Children of the Camps

by Mark Felton

  The Kempeitai instructed local hotel owners to convert their establishments into brothels in mid-1943. Prostitution was to be expanded. The Japanese decided to create brothels ‘themed’ along the lines of race or nationality. European women and girls were targeted for recruitment from the internment camps to offer one such ‘theme’. Brothels employing European women were established at Batavia, Bandoeng, Pekalongan, Magelang, Semarang and Bondowoso. ‘This change of policy was probably due to the increasing incidence of venereal disease and the inability of the privately-run brothels to remedy this problem. In addition, fewer European women were available for work in the brothels, as most of them [living outside the internment camps] preferred to establish a relationship as mistress to one Japanese man.’2 The Kempeitai viewed female internment camps as a source of largely untapped potential. ‘They believed that among the twenty thousand women interned in these camps enough volunteers could be found to solve their recruitment problems.’3

  How white women and girls ended up as comfort women in the Netherlands East Indies was complex. The women fell into one of three general categories. Firstly, there were those women who had been working as prostitutes before the war and who had continued in that profession after the Japanese occupation. Secondly, some women from internment camps volunteered for work as barmaids or waitresses to escape from the terrible conditions in which they found themselves living and many of these were subsequently coerced into prostitution by unsavory Japanese and Korean pimps. For example, in June 1943 the Japanese owner of the Akebono restaurant in Batavia was instructed by the Kempeitai to open a brothel. He set up an establishment called the Sakura (Cherry Blossom) Club. Of the twenty European women working at the club, eleven had volunteered for the job to escape Cideng Internment Camp in the city. In late 1943 the Kempeitai ordered the establishment of a second military brothel in Batavia for army officers. Called the Theresia or Shoko Club, it was run by a Japanese pimp. He used European women as procurers, and in December 1943 the Kempeitai ordered him to obtain more white women. Using his European procurers, the pimp went to Cihapit Internment Camp in Bandoeng and successfully recruited eleven white women to work as prostitutes. The third group consisted of European women who were simply taken by force from the internment camps in groups and used as sex slaves by Japanese troops.

  Recruitment drives did meet with considerable resistance from women inside the camps. Paget Eames recorded that when the Japanese tried to take girls from Bangkinang Camp in Sumatra, ‘a small group of women in the camp intervened and they hid the young ones. The Japanese only wanted virgins so Mother was quite safe, and when they saw there weren’t any young women there, they got very angry and demanded volunteers.’4 On 25 January 1944, Kempeitai troops arrived at Muntilan Camp in Java in a bus, bringing with them a copy of a list they had previously forced the women camp leaders to draw up recording suitable young women and girls. A tenko was immediately called and the women on the list were ordered to go to the church (the camp being situated inside a monastery) for an inspection. The camp leaders and the camp doctor followed behind, protesting loudly to the Japanese officers that this was illegal and against the Geneva Convention. Their protestations were pointedly ignored until the Japanese tried to remove a group that they had selected from the camp. Resistance was strong. A large crowd of women and teenaged boys had gathered outside the church while the Japanese were inspecting the women. When the church door was flung open and the Kempeitai tried to escort the women to their bus violence broke out. The furious internees, their patience already exhausted by the inhuman treatment that they had all suffered from the Japanese, hurled clumps of dirt and stones at the Japanese soldiers. In turn, the Japanese reacted violently, Kempeitai officers even slashing at the unarmed women and children with their swords. By these methods, the Japanese managed to force their way through the crowd and the young girls were roughly bundled aboard the bus and driven out of the camp, many of the mothers left behind screaming and tearing at their clothes in anguish as their daughters disappeared to an unknown fate.

  Three days later the Kempeitai came back to Camp Muntilan. Another tenko was called and the remaining prisoners were offered a deal. The Japanese would accept volunteers to replace the women they had taken by force before. A handful of women, mostly respectably married, but a few of whom had been working as prostitutes before the war, raised their hands and volunteered in order to spare the younger girls from multiple rape. On 28 January 1944, thirteen young women from the camp were taken to Magelang.

