Eyewitness (16 page)

As we passed the Kalang airport, Singapore’s civil aerodrome, from which a handful of Buffalos had sought to defend the city until one by one they were eliminated by the enemy’s overwhelming numerical superiority, we noticed that the Japanese had laid down two broad asphalt landing strips across the field. I remark on it because it was the only piece of Japanese military work which we saw in three and a half years of captivity which really looked a good job.

At the docks the Japanese sentries were in a particularly vicious and truculent frame of mind and a number of men were bashed as we were herded on board
Mayebassi Maru
, Japanese supply ship No. 722. Our party of 1500 had now been augmented by the 200 men who had left Batavia five days ahead of us and also by some Dutch. We left a handful of the sickest men in the P.O.W. hospital at Changi. In all, 1799 prisoners were crammed into two holds forward and one aft on
Mayebassi Maru
.

We had imagined that nothing could be worse than conditions on the trip up to Singapore; but two minutes on the
Mayebassi
convinced us that we had been wrong. As I peered over the shoulders of those in front of me at the edge of the first hatch, I saw that two upper tiers in this hold were already occupied by Japanese troops. From the lower of these a forty-foot ladder descended to the very bowels of the vessel, where the floor space was already half covered by piles of Japanese gear, boxes, bed-rolls and other miscellaneous articles, including a tractor. The actual area of the hold was 75 feet by 48, and into this 650 prisoners were now driven.

From the bottom of this pit the patch of daylight at the top of the hatch seemed as remote as the clouds from the depths of the Grand Canyon, and it was obvious that nobody would be able to lie down in comfort. A group of us climbed on top of the highest pile of gear, perhaps 20 feet above the bottom of the hold, and there we perched precariously in the pious hope that we were at least a little nearer to fresh air.

No written words could convey the depression which seemed to settle on us in the depths of that pit. We did not know how many days lay ahead of us, and previous experience had taught us that we should be confined here until the end of the trip, however long that lasted. Suddenly, a lad from Wagga, Micky Cavanagh, called out in a ringing voice, ‘Don’t let them get you down, chaps. We can take it! Are we down-hearted?’ The Japanese, crowded along the rail of the tiers above, like visitors at a zoo peering down into the animals’ pit, must have been amazed at the vigour of our response. The spell had been broken. The boys were not going to be licked, however grim things might become.

For the next 54 hours we lay sweltering in this unforgettable hole without a breath of fresh air. The ship lay stationary in Keppel Harbour so that the canvas vent in the prevailing dead calm brought no air to us in the depths. What little air filtered in at the top of the hold was drawn on first by the 200 Japanese quartered in relative comfort above us. We had thought the
King Kong Maru
an inferno. We realised now that it had been only one of the outer compartments of the Jap P.O.W. hell. Now we were in the central torture chamber – the grill
de luxe
.

Within an hour most of us had stripped to the skin, but even so the perspiration rolled down us in streams, and on the precious occasions when we got half a pint of tea or hot water to drink, it seemed to escape through our pores within three minutes. For acute and sustained physical discomfort, the holds of
Mayebassi Maru
beat even Serang to a frazzle.

At night some of the men simply lay on top of each other. Those of us who were on top of the gear tried to sleep with our heads perhaps three feet above our feet dangling below. My head and back were on a sloping roll of coir matting while my calves and feet tried to retain a precarious purchase on the bonnet of a small tractor feet below. Any man who got two hours of sleep in the twenty-four was doing very well.

By the Friday evening, 54 hours after coming on board, we had begun to think that we were doomed to rot slowly on the bottom of this wretched boat in the middle of Keppel Harbour, for such days as remained to us in this world. So it was at first with incredulity, and then with hoarse cheers, that we heard the anchors being taken up. As the vessel at last moved forward a first trickle of fresh air came down the vent into our purgatory. With it came hope and an incredible rush of cheerfulness.

