Moreover, the attitude of these Japanese soldiers to the Westerners they had captured was very different from that of their compatriots who had so generously cared for their prisoners in the First World War. Few in the Imperial Army now wished to be judged by the values of the liberal democracies of the West — Japanese propaganda had, after all, called throughout the 1930s for such decadent thought to be rejected. These Japanese soldiers had been taught that Westerners were interlopers in Asia — what right had these hypocrites (who had so objected to Japan’s legitimate territorial expansion in China) to be here at all?
Against this background of Japanese belief, Anthony Hewitt and his fellow soldiers of the Middlesex regiment marched into captivity in Hong Kong and were held at an abandoned barracks at Sham Shui Po. ‘The barracks had been knocked about all over the place,’ he says. ‘The living conditions were quite terrible. A lot of my soldiers were living in huts with no roofs and with nothing to protect them from the rain. They had nothing to sleep on — just bare bits of concrete. There was no medicine and we only got a bowl of rice in the morning and a bowl of rice in the evening. There were flies and rats and everything you can think of in the camp and the smell was ghastly. The sanitation in the camp was out of this world — there was nothing. But the men were still marvellous. The cockney when he’s down still keeps his spirit.’ From the first it was obvious that the Japanese would treat their captives with great brutality. ‘The Japanese were inclined to beat you, particularly if you failed to salute them. This didn’t mean facing a Japanese head on and failing to salute him that way, but it might be a Japanese about a hundred yards away that you hadn’t noticed.’ Hewitt’s commanding officer spent ‘hours and hours’ complaining to the Japanese about conditions in the camp and ‘they always said, “Oh yes, that’s all right, we’ll do that tomorrow, we’ll bring in this tomorrow.” They never damn well did anything at all. They didn’t mean to, either.’
After little more than a month in captivity, Hewitt was told by his commanding officer that he should try to escape from the camp and make his way to China, in order to take letters to the nearest British embassy outlining the terrible conditions under which the soldiers were held. In preparation for his escape Hewitt tried to deceive the Japanese guards about the number of British officers imprisoned in the camp by omitting one sick officer from the roll call — the plan was that the sick officer would then be included to make up the numbers once Hewitt had made his escape. Then disaster struck: ‘One unfortunate day he was found and the Japanese came to me and said, “There are more officers than you said.” So they took me behind what was the old sergeants’ mess and they went on questioning me and then they started beating me. They beat me with frightful blows to the head — mainly with the blades of swords and also with bayonets in their leather folders. I remember thinking about my parents as I was bashed. When I got into trouble like this I always thought of my parents. I was very fond of my father and mother who were in England, and I thought, “Oh God, my poor parents.” I would have loved to have seen them again. Very shortly I was unconscious. I was trying not to fall down, because I knew I’d be beaten like mad on the ground but I was completely unconscious and so I must have been beaten as I lay there.’ When he came round he was covered in blood and had trouble focusing his eyes — he was to have problems with his eyesight for many years afterwards. But in an act of considerable courage he still managed to escape from the camp in February 1942 and make his way by boat to the Chinese mainland where he joined the resistance against the Japanese. His six weeks of imprisonment had allowed him to form a view of his enemy that would no doubt be echoed by the majority of Allied prisoners who fell into Japanese hands: ‘I thought they were terrible people, the Japanese. There was absolutely no link between normal civilized behaviour and the way these Japanese troops were behaving. No reason at all why they had to behave in this awful, cruel and sadistic manner.’
Conditions for both the POWs in the camp at Sham Shui Po and the Western civilians interred in Hong Kong at Stanley camp were grim — all suffered from overcrowding and malnutrition. But even though the Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong were not automatically interned they too did not escape atrocious mistreatment. Two whole areas, Happy Valley and Wancahi, were designated by the Japanese as enormous brothels, with the Chinese women who lived there forced into prostitution. There was scarcely any food for the Chinese of Hong Kong and, by the end of the war, stories of cannibalism abounded. Some managed to escape to the mainland (where they often fared little better); those who stayed risked death from starvation and disease. By the summer of 1945 the Chinese population of the colony had been reduced from 1,600,000 to 750,000.
This pattern of the mistreatment of POWs and Western civilians in overcrowded camps, together with the oppression of the indigenous population outside of captivity, was repeated across virtually the whole of the burgeoning Japanese empire. Within weeks of their conquest of Hong Kong the Japanese crossed the South China Sea and occupied Java; then part of the Dutch East Indies. ‘We thought we were safe, living in the Dutch East Indies,’ says Jan Ruff, a Dutch woman then in her late teens. ‘Then Singapore fell in February 1942 and we knew it would only be a matter of time before the Japanese landed on Java, which they did on 1 March.’ A week later the Dutch surrendered and captured Western civilians were interned in camps. ‘It was really dreadful — the starvation,’ says Jan. ‘You really had hunger pains. We ate anything. We ate weeds. Towards the end we even ate rats and snails. We even ate a cat — the camp commandant’s cat — because we were so hungry. And the Japanese were very brutal. The women were beaten and often punished by being made to stand in the sun for hours and hours. Sometimes for punishment we had to bury our food. And all this for small things. If you didn’t bow deeply enough, you’d get punished for that.’
