Burma Railway Man: Secret Letters From a Japanese Pow Page 6

  When we first arrived in Malaya, we met a new tool – a digging implement known as a CHUNKOL.

  You see, my dear, spades are no good in a country where the peasantry doesn’t wear boots! The chunkol – like a large Dutch hoe is therefore used instead.

  It is raised above the head and then brought down smartly into the earth. Being non-Asiatics we have to use them. Incidentally, did you realise that all-practically all-earth moved from one place to another by the natives is carried in baskets? And now that we are on one level lower than natives, we also carry these little baskets loaded with dirt.

  Soul destroying work. To think we have sunk to this!

  P.S. Even more soul destroying is being in charge of a party and doing nothing all day.

  Letter 44

  Darling,

  Personal possessions in this situation become far more valuable as each minute, day or week passes.

  By personal possessions, I don’t mean ordinary kit but rather the photographs, keepsakes, personal property that reminds one of something or someone at home.

  My pen, for instance – and have you noticed the Quink I am still using? I have my watch and, best of all, my photographs. The pencil you bought at Annan is here with me.

  I suffered a grievous loss the other day when I found that the pressed flowers from your wedding bouquet had been invaded by a tiny tropical insect and had crumbled to dust. Never mind, never mind …

  Charles also writes of a group of fellow captives and his Japanese captors.

  Letter 45

  My Dear,

  A rather strange section of the prisoners here are the Malayan Volunteers. In Malaya, the TA is represented by the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force and the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force. Both are known as the ‘Volunteers’. With the exception of the regular PSIs, all are businessmen, planters etc. All are older than the average. They have now the peculiar experience of being POWs in their own country. I was talking to some the other day who were working on a grass cutting fatigue for the Nip cavalry. One actually told me that on a previous day he had been set to work to cut grass from his own garden. Nip officers are now in his house. A galling experience!! … One day – oh, let it be soon! – I must tell you about the following:-

  2/Lt Aoki (the Sword Swallower), Sjt. Major Obara, ‘Horace the Drain Man’, ‘Wanker’ Lt. Sato, Capt. Hashimoto (who swum the Straits of Johore) and others.

  The Japanese are an incredibly childlike race, vicious as a schoolboy and delighting in the torture of animals. Yet – they love flowers.

  The Australians are doing well out of the petrol racket – stealing petrol and selling it through the wire to the Chinese. They sold a whole horse t’other day, getting it out of the Camp in pieces. One of my own sergeants asked for, and obtained, a daily supply of petrol for the steamroller he drives!! Incidentally, I drove this t’other afternoon. Rather amusing …

  The Japanese officer is a funny man to Western eyes. His service dress is usually of green, altho’ I have seen many variation colours between suits and even between breeches and coats.

  Starting from the bottom, he wears jackboots with spurs. Into these are tucked the baggiest riding breeches ever worn by man.

  His tunic is a ‘Bum-freezer’ and only extends to the base of his spine at the back. Under this he wears a white shirt, opened at the neck and turned back under the collar of his coat. Badges of rank on the lapels. And then his sword … No Nip officer is ever dressed before he buckles his sword on – the double handed curved Japanese sword with which so many Chinese are executed.

  Charles writes another heartfelt and slightly desperate declaration of love to Louise:

  My Darling,

  Are we going to change much during these months of separation?

  Say we are POW for 2 years … How are we going to find each other at the end? As you know, when people are together, they grow like one another. When they are apart, they tend to become like those they mix with.

  We began our companionship with identical interests, feeling and background. Now we are apart, and while you are mixing with the Officer type in a civilised land, I am at the back of nowhere trying to look after men who will gradually deteriorate into little better than savages if the Japanese hold them for more than a couple of years.

  When I return, shall I appear to you as an uncouth savage? Will it be fair to you to take up our life as we left it when I am different to the person you married?