As we steamed slowly westwards and out into Malacca Strait, I could not help thinking of third-class and tourist cabins I had occupied at times on various ships, and of complaints I sometimes made about the conditions. I realised now that even in the ill-ventilated inner cabin which I had shared with four others on a Russian boat in crossing from London to Leningrad, I had been cruising in the lap of luxury. Wanderlust may carry me into some strange places on some very odd ships, but I don’t think I or anyone else enjoying Nippon’s hospitality on that particular pleasure cruiser will forget its fragrant memories.

When we turned northwards up Malacca Strait on the evening of 16 October 1942, destiny had obviously dealt out the hands for all to see, and there could no longer be any doubt that Burma was our destination. In Changi we had heard of a railway project in the Bangkok area, and we knew that a number of prisoners from Changi had been sent up there earlier in the year. Burma had been mentioned by the guards in Batavia, but it was only now that we came to realise that we were probably going to be employed on the construction of a railway to link Bangkok with the Burma coast and the Bay of Bengal.

The Japanese allowed us on deck for periods of 20 minutes or half an hour at dawn, and again in the evening. Our worst trouble was the entire absence of water for washing. A number of men, who sought to wash in the trickle from a deck hose or at the leak in one of the pipes, were mercilessly beaten up by Dogface, the worst of the Batavian guards, who accompanied our party. On two occasions, for brief periods, we did get permission to turn on the deck hose and by this means hundreds of men had the only wash in ten days after leaving Changi.

The latrines were similar to those on
King Kong Maru
and, with the number of dysentery cases increasing daily, they were soon in an appalling state and almost unusable. The ration of water, at first two pints a day, was later improved; but the meat throughout consisted of Australian mutton carcasses from the Singapore Cold Stores, bearing the dates 1931 and 1935. This meat might have been all right while frozen but
Mayebassi Maru
had no refrigeration, and the meat stank to high heaven, so that only those with the strongest stomachs could tackle it.

The scanty medical supplies brought by the party were liberally used by the crew and guards for the pettiest ailments. The senior M.O., Colonel Eadie, Melbourne, was beaten up for refusing to allow a Japanese to fool with his microscope while he was using it. We eventually secured permission to place the worst of the dysentery cases on top of the hatch, so that they could be near the latrine, but scores of men who were becoming weaker daily had to face the grim climb up to the deck.

Every now and then the Japanese indulged in orgies of bashing, usually on the flimsiest of pretexts. Prisoners were hustled down into their stinking inferno at the end of the short periods on deck with blows of rifle butts, and sometimes, for hours on end, even the sick were not allowed access to the latrine.

Yet somehow we got through the days as the vessel crawled slowly along the green Malayan coast with its low, swelling hills. We were anxious about torpedoes, for we knew that British submarines were operating in these waters. The Dutch P.O.W. ship which followed us a week later was attacked by a British submarine, and we were amazed at our own luck in getting through. At the bottom of those deep wells, with only one rickety ladder leading to safety, and 200 Japanese who would unquestionably panic and jam the only companion- way leading to the deck, the chance of escape in an emergency was slim in the extreme.

*

Even the slowest hours and days draw to an end at last. On 22 October we steamed into the mouth of the Irrawaddy, and slowly up its broad, muddy stream between brilliantly green padi fields, past innumerable warehouses, to anchor at the Rangoon docks. We were not allowed on deck from the time we anchored until sunset, but it was one of those sunsets that makes anything worthwhile. As the great orange ball of the sun sank into a bed of golds and purples, night descended rapidly on the river. Against the background of light and colour which changed each minute, we stared fascinated at the thronging rivercraft. Heavy barges and ferries chugged slowly upstream against the swiftly flowing current. Slim lateen-rigged fishing smacks glided gracefully past. Heavy prahus and sampans of all sizes laboured painfully upstream, driven by the tireless arms of sturdy native oarsmen, or slid rapidly seawards in the grip of the coursing stream. Red, green and blue lights appeared on the ever-changing stream of craft as the last lights of day faded. We stood there entranced, drinking it in as eagerly as the cool evening breeze which brushed our faces. Then the guards decided that we seemed too happy, so we were thrust down below again.

