by Martin Booth
In the camp, he now realised, he seldom heard birds. He tried hard to recall when it was he had last listened to a morning song like this but he couldn’t remember. It must have been in Hong Kong. With Bob.
Bob. Long-dead Bob. The ultimate escaper. Not for him the home run through Chungking and the underground, the dream of liberation. He was already liberated, and gone wherever dead men go. Probably, Sandingham reasoned, a dark void where there is nothing. Nothing was preferable to the something he knew. In nothing there is no starvation, no sickness, no pain, no punishment, no work. There was no hancho, no taiso, no tenko, no hochotore each time he passed the camp guardhouse, his feet hurting at the ridiculous goose-stepping march; no benjo full of shit.
He still loved Bob. Sometimes, when he was exhausted or working like an automaton in the timber yard doing a job that required no thought, like sweeping up or sawing through a log, he daydreamed about their meeting after the war. He would be wearing a well-tailored blazer and slacks and Bob would be dressed in a light summer suit and they’d be walking along the banks of the Cherwell in the University Parks. Through the trees the spires of Oxford would point to God and the block of Magdalen College would dent the distance. Young men in punts would glide by through his mind like swans on still waters.
The song stopped. Sandingham watched. A dull brown bird dropped from the branches of the tree and disappeared into some rank weeds by the paddy wall.
Damn! he thought. He could not dredge the memory back. From the University Parks, was it possible to see the tower of Magdalen? Or did other buildings get in the way? Weren’t there a lot of houses across the river from St Catherine’s that blocked the view?
He bothered this over in his mind, seeing nothing of interest from the lorry until a pig waddled into the far end of the field and began to rout about in the damper earth by an irrigation channel.
The sight of the pig took away his thoughts of Oxford. Instead he watched the animal scrabbling with its trotters and teeth and pictured a large joint, the skin crisped with oil and crackling in his mouth and the roast onions and potatoes browned with Bisto gravy. And broad beans. He accepted that this was what he was reduced to: a pig could erase his memories of home and his love for another human.
This realisation pushed itself upon him and immeasurably depressed him. To match his thoughts, a large cloud blew over the sun, obscuring it and causing him to feel once again the chill air.
There is no hope. He knew that now. No chance for liberation except in death. No chance for resurrection from the pit of prisonership.
The farm buildings, two hundred yards away behind the row of willows, were dark and low. The slight pitch of the roof and the blackness of their wooden construction made them particularly un-European. Looking at them, Sandingham had driven into him even more forcibly the fact that he was an alien in an alien land, unnecessary and insignificant.
The cloud shifted. The wind had picked up and hurried it along. Sandingham watched the progress of its receding shadow hasten across the brown fields towards him. There was warmth again on his skin.
The farmstead shook with life. The sun shimmied upon the trees to the left of the pig sty. The pink-white fluff caught the sun and translated it into beauty.
‘Cherry blossom!’
‘What’s that, mate? Sir…’
‘Cherry blossom, Wilkins. Over there. Nine o’clock from the farm…’
Wilkins screwed up his eyes. He was suffering badly from conjunctivitis, his eyelids red and bruised, his pupils bloodshot and itchily painful.
It was with considerable disgust that Sandingham perceived that he had used the army field-spotting method to point out the blossom. It was an insult to nature.
‘Can’t see it, sir.’
‘By the buildings, man. To the left by that low shed. There are two trees – leafless. See the pink haze?’ He had become agitated with the excitement of his discovery. ‘It’s cherry blossom.’
Wilkins squinted.
‘Think so, sir. Is it important?’
Sandingham thought then said, ‘No. Not really.’
Yes, it was. In all pain there is beauty; in all strife there is peace; in all sorrow there is laughter. Maybe hope, even. One just had to find it. To do so he stared at the distant blooming tree.
A van arrived. The two mechanics lifted a heavy toolbox from the rear, opened the bonnet of the lorry and started to tinker with its engine. Fifteen minutes passed. They could not get it to do more than turn over on the starter.
