My Life as a Prisoner of War of The Japanese

My name is Arthur, and I am 89 years old. In 1941, I was known as Lt.A.H.H.Base, of the 5th Battalion Suffolk Regiment, 18th Div. I was 24 yrs old when I became a P.O.W. and here is my story.

The Battle for Singapore.

I left Liverpool in October 1941 and my division was allotted the North East Sector of Singapore, where the Japanese landing was expected. I commanded 17 Platoon, D Cmpny, 5th Suffolks on the tip of Punggol Point. On the first day, we captured a Jap disguised as a British Merchant Navy Officer. We came under shell and mortar fire for days and repelled Jap attempts to land at night. . The Japs succeeded in landing on the West Coast and we were withdrawn to the Bukit Timah/Farrer Road in Singapore town after a hair-raising move under aerial attack. At Farrer Road I could see the Jap HQ - the Ford Factory — in front of me. Again, we came under shell, mortar and machine gun fire and our casualties included one soldier who suffered an appalling head wound and was dying. He kept begging to be shot.

14th February 1942, a bevy of senior officers carrying a white flag, tried to go through our lines, but we turned them back at gunpoint. They returned later with a pass from General HQ and they proceeded to the Jap HQ to negotiate our surrender. We were utterly appalled.

Here are a few of my ‘narrow escapes’ during this period!

1. During an Officers’ reccy along Bukit Timah Road, two mortar bombs fell. One hit a few feet in front of me but I was only shaken.
2. Walking along Farrer Road selecting sites for trenches, a sniper put a bullet just passed my ear. The same sniper had another go at me and hit me in the leg. My sergeant brought him down.
3. Taking refuge in a monsoon drain during an attack, I found myself sharing it with a very large black snake. A Jap hand grenade burst into the drain and caused the snake to go off in one direction and me in the other!
4. One of my corporals had a piece of shell go through the sole of his boot, taking off a toe. At the time, my head was alongside his foot!
5. I was chased by a zebra that had been released from Singapore Zoo!

My battalion surrendered on orders at Raffles College on 16th February 1942 and on the 17th we marched 16 miles to Changi Barracks, behind the pipes of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, to begin our imprisonment. Before moving off, we buried our dead and marked their graves with nametags in bottles.

The Selerang Incident

Soon after arriving at Changi, the Japs demanded that we sign ‘non escape’ forms. Since this was against Army Regulations — it was our duty to try to escape — we refused to sign. The Japs, therefore, moved all 17,000 of us, including wounded and sick, to Selerang Barracks — peacetime population of 900! After several days, the condition of the sick living in the open, and the impossibility of digging sufficient latrines in the concrete barrack square, rendered our position untenable. Our Senior Officers decided, therefore, that we should sign the forms ‘under duress’, thus rendering the declaration null and void.

Changi Barracks March and April 1942

Organised ourselves and began to learn to live with rice! Work parties smuggled in tomato sauce or soy sauce as it made rice palatable. However, it was expensive if we could get hold of it. I made two bottles last me nearly a year by strict rationing and adding water!

First met the Jap method of discipline — severe beatings at the slightest excuse.

From May until October, we were building roads, a bridge and a shrine to Japanese War Dead on Bukit Timah Golf Course- always hungry. On October 25th 1942 prepared for transit to Siam (now called Thailand).

October 29th, 25 people packed into steel cattle trucks and set off on four day trip the length of Malaya to Siam. Many suffered heatstroke. Stopped once a day for rice, water and natural functions. Some decided to escape into the jungle, but all captured and executed or never heard of again.

November 3rd, reached Siam in heavy monsoon and marched to transit camp which was 2ft under water. No food, no rest, no toilets, several deaths. Appalling conditions. Managed to slip names of several officers and others to Italian Catholic Priest outside Catholic Mission.

On November 5th marched 25 miles in monsoon to Kanburi and then by barge to Chungkai — our first camp on a long hard road building a railway through to Burma (now called Myanmar)..

It is necessary to give a background to this remarkable feat of engineering. The Jap drive into Burma and on to India needed supply lines. The sea route via the Indian Ocean was insecure, the railway system of Siam and Burma had never joined, and years before the war German engineers had surveyed the River Kwai area for a railway link and had concluded it was ‘impossible’ because of the rugged country of jungle and mountains, the disease aspect and the lack of workers. The Japs solved these problems by using us. From Ban Pong, Siam to Than Besar, Burma, was about 250 miles, most of it unexplored jungle, bamboo scrub, teak forest and mountains, teaming with wildlife and malaria. The railway had to be completed in 1943 before the monsoon. The first work parties cut the track through the jungle followed by embankment builders. Then came bridge builders, cutting timber and constructing bridges and calverts without any mechanical devices. Finally came the track layers.The British and Dutch prisoners worked North from Siam and the Australians worked south from Burma to meet at the Three Pagodas Pass on the Siam/Burma border. About 40,000 white prisoners were involved, and later, because of their high death rate, about 75,000 native Javanese, Sumatrans, and Malayans. Death rates were approx.1 in 3 whites and over 50% natives.

