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Prisoner of War
No one knew what was going to happen next. Most of us were so tired that we didn't care. The unexpected had happened; and suddenly the whole basis of our lives had been knocked away from under us. Funnily enough, we always had complete faith that our original way of life would be restored to us. Nevertheless, the experience has left me with a profound sense of insecurity, lest something will happen again to disrupt normal life as we know it.
For the moment we had little reason for confidence. We had no idea what the Japanese would do with prisoners. The precedents were not promising; to our knowledge at least, they had not often taken many. But several tens of thousands? There had to be other solutions.
For that matter, we knew very little about the Japanese, except that they had turned out to be a far more effective fighting force than we had imagined. The popular British image ran along rather comical 'Mikado' or 'Madame Butterfly' lines. Industrially and militarily they were simply regarded as rather clever copyists. We did know what had happened after the Meiji Restoration — the annexation of Korea, the defeat of the Russians, and more recently the occupation of Manchuria and much of China. An old 'China hand' with us, who had been in Japan, told us not to worry. The Japanese, he said, were a very nice and civilised people.
That night nothing happened. The firing died away until there were only occasional sounds of shots or explosions. Many fires were still burning throughout the city, and the air was full of oily smoke. We settled down as best we could in Little's department store, surrounded by all kinds of luxury goods. Next day we were told to pile our arms and other weapons. The Indian and other Asian troops were to march to Farrar Park, the British, Australians and other Europeans out to Changi Point, a distance of about 15 miles. European civilians were to go to Changi gaol. Sorrowfully, I said good-bye to my Indian orderly. No: one knew what to expect next.
Nearly all of us had to go to Changi on foot. Only fifty lorries were being allowed to carry the sick and wounded and such heavy equipment as we might be allowed to take. Individually, we could only take what we could carry. That set us a 'Desert Island Disc's type of problem. (A British radio programme in which a celebrity is asked to choose eight gramophone records he would like to have if marooned on a desert island).
Apart from all the luxury goods in Little's, there was a bookshop still open the square. I could have taken anything. I did the expected kind of thing and took a Bible and a Church of England Prayer Book (which I still possess), but hardly anything from Little's, where I surveyed the tea sets, vacuum cleaners and carpets. If we had been starting a hotel we would have been well placed. But as a prisoner of war? I found a new pair of shorts and a shirt, to replace my ragged, sweat-stained clothes. A pair of shoes seemed a good idea. I replaced my steel helmet with an appalling-looking 'Bombay Bowler'. A tour round the other departments produced a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and a towel, all of which I bundled into my haversack.
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Japanese Soldier
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The day was very hot and sticky. We set out on our sweaty march, a motley lot of Indian Army officers without their troops, and were able to see some of the destruction in the city, with corpses still lying around or floating in the river. A few Japanese soldiers were on street corners. As we passed one, a Chinese ran out from a shop entrance. The soldier raised his rifle and shot him. But no disorderly Japanese troops were to be seen in the city. After about five miles, well out in the suburbs, a minor miracle happened. A lorry passed, only partly full, and stopped. About thirty of us managed to jam ourselves on board and we rode in relative comfort the rest of the way.
Changi camp should be distinguished from the notorious Changi Jail, where the civilians were first sent. A barracks area intended for about a brigade of troops, sixty thousand or so would now occupy it. Everything was in chaos, but we managed to find the buildings to which we had been assigned, and to settle in after a fashion. Next day I was astonished to have a visit from my cousin Finch White, a regular major in the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, whom I had last met in Ferozepore. He had been sent to Malaya at the last moment, just in time to be taken prisoner. I had no idea of this, but he had known that I was in Malaya, and was relieved to find me alive and relatively well. So I moved into the quarters he was occupying in a corner of one of the barracks buildings.