  At Bangkinang Camp the ‘volunteers’ demanded by the Kempeitai were slow in coming forward, after the older Dutch women had hidden the young women from the Japanese. ‘There was a group of Indonesian and Malay prostitutes,’ recalled Paget Eames, ‘who finally got up and said, “Look, this is just another job to us, let us go.” But the Japanese weren’t satisfied as there weren’t enough of them, so some strapping Dutch ladies volunteered.’ This time, the Japanese were brought up short by the attitude of the Dutch women, and a rather amazing thing happened. The truck, aboard which the Dutch women and the native prostitutes had been loaded, turned back up at the camp. ‘We heard that these big Dutch ladies had stopped the truck, beaten up the drivers and had driven the truck back to the camp. We all waited, wondering what was going to happen to us … but the Japanese were embarrassed about being beaten up by the women and we didn’t hear any more about it.’5 This incident did not prevent some Dutch women and girls from voluntarily going with the Japanese. ‘No one made any judgement about that. The important factor was staying alive,’ recalled Eames.

  The treatment handed out to the young women who were taken as comfort women was horrible. Jan O’Herne was an attractive teenaged Dutch girl who had been born in Bandoeng in Java. O’Herne, along with her mother and two sisters, had been imprisoned in a condemned army barracks at Ambarawa, which had been hastily turned into a civilian internment camp. ‘I’d been in the camp two years,’ recalled O’Herne. ‘The Japanese gave an order that all young girls from 17 years and up had to line up in the compound. These high military officers walked towards us and started to eye us up and down, looking at our figures, looking at our legs, and it was obviously a selection process that was going to take place.’6 The girls were herded aboard an open army truck and ‘driven away … as if we were cattle. And I remember we were so scared and clinging to our little suitcases and clinging to each other.’ Driven to a large colonial house about twenty-five miles from the camp outside the town of Selarang, the abuse began soon after arrival. ‘When we got to the house, we were told we were there for the sexual pleasure of the Japanese military … you know, our whole world just collapsed from under our feet. And we started protesting straightaway. We said that we were forced into this, that they couldn’t do this to us, they had no right to do this, it was against the Geneva Convention, and that we would never do this. But they just laughed at us, you know, just laughed. They said they could do with us what they liked.’7 The Kempeitai had named the brothel ‘The House of the Seven Seas’. ‘We were given flower names and they were pinned to our doors,’ recalled O’Herne. ‘They started to drag us away one by one. And I could hear all the screaming coming from the bedrooms, you know, and you just wait for your turn.’ O’Herne did not have long to wait. There stood this large, fat, bald Japanese officer looking at me, grinning at me, and I put up an enormous fight, but he just dragged me to the bedroom.’ O’Herne and the other girls were all virgins when they were assaulted. ‘I said, “I’m not going to do this.” And he said, “Well, I will kill you. If you don’t give yourself to me, I will kill you.” And he actually got out his sword. I went on my knees to say my prayers and I felt God very close. I wasn’t afraid to die.’ O’Herne was then raped. ‘He just threw me on the bed – got hold of me, threw me on the bed and just tore off all my clothes and most brutally raped me. And, I thought he would never stop. It was the most … the most horrendous … I never thought suffering could be that terrible.’ Aft
er the Japanese left, ‘I thought, “I want to go to the bathroom. I want to wash this all away. I want to wash away all the shame, all the dirt. Just wash it away, wash it away.” ’8 The bathroom was already filled with sobbing girls. ‘We were all there in the bathroom, you know, all totally hysterical and crying and just trying to wash away the dirt, you know, the shame. Within one night, we lost our youth. We were just such a … such a pitiful little group of girls, and we were just embracing each other. And how many times was each one raped that night? You know, I shall never forget that first night. And we felt so helpless. This was going to happen from now on, night after night.’9