  Louise, whether under these conditions I become a gibbering imbecile, you can rest assured that to me you are still the most marvellous person in the world: that even if I return when you are 80 and I’m 80, I shall still think – I shall still know that you were the only girl I’ve ever loved or ever shall love.

  I am very worried today, so you must please excuse these doubts!

  While Charles was fretting in Singapore, Louise received an Army Form B. 104-83A, which ended six months of speculating if she was a widow or not.

  Dear Madam,

  I have to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office to the effect that No.879400 W/Sgt. STEEL, Charles Wilfred, Royal Artillery (Field) is a Prisoner of War in Japanese Hands. Camp unknown.

  A Charles Steel List followed.

  Darling,

  A POW Camp is the greatest hotbed of rumour in the world. Some are absolutely amazing. Listen to these: –

  (a)

  Hitler is dead

  (b)

  The European war is over

  (c)

  The Italian Fleet in Singapore

  (d)

  The Japanese can’t feed us (Don’t we know it!) and are sending us all to a neutral country.

  (e)

  The Japanese are sending half of us home with the rising sun tattooed on our foreheads. The other half will be killed if the former are taken in battle.

  (f)

  We are to build a railway from Thailand to Burma – over mountains and through swamps, a feat attempted by Great Britain but given up owing to high death rate of coolies.

  (g)

  We are to march to Thailand (800 miles)

  (h)

  Germans at Alexandria

  (i)

  Japanese in Australia

  And so on

  Most of these rumours were, indeed, wide of the mark and Charles could be forgiven for thinking that the construction of a railway though some of the worst terrain in the world would be considered one of the wildest. His last note from Bukit Timah was brief with shock.

  Oct.’42

  Dearest,

  We are moving – believed to Thailand (Siam) to build a railway into Burma. I’m afraid most of the Red Cross stuff will have to be left behind.

  Chapter 6

  The Impossible Project

  A legacy of British colonializm was the construction of a railway network to compensate for the almost total lack of decent roads throughout the Empire. They were a way of shortening vast distances and linking cities separated by hundreds, even thousands of miles. They were the mortar that bound together colonies like India, South Africa and Canada. It followed that the British considered a rail link between Rangoon in Burma and Singapore, via an existing line in Thailand. Twice the British explored this route, once in the 1880s and in greater detail in 1906. A survey concluded that the region’s hostile environment of dense jungle covered mountains, together with one of the world’s heaviest annual rainfalls, made the project very unappealing. The huge engineering difficulties and the estimated cost to lives overrode any advantage that could be gained over the existing ocean route. The project was dismissed as being impossible.

  As early as 1939, the Japanese began preparing the ground to confound the sceptics and make this impossible project a reality. The original plan was to use about a 250,000 Asian labourers to construct this single-track railway. With the comparatively easy victories in Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), the Japanese found themselves with a large pool of ski
lled, disciplined military personnel and they had no qualms about ignoring the convention that POWs should not be required to undertake work that was useful to their captors.

  Between October 1943 to October 1944, approximately 60,000 Allied prisoners of war and 300,000 Asian labourers slaved in some of earth’s densest jungle. Two Japanese engineering regiments totalling 12,000 men controlled the construction, often with extreme brutality and, at best, indifference to the plight of their unwilling workers. At any cost, the railway had to be completed in the time-span that Tokyo decreed, and the cost was human suffering on an horrific scale. Without the use of machinery, the POWs had to bridge rivers, build precarious trestles along dizzy ravines, hack though rock choked passes and drive piles in malarial swamps. Along its 260 mile route, approximately forty camps were constructed at intervals of five to ten miles. The first POWs from Changi were sent north to Thailand in June to construct the railway base at Nong Pladuk, consisting of workshops, stores and a large prison compound. As the need for labourers steadily increased, so the population at Changi decreased until it was regarded as a transit camp for the railway. Charles was amongst the second group, known as ‘K Battalion’ and whose first destination was the sprawling staging camp at Ban Pong, by the existing Thai railway.

