Prisoner from Penang: The moving sequel to The Pearl of Penang

by Clare Flynn

  When Mum told her what was happening, Marjorie said, ‘We’ll show the Nips what British pluck is,’ puffing up her large, shelf-like chest, like a bird in a mating ritual.

  At that moment, three Japanese soldiers appeared at the end of the passageway. In front of them, his hands up, was the ship’s captain. They screamed at Mum, Marjorie and me, and using their guns, on which the bayonets were primed and ready, they indicated we were to return to the hold. They pushed the captain in front of them, bundling him into the hold behind us. The hatch slammed shut.

  Inside, the screams and cries began again.

  The captain raised a hand and signaled everyone to be quiet. ‘I have surrendered the ship into the hands of the enemy. We are now in the custody of the Japanese. Please stay calm and everything will be all right. I made the decision to surrender, as it is my first responsibility to ensure your safety, ladies. We are being taken to the nearest port where we will be disembarked and taken to a place to stay.’

  The faces of the women telegraphed their shock.

  The captain spoke again. ‘They will likely arrest all the men onboard, but I am sure they will allow you and your children to go free as soon as we are on dry land. Please be patient until then and cooperate with any instructions you receive.’

  When he had finished speaking, Mum turned to me. ‘I have to find your father. I need to speak to him. If they are going to arrest the men. I must see him.’

  Mum’s new indomitability crumbled when I finally had to admit to her that Dad wasn’t on the ship.

  ‘You lied to me!’ she shrieked. ‘You said he was coming on board with the other men.’

  ‘I had no choice, Mum. None of the men, apart from the wounded, were permitted to leave until all the women and children were evacuated. Dad understood that.’ I reached into the pocket of my dress and pulled out the letter he had handed to me on the quayside. ‘He asked me to give you this.’

  I’ve no idea what my father had written to her and it was not my place to enquire, but Mum read that letter over and over again and, after weeping silently, folded it and put it into her handbag.

  From that day on, Mum never complained about Dad’s absence again, although she and I would speak of him often, wondering what he was doing.

  I now know how lucky we were that day. Later, I would hear of other vessels – also with a cargo of evacuees – which were subjected to a sustained attack with massive loss of life. The Japanese appeared to have an aversion to taking prisoners, often preferring to put them to death. I suppose they wanted neither the cost nor the distraction of dealing with them.

  After the war, I came to hear of numerous atrocities perpetrated against nurses, doctors and civilian women. Wounded men were bayoneted to death. Nurses raped and murdered as they went about their duties – and two Australian nurses I had known from the Singapore hospital wards were among those evacuated on the Vyner Brooke. They were shipwrecked and survived the ordeal, only to be butchered by the Japanese when they came ashore at Radji Beach. I don’t know whether my two colleagues were among those ordered to wade into the sea where they were machine-gunned to death, their blood turning the waves red, or whether they were among those still on the beach tending to the sick and dying, as the Japanese soldiers moved among them, driving bayonets through their helpless bodies.

  I have often asked myself whether it might have been better to have been shipwrecked like several other evacuation ships. To be one of the women drowned, eaten by sharks, or dead from lack of water and exposure to the burning sun while clinging desperately to a life raft. That was the fate of the nurses and the women and the children they tried to save when another ship which left just hours before us was attacked, sunk, and abandoned off Pom Pong Island. The surviving women and children were rescued by a Dutch cruiser only for that to be shelled and sunk by the Japanese. The hold where they were housed took a direct hit. The nurses up on deck rescued as many as possible but after days at sea only one survived. Later I would meet her in the camp at Banka Island.

  The Empire Star, in spite of enduring a sustained aerial attack, managed to limp its way to Batavia, from where, after repairs, the evacuees made it to Fremantle in Western Australia. For us on the Royal Crown, our war and our long suffering were only beginning.

  4

  Banka Island

  The Royal Crown, under the control of our captors, followed behind the Japanese destroyer to Banka Island in Sumatra.