  O’Herne and her companions endured four months of being raped every day and every night before they were suddenly released and sent back to their camp. During her time in the brothel, O’Herne had tried to appeal to a Japanese Army doctor who inspected the girls regularly for disease, but to no avail. ‘When the doctor came, I went to him and I said, “Look, I want you to know we’re here against our will. Use your influence. Go to the highest authority, report this, that we are forced into this.” ’ The response of the doctor was extraordinary: ‘He just laughed and he ended up raping me himself. And from that time onwards, every time the doctor came for his regular visit, he used to rape me first.’10 When O’Herne was reunited with her mother at Muntilan Camp, finding the words to explain her ordeal proved impossible. ‘That first night back at the camp, I couldn’t even talk or say anything to her. I just … I can feel it now, laying in my mother’s arms, you know, in the hollow of her arms … her arms around me … And then the next day, I told her what had happened to me and so did the other girls,’ remembered O’Herne. ‘We had all these girls with all these mothers … And the mothers just couldn’t cope with this story, this happened to their daughters, you know. It was too much for them – they couldn’t cope with it. And we were only to ever tell our mothers just once. And it was never talked of again – it was just too much for them.’11

  9

  God Save the King

  The guards stopped the beating and the internees dragged the man inside for his protection. The whole camp came out and then the Japanese got scared of so many people – they called it the Lunghwa Rebellion. Soon after that truckloads of armed soldiers came in, and they were on all the roofs of the buildings with guns.

  Rachel Bosebury, British child internee

  Lunghwa Camp, Shanghai

  Not every internee was prepared to accept the overlordship of the Japanese and many did resist to one degree or another. Any kind of resistance, however mild, could bring down horrific punishments upon the transgressor, so adults were particularly careful not to discuss their illicit activities around the children. The adults feared that the information would be quickly leaked around the camp by the children and would eventually reach the ears of the Japanese, with dire consequences. ‘Children just say things,’ recalled Rachel Bosebury, a prisoner at Lunghwa Camp in Shanghai, ‘and we found out after the war that there was a radio on the third floor of the D Block men’s bathroom. I always used to wonder why the men went to the bathroom so much … I never knew that till after the war … but you could have been killed for having it.’1 The Japanese had everywhere confiscated radios, telescopes, binoculars, cash and a host of other paraphernalia from internees that they considered a security threat or contraband. In many prisoner-of-war and internment camps throughout Asia radios were secretly constructed from parts smuggled into the camps, allowing prisoners some link to the outside world and the progress of the war, especially by following BBC reports, or reports from Radio Chungking in Free China. Many POWs and internees unfortunately paid for these illicit machines with their lives when they were discovered by the periodic Japanese searches, and the Kempeitai military police brutally tortured everyone who was found in possession of an illegal radio or even remotely connected with it. It was all part and parcel of the climate of fear deliberately engendered in the camps, and it was extremely successful in preventing serious escape attempts or rebellions from occurring.

  Escape was a form of resistance that the Japanese punished with extreme severity, and by most prisoners it was not even considered. The problems of being on the run hundreds of miles behind enemy lines were almost insurmountable. Westerners stuck out among the native populace and unless contact could quickly be made with an underground organization it was unlikely that locals would risk massive retribution from the Japanese to aid escapees. In the Netherlands East Indies the white colonists were roundly hated by the Indonesians, who often killed escaped prisoners-of-war or internees, though a slightly better opportunity existed in occupied China, the Chinese having no love of the Japanese. The odds were still stacked in the favour of the Japanese, but a few internees did manage to escape into Free China, risking all to do so.