  Letter 49 Bangpong (sic), Thailand Oct.’42

  Dearest,

  What a journey!!

  We marched to Singapore Station (FMSRly) on 22 Oct. and were loaded 27 to a steel closed railway van. We left that night and after 86 hours in the train, arrived at Bangpong (sic) about 64 kilos from Bangkok, the capital. During that time we passed through Johore, and the whole of the Malay peninsular. We had an average of under two meals of rice a day but fortunately carried some Red Cross tinned rations with us. It was an amazing experience, albeit uncomfortable. The backbone of mountains in Malaya were very impressive.

  We knew when we got to Thailand by the abrupt change in the native. In Malaya, all women are either swathed in clothes or wear Chinese trousers. Here, all females wear sarongs and little blouses. They are far more handsome in the main. Men are quite good looking and the fact that everyone wears some kind of uniform gives the country a Puritanical effect.

  But oh! The sanitation, the filth and the poverty!! The dead dogs in the gutters, the naked dusky children, the appalling diseases which one can see.

  I think that we shall have to be very careful in this country.

  We are temporary occupants of some flooded sheds. Water is over our boot tops and one sleeps on a double platform down each side of the shed. Vermin and filth is everywhere. We feel like prisoners for the first time. Food is atrocious.

  Ban Pong was an ominous introduction for conditions Charles and his fellow prisoners were to experience for the remainder of their captivity. It was dilapidated from overuse and disgustingly insanitary. Fortunately, they only spent one night there.

  Tamarkan, near Kanchanaburi Nov.’42

  My Dear,

  We have arrived at No.1 Jungle Camp, Thailand.

  It is in the jungle on the River Manam, about 4 kilos from the ancient walled town of Kamburie (sic).

  We left Bangpong (sic) in lorries. It was extremely interesting to travel the 40 kilos to Kamburie (sic). Rice fields on all sides, primitive fish traps in the flooded ditches by the roads, weaver birds – and all kinds of butterflies in the air. Great banana plantations, bullock wagons, tall palm trees of many kinds and, all over, the glaring tropical sun. About the Siamese temples and buildings, I must tell you later.

  Then through Kamburie, its gaol guarded by guards with blunderbusses, its prisoners shackled together, through the fascinating streets with the wooden frame buildings with open fronts piled with all kinds of merchandise.

  Past Kamburie, under the trees, up a narrow path through thick vegetation to where a clearing has been made near a mighty river, flowing rapidly between high banks. In the clearing are 5 long huts with bamboo sleeping platforms on each side … our future home. I am very tired. Even the bamboo’s seem soft after that train journey of so many hours sitting hunched up.

  Colonel Toosey, having made his protest that POWs should not be put to this kind of work, decided to accept the inevitable but to cut the best deal possible with the Japanese. He organized a command structure, made sure that everyone knew their duties and generally tried to alleviate the grim conditions in which his troops lived. His capacity for remembering names and faces and his jaunty carefree manner endeared him to his men. He also made a point of being smartly turned out whenever he appeared before his men. It was something that gave him a psychological edge over his captors. He managed to develop a reasonable working relationship with the Japanese senior NCOs, Sergeant Major Saito, a strict but fair disciplinarian and RQMS Murakami, who was responsible for food and canteen supplies.

  The first morning, the Japanese camp commander, Lieutenant Kosakata, called all the British officers and warrant officers to a meeting, at which they received their work targets. This was in marked contrast to the welcoming words delivered by the Japanese commander to the assembled prisoners at Tanbyuzayat camp in which he said;

  You are the remnants of a decadent white race and fragments of a rabble army. The railway will go through even if your bodies are to be used as sleepers.

  Charles wrote;

  On our arrival here we were paraded before the Jap CO and were told that we should have to work with the men. Col.Toosey held his tongue, but we are going to disobey this order if it is possible to get away with it.

