after a day or two he would become sullen, complaining and of uncertain temper. Osuge had just got his corporal's star, and being all too conscious of his complete ignorance of anything to do with mechanical transport was soon exerting his authority by wicked little displays of temper - not necessarily directed towards the POWs, let it be said. The other driver, Hirahara, was a very different type. Like Watanabe, he came from one of the big cities in the south of Japan, Hiroshima perhaps. He was an irrepressible little man with a gruff voice that earned him the nickname 'Popeye'. But he was highly exceptional among the Japanese soldiers we met in so far as he was a petty thief. His companions always took the precaution of searching his kit before letting him leave a billet. The remaining Japanese was Maeda, a thin limbed, fine featured student from a well-to-do farmer's family. He was intelligent and sometimes very thoughtful, would flare up unpredictably as soon as any feelings of resentment were aroused in him.
For several hours we made fairly good progress, but now it was clear to everyone, even Watanabe, that the Chevrolet go no further. A lorry can run with two broken spring leaves a useless cylinder and a leaky radiator; but now the half-shaft had gone. We could do no more. We squatted by the roadside, shivering a little as the effect of our exertions wore off and the rain seeped through our thin cloths.
Corporal Smith was sick. For two days he had had bad of dysentery. Tich had ulcers on his legs. Bob was still weak from an attack of malaria the previous night. But by the standards of most of the prisoners working on the railway we were in excellent health.
We wailed to see what Nomura would do. He was a big fellow by Japanese standards, a tough regular soldier who moved and thought slowly, but rarely lost his temper. He grunted, and in one word accepted temporary defeat:
'Meshi,' he said. Food. No Japanese soldier would consider taking a meal if there were an immediate job to be done. We had not eaten since starting off that morning, and now it was nearly four o'clock. Nomura and I sat there while the others went off to the lorries to get the tubs of rice.
'Where do we sleep tonight?' I asked.
'Don't know,' he grunted.
'What about the Japanese camp we passed just down the road
'It's another unit.'
This seemed to imply an inflexible rule. A Japanese soldier would lose considerable face if he had to ask for hospitality from another unit.
The others came back with the rice tubs and two mess tins of boiled vegetables and pickles. We dug the cold rice out of the tubs into our own mess tins, shared out the vegetables and pickles and silently began to eat.
A working party of British and Dutch came sloshing through the mud along the road, escorted by half a dozen Japanese soldiers. We could tell that some of them were Dutch because of the somewhat unmilitary-looking green straw hats, now mostly in tatters, that many of them had managed to retain. The prisoners moved in single file, wearily and silently with their heads down. Most of them were nearly naked except for G-strings and some sort of head covering. A few had boots, but most clumped stickily along on wooden clogs, carrying their picks, shovels, sledge hammers and parangs. All looked yellow and emaciated, with dirty bits of bandage tied here and there on their legs and arms.
As they passed, Bob recognised one of them.
'Hey, Nobbie,' he called. 'What camp are you from?'
A man in the line looked up, but before he could reply, one of the Japanese guards came running along the track, brandishing a heavy bamboo stick and shouting to his party to keep moving. He made a threatening gesture at Bob, cursing him loudly.
As the party moved out of sight, I glanced at Nomura. He was watching, but silent. When we had finished eating, he and the others started discussing what to do. The Chevrolet would have to be left in the jungle until spare parts could be be got to it, and two men would have to be left with it until relieved. Osuge and Hirahara were assigned to this unattractive job. Meanwhile there was work to be done in shifting all movable and nonessential parts from the Chevrolet to the other lorries. In exchange, Osuge and Hirahara were given an extra tarpaulin from the Nissan. By the time we had finished it was nearly dark. I wondered again where we were going to spend the night.
Nomura got into the driving seat of the Marmon Harrington and told Shibata and me to sit beside him. Corporal Smith was in the back, and Bob and Tich travelled with Maeda in the Nissan. Slowly but fairly effectively, we began to move forward, leaving Osuge and Watanabe ginning rather forlornly by the roadside.