  The Straits of Malacca are studded with a vast number of islands of varying sizes. Banka is one of the larger ones, hugging the coast at the end of Sumatra, about halfway between Singapore and Batavia in Java.

  We came ashore a bedraggled mob, after our cramped passage in the hold of the ship and were marched along an extremely long pier to the shore.

  Once on dry land, we got our first close-up sight of the enemy. They surveyed us with contempt, as though we were vermin.

  This was a terrible shock to many of the British mems such as Marjorie Nolan, who were used to what they referred to as ‘little Asiatics’ running around doing their bidding. Here the roles were reversed and these men, battle-hardened from their years fighting in China, made that clear.

  The Japanese soldiers paraded us in lines on the foreshore and ordered us to hand over our rings and watches. I managed to slip off my engagement ring and tuck it inside my brassière. I nudged Mum to do the same, but her wedding ring was trapped on her swollen finger. Fortunately, the Japanese took her wristwatch without noticing the ring.

  ‘One bag only!’ The guard snapped out his order in Japanese and a translator repeated it.

  The one or two women foolish enough to try to debate this ruling were treated to a kick in the shins. Some, with two or more suitcases, were forced to make difficult choices. Most selected their biggest and heaviest case.

  We looked about us, expecting to see buses to take us to our destination. After some time, I realised there was to be no transport. Wherever we were heading it would be on foot.

  Once we got underway it became apparent our route was straight through the jungle.

  ‘Thank heavens for hospital footwear,’ I said to Mum, pointing to my sensible shoes. To my relief, she was wearing a pair of flats. But they were open sandals and her feet were soon muddy, scratched by undergrowth and bitten by insects, as we tramped through steaming rain-soaked jungle.

  As Mum and I trudged along I had cause to be grateful for the advice Veronica had proffered in the hotel bedroom, to bring only a hold-all each. All around women were moaning and sighing as they struggled to carry heavy leather suitcases, filled to capacity. Marjorie was one of them.

  ‘I simply can’t go on. How can I be expected to carry a case as large as this one?’ she asked.

  ‘I did tell you to go for the smaller one,’ Mum snapped at her friend.

  ‘Who knows how long it will be before we get home. How could I possibly manage without sufficient changes of clothes? What do you take me for, Janet? Some of us believe in keeping up standards.’ She sniffed pointedly. ‘We have to fly the flag.’ Ten minutes later, she let out a loud groan and dropped her suitcase on the ground.

  Mum nudged me. ‘Give her a hand, Mary.’

  Biting my tongue and telling myself I was doing it for Mum, not for her ghastly friend, I stretched out my hand to take hold of the case. I had intended it as a swap for my much lighter hold-all, but Marjorie strode past me. ‘Thank you, dear,’ she called over her shoulder.

  The suitcase weighed a ton.

  Veronica appeared beside me and picked up my hold-all in her free hand. ‘We’ll take it in turns,’ she said. ‘We can switch every fifteen minutes or so.’

  If my mouth was wide open in surprise Veronica didn’t react. She gave me a tight little smile and raised her eyebrows. ‘Rule Britannia,’ she said, nodding her head in the direction of Marjorie’s retreating bulk.

  Yet carrying a heavy case was preferable, compared to those women clad in high heels. They looked like they
were heading to a social function. By the time we reached our destination, several hours later, bleeding from our blisters, many had decided that bare feet was the lesser of two evils in spite of the proliferation of insects, sharp thorns and rough stony ground.

  Our first abode was a place called Muntok Camp. To refer to it as accommodation is an enormous exaggeration. Muntok was a terrible place.

  As soon as Marjorie saw the grim stone buildings where we were expected to sleep on raised concrete platforms, she drew herself up to her full height and went into battle. ‘This is completely unacceptable. Do they think we are animals?’

  She approached the officer-in-charge and barked at him as if he were a servant caught in a misdemeanour. ‘Are you the senior officer?’

  The soldier stared back at her, his eyes cold and narrow behind the ubiquitous round-framed spectacles so many of the Japanese wore.