Before long, parties of other ranks were taken off to other parts of Singapore. The rest of us had nothing to do except look after our own needs. Although the area as a whole was guarded we never saw any Japanese. To start with, we had fairly good food supplies, mostly tinned, but as time went on they began to run out and we became more dependent on Japanese rations. For couple of months we discussed endlessly the campaign in which we had just been defeated. That was a sort of psychological catharsis. For myself, I was too physically exhausted to care much about what was going to happen. We engaged in various activities — sporting, studious and artistic. An infamous incident occurred when it was demanded of us to sign an undertaking not to escape. We refused. Most of us, except a few sick and dying, were crowded into Selarang Barracks, intended for a single battalion. We gave in, signing under duress when it was threatened that the sick would be moved in with us too. After that, life went on without many developments. Some time later we were told we were to be sent to properly organised POW camps in the north. Meanwhile, all our senior officers, down to the rank of Brigadier, were taken away by ship to Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Then the truth began to filter through. We were going to work on the Bangkok-Moulmein Railway in Thailand.
The earlier parties left for Thailand and Burma from about May onwards. In October I was included in a party of about two hundred, mostly Indian Army officers, with officers and other ranks of the Federated Malay States and Straits Settlements Volunteers. Many civilians of every kind of status had been conscripted into the latter force only when war had come to the Far East. Our party included, for instance, much of the academic staff of Raffles College, later the University of Malaya, with full professors as privates or corporals. Unlike many later parties, we were reasonably fit to start with, although the limited diet in Changi was beginning to tell on some of us. Those who had been heavy drinkers, especially of beer, were more vulnerable than others to the onset of beri-beri (vitamin B deficiency).
In other accounts, the various parties are often given letters of the alphabet — ‘A’ Force, ‘B’ Force, etc. The most notorious railway work forces were ‘F’ and ‘H’, consisting largely of sick men, who did not leave Changi until April and May 1943. I was not aware of being a member of any particular 'force'.
I want to concentrate on those events of the next few months that affected me personally. Plenty of books have been written describing the horrors of the 'Railroad of Death'. They do not exaggerate; everything they record really happened. What I want to do is to get the whole story a bit more into perspective, and to add, perhaps, something about personal experiences in a situation that was in other respects very bad.
We left Singapore in early November 1942. The journey began in steel railway trucks carrying thirty to forty men apiece. The journey took over four days of travelling, with many stops and waits on the way. From Banpong in Thailand, on the Bangkok line, then the railhead for the new line to Burma, we were taken by lorry to Kanchanaburi, and from there we had to march the last fifty miles or so to our first camp at Tarso. We began to fall out sick, and to drop a lot of the belongings we had carried from Singapore. When we arrived in a very weary state we found nothing but a camp site, and we had to build our own huts from bamboo and Atap (palm fronds).
After a few days we were moved further upriver, this time by barges, to another camp called Kinsaiyok, and had to start hut building all over again. There we were told that we had been delivered to the wrong camp, and were again put in barges to be taken some way back downstream to Kanyu. (Kanchanaburi is about 50 kilometres from Banpong, and Tarso about 80 kilometres beyond that. Kinsaiyok is about a further 40 kilometres upstream. The meeting point for the railway, between Thailand and Burma, was 262 kilometres from Banpong, and 32 kilometres short of three Pagodas Pass, which divides the two countries. The total length of the railway, from Nongpladuk, near Banpong, to Thanbyuzayat in Burma, was 415 kilometres.)
Kanyu was later to become one of the major camps on the Thailand side. We were among its first inhabitants. To begin with there was not a great deal to do except build huts and look after ourselves. There were no restrictions on movement and no fences. We could have escaped quite easily; the only trouble was that there was nowhere to go. Several times I walked hundreds of yards away from the camp, and climbed a small hill to survey the mountains and jungle around us. I took my Prayer Book with me, and learned the 48th Psalm by heart. I put this to good use on Christmas Day when, in the absence of any chaplain, I took a service. In other respects that Christmas was a disaster. The Japanese, deciding to be generous, gave us a live pig. We duly butchered and cooked it. Only then did we discover that it was riddled with guinea worm. Some went ahead with their Christmas dinner, most did not. We were not hungry enough, yet.