  On the first day’s work, I was out with a party. The river is an amazing spectacle. The current is very fast. There is, of course, no bridge and transport across the river is by barge towed by shallow draught launches. These launches are very fragile craft. We were carried over safely, but the men in the next launch were thrown into the water when it capsized owing to too many getting in on one side.

  We are here to build a large portion of the railway, including cuttings and embankments and at least two bridges, a temporary one of wooden piles and permanent one of steel and concrete.

  At the end of the day’s work, everyone went into the river for washing and bathing. It was absolutely grand to be in the clear water and attempting to swim against the current. A fine sensation is to walk up-river, plunge in and swim down-stream, watching the banks rush by as the currents bears one rapidly down. I love swimming in the river. Officers and men are in the same boat. Food is really bad. Weak stew and rice three times a day…. It is raining steadily: the river is rising and last night swept away the small plank bridge almost completed. Great masses of vegetation and tree trunks are coming down. There is a lot of firewood about. These monsoons are most inconsiderate.

  With his ever-observant eye, Charles made some sketches*;

  Letter 53 Tamarkan Nov.’42

  I wish I had a camera … but I haven’t, so here’s a sketch or two.

  Lavatory

  Two types of barges. A whole family lives under the shelter at the back of each.

  Note ‘eyes’ to enable barge to see rocks etc.

  A joss stick is often lit on the prow frighten away evil spirits.

  This is a typical river launch.

  The front of the platform is used for running against banks to enable passengers to disembark.

  Bangkok is said to be the Venice of the East. Certainly it is in Thailand that the rivers are the highroads and the village high streets. Everything depends of the rivers – water and sanitation especially….

  …The Thai currency system is centred on the TICAL (or BAHT), worth 1/10 pre-war. It is composed of 100 STERANGS.

  A five cent piece (we call sterangs cents and ticals dollars) is a small white metal coin with a hole in it. The 10-cent piece is the same, only larger.

  Notes start at 50c and are issued for 1 Tical, 5,10, 20, 50, 100, 1000 Ticals.

  All notes before the war were printed by De La Rue of London, but already the Thai and Japanese are printing their own – and very bad
ly too!!

  Letter 55 Nov.’42

  Darling Girl,

  Notes from Tamarkan

  1.

  Canteen supplies very bad. S/Major Saito very anti-British (a somewhat different view to that expressed by Colonel Toosey.)

  2.

  Incidents over officers refusing to work results in joint WOs’ and officers’ working party.

  3.

  Line due to go through a tobacco plantation. Men drying leaves everywhere.

  4.

  Work very hard. Mostly on task system. Do so much – then you go home. Tasks increased each day, or when finished, more added on. With the heavy manual work and swimming one gets an appetite for even the swill, which is given us. Hands like a Navvy’s, sun is cruel.

  5.

  First death in camp. Food quite insufficient.

  6.

  One Yasme (Rest) day per week obtained.

  7.

  RSM Coles allowed one ord.WO each day. An extra day ‘in’ for me about once in 10 days.

  8.

  Pay put up. Officers monthly against their pay at home. WO’s – 40 cents, NCO’s – 30 cents, OR’s – 25 cents. Thanks goodness I don’t smoke. All mine goes on food.

  9.

  An RA Officer hits a Nip, who struck a man. Dreadful trouble: gets off shooting, but is in solitary confinement for a month on rice and water.

  10.

  Bugs rapidly increasing in bamboo and always small amount of lice.

  11.

  Wooden bridge piles being driven. Very heavy work indeed.

  The camp at Tamarkan consisted of five long attap huts, each packed with 300 men. The task they had been set was to construct first a wooden and then, a little up river, a substantial steel and concrete bridge over the River Mae Khlaung. This was the River Kwai Bridge immortalized in David Lean’s 1957 film. The relatively easy days of Bukit Timar were fast becoming a distant memory as they were replaced by long hours of heavy manual labour, poor and insufficient food and the random cruelties of their captors.