  ‘This accommodation is utterly unsuitable. It just won’t do.’ Her tone was imperious, probably no different from the one she would have used to her cook or her syce. ‘My husband is a high-ranking government official. You must find us an appropriate alternative immediately–’

  The officer lashed his hand across her face with such force that we could hear the impact. His mouth formed a snarl and he screamed something to the men around him, striking terror in all of us.

  One of Marjorie’s teeth and all of her plucky fighting spirit deserted her and she began to cry. Her hand went up to her cheek which was livid red. Her lips were stained with blood from her gum.

  That one blow demonstrated the new order. Servant was now master and we were to be under no illusions that we would receive any concession to status or gender. The age-old British colonial caste and class system with all its rules and conventions had been swept away in one angry slap of a hand.

  To her credit and my surprise, my mother made no complaint about our conditions at Muntok, even to me in private – although she would have been perfectly justified in doing so. Marjorie’s treatment had shocked us all and no one else raised any objections.

  The camp had been built to house coolies working in the Dutch-owned tin mines. I hope those men had received better treatment there than we did, even though labouring in a tin mine must have been a thoroughly unpleasant experience. At least they’d have been properly fed.

  The camp buildings were in a large horseshoe configuration. Our block housed women and children only, with another opposite where male prisoners of war were already in residence. The linking section of the U-shape was used by the Japanese guards. The place was spartan in the extreme – just an empty room with an atap roof, stone walls and those concrete sleeping slabs. We were given no bedding. The roof was in poor condition and the rain was pouring through as we walked into our new ‘home’. The allotted space we each had for sleeping was about two-feet wide. Forty of us crammed into a dormitory intended for twenty coolies.

  Sleeping was impossible that first night. As well as the noise of crying children, whispered conversations and snoring, the concrete sleeping slabs sloped downwards, so during the night gravity would send us sliding towards the floor.

  That first day we had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours, presumably as a punishment for Marjorie’s outburst. Inevitably, the smaller children, who were already confused and distressed, began wailing and crying with hunger. When eventually, we were fed the next day, it was only small bowls of rice.

  The hungry children’s distress was made worse when one of the guards chose to deal with it by hitting the small offenders on the shins with the butt of his rifle. None of the other soldiers or officers made any attempt to reprimand him for this and the rest of us were shocked into silence.

  At the end of the room was a tap, fed by a metal water tank, where we were expected to wash, although the same water was used to wash clothes and was dirty from the bodies of all who had washed before. Beyond was a small room with a line of squat latrines. Outside, in the area between ours and the men’s block, was a roofed-over area with benches – the only seating in the camp.

  I still nursed the hope that the captain of the Royal Crown was right, and the Japanese would eventually allow the women and children to go free. This hope was reinforced by the fact that the camp was already well over-capacity yet more and more people were admitted as the days passed. Surely it was impractical to keep us all. There were captured Dutch and British servicemen, including wounded soldiers from the Kuala, which had been sunk in an air attack, local Dutch families and evacuees from other captured or wrecked ships. One of the male prisoners told me that the local Muntok town prison was also filled beyond capacity. It was extraordinary to incarcerate the entire European and Eurasian civilian population of Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. Even had they thought the men, if left at liberty, represented a threat, it was cruel and unnecessary to imprison women and innocent children – some of them babies.

  Water in the washing tank had to be replenished each day by hauling buckets from wells on the periphery of the encampment. Clothes washing was fraught with anxiety as it necessitated a close eye on drying laundry because the lack of garments among many of the inmates meant theft was not uncommon.

  One day I came upon Mum having a huddled conversation with her Penang friends.

  Marjorie was holding forth. ‘I am absolutely certain it was her,’ she said.

  The others looked embarrassed and my mum said, ‘What makes you so sure, Marjorie?’

  ‘Sure about what?’ I asked.

  Mum looked at me apologetically. ‘Marjorie thinks Mrs Leighton stole some of her underwear.’

  ‘Thinks? Knows!’ Marjorie pursed her lips.

