LITMIR.BIZ

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oozes from our wounds.

      We have no cloth with which to bind our wounds,

      and flies swarm to the scabs,

      Yet we have no strength to brush them away.

      We keep on falling down, we can’t move.

      Many times have I thought to kill myself.

      The railway achieved prominence in the West initially as the result of debriefings of prisoners whose unmarked ship, the Rakuyo maru, in transit from Singapore to Japan, was torpedoed by an Allied Forces submarine which rescued them. This was reported by Sir James Grigg, Secretary of State for War, to the House of Commons on 17 November 1944.⁸⁴ John Coast, R. Norfolks, gave the railway its soubriquet ‘Death Railway’ in his Railroad of Death (Commodore Press, 1946). He became press officer, FO, Bangkok, and later press attaché to President Soekarno of Indonesia.

      The Geneva Convention for the treatment of Prisoners-of-War has over thirty-five articles but in the context of the Thai-Burma Railway eight stand out in particular.

      1.They must not be employed on unhealthy or on dangerous work.

      2.Daily work must not be excessive. They should be allowed a rest of twenty-four consecutive hours, preferably on Sundays.

      3.They must at all times be humanely treated and protected, particularly from acts of violence, from insults and from public curiosity. Reprisals against them are forbidden. They are entitled to respect for their person and honour.

      4.Their food ration shall be equivalent in quality and quantity to that of depot troops of the detaining nation.

      5.Clothing, underwear and footwear shall be supplied to them.

      6.Each camp shall possess an infirmary where prisoners shall receive attention of any kind of which they may be in need.

      7.They shall be allowed to receive individually parcels of foodstuffs and clothing.

      8.Intellectual and sporting pursuits shall be encouraged so much as is possible.

      An important life-line for prisoners was a chequered one, secret radios. It was a complicated story. The Naval Barracks at Kranji on Singapore Island had not been entered since capitulation, and a party of prisoners was sent, with Japanese permission, to clean the place up. They found the electric light could be made to work, so the Japanese, while the devastated city lighting system was being restored, kept the party there on the cleaning job with a Japanese guard. In a small storeroom leading out of the transformer room the party found shelves stacked with radio valves of all sizes. These they ‘won’ and hid. There was some intercommunication between various prison-camp areas on the Island, contacts such as ration parties, exchange of scarce resources and so on, always with a Japanese guard accompanying them. In the secret radio context there were three in particular, first the main camp at Changi, second the Kranji cleaning party, and third the camp near Bukit Timah on the golf course where prisoners were navvying for Japanese shrine-carpenters who had been sent from Japan to build a shrine like a small temple, the Shōnan Shrine, to ease the souls of Japanese soldiers killed in the Malayan campaign to capture Singapore. At the Ford factory at Bukit Timah the Shrine party found some 50-gallon drums of petroleum jelly, needed with Japanese approval by Roberts Hospital at Changi. The Kranji party managed to smuggle out a good-stock of 1½-volt valves which the Shrine Party in turn managed to smuggle into Roberts Hospital inside a petroleum jelly drum. Meanwhile the Royal Corps of Signals had been alerted at the start of the exercise and their artificers got busy making miniature wireless sets concealed in the bottoms of officer-type water bottles, to be activated by small 1½-volt batteries. From then on, each party sent from Changi to Thailand carried with them a wireless set and batteries, both ingeniously concealed in various ‘obviously necessary’ utensils.

      Independently of the Kranji development Captain John Beckett, 2 Cambs, built a secret set in Sime Road PW camp on Singapore Island in 1942, but on arrival at Chungkai in Thailand with a box of components he was at a loss how to know how to operate in jungle conditions. Luckily he came across Lieut. Tom Douglas, RCOS, who in civilian life was a BBC engineer and expert in wireless construction. With Beckett’s components Douglas built several sets in officer-type water-bottles. Their efforts are described in detail in The 18 Division Booklet, issue for 1988–1989, pp. 5–11.

      The first upset in a Thailand camp occurred when a kempei (Japanese secret policeman) grew suspicious, overhearing a prisoner’s casual talk which suggested that he knew something of what was happening in the outside world. At first the kempei thought someone must have smuggled into camp copies of the forbidden Bangkok Chronicle, an English language periodical for that polyglot city, edited under Japanese supervision by pro-Japanese Thai. Without warning the camp guards, kempei made a snap search for the periodical during which a wireless set was discovered and three prisoners were beaten to death. From that point onwards security drill for wireless sets was made extremely rigorous. Only selected officers and warrant officers were entrusted with the news from New Delhi and they were always given it a fortnight late. The prisoner had to say that any item overheard by a kempei, Japanese guard, or Korean heiho, came from ‘an educated Thai on a ration-detail’ down in the local town. The dangers run by Boon Pong, as I mention later, became even more obvious when he was smuggling ‘canary seed’ into a camp up country.

      There were some narrow escapes by the courageous men operating these sets. At Thā Sao, Captain Biggs, RCOS, who had carried a set up in October 1942 in Lt-Col McOstrich’s party from Singapore, had the set concealed in a blanket on his bedspace and the batteries and earphones in two haversacks hung up on pegs. One day when Biggs was down at the cookhouse as messing officer, Colonel McOstrich was told by the Japanese that a search was about to be made. With great presence of mind another prisoner said he urgently must go to the latrine, was given permission to do so, and warned Captain Biggs who immediately returned to the hut and stood at his bedspace. As he arrived the Japanese discovered the earphones and set up a great hullabaloo and chattering as they examined them. Biggs swept blanket and set off the bedspace behind him and pushed them with his foot under the sleeping platform. The Japanese excitedly searched his bedspace and found the batteries, chattering and crowding around. Biggs stooped down, lifted set and blanket up off the floor and replaced them on his bedspace. The Japanese then searched underneath the sleeping platform and found nothing. Biggs explained he was hoping to light his end of the hut with the batteries and incredibly the Japanese bought the story. It was lucky they were kempei: the camp staff would not have done so, batteries being permitted only for use by Japanese camp staff.

      Charlie Mott, one of Chennault’s Flying Tiger pilots, was associated with radio set batteries. He was shot down when raiding Tak airfield in Burma and 8 January 1942, and after hospital operations in a Japanese military hospital in Bangkok was put into Nong Pladuk prison camp with a pair of shorts and slippers. We rallied round (I gave him a blanket) and he quickly established himself in our society – he had played chess for his State, would lie on his blanket and play eight of us simultaneously on home-made chess sets. Our RASC drivers took to him for his engineering skill and elected him to be the Officer in charge of 62 Truck & Motor Pool of about 200 RASC and other drivers hauling rations up to camps as far as the Three Pagodas Pass. When the Japanese motor-transport got as far as Thā Sao, a prison camp radio set was carried, in a tin covered with rice to the camp perimeter fence and Charlie ran leads from a lorry-battery insider the Japanese MT compound. The contact worked spasmodically for about a year.

      The worst example of kempeitai reaction took place at Kamburi in September 1943 when a wireless set was discovered. Seven officer-prisoners were brutally beaten with heavy bamboo rods over a period of three days as a result of which two of them, Captain Hawley, SSVF, and Lieutenant Armitage, RA, died. The seven prisoners’ terrible ordeal included vicious kicking and punching of body and face, intermittent beating with the buckled end of leather belts, and immersion overnight in a water-filled ditch. The kit and personal effects of the two dead men were never found, presumably destroyed by these bullies, who buried the bodies behind the camp guardroom. When the Japanese, fearing a paratroop landing, segregated all officer-prisoners into a single camp at Kamburi at the far edge of the padang alongside the railway,

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