The guards, the driver and the mechanics held a conference. The mechanics left in their van. Twenty minutes later, another lorry arrived. It appeared to be as dilapidated as the one that was broken down. Nevertheless the prisoners were transferred to the second vehicle and driven off to the timber yard.
As the transport edged out of the farm lane Sandingham, watching the cherry blossom, saw a movement closer by. It drew his attention. He looked at the patch of scrub into which the songbird had dropped. There it was. A small boy, four or five years old, was hiding in the cover and surveying the prisoners. His eyes were wide with the curiosity of the ignorant and the innocent. Sandingham gave the boy a broad smile and he smiled shyly back.
* * *
The fever subsided after a week, during which time Sandingham had tossed and twisted in the bunk allocated to him in the sick bay, a somewhat fanciful title given to the smallest building in the camp, situated the other side of the latrines and, due to the prevailing wind, usually immersed in its doubtful perfumes.
The weather was humid and close for most of his illness. The Dutch doctor, a highly qualified eye surgeon from Java, could do little for him. There was no way for him to regulate his patient’s temperature except by keeping his sheet soaking wet in the noonday heat and dry and close to his skin at night. The Dutchman’s main intent, as with all his patients, was not necessarily to save Sandingham from death, but from being carted off to the byoin, the ‘hospital’ camp situated twenty-five miles up the coast. Any byonin who were transported there seldom returned. It was deemed better to die in the hands of the prisoners than at the hands of the hospital camp staff. They were not noted for their sympathy, which was as lacking as their medical skill was wanting.
Sandingham’s chances of surviving his fever, which the doctor at first feared the herald of an outbreak of diphtheria or cholera, but which turned out to be neither – though what it was he was not able to guess without a microscope and a slide – looked slim from the outset. On the first three mornings of his sickness the corporal who was in charge of deducing who was fit for work and who was not, decided in Sandingham’s favour and excused him.
Known variously as ‘Top-Hat-and-Tails’, ‘The Wreathman’ or ‘Coffin Charlie’, the corporal stepped into the sick bay on the first morning and sauntered down the row of bunks and tatami, as usual tapping ill prisoners’ feet with a short cane. Those who made no or little response to his tickling or prodding gained his standard prognosis.
‘No wurk. You for box.’
Each day, as the gocho left the building, he would detail the first three prisoners he spied, release them from their chores and order them to chop kindling for the cremation.
Upon Coffin Charlie’s departure from the sick bay the old sergeant, a gunso from the Kwantung Army, would come in and sooth any doomed man’s brow and say, rather ineptly, ‘You no sweat. We get you OK-A1. No box for you. No box for you.’
He would assist the Dutch doctor all he could and was kind, sympathetic and never brutal. He was nicknamed ‘No-box.’
Towards the end of his fever, when he was able to remain lucid for more than an hour at a time, Sandingham appreciated the old gunso’s kindness and, like the man who promises to his god that he will be good and pray after the current crisis is ended, he swore he’d do something for him after the war. Buy him a wristwatch. The gunso had one and still wore it, but it never told the time, having lost both its hands.
* * *
‘Keireish
iro!’
Sandingham snapped to attention, saluted then bowed low from the waist. He was not quick enough. The butt of the Arisaka rifle struck him in the ribs and he tottered sideways.
‘Keireishiro! Isoge!’
Again he bowed, lower. He could feel the blood rush to his head and his ears rang. He was dizzy and unable to stand still.
‘Keireishiro! Isoge!’
‘Watashi wa memai ga shimasu,’ Sandingham pleaded. He should have known better, but the dizziness affected his reason.
A backhand hit him on the side of his head and knocked him to the ground. A boot hit him hard on the shins, then wedged its toes under his groin to turn him over.
He rolled with it and saw against the scorching disc of the sun a group of Japanese soldiers standing in a semi-circle round him. One was a little way back from the rest.
‘Yu! Up! Up!’
He did not attempt even to sit. A rifle was raised.