After about half a mile we came upon the camp from which the party of prisoners must have come. As we came up to it, Maeda began blowing a distress signal on the Nissan 's horn. Looking round I could see clouds of steam coming from the radiator. This was a regular performance, but we were not always lucky in having it happen near a water supply.
Tich and Bob took a bucket apiece and went with Maeda to the camp entrance to ask the Korean guard where water could be had. I got down too and went with them on the chance of finding someone I knew in the camp. The sentry waved them on, but made me wait. A British officer came and spoke to me:
‘Hallo,' he said. 'Where have you come from?'
I explained that we were attached to a transport unit and wore trying to make our way down the river from Kinsaiyok to Banpong. He told me in return that he was with a detachment of about 200 men from No 2 Group. I asked him how were going.
'Could be worse,' he replied. 'We had a hell of a time a month ago when the speedo was on. But now its a bit easier, and we are expecting the track laying party along any day. The Nip engineers on the job are not too bad, except every Thursday, when a major comes round and gives them hell. They just pass it on with bamboo sticks to everyone in sight. The Koreans in the camp are a lot of bastards, but fortunately the Nip sergeant in charge of them keeps them fairly well under control — except when he's drunk, that is.'
'Have you had many deaths here?' I asked.
'No, only five I think. But then we've been lucky in being able to get most of the seriously sick down to the main camp in Chungkai. The trouble is, though, that when we finish the job here in a couple of weeks we shall probably be sent right up near three Pagodas Pass, beyond No 4 Group.
‘Have you heard anything about that?’
I shook my head. We had seen ‘H’ and ‘F’ Forces marching up the river — the men who had been left behind in Changi as too sick for work, but now ordered up-country to face the worst conditions of any prisoners on the railway. But I saw no point in telling him about that.
We got our water, but no accommodation for the night. We slept as well as we could under tarpaulins in the lorries. Next day we got through to Banpong, very tired, dirty and hungry.
The next five months were remarkable chiefly for their ordinariness — or so it seems looking back on them now. Here we were, a bunch of British POWs, only twenty-one of us left now, living and working in quite a matter-of-fact way alongside a Japanese Army unit. We were not particularly friendly or familiar with them, but on the other hand we were not subjected to any kind of severe discipline. Up on the railway, though, the tempo of work and the chronicle of miseries were rising to a crescendo. The line to Burma had to be completed, regardless of suffering. Ultimately the two halves of the single-line railway were joined up on 17 October 1943, at a point 268 kilometres from where we were, in Banpong.
There was great rejoicing, at least on the Japanese side, and to some extent on ours too, because from then on the pressure of work eased. But it was already too late for many of the workers. We ourselves had no great sense of conscience at not being there until the end. We had had our share of hardship earlier on, and some of us had had a fairly bad time working on the roads with the transport unit. Perhaps that helped us to get on well with them.
The Banpong camp was really part of a much larger complex, used chiefly for Japanese troops in transit on their way to Burma. All the POWs lived together in a long atap-roofed hut, sleeping side by side on a kind of bamboo shelf, with Tony and me at one end. The other ranks were a very mixed lot, with a heavy preponderance of RASC drivers, There was also a teacher from a Rudolf Steiner school, and the eldest son of a well-to-do glove maker. Some had belonged to the same unit, and engaged in endless arguments, conducted generally in four-letter words, on what seemed to be quite unimportant subjects. For instance, a marathon dispute went on for over two days as to whether their berths on the troop ship had been above or below the officers' quarters. In the end only one of them maintained his position, and when asked why he did not concede defeat he said that it would have made him seem such an 'effing' liar. The worst condemnation they could think of was to say that someone was 'lying down reading'. There was, in fact, not much work to do. Nor was there much discipline, either among ourselves or imposed by the Japanese. In the ordinary POW camps it was usual for the Japanese to insist that we should bow to or salute their soldiers of all ranks. Although we would salute Lieutenant Kameyama when we met him, which was only rarely, we did not salute any of his men. But there was no question as to who was in charge, as was shown up in a few minor incidents. Tony and I had feared at first that we might find ourselves in a difficult situation. Perhaps our new guardians would turn out to be particularly unpleasant or would insist on us doing work that might be considered military assistance to the enemy. When it turned out that neither of these fears was justified we were able to relax more. Our role as officers lay chiefly in allocating minor duties such as lavatory cleaning and water carrying. I did find myself in one peculiar role. Because, no doubt, I could speak a little Japanese, I was put in charge of the bicycles that their soldiers could borrow if they wanted to go into town. Each bicycle had to be signed for, and this put me, oddly enough, in a certain position of authority, in which a soldier wanting a bicycle would come into the hut, click his heels and salute me before making his request.
