Escape from Singapore — 6b. "Midge"s Story

This page is the continuation from 6a of the story told by the late "Midge" Warner, and prepared by Brian Napper. (For the context see 5. 50 Years on: a Small World !.)

Midge’s daughter Jennifer’s childhood memories of these events can be seen in 7. Jenny's story. The two stories can be cross-referenced by using the similar section headings.

My annotations are given in square brackets.

Embarkation — 31st January 1942

The “Empress of Japan” was a big Canadian Pacific liner which had been [requisitioned and] refitted for a troop ship. And it had bought in troops in to Singapore at the very last minute, just in time to be taken prisoner! They disembarked them earlier that morning. The Japs knew what was going on, and they bombed the docks mercilessly all day. The troops got off in the morning. There was no time to do anything to the ship really. We couldn’t get on because of all this bombing, and the docks were all on fire. We were supposed to embark in the morning, but we couldn’t even get down to the docks. When we did get there in early afternoon we couldn’t get on board. We had to lie on the dockside, because of all the bombs and fires. All the godowns [shipping warehouses] were on fire, and the dockside was on fire, and they did actually hit the “Empress of Japan”, but they only did slight damage, I think. The dockside was just a heaving mass of people, some escaping from being drowned at sea — setting off and then being sunk — quite a few swam ashore again, and quite a few were drowned or went down with their boats. People were trying to get away in all sorts of craft — anything they could lay their hands on really.

Anyway, round about teatime we got on board. Because it was a troop ship, and at the last minute they were told they were taking I think it was 1,500 women and children — young children, all of them — they had to think again. They only had big open troop decks for the troops and I think they had hammocks on them. Well they couldn’t put women and little babies in the hammocks, so they went round Singapore, well I imagine the whole of Singapore, and collected all the old mattresses and laid them on the floor. I was lucky, because it was a big ship and for some reason I was allocated a cabin on the boat deck, which was right high up. There were several decks; it was a huge ship. And the troop deck where they put the mattresses was below sea level — you know, right down in the bowels of the ship almost. I was up in the boat deck.

I was in a cabin that was originally for two, but when they refitted it for a troop ship they made it into a 4-berth cabin. Well there were 5 grown-ups plus a 6-month baby, plus Jennifer. So we were very cramped, with no privacy, as you can imagine! I had a little narrow bunk which I shared with Jennifer, an upper bunk, and the woman with the 6-month baby had the bunk below. Two other women had the other two bunks, and there were two women on the floor [maybe just one?]. They had either mattresses or something -- I don’t think they could have had mattresses as there wouldn’t have been room to put much on the floor. It was quite a small cabin, originally a 2-berth one. The toilet facilities for the deck were all together in one place, including the baths. But we could never use the baths, because you never knew when there was going to be an alarm, and to be caught in the bath would be pretty awful! So we used to do strip washes whenever we could and as best we could. But of course to start with we were short of water — we weren’t allowed to use much water.

Sailing in the Japanese War Zone

We went straight down to what was then Batavia [Jakarta], the main port in Java, in the north, and we put in briefly for repairs to the bomb damage that we’d suffered. Then we sailed from Batavia through the Sunda straits between Java and Sumatra, which was where we were bombed again [but not hit this time?]. Of course the Japs had got all the land there [not strictly true yet]. During that time of getting away from that part of the world, in the day time we were not allowed up on the [open] decks at all; we had to come down to the big troop deck where there were all the mattresses. Well I had a friend who had a mattress, with a little girl a little older than Jennifer. She said I could come and share her mattress during the daytime. We were only allowed back on the boat deck at night, to sleep. We were sort of battened down there, with no water between early morning and evening, which was very difficult for young children. It was terribly hot. The children cried. The woman in the next cabin to us had a five days old child and a little girl of two. There were an awful lot of very young children, and they all had to come down in the daytime. Nobody was allowed to stay upstairs.

On board ship we had what were called emergency bags. We were allowed a small bag into which you had to put things you really treasured, or anything that was valuable. So that in the event of either air raid or submarines, and you had to take to the boats, you could take that with you. Of course I changed my mind every day about what to put in this wretched little bag. And of course you’d got to take things like toilet rolls and soap — not photographs — they were really more important.

All the children were ill, at one time or another — the usual things. Jennifer had something they couldn’t quite fathom; she did for a short time go into the “Hospital”. This was run by anybody who had any medical knowledge really, from the women who had got on board. There were one or two doctors and one or two young nurses, so they started up a hospital. Jennifer had a temperature; nobody quite knew what it was. However the children were all ill off and on, and upset, because it was a very upsetting time for them. When the alarms went — we had two, one for air attack and one for submarine — even the tiniest baby howled — you know, they felt the tension. We had klaxon horns, awful klaxon horns; we had different [number of] sounds for air — I can’t remember; so many for air and so many for submarine.

Part of the crew of the “Empress of Japan” were Hong Kong Chinese, and they were very bitter about the fall of Hong Kong, which was just before the fall of Singapore. They refused to work. They didn’t do the jobs they were supposed to do. They were an awful nuisance. The captain didn’t really have enough men on board to keep them in order. This is partly why the women without children had to wait on the women who did have children. Another nightmare was that we had to have these wretched lifebelts on all the time. You had to carry them everywhere with you; you could never leave them behind. If you’d got children with you you’d got your own and the children’s to carry.

At the start of the voyage out of Singapore, this friend and I, we really had to laugh, because there we were, we had come from lives of luxury — the British in those days in the British Empire were top dogs you know. We had servants and every luxury. Then here we were reduced to just one mattress, which we guarded with our lives! If anyone encroached on it at all we were absolutely livid. We said [when calmed down!] “Well, really!” and we just sat and laughed — there wasn’t anything else to do really. We said “What a change in such a short time.”

The Voyage to Cape Town

The route we took was Singapore, Batavia, up to Columbo, down to Durban, then round to Cape Town.

When we got ashore at Columbo we bought some tea. We used to make our own tea. We found out how to work one of those things — whatever — and managed to get hot water and make tea. This we used to dole out to quite a few people.

We knew we would be ending up in a much colder climate, and we hadn’t any proper clothes. We did go ashore in Durban, and tried to buy one or two warm things. But we’d very little money. We weren’t allowed to take .. — I think the limit was the equivalent of about £10 — from Singapore. Of course £10 in those days was a lot more than it is now, but even so, it didn’t buy very much. We had bits of blankets and bits of warm clothing, and we made little hoods for the children to keep their ears and heads warm, because they would feel the cold so; and all sorts of bits and pieces for them you could make. I was fortunate; I had done quite a lot of sewing and I had got some cottons and needles on board, so I was in great demand to loan them out to people to make warm clothing!

My friend’s name was Marjorie, whose mattress we shared. She came from an army family. Her father had been quite high up in the Indian army, and she had been out in India — but she came back to England to be educated — and all her family were Army. We kept in touch [after the war]; we often used to go there and stay with them. Her husband was a prisoner of war, but he got through alright. Well, I say alright, but he suffered a lot and was never quite the same again. He was in Changi. Most of my husband’s friends, who of course like him were called up for the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force, they weren’t in Changi, they were “Prisoners of War - Army”, and they were sent up on that Burma-Siam railway, where so many of them lost their lives, building the railway under atrocious conditions.

The story continues as page 6c. "Midge"s Story.

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