‘Kamawanai de kudasai!’ he yelled.
The words came out at a high pitch, barely human.
‘Yamenai to okina koe o dashimasu yo!’
The rifle butt smashed on his shoulder. The pain wavered and jolted through his dizziness.
‘Yamero!’
The ring of soldiers edged back slightly and the single figure moved in. Another order in Japanese snapped out. A heicho stepped forward and grabbed Sandingham under the arm. A private assisted him. They dragged him towards his barrack, one of his tabi coming off on the way as his feet ploughed through the dust.
‘You fucked that one good and proper,’ stated a voice in the red glare beyond his sight. ‘The visiting commander. God forbid they decide to do us for it.’
‘I’m … I’m sorry,’ Sandingham stuttered.
‘Can’t be helped,’ replied the voice. ‘Here. Help me get Joe’s shirt off. Jesus! Look at the bruise.’
He’d been out of the sick bay nine days. This was his first rest day from the timber yard.
* * *
It had no front cover, back cover, title page or fly and was smutted and dusty and smelt of old wood and bone glue, which reminded him of the secondhand shop near the chemists in Saffron Walden. More than half the contents were missing. Where the pages were torn, sawdust had slid in between the leaves and every time he opened it a tiny fall of dust trickled on to his sheet and meant he had to take it up and shake it out of doors. Sawdust, Sandingham knew, was worse than biscuit crumbs. Or so he supposed. It had been a very long time since he had last had the unbelievable luxury of being able to eat a biscuit in bed.
The book had come from Mr Mishima in the usual way, following intermittent deliveries of miniature packets of tea, dessicated fish heads, dried lentils and once, memorably, three aspirin. The sack on this occasion had not had the Japanese figure for rice on the side but the five characters that meant peas. It had not been used for a long time. Snuggled in the centre was what was left of a guide book to Japan and her customs.
At first, Sandingham read it from boredom. He had nothing else, for books were very scarce indeed: there were whole weeks that went by in which he did not see a single English word printed on paper. Even the Holy Bible did the rounds as fiction or non-fiction or a mixture of both, depending on the reader’s interpretation of the life of Christ. After a while he started to find the book of interest. It gave him phrases that might be useful, though not in his present circumstance. There was little scope for ‘Donna toriryori ga arimasu ka?’ (‘What poultry dishes do you serve?’), ‘Koko wa kaze ga arimasu hoka no teburuo o-negai shimasu?’ (‘There’s a draught here; could you give us another table?’) and ‘Konohen ni dansu horu ga arimasu ka?’ (‘Is there a dance hall anywhere here?’) The book also contained a section on Japanese festivals, another on dress and a third on religion, much of which was missing.
He read it all with interest and, in the moments that they could snatch together, he talked about what he had discovered with Mishima who, in his turn, explained things further.
A few of the other prisoners took to the book as well. Word spread that it existed but no one accused Sandingham of being a Nip-lover, a Nip-scholar or a Nipper: if he had had Mein Kampf or Das Kapital tucked into his hidey-hole they’d have begged a read of those as well. Certainly, those who greatly missed books would have done so.
His hiding place was skilfully contrived. With care and considerable patience, he had started to manufacture it – ‘sculpt’ would be more appropriate – just after the arrival of the liquorice tea. He had found a loose strip of wood on one of the barrack hut beams and had removed this and carved out a deep cavity behind it. In this he kept the book. From time to time he removed it and buried it under the earth beneath the floorboards, but only when the beam was needed for something else.
Most of the prisoners had their own secret niches. Some broke the vital law by keeping stamp-sized diaries in them, the writing almost microscopic. When snap searches, known as kensa, occurred, the guards were usually not interested in delving too deeply. They were generally searching for stolen food, radio receivers or English-language newsheets. They never found a thing. There was no radio as there had been in Hong Kong, any food was generally consumed within twenty minutes of the theft and there was no newspaper-boy, newsagent or Times correspondent within two thousand miles.
