Mitchell - FORTY-TWO MONTHS IN DURANCE VILE: prisoner of the japanese

CONTENTS

CHAPTERS

7. ?

This book is dedicated to all old friends in that past adversity: they are still remembered with considerable affection; to all, of whatever race, who suffered then or have suffered since in consequence of Nippons greed and inhumanity; and above all to the memory of the twenty-seven young men in every hundred who did not survive the many hell camps.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The late Dr Frank Murray, MBE, contacted again after nearly forty years, was kind enough to read an earlier draft of this book, and the final version has been revised to include facts and corrections suggested by him. I am indebted to him for some of the photographs reproduced. Plans of camps are based on my own recollections of those places.

I am indebted also to Ms Eleanor Melamed, of the American General Services Administration, Washington, DC, and to Dr John Pritchard, for information on the Tokyo War Trials.

Many old friends have been kind enough to remind me of events or to confirm my own recollections of them. Among them, Ted Rimmer, Norman Gould (who allowed me access to his minutely-written diary to get my sequence of events into order), Ray Dispain, Bryn Roberts, Bill Moore, Bill Vernon, Ian Newlands, George Dobson, Gordon Pike, M.W. Thompson, Bobby Jones, Eric Robinson and David Marshall (who became Singapores first Prime Minister, and was for fifteen years that Island States Ambassador to France, Spain and Portugal), deserve special mention. W.A. Lidderth, Bill Lightfoot and Capt. F.E. Forbes have confirmed details of the Royal Artillery wood-party story.

Prologue.

On 28 September 1941 the Canadian Pacific liner, Empress of Canada, steamed into Singapore Harbour with a consignment of some 2000 soldiers after a remarkably uneventful convoy, which had lasted eight weeks. The voyage had been notable for two large outbreaks of food poisoning; for vast hordes of cockroaches, which swarmed the mess-deck and were sometimes to be found cooked in the food; and for the quite amazingly enthusiastic, kind and generous welcome given us by white South Africans during five days ashore at Cape Town.

Among a large contingent of Royal Artillery troops our draft of thirty Royal Signals operators, designated ROAKZ, or KZ for short, was somewhat out of place. More so than we at first thought, for at Freetown, Sierra Leone, our senior rank, Corporal Anderson, had been informed that we were on the wrong ship.

Arrival in Singapore found us marooned on board long after other troops had left, for we had no disembarkation papers.

Eventually we were smuggled ashore while customs officers were distracted at the stern of the ship, and taken by truck to a mixed reinforcement camp (MRC) at Bidadari on the outskirts of the city. The MRC soon realized that thirty undocumented, unrecorded and therefore not-to-be-accounted-for men would provide them with a permanent staff in the place of one that was normally far too transient to operate efficiently, and we were held there until 20 January 1942.

Other troops who had been on the island for months had been disgruntled. In sharp contrast to fantastic hospitality experienced in South Africa, the local white population in Malaya resented servicemen and treated them as scum. Singapore had scarcely felt war so far and they did not want troops there to disturb their peace.

For months Japanese diplomats had been arguing with the Americans in Washington DC. On the night of 7 December 1941, without warning, Japanese troops landed at Kota Bahru in northern Malaya; and their air force bombed Singapore and the American Pacific Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This brought America into the War. Hitler also declared war on the United States.

British troops were sent north across the Siam border to intercept Japs coming from further landings at Singora and Pattani. The Siamese opposed our army while apparently welcoming the Japs.

The battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales, lacking air support, were sunk off north-east Malaya on 10 December by Jap torpedo bombers.

British troops were forced back and began a long series of retreats over the next ten weeks, which eventually brought the Japs to face us across the Strait of Johore.

Meanwhile, on 20 January, ROAKZ had been dispersed to various units and I found myself separated from the rest and posted to III Indian Corps Signals at Johore Bahru, a white unit serving an under-strength Indian Corps. On 28 January, my thirtieth birthday, Johore was blanket bombed and the bungalow commandeered as our signal office was blown off its pile foundations, without injuring any of the staff. The following day we withdrew across the Causeway to Singapore Island. The causeway was blown up rather ineffectually at the Johore end on 31 January.

Our unit moved to the Bidadari area where a Corps HQ was set up in the Malayan seminary, and we were billeted across the road alongside the Muslim cemetery.

Heavy blanket bombing had continued daily in the past weeks and by now we were seeing the all too familiar triangular formation of twenty-seven bombers coming over twice or three times a day. These flew in safety since there were no fighters to oppose them and ack-ack fire apparently did not reach them.

On the night of Sunday 8 February the Japs landed through mangrove swamps on the north-west of the island amid a tremendous barrage of gunfire, establishing a large bridge-head as Australian troops withdrew.

On the Wednesday III Indian Corps fell back to the centre of the city where we camped on the cricket padang in front of the Cathay building, then the tallest block in Singapore. The next day we were ordered into the building despite the fact that its ground floor was in use as an Australian Army Hospital.

The Japs continued to press their advantage and overran the islands two fresh water reservoirs. The Cathay building was shelled and hit thirteen times, finally putting our Signal Office out of action, again without injury to staff on duty.

With water supply in Jap hands, the Governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, instructed General Percival to surrender to save further suffering on the part of the Civilian population. A cease-fire was agreed for 1830 hours.

We were moved out of the Cathay Building at about 2000 hours, and discarding our rifles in a disordered pile, found shelter for the night in a nearby barracks.

So, Singapore fell. It was Sunday 15 February 1942, just ten weeks since the balloon went up on the night of 7-8 December 1941. Those who had lived through those weeks, and many had not, were now to face a long and indefinite period during which personal survival would be a battle of a different sort for each and every one of us.

The detailed story of that campaign has been told many times. This book will deal with the incarceration that followed from the viewpoint of an ordinary soldier.

1 Prisoners of War

Monday morning dawned to an extraordinary quiet in which almost nothing stirred and the only sound came from a dump of small arms ammo, which was burning at the far end of the cricket padang.

The sun rose hopefully and blazed in splendour throughout that day but did little to dispel the odd mixture of shamefaced relief and very considerable apprehension felt by most of us.

What did the future hold? An unknown length of incarceration under unpredictable conditions, which certainly must include a great deal of hardship of one kind or another. We shut our minds to it, for anticipation would not alter the ultimate unpleasantness and it was better to wait and see and take it as it came.