We were fed from the Japanese cookhouse, on more or less the same food as they got themselves — usually an ample supply of sticky rice, helped down with a kind of vegetable and bean-curd stew, strongly flavoured with soya sauce, and perhaps a little meat. When I went to Japan some years later, I realised that for several months we had been fed three times a day on what amounted to typical Japanese breakfasts.
It did not take long for the Japanese to build for themselves a traditional bathhouse with a large square wooden tub which they could fill with hot water. They always used it first, and we were allowed in afterwards, using the typical Japanese method of washing ourselves down first with soap, and getting into the tub only when we had thoroughly rinsed off all the lather.
It would have been quite easy to get out of our camp. But there was nowhere to go. Although the local Thais were quite friendly and helpful we did not consider them trustworthy enough to depend on their help. As it was, we had considerable liberty of movement as long as we rode on the lorries going into town. The money with which we were paid was nominally in Thai ticuls or baht, printed in huge quantities by the Japanese and not having much real value. Nevertheless, it served as a medium of exchange for eggs, tobacco, vegetables and suchlike local products.
We called the money 'dollars', probably because we had previously been used to Malayan or Straits Settlements dollars, but there was no real way of equating it in value with other currencies. Other ranks were paid, as on the railway work, a small sum of 20 cents or so for every day they worked. But officers were paid whether they worked or not, and this pay was supposed to be deducted from the pay we were getting at home. The monthly amount 120 dollars, but the Japanese deducted about 40 dollars a month as 'savings' in the Yokohama Specie Bank, against the day, no doubt, when we would have to make our own way in the Greater South East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere under the aegis of a victorious Japan. We usually donated about 20 dollars to our hospital funds. Human nature ran true to form; there were those among us who were feckless with their money, and those who managed to save, not to mention those with entrepreneurial instincts who were capable of becoming very 'rich' indeed. Some set themselves up as 'bankers', providing dollars in return for IOUs payable in sterling after the war. The going rate was usually about one dollar to one pound. On one occasion I cashed a 'cheque' for sixty pounds this way with a British sergeant-major. I lost touch with him, and after the war it was never charged against my bank account.
The only adventure I had during this period occurred when a party of Indian POWs was moved into some huts alongside us. Their status was rather unclear. We knew that the Japanese had put intense pressure on Indians to join Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army. Some had indeed joined, with the intention of helping to 'liberate' India from British rule, and a few had even gone into action in Burma. But most had simply acted under duress and had avoided actual military service in any way possible. There was therefore a large 'grey area' between those who had definitely collaborated with the Japanese and those who had not. The Indians next door were under a lieutenant, and were in fact having a worse time with their captors than we were. They attributed this to sheer racial discrimination; they expected that Europeans would be treated better than Asians. I was agreeably surprised to find among them my former orderly in the 2/16 Punjab Regiment. As it was not hard to talk over the fence, he asked me to supply him and some others with a chit to say that they were not serving the Japanese as combatants. This I rather foolishly agreed to do. A few days later a message came that the Indian lieutenant would like to have a word with me. They smuggled me into their camp through the fence, after dark. I was astonished to find how astute they were at deceiving the Japanese. I would be led forward a few yards, and then pushed into the shadows while a Japanese guard passed. Then we would carry on until we reached the lieutenant's quarters. I drew the conclusion that the Indians had been pulling the wool over our eyes for years, just as they were now doing to the Japanese.
The lieutenant was polite and friendly, but asked me to stop writing chits for his men. This could lead to frightful consequences for us all if found by the Japanese. I should leave it to people like him to judge what should be done about men guilty of traitorous activities. After enjoying a mug of tea I was spirited back to my own camp in the same way as I had come. I took the point and desisted from putting anything in writing again.