Jan Ruff’s initial experience in her internment camp mirrored that of thousands of other Western civilians captured by the Japanese and held in camps from Hong Kong to Borneo and Singapore to Burma. Terrible as these conditions were, just as in Hong Kong the indigenous population — especially the Chinese — often suffered worse outside the camps. But Jan Ruff’s case is different, and worthy of particular study, because after being imprisoned for two and a half years her situation suddenly changed. ‘One day an army truck arrived at the camp with these high-ranking Japanese officers and we thought, “Oh, it’s just another inspection again.” But this time the order came that all girls from seventeen years old up had to go and line up in the compound — which made us very suspicious. So all the girls lined up and we could see straightaway that something terrible was going to happen. They sort of paced up and down, up and down, looking at our legs and our faces. Then some girls were told they could go back to their mothers and the line became smaller and smaller. They were sort of laughing at each other and lifting our chins and eventually there were ten girls left in the line and I was one of these ten and the fear was absolutely terrible.’ The selected young women were told to pack a small case and were then taken to a truck which waited at the camp gate to drive them away. ‘We thought perhaps we were going to work in a factory or something,’ says Jan. ‘But we were suspicious because they wanted the young girls — the mothers especially were very afraid.’
She and the other young women were driven across Java until they reached a large Dutch-colonial house in Semarang, the capital of Middle Java. The house was surrounded by a fence and guarded. Jan Ruff’s terrible ordeal was about to begin: ‘We were told that we were in this house for the sexual pleasure of the Japanese military. In other words, we found ourselves in a brothel. So it was just as if my whole world collapsed. We protested. But the Japanese said they could do with us what they liked.’
Each of the young Dutch women was given a Japanese name and had her photograph taken and displayed on the veranda of the house. The torment of the ‘opening night’ of the military brothel is, says Jan, ‘engraved in my body for ever.’ ‘We were supposed to go to our
rooms, but we didn’t do that. We all gathered around the dining table and we just sat, clinging to each other.’ One by one, each of the girls was dragged away. The house was full of Japanese soldiers, laughing and joking. ‘I could hear screaming coming from the bedrooms,’ says Jan, ‘and I hid under the dining room table but of course they soon pulled me out from under there.’ She was dragged into a bedroom by a tall, fat Japanese officer who brandished his sword at her. ‘He threatened to kill me if I didn’t give myself to him. And I sort of made him understand that I didn’t mind dying. I said could I say some prayers before he killed me? But then, of course, he had no intention of killing me. I would have been no good to him dead. And he started to undress himself and I realized he would rape me. He threw me on the bed. He tore off all my clothes, and as I lay there naked on the bed he ran his sword over my body, still threatening me with his sword. I could feel the steel. He was just playing with me like a cat with a mouse. And he eventually raped me. The most brutal rape. And it’s something you never forget. We were all virgins. We were such an innocent generation. We knew nothing about sex. And it seemed as if it went on for ages. Eventually he left the room and I was in total shock. I went to the bathroom. I just wanted to wash away the dirt and the shame.’
Jan Ruff tried to hide on the veranda after she was raped but she was soon found and dragged back to the bedroom: ‘And there was a whole line-up of Japanese waiting and it started all over again. And this went on all night.’ At least ten different Japanese soldiers raped her that first night. ‘By raping me the Japanese took away everything from me — my self-respect, my dignity, my possessions, my family. I really wonder how I coped. It’s amazing how strong you can be. My strong belief in God and my faith and prayer helped me through.’
That first night was only the beginning of many weeks of torment during which Jan and the other girls were repeatedly raped. ‘I even cut off my hair,’ she says. ‘I thought, “I’ll make myself look as ugly as possible.” I looked absolutely terrible. Didn’t make any difference. In fact, it even drew more attention, because everyone wanted the girl who had cut off her hair.’ Once a week the Dutch women were subjected to a gynaecological examination by a male Japanese doctor. ‘This was just so ghastly,’ she says. ‘The door and windows were left open and other Japanese military were encouraged to come into the room or to look through the door or window when we were being examined. The humiliation was absolutely terrible. I mean that was as bad as being raped. They humiliated us. We had no dignity left — they stripped me of everything.’ When the doctor first arrived Jan pleaded with him to help. ‘I thought, “Well, he’s a doctor. I’ll put in a complaint.” I said, “We’re here against our will. Surely as a doctor you have compassion, you’ll understand?” He just laughed at me. And he ended up raping me. And from then onwards every time that the doctor came for a visit he raped me first.’
After three months of this torment, Jan Ruff and the other young Dutch women were suddenly taken from the brothel: ‘For some reason that we never knew we were told to pack our bags and we were transported to another camp in Batavia — today’s Jakarta. There we were put in a women’s camp, but the Japanese always kept us separate from the other women. They didn’t want anyone to find out what had happened to us. And these other women in the camp thought that we had done all this voluntarily. They thought that we had worked in brothels for the Japanese in order to get more food and we were called “whores”. That was a terrible thing. And the Japanese told us that if we were to talk about this to anybody they would kill us and kill our family too. So we kept quiet and my silence started there and then — not daring to talk about it.’