By the Geneva Convention, Officers should not work and certainly not help enemy war efforts. We refused to work and the Japs lined us up and surrounded us with machine guns. We still refused, so they cocked their guns and prepared to fire. We worked!. Fifty of us became the ‘Officers Bridge Building Party’.

Tamarkan Bridge.

This is known as ‘The Bridge over the River Kwai’ and was the only concrete and steel bridge on the railway. The steel spans were brought from Malaya by the Japs. Originally, it was necessary to build a wooden bridge to get our material to the other side.

Wang Pho Viaduct

This viaduct was constructed by hand, without any mechanical help other than a pulley, from teak floated down the river about 50 miles north. It ran about 500 yards long and 40 to 50ft high, anchored to the cliff wall above the river. It took us several months to build and lives were lost. It is still in use today.

We marched from site to site to build bridges, usually with only about six Jap or Korean guards. Escape was easy but pointless with hostile country all around and execution by beheading if caught.

Malaria and dysentry, soon cut our numbers, so that at one bridge — vulgarly but appropriately called ‘Shit Creek’ because of the deep mud in which we worked — only about 15 of us remained able to work. All we ate was a meagre portion of weavil-infested rice. Some died. If we could, we supplemented it with jungle greens, roots, rat, iguana, monitor lizards and snakes. We also fished when possible. It was at the ‘Creek’ that we managed to head off one mangy cow from a herd being driven up to Burma . The cow was hidden in the jungle until it could be killed, which had to be almost immediately to avoid discovery. Unfortunately, every camp attracted masses of rats, that in turn, attracted snakes, that in turn attracted other animals! Likewise, the river was full of small fish that attracted crocodiles.

I caught my first attack of dengue fever — felt so ill with high fever. Lost considerable weight — thought I’d reached the end.

1943

This was a nightmare year devoted to surviving Enormous death toll up country grew even bigger as the Japs speeded up the construction of the railway. Cholera broke out among the native labourers who left their dead to rot instead of burying them or threw them into the river — so cholera spread downstream like wildfire.

Chungkai became a basecamp and hospital. Caught dengue fever again, but was healthy compared to the ‘living skeletons’ up country. My orderly, Private Fred Walters returned as a survivor of a party who had 75% casualties. He died of malnutrition and malaria during the night on August 13th 1943. He was with me the whole of my time with the Suffolk Regiment. He was a quietly spoken, utterly reliable and efficient soldier. On his death, I got to his body too late to recover his wedding ring, which had been stolen, but I managed to recover his wallet which I handed to his wife on my return in 1945. I buried him with full military honours — colour party of 5th Suffolks, bugler etc. in Chungkai Cemetary in grave marked with his details in a bottle. I felt tremendous sadness.

My last journey was to the Three Pagodas Pass on the Siam/Burma border where the two parts of the railway joined up in October 1943. Buried dead cholera victims. We were stalked by a tiger and drove it off by borrowing guard’s rifles!

At the end of l943, was detailed to join 3000 men proceeding to Japan to work in a coalmine. The night before the party left, a fellow officer asked to be put on the party and I was taken off. The ship carrying the party was torpedoed off the Phillipines and my replacement officer died.

At Chungkai Base Camp huge efforts were made to help the sick, by smuggled in supplies and by amenities to uplift their spirits. The Chungkai Theatre was started by officers with theatrical experience. One had acted on the West End Stage and wrote out plays from memory. A revue called Wunderbar was so colourful and the music so astonishing, that the Japs made us put it on again and again for their benefit! The Japs had photographs taken for propaganda purposes. One female impersonator deserved a medal for the dreams he conjured up in the minds of the sick! Unfortunately, he was drowned in transit to Japan in 1944.

A constant medical problem was the tropical ulcer. With undernourished bodies, the slightest scratch turned into an ulcer. I had several on my legs and feet for most of my time in Thailand. The cure was bedrest and sulphonamide ointment — both impossible — so casualties were high. Ulcers had to be cleaned of pus daily and the howls of anguish each evening after work as we queued to have our ulcers cleaned with a spoon, were terrible. Some ulcers extended from ankle to knee, exposing the shin bone. Doctors experimented, by introducing maggots (male or female, but not both) into the wounds to eat the pus. They counted them in and after a week or two, counted them out. Severe ulcers resulted in amputation.The ingenious manufacture of false limbs from old tins, leather and string, was incredible. Another complaint amongst the prisoners was beri beri, caused by lack of vitamins. Huge amounts of water collected under the skin, usually the feet, causing great pain. In hospital after the surrender, I saw one man, after being treated with vitamins for a few days, pass nearly a gallon of water in one session!