News did filter through to them from time to time, however, in Japanese newspapers. These reached the prisoners in a number of ways. Food for the kitchens was wrapped in them, it was issued in strips as toilet paper, it was handed out to get fires started, it was flattened and lacquered for use in windows and walls, it was sent in shredded to be used as a basis for papier mâché that was employed to fill draught cracks in the barracks and, on a good day, it blew in from outside, winging over the wire like a drunk flock of birds.
To everyone’s surprise, it was never censored. The camp authorities knew that there were Japanese-speakers and readers amongst the prisoners, but seemed not to worry. News from Europe was reported with surprising candour and the prisoners were, considering their position, reasonably cognizant with the situation on the Western Front. The Pacific theatre, of course, was carefully monitored and censored before publication, victories being announced but defeats ignored. However, by careful study of the news articles by a group of prisoners assigned the task it was possible to chart the progress of the war by listing omissions from week to week, rather than by noting admissions. In this way the prisoners learnt of the advance across the Pacific, of the eventual recapture of Corregidor and the Battle of Midway.
* * *
Two events occurred in the mid-summer of 1943 that gave the prisoners a release from the humdrum work-slave-sleep-work routine into which they had gradually and almost unconsciously slithered.
Both took place in the timber yard and happened in extended midday breaks, stretched from one to two hours.
The first was the celebration of Doyo no Iri, the First of the Dog Days. The hancho came into the shed and switched the power off at the junction box by the entrance. The grinding and howling were quickly replaced by silence. The prisoners looked at each other in bewilderment and anxious expectation. Someone must have done something.
Whenever the unexpected came about, even if it were a small matter like a guard bawling at him as he boarded the truck, Sandingham grew agitated. It was surely only a matter of time before somebody caught him and Mishima out: what might then happen did not bear thinking about.
The workers were herded together outside in brilliant sunlight. The sky was a harsh blue and the clouds were fine weather cumuli blowing in from the sea.
The hancho, who had gone into the yard office, reappeared accompanied by an unusually tall Japanese man in his forties, dressed smartly in a cream kimono with a narrow red obi into which was tucked a yatate, a container for a pen and ink pad. On his feet he wore white tabi socks and a pair of straw zori. On his nose perched a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and behind him stood two servants holding between them a rattan baske
t.
All the workers bowed low to this man who might have come from another planet, such a contrast did he make with the labourers.
A long speech was given. One of the prisoners who understood Japanese was allowed to stand up straight and translate as the speech was made: everyone else remained in the bowed position.
‘This man is Mr Kumisada. He owns the timber yard. He owns many timber yards. He is from an ancient samurai family. He wishes his workers a good summer. Today is a festival. He wishes to share with his workers the fruits of their labours on this auspicious day.’
Facing the parched earth, Sandingham gave a wry grin. It could not be seen.
For a minute the speech continued without translation, then the prisoner interjected, ‘The gist of that is that Mr Kumisada is thankful – rather than grateful – that we have contributed so much to the glory of the Emperor and the war effort. Obviously,’ he added, knowing that no one present in authority spoke English, ‘Mr Kumisada is in blissful and convenient ignorance of the articles of the Geneva Convention.’
The servants came forward and placed the basket on the ground. The lid was removed and the prisoners and Japanese labourers were chivvied into a line, the PoWs at the rear. As they moved forward to the basket, each man bowed as low as he could to Mr Kumisada and received a small cake which he broke open and ate in pieces. The Japanese muttered, ‘domo, domo’ as they passed.
Sandingham accepted his cake and went into the shade to taste it. It was crumbly and sweet, the surface pastry soft and sticky with sugar. He swallowed it slowly, to make it last, and noticed as he did so that the Japanese were doing likewise.
It was then that it occurred to him that the local population were hungry. Food was getting scarce for them as well as for the prisoners, and he felt the nagging fear that if things became really bad for the Japanese then what might it become for their unwilling guests?
The translator stood up and went into the centre of the yard. Mr Kumisada was seated on a stool in the shadow of the office. He too was eating one of the cakes.