  I started to laugh. The idea of Veronica Leighton stealing underwear was bizarre – but that it should be that of the rotund Marjorie was beyond credibility. ‘Mrs Leighton would never fit into your undergarments,’ I said trying to suppress the giggles as I imagined the tiny sylph-like Veronica trying on the voluminous knickers that I had seen Marjorie hanging on the line that morning.

  ‘I didn’t mean she plans to wear them herself. But she might be planning to sell them or cut them up and make some for herself.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Might be? Did you see her take them?’

  Marjorie jerked her head. ‘She was in the vicinity just before I noticed they were gone.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, sweeping my arm around the crowded camp. ‘Any of these people could have stolen your undergarments. Unless you have some solid evidence, I wouldn’t recommend throwing blind accusations out.’

  Giving me a look that would have soured milk, Marjorie huffed loudly but said no more.

  The nurses were kept busy by the numerous ailments we had arrived with at the camp. Those who had been shipwrecked suffered from exposure and sunburn. Many had lacerated and blistered hands from hanging onto ship’s ropes for hours while in the sea. There were torn feet, infected insect bites and blisters from the march to the camp. On top of these recent injuries, there was the challenge of treating long-term conditions without medicines, as well as the growing occurrence of malaria, dysentery and stomach upsets.

  But the medical emergency that shocked us all was the plight of an RAF officer who had shattered both his feet. He was in excruciating pain, fading in and out of consciousness, and I hoped he couldn’t hear the conference between the doctors and nurses present.

  ‘We have to amputate that foot.’ The speaker was a military doctor.

  I closed my eyes at the thought of the poor chap and how the loss of a foot would affect his future. When I heard the doctor’s next words I wanted to throw up.

  ‘The Japs won’t move him to the hospital and they won’t let us have any instruments or anaesthesia.’

  A collective gasp from the nurses went up.

  ‘What will we do?’ The speaker was an Australian nurse.

  ‘Improvise.’

  I will never forget the bravery of that poor wretched flight lieutenant. The doctors used a saw fashioned from
the metal hoop of a barrel, with his pain numbed only by a small quantity of morphine. A few days later, it was decided he must lose the other foot too. But all his bravery was to no avail as he died soon after.

  As I prayed for the soul of the dead flight lieutenant, I was grateful that Frank hadn’t fallen into Japanese hands and would have had a quick death. If it had been he who had had to go through that ordeal, only to die anyway, I would not have been able to go on living.

  I also remembered Doug Barrington, Evie’s husband, who had died of septicaemia after refusing to have his leg amputated in a clean modern hospital. His obstinate refusal struck me as ungrateful and selfish in comparison with the ordeal of the dead airman.

  From our earliest days in Muntok the cruelty of the guards was evident. With rare exceptions they were brutal and sadistic in a breathtakingly casual way. Whether it was a howling child or a woman who dared to answer back made no difference. Any minor infraction was a cue for a face slap at full force, a beating with a rifle butt or a kicking. They strutted around the camp with naked bayonets, and I had no doubt they would be all too ready to use them.

  The Japanese were evidently unaccustomed to women answering back or speaking out – it seemed to go against all their expectations and sensibilities. We all learnt rapidly that it was unwise to provoke them – and we each had the scars and bruises to show for our defiance.

  But it wasn’t just the harsh conditions that rendered Muntok Camp a horrible place. There was something about the atmosphere there. Something that went beyond our imprisonment. I’m not being fanciful, as others said the same. Perhaps there was already something in the history of the place. Even though the surrounding jungle was rich and verdant, birds chorused in the treetops, and the sun shone down on a landscape similar to those I had come to love in Penang, there was something sinister, unsettling and malign about Muntok Camp. Although we knew the sky and jungle were out there, we could see little of them. There was just a narrow strip of sky visible between the huddled buildings, and this reinforced our sense of isolation from the rest of humanity. That strip of sky was not enough to offer us relief from the burning sun when we had to stand beneath it, but it offered us no perspective of the wider world.