In order to survive the terrible conditions, it became essential to belong to a Kongsi (Malayan for group or gang), so that if one became ill, his fellow members could bring food and generally look after him, remembering that the Japs did not issue rations to sick people, only those who reported for work. Such was Jap logic. Of my Kongsi, only one friend, Lt.Alan Brandle, 4th Royal Norfolks, survived the 3yrs or so that we were on the railway. My wounds had healed fairly well but Alan, who suffered a badly broken leg which was incorrectly set, remarkably managed to trek the hundreds of miles up and down the line. We did everything together, carried each other’s kit when exhausted, wangled food from odd places, bartered things by going ‘under the wire’ to Thai villages, washed each other’s clothes and generally helped each other to survive.

1944

We were confined to the officers’ camp on Kanburi Airfield, Thailand with occasional forays up country to repair bridges. Here, we received our only Red Cross parcel (one parcel to 7 officers). We also received the first mail from home. Over the whole period I was a P.O.W. I received only 3 letters from home. After the surrender, I received another 60! Mail and Red Cross parcels were discovered in a warehouse in Bangkok!

On a Tenko (roll call) parade one evening, 6 large bombers suddenly swung in over the jungle and bombed Tamarkan Bridge just a few hundred yards away. Unfortunately, some overshot, and about 40 P.O.W.’s were killed and several hundred injured. Air raids became common on the line just 50yds outside our fence. In one raid, my sergeant had his right arm almost severed. I learnt later that this raid disguised a parachute drop of agents to link with the Thai underground. In the latter part of 1944, we spent a great deal of time dodging our own bombers. It was another burden to bear.

1945

Early in 1945 with the German war drawing to a close and the Japs retreating in Burma, we were moved from west of Bangkok to the east towards Cambodia. The last part of the journey, we walked some 40 miles in bare feet, as our boots had worn out! This journey was remarkable as at one point, we ran into the Jap troops retreating from Burma and they were in very bad straits. They had no medical corp, so we treated their wounded and gave them some of our rice — ironic!

We were told to build a swimming pool by damming a stream and digging a pit. This, it was disclosed after the war, was to be our mass grave, as the Japs intended to kill us rather than release us. A British Officer, transgressed in some fashion and was imprisoned in a hole in the ground with a bamboo lid for two months. We managed to feed him eggs hidden in his tea ration.

On August 17th (the war ended officially on August 15th), we were hauled back from our work and told that the Japs had surrendered. It was unbelievable! We soon hoisted the Union Jack and sang the National Anthem and strong men wept

The following day, August 18th, a British Officer stepped out of the jungle in immacualte uniform (he was with the Thai Underground) and told us of the Atom Bomb. He radioed for help and the RAF came over and dropped supplies, medicine and a doctor. We stayed put for several days, as there was no transport. Once transport arrived, we drew lots for the order in which we would leave camp — I drew the lowest card and waited a week before I left with the last 25 officers. We arrived at Bangkok Aerodrome and met our first friendly troops — the RAF. A woman was serving real tea with milk. She was the first British woman we had seen for 4 years! She asked if I would like sugar, and I couldn’t help but say ‘just stir it with your finger, that will be sweet enough for me’!

We flew out in Dakotas to Rangoon — a hazardous flight in the monsoon. The plane behind us crashed into the sea. A tragic end for 25 ex P.O.W.’s who had endured so much.

Secret Radios

Throughout our ordeal we heard the war news on secret radios built from bits and pieces by Royal Signals Officers, but we didn’t know of the atom bombs on Japan because we had run out of batteries. It was very dangerous running these radios.Three Officers were caught in Chungkai and beaten to death in front of us. These radios were hidden in many secret places such as a British Army water bottle, a cookhouse oven, hollow bamboo in the hut construction and once, on moving to another camp, in the Jap Commandant’s armchair! The radios were known as Canaries, the batteries as Bird Seed, and the news as ‘The Canary is Singing’. The news was issued by word of mouth, never in writing, about 10 days late. If we had known instantly, the Japs might have deduced we had radios.

Off Home at Last

I left for home on a Dutch Liner, the S.S. Boissevain, used as a troopship. I weighed in at just 7stone. We had a daily issue of guinness and baby food and at the end of the trip, most of us had put on weight.

When we docked at Liverpool to a tremendous welcome, England had never looked so fresh and green.

After the war, it was said that one man died for every railway sleeper lain along its 250 mile length. I cannot vouch for that, but it is most probably true.

I am a forgiving man, and have tried to move on from these horrendous events, but I have lived in hope that before long, a genuine apology from my captors may be forthcoming. It would mean everything to me to hear the words ‘we are sorry’.

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