Among the Japanese troops passing through, quite a number came to speak to me. Word had got to them that there was a Cambridge University professor in the camp. I had really got no further than my second undergraduate year, but it was difficult to convince them of that. Some were curious, some slightly hostile. Most simply wanted to say something about the war. They were quite convinced, of course, that they were going to win, and so the thrust of their arguments concerned how we were going to manage in the Greater South East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, which they were now in the process of creating. The following typical example of such an encounter is taken from the notes I wrote soon after release:-
It was a dark and grizzly evening. The Japanese troops passing through the transit camp had put away their machine guns and rifles, had rolled their funny little mountain guns back into the shed, and were having their evening meal. I lit a candle, got under the mosquito net and began to read. I did not expect anyone to come and see me. True, that afternoon a Japanese cadet officer had come up to me, saluted, and asked was I the English captain? Could he and two friends come round and see me in the evening? But it was late now, and the weather was bad, so I did not expect them to turn up.
Suddenly the edge of the mosquito net was raised and there stood three little Japanese. I invited them to come on the bed. They scrambled up, squatted down and produced their contribution to the evening — a bottle of Thai whisky, a pomelo, a packet of French-Indö-China cigarettes, a tin of biscuits and a candle. We talked far into the evening. The cadet's name was Tamei, and in civilian life he had been training to be a Buddhist priest. The sergeant-major, Iwashita, claimed to be a Christian; the only testimony to this was his ability to name the first four books of the Bible and the four gospels. The trio was completed by Saito, a private who had recently graduated from Tokyo Imperial University. We talked of all sorts of things. Their unit had had a bad time getting away from the Solomons, and now they were going to Burma to fight the English there. As the evening wore on we got rather sleepy, and the whisky, although weak in alcoholic content, loosened our tongues a little. When we had got beyond arguing about our rival philosophies, they began to admit their dislike of war, of the thought of dying, and their wish to go home and lead a peaceful life. The chances are that they are now lying buried somewhere in Burma.
A common denominator in all such conversations was the strenuous support of two strongly felt viewpoints. One of these was the belief that the Japanese would win the war, but, paradoxically, if they didn’t there would never be any question of surrender. They were determined to die for the Emperor, to the last man, woman and child. The other point, very frequently made, was that they were engaged in a 'Hundred Years' War'. It was never very clear when this began. Most people think it was 1941. But it might have been the Russo-Japanese war, or the Japanese incursion into Korea round the turn of the century, or it might have been Manchuria in 1931. At any rate, it is not yet finished. The Australian author, Russell Bradden, himself a POW, wrote a book on this theme, ‘The Other Hundred Years' War’. There must be many influential Japanese still alive who were brought up on this doctrine. As shown above, this was not created as a matter of post-war policy, but had existed well before.
Sometimes the troops passing through would arrange concerts. Two large Nissan trucks would be drawn up side by side, with the sides and tailboards let down, to form a kind of stage. The performances given were often quite noteworthy singers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats and sometimes exhibitions of the martial arts. The make-up and costumes were often remarkably good, for both men 's and women's parts. Perhaps some of the actors were Kabuki professionals in civilian life. Even under the adverse circumstances I began to learn a little about Japanese culture.
It was sometimes suggested that the British POWs should put on a turn. We had no talent of any kind among us, and we would try to decline as politely as possible. But when they insisted we would crowd on to the 'stage' and sing some numbers that we all knew, such as 'Ten green bottles hanging on the wall', 'I've got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence', 'The Lambeth Walk', 'Tipperary' and 'We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line', but we were seldom all sure of the words. Our performances did not exactly sparkle and I fear that we were not very good representatives of British culture.