This was the worst night of the lot. It was not merely that we were stationary and that the air vent was not working; millions of mosquitoes filled the holds so that one could not move one’s hand without brushing against scores of tiny, hovering bodies. The droning buzz from these countless invaders beat against one’s eardrums relentlessly. We wrapped ourselves from head to toe until we nearly stifled, but sleep was an impossibility. For nine hours we sat or lay or stood in misery; but, except for the handful who had mosquito nets, I don’t think one man had an hour’s sleep.

Next day we were told to collect all our gear and, after assisting the Japanese to extract all their goods from the hold, we left the ship and were marched along the wharves. It was obvious that first the Japanese and more lately British bombers had been having a busy time over Rangoon’s extensive dockland. The river was littered with the masts of sunken shipping and with fragments of wreckage. Many of the godowns had been gutted or blown to fragments, and the docks themselves had suffered considerably.

While we were waiting to climb the gangway of another ship –
Yinagata Maru
– we watched gangs of handcuffed coolies moving rails on the wharves under the direction of Japanese taskmasters. The nature of the treatment meted out to these Burmese and Tamils as they toiled suggested that the Jap was not likely to make himself any more popular in Rangoon than in Singapore or Batavia.

From the docks we could see a number of the main buildings and thoroughfares of the city. The same curious atmosphere of inertia and deadness, emphasised by the absence of motor vehicles, seemed to exist here. Directly opposite us, the Hollywood Hotel, its architrave bedecked with red and yellow figures of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and various other film personalities, brought back startlingly another world in which hellships, coolie labour and bullying Japanese had no part.

Aboard
Yinagata Maru
we found ourselves placed in a hold on top of a cargo of gravel, which had the great merit of being flat, and provided by far the most comfortable billet I had yet found in a Japanese ship. Here we were issued with six and a half biscuits per man. That afternoon we raised anchor and, to our surprise, were all allowed on deck until after nightfall, while the boat moved slowly down the Irrawaddy and out across the Bay of Mataban towards Moulmein. Our last view of Rangoon, like the first, was of gold-topped pagodas glinting miraculously in the late afternoon sunlight to remind us that in the unchanging East the overthrow of Empires and the coming of new conquerors impose their influence only on the surface of things.

It was on the following afternoon that we drew slowly in to the mouth of the Salween River, a much narrower stream than the Irrawaddy, and knew that, at last, journey’s end was in sight. We passed a number of native kampongs amidst fields of lush corn and rice, and then towards evening found ourselves, again amidst pagodas, dropping anchor off Moulmein.

After dark we went ashore on a huge floating platform towed by motor tugs. It was a beautiful moonlight night, marred only by the screaming and ranting of the Jap sentries who found occasion to indulge in some brutal kickings and beatings before the first batch was landed ashore. After the misery of our passage, it was good to stretch out full length on the metal pavement of the road where the Japs held us for an hour before we were marched off to the Moulmein jail. It was 17 days since we had lined up on the road in the Bicycle Camp – days in which many men were murdered as surely as if a knife had been thrust into their vitals.

All things considered, we were tremendously lucky that the epidemic, which the M.O.s dreaded, did not sweep the crowded holds. The fate of the 1500 Dutch P.O.Ws who left Batavia a week behind us proved how uncheckable was infection under such conditions.

These prisoners never left the ship through 22 days and nights of hell from Batavia to Rangoon. After taking ten days to reach Penang, they lay stifling there for nine days following a submarine attack. Dysentery, already bad, now spread like a bushfire, and by the time they reached Rangoon, 14 were dead and scores more on the verge of death. A Japanese doctor made a cursory examination of the sick at Rangoon but made no attempt to succour the dying men. All prisoners were herded into the Rangoon jail where on the first night the worst dysentery cases, in batches of 60, were locked in bare stone cells with nothing but a little straw on the floor. They were left all night without food, water, pans, buckets or anything else. This was a death sentence for many. Within a few days more than half the total force was virtually incapacitated by dysentery.

Constant appeals by senior Dutch officers were met by the Japanese with abuse, refusals and sometimes blows. The Japanese provided nothing whatever for the dying men except tools for their comrades to bury them, for the captors were mortally afraid of an epidemic involving themselves if the corpses were not hastily shovelled underground.