  Rachel Bosebury recalled what happened after a group of four internee men escaped from Lunghwa Camp in 1944. American internee Kay Pait made it as far as the Nationalist capital at Chungking, and freedom. When the Japanese discovered the men missing from their block at tenko the next morning they interrogated a young man from the same barrack who had unwisely elected to remain behind when his comrades had broken out. ‘Whenever anybody did anything wrong the Japanese shut the whole camp down,’ remembered Bosebury. ‘If people escaped … we’d be confined to our room and down to one meal a day,’2 said James Maas. The young man was grabbed by the guards. ‘They started beating this man, terribly, and he ran out to this football field between D Block and H Block. They tried to catch him in the field.

  It was so terrible the way the Japanese guards held onto and tried to beat him with bamboo that people poured out of my building.’ Incredibly, the internees came out in force and physically stopped the guards from assaulting the prisoner any further. It was an extraordinary moment of collective defiance by the internees to Japanese authority. ‘The guards stopped the beating and the internees dragged the man inside for his protection. The whole camp came out and then the Japanese got scared of so many people – they called it the Lunghwa Rebellion.’3 The ‘Rebellion’ did not last for very long. ‘Soon after that truckloads of armed soldiers came in, and they were on all the roofs of the buildings with guns,’ recalled Bosebury, who added: ‘We behaved, or else!’ The unfortunate internee the guards had assaulted was taken away by the Kempeitai military police to one of their detention centres in Shanghai, and he was not seen alive again.

  The camp commandant punished the internees for having stood up to the Japanese authorities during the so-called ‘Lunghwa Rebellion’. The prisoners were no longer permitted to eat together in the mess hall, and instead ‘you had to eat in your own room; if you broke any rule, the guards were allowed to beat you,’ recalled Bosebury. Barricades of barbed wire were erected between the accommodation blocks at night to prevent any fraternizing between the prisoners. ‘If you got anywhere close to the barbed wire, you could be hit, beaten, or killed – take your pick.’4

  Some of the young boys in the camp were quite brave and deliberately challenged the camp rules. ‘We would dare each other to run out of the front gate of the camp, cross the road and run back in again,’ remembered Ronald Calder. ‘I became a very good thief, too. I got caught stealing food from the home of one of the guards and was shooed away by his wife.’5 Generally, although the Japanese guards were not averse to hitting children, they realized that such pranks were just a case of ‘boys being boys’, youthful high spirits, and let it go.

  Taking action was always difficult for civilian internees. The draconian punishments that the Japanese handed out for even the slightest deviation from the rules effectively prevented real resistance to their regime. Most internees were cowed and frightened. Even the act of refusing to bow to the Japanese sentries, as we have seen in several accounts, would result in an immediate, and often severe, beating. Not bowing low enough could also garner the same reaction from the hyper-sensitive guards. Not turning up for tenko could result in a visit to the hospital once t
he guards had finished. However, we have also seen that some adults risked death by constructing and concealing radio receivers, while others attempted to escape. A seventeen-year-old British girl witnessed an extraordinary act of defiance which was carried out at Weihsien Camp in northern China one blazing hot summer’s day.

  At Weihsien, tenko occurred once a day, the entire camp population being divided into six groups, with a separate roll-call for each. Once a month, the whole camp of 1,500 Allied civilians was gathered together on a dusty field and carefully counted. One day when the mass tenko was being held, the internees stood in the usual bored, listless ranks as Japanese soldiers marched up and down the wilting lines counting and recounting for hours on end. ‘Between counts – it invariably took several before they reached the correct total – the internees sat or lay down, some reading or chatting, school children playing, parents trying to amuse fractious toddlers … anything to relieve the boredom,’ recalled the British teenaged prisoner who witnessed the parade. Among the huge crowd were several members of the Salvation Army, who had brought with them their instruments. They played a constant stream of band music in an attempt to entertain the internees and help the time pass more quickly. ‘So it went on for a couple of hours in the intense heat, and still the numbers were not right. At last the guards realised they had not counted the internee official who was accompanying them around! So, to the great relief of all, the order to dismiss was finally given.’6 What happened next was something on a par with the so-called ‘Lunghwa Rebellion’ recounted above.