One day I had had to go upriver to Group Headquarters collect our pay. Here is my account of my return, and what I found awaiting me:-
It was very chilly as we rattled down the line towards Banpong on a cold, clear November night -- 25 November 1943. I was shivering in an open truck with Tahara, the Japanese private who had escorted me to Wanyai (Tarso) to get the pay for our unit, Tahara had fallen asleep. These people seemed to us to be able to sleep anywhere, under any conditions. When we stopped at Banpong he got off the truck, still half asleep, and staggered off in the direction from which we had come. We stumbled on a couple of hundred yards before he would admit that he was wrong. We turned round and walked stiffly back for half a mile towards our camp, passing on the way an abattoir which was making the night air hideous with the squeals of pigs being slaughtered.
The guard let us through the barricade, and I headed straight for our hut. They were all asleep, and someone was snoring. I lit a candle and started very quietly to crawl under the mosquito net to make my bed. Then Tony, who slept beside me turned over and opened his eyes. I said I was sorry for waking him.
'There're some letters for you, Alan,' he said, pointing to a biscuit tin between us. I forgot my good resolutions about waking no one and reached for them. Five of them two from my father, two from my mother, and one from my sister, all written in the anxious days of mid-1942, after they had waited for months without a single word from me. They were full of little scraps of news and expressions of hopes and fears for my safety, and promises of parcels that I suspected I would never receive. Five letters, all over a year old, but some of the most welcome mail that I could ever remember receiving. I read them twice, blew out the candle and wrapped the blanket round me. I said a little prayer of thanks, and for those at home, and quickly went to sleep. (Written shortly after my release. )
When we had been captured at Singapore we had all been — unless of course posted 'missing, believed prisoner of war' - worse was known. After many months we had been allowed to write a 'form' postcard, showing at least that we were alive. These had taken over a year to deliver. Finally our relatives had been allowed, after much indirect negotiation through the Red Cross, to write letters limited to twenty-five words.
Shortly after that our time with Tamotsu Yusotai came to end. By then the name had changed to Retsu Yusotai, presumably through a change of commanding officers. From a military point of view we did not know much about them. We were not encouraged to enquire, and for that matter we were not very interested. As far as we knew they were now being sent up the line to Burma.
None of us had much to do with the Japanese officers or senior NCOs, and they did not have much interest in us. On the other hand we formed quite a close relationship with some of the lower ranks. And some of our other ranks got into all sorts of shady deals with their Japanese opposite numbers. I myself formed a special sort of relationship with Maeda, (This is not his real name. Even at this late stage there are possibilities of causing embarrassment to his family) the university student from a well-to-do farming family. He was probably not far from my age (then 23), though for official purposes I had added five years to my age, largely because 23 was absurdly young, by Japanese standards, to be a captain. It was a bit more plausible to be 28. This little deceit backfired on me when Tony, who was about 26, and a Regular Army Captain, found out that he was really older than me.
Maeda and I were thus probably contemporaries. It was not exactly a friendship we formed — more what sociologists would call a 'joking relationship'. It all centred round the idea that I should marry his sister. Whenever we talked we always got around to the subject of what a good wife she would make for me. He stressed how tall she was — like me — and he had already written to his family suggesting a match. In due course I got rather tired of this line of thought, seemed to have no possible practical application. I made some careless remark to indicate that the joke was over, and was astonished to find that Maeda was genuinely upset. In his eyes he was doing me a great favour. Here was I, a prisoner of war with no real social prospects. I would one day have to make my way in a world dominated by a victorious Japan. He was offering me a genuine opportunity! We made it up after a few days, but the sister was never mentioned again.
I also made quite a serious mistake with Corporal Nomura. One day we were talking about army drill. To illustrate some point I gave him the Japanese order for 'Come to attention!', Kyotsuke! In no uncertain terms he made it clear that I had gone too far. Kyotsuke! was an order that could be given to an NCO only by an officer of his own army.
How easy it was to have misunderstandings! The remarkable thing was that we were able to have such relationships at all.
And so the time came to say good-bye to Retsu Yusotai. They had probably saved the lives of most of us; but when we parted there was no great show of sorrow or affection, just an expression of best wishes for a future which was unlikely to be good for any of us. They assured us we would not be sent back to ordinary prisoner-of-war camps, but would continue to be used on transport work. However, we were first sent a few kilometres down the road to one of the main POW camps in the area, at Nongpladuk, which was in fact the point where the Burma railway joins the main Bangkok line.
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