Immediately the war was over Jan Ruff broke her silence when a priest visited the camp: ‘He gave mass and I was just so happy, so glad. And afterwards I asked if I could see the priest. I just needed to talk. After all I’d been through I thought that he would be a good person to talk to. Before the war broke out I was brought up in Catholic schools and I wanted to become a nun — that was the only life for me, that’s what I really wanted. And I said to this priest, “Is it all right if I tell you my wartime experiences?” And I told him what happened to me during the war. And I shall never forget, after I’d spoken to him he said to me, “My dear child, under the circumstances I think you’d better not become a nun.” Because one of the things I’d said to him was, “I still want to become a nun — all these things have happened to me but I still want to become a nun.” And then I got this answer from the priest. Which made me feel terrible. I felt I had something to be ashamed of. I felt dirty. I felt soiled.’
The only other people she told of her ordeal were her mother, her father, and, after she was married, her husband. ‘They’re the only three people I told — and for them it was too much. My mother, she couldn’t deal with it — her daughter systematically raped by the Japanese military. My father was even worse. And even Tom, my beautiful darling husband, he listened to me carefully but we never talked about it again. It was never discussed. It was just too much. And therefore we had to get on with our lives as if nothing had happened, and it was very hard.’
It was not until 1992 — nearly fifty years after the crime had taken place — that Jan Ruff decided to tell the world of her experience during the war. She was relaxing in the sitting room of her house in Adelaide when she saw an astounding series of interviews on television. Some of the first Korean comfort women to talk openly about the crimes the Japanese army had committed against them were telling their stories: ‘And when I saw them on television I thought I must back these women up. They wanted an apology from the Japanese government — they wanted their dignity back. So then I became the first European “comfort woman” to speak out. And when I saw the other comfort women in Tokyo, when I came face to face with the Korean and the Chinese and the Taiwanese and the Philippine comfort women, we threw our arms around each other and we hugged each other, because only we could understand what it was like. Nobody knows — but we did. And when I hugged the other comfort women from Asia it was as if a whole load fell away from my shoulders all of a sudden. We could heal one another. We were the only ones that would understand, because you can never describe it — the feeling. Yes, it was a very healing moment.’
Documents from the Dutch National Archives confirm Jan Ruff’s recollections from the war. Altogether thirty-five Dutch women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six were forced to work in four separate brothels around Semarang in central Java. The first women were installed in the brothels in late February 1944. Three months later, military headquarters in Japan ordered the use of Dutch women as forced prostitutes to cease (though seventeen of them were still sent to a brothel on Flores island where they remained until the end of the war).1 It remains hard to understand exactly why the decision was taken to put a stop to Western women working in the military brothels in Semarang, especially since from the start of the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies many local Javanese women had been forced into prostitution, but it seems likely that the use of Dutch women in this way was a local initiative. Detestable as the experience of Jan Ruff and the other Dutch women unquestionably was, the suffering they endured was very similar to that of thousands of other Asian comfort women who had been subjected to rape in Japanese military brothels in Asia since the early 1930s.
It is significant that the local initiative to force these Dutch women into military brothels was not taken until the start of 1944, when the war was most definitely going against the Japanese. For Japanese treatment of their captives, whilst not consistent, did often become still more brutal as the war went on — as the history of the Allied prisoners of war held in Sandakan, North Borneo, demonstrates. In the words of Professor Yuki Tanaka, one of the BBC’s historical consultants on this project, ‘The Sandakan incident provides the clearest picture possible of the relationship between the power structure of the Japanese Army and the occurrence of war crimes.’2
The Japanese had been keen to occupy
not just the Dutch East Indies but also Borneo (which was divided between the British and the Dutch) because these colonies were a major source of the raw material they needed most of all — oil. To protect this region they decided to use forced labour to build an airfield on the northeast tip of Borneo at a town called Sandakan. The first 1500 prisoners of war — the majority Australian — arrived at Sandakan in July 1942. Initially the death rate in the camp was relatively low. One reason was the availability of morphine, obtained thanks to the subterfuge of Dr Frank Mills, one of the Australian POWs. ‘At that time the Japanese were playing the military games to the hilt,’ says Dr Mills, ‘and they gave the first officer who died a military burial in the town of Sandakan.’ After the funeral Dr Mills asked his guard if it was possible to visit the local pharmacy and purchase a dose of morphine for one of the POWs lying sick in the camp. ‘He said, “Yes, one dose.” I said, “Two doses.” He said, “One dose.” So we went into the pharmacy and I said in a loud voice, “Give me one dose of morphine sulphate, half an ounce.” The little pharmacist took a quick look — a little Indian pharmacist in his early thirties — and took out a packet of morphine and cut it in half and handed it to me. It was half an ounce, about a thousand normal doses. The Jap said, “You pay!” The pharmacist said, “No, too small, no pay.” “You pay,” he [the Japanese guard] said, “you pay.” So I handed over some money and he give me some change and we walked out. I had a thousand doses of morphine. And of course it came in very handy in camp — it was very, very necessary.’
Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II Page 9