Then the railway work began, with the clearing of the trace along which the line was to run. At first, only the other ranks went out of the camp. 'to work. Officers were formed into parties to do jobs around the camp. But we were far too many for that to last long. Soon the pressure was on us, to work on the railway — only a little light work, we were told. We did not get much support in our objections from the other ranks. Before long, there was not much difference in the work we were doing — clearing jungle, digging cuttings and building culverts, and drilling rock as a preliminary to blasting. All this was done with the most primitive of tools picks and shovels, 'stretchers' for carrying earth, and hammers and chisels for rock-drilling.
We were made up into parties of about thirty each and were marched off soon after dawn. There we came under the control of Japanese army engineers, belonging to the two railway construction regiments assisted to the job. Organisationally, they were quite distinct from the POW administration. Inside our camps the guards were Koreans, under the command of a junior Japanese officer or sergeant. The Korean guards were of a class known as gunzoku — meaning roughly 'civilians in Army employment.' (A gunzoku is also known as heiho. I believe that civilian auxiliaries were known as gunzoku if of Japanese nationality, but heiho if of other nationality, i.e. Chinese. Ours were Korean, but referred to as gunzoku. This may have been because some Koreans had Japanese nationality.)
They wore an army-style uniform but without badges of rank. They were greatly despised by the Japanese, and badly treated. We were told that their pay was paradoxically much higher than that of soldiers — a further factor in the latter's dislike of them. Unfortunately, they tended to pass their ill treatment on to us. A large part of our misfortunes were attributable to our Korean guards. Originally, there had been a number of 'decent' Koreans, but it would appear that any with humane instincts were soon weeded out by the Japanese, leaving us only with a bunch of fascist minded collaborators. I have been sorry ever since that this gave us a thoroughly bad idea of Koreans. I know from subsequent experience that they are very different from the Japanese, and had suffered badly at their hands since being invaded and annexed, from 1895 onwards. They are an extremely tough, creative people, and although by no means lily-white saints, they have many commendable qualities which had no chance of showing up under these conditions.
The railway construction engineers who supervised our work were a very rough lot. They had probably cut their teeth on construction or repair work in China with a work force considered entirely expendable. Our more serious problems really began. The norms set for our daily tasks — cubic metres of earth or the depth of holes drilled — were being constantly increased. The working day became longer and longer. Our health deteriorated further, with fevers, enteritis and ulcers, and the rations became less and less varied. There was usually plenty of rice, though of very poor quality, but little else to go with it except some dried vegetables —a sure recipe for beri-beri. We still had some medical facilities. One day I mentioned casually to a doctor friend that I was suffering from numbness in my fingers and found myself packed off to the 'hospital'. The chief element in the treatment was to be put on 'G Diet', the richest diet available. I felt somewhat ashamed about that; there were others in poorer condition. But when I was discharged, I too began to get worse, with ulcers and dysentery, and an attack of what appeared to have been dengue. It might have been some kind of malaria. The work continued at an even greater pace. Unless you were virtually unconscious you were not let off work. If you were too bad to go out on the railway, you formed 'light sick' working parties in camp.
I was in such a state some time in March, when there was a sudden call for thirty of us — four officers and twenty-six other ranks — to go on a detached party. This happened every now and then, but nobody ever discovered what happened to people on these parties. So it was not exactly a matter of volunteering. Someone had to go. We knew we might be falling out of the frying pan into the fire. I have no idea how or why the army managed to extract thirty of us from the POW administration for work not directly connected with the railway, or why we had an unusual proportion of officers to other ranks. Maybe it was simply a way of reducing the number of those shown as sick.
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![wh_l_arr[1]](../assets/images/wh_l_arr_1_.gif "wh_l_arr[1]")
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