Hiroshima Joe

by Booth, Martin

  He was naturally thin when they arrived in the camp, marching in past the small, octagonal, pagoda-like guard-box. Now his thinness was accentuated by emaciation – behind his back, the others in his hut called him ‘Tapeworm’. He had one of them, too. The papery, cream-coloured egg-segments passed out with his faeces. He could do nothing about it: they had no sulphur drugs. He called it ‘Tony’, after his headmaster at school, a man called Hill who had big ears, no sense of justice and was, in his estimation, ‘a right shit’.

  ‘What’s it made of?’

  ‘Rice, cabbage leaves and stalks, carrot tops, a few turnips and eleven ounces of sugar liberated from our Nipponese neighbours. Boiled up first on the ring.’

  The ring was a home-made heating element powered by an illegal flex that was connected to the electrified fence. It worked well, if slowly, and all the huts bounding the perimeter fence had something like it. It had begun life as a form of primitive electric fire in February. Now, in April, it powered the fermentation bucket.

  ‘It is rough,’ admitted Sandingham after a second sip had burned his tongue.

  ‘Rough? You could depilate sheep with it.’ As a vet in civvy street, ‘Black’ Berry should have known.

  ‘Well,’ judged the medical officer, sampling a drop on the end of his finger, ‘it won’t make you blind but it might make you blind drunk. Anyone who can’t stand their share can donate it to me and the sick bay. We can use it for sterilisation. Or cleansing cuts. And I’m not joking.’

  ‘Better idea, doc,’ suggested the vet. ‘Keep it a few more hours to mature and use it as an anaesthetic.’

  They all found that amusing.

  * * *

  ‘You!’

  Sandingham stood as upright as he could, turned as smartly as he could, saluted as smartly as he could, then bowed from the waist as low as he could.

  ‘When an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army comes by you, you salute immediately.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Sandingham to the dirt, upon which stood firmly planted a pair of highly polished leather boots.

  ‘Stand up!’

  He did so, pressing his hand into the small of his back to press the pain away. He had pulled a muscle badly while digging the trenches at Kai Tak the day before.

  ‘Why is your hand not at your side? You stand to attention.’

  He did so, but not fast enough. The slap across his jaw sent his head reeling to the right.

  ‘Next time, you salute before the officer of the Imperial Japanese Army sees you and you hold that salute until he has passed from your sight.’

  Afterwards, Pedrick asked, ‘Who the hell was that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea and I hope I don’t have to find out.’

  * * *

  Sally was defecting. At the beginning, she had stayed with the Pay Corps sergeant but after a while she was to be seen offering her attentions more and more to the Japanese subaltern who was in charge of messing for the camp guards. Although their food rations were not exorbitant, they had considerably better quality food than the prisoners and there was a far greater quantity of it. Rice and fish or meat gravy, interspersed from time to time with pork or monkey scraps, was preferred by the bitch to her owner’s skimpy servings of originally weak but further diluted soup and whatever she could catch for herself by way of rats, mice and the shining, brown-backed cockroaches that inhabited every crack and cranny of the buildings. The final sign that she was going over to the enemy occurred when, returning to the barrack hut late one night, she was noticed to be wearing a brand-new leather collar with metal studs mounted on it.

  The sergeant scooped her up in his once-brawny arms. The dog, with a duplicity better suited to a feline, licked his face.

  ‘You know, John,’ said a fellow sergeant, ‘I can’t bear that soddin’ animal. Watching it lick you reminds me of a whore. As she screws you, you wonder whose cock was up there last. The last chin that tongue slurped was probably Tokunaga’s own.’

  ‘Doubt it. The Imperial Japanese Commander of Saps Like Us, The High Honourable Colonel Tokunaga, Sir! would probably eat the poor little bugger. You can’t blame the dog. She’s hungry and finding ’er food best she can. Watchin’ ’er operate makes me wish I was a little bitch like that. You got to admire ’er stayin’ power.’

  ‘What’s more,’ added another, ‘she don’t get diphtheria, she don’t get scurvy and she don’t get cholera. She do get mange…’

  ‘… which is abou’ the only bloody thing we ain’t getting.’

  He put Sally back down on her paws. She wriggled under one of the bunks and settled into a snug of crumpled paper she had fashioned into a PoW version of the bamboo wicker basket she had formerly occupied in the offices at Murray Barracks. Even dogs, one of the NCOs tersely commented, had to make sacrifices in a war.

  For some days Sally continued to visit the guards for luxuries that would not have been refused by her rightful owners. On one occasion, in the manner dogs have, she returned with her breath smelling strongly of roasted chicken, much to the chagrin of the sergeant who had not seen a chicken since being captured, except for a solitary and scrawny cockerel that had mistakenly flown over the perimeter wire from the surrounding streets where, by April, there was none of its kin left crowing. The bird had quickly disappeared, almost before it had landed. A smearing of mouldy rice by the wire had assisted in convincing it that it should make the crossing of the no-man’s-land of electrified fencing and the guard walks. Sally had, on that occasion, been presented with the parson’s nose.

  It was a sweltering day, even before the sun had reached the mid-morning angle. The prisoners who were on work draft had long since departed and would by now have been bathed in sweat at Kai Tak, the dusty soil powdering into their hair and ears, adhering to their skin like a thin pastry case. Some felt they might yet cook.

  For Sandingham, it was his turn on the rota for general camp cleaning. A top-brass Japanese officer was expected to visit the camp in the evening and that meant everything had to be spruced up. The worst job was sweeping clear the dust that had settled on the concrete of the camp roads. The best job, after the sweeping was completed, was the washing down of the road. Whereas the British Army painted boulders white, the Japanese scrubbed roads: all armies do pointless things, Joe thought. Indeed, it was a job much sought after by the prisoners for it involved dowsing the hot roads with sea water and then sweeping it off into the gulleys, gutter-slots and earth. It was a chore that gave the prisoners two respites from their daily life – they could splash water about like errant schoolboys and, within the parameters of their life, ‘enjoy’ themselves; and the sea water was salty and beneficial to skin wounds.

  It was a task to which Sandingham got himself and his small workforce of other ranks delegated. He took it upon himself to bring the water from the barrels mounted on the back of a lorry to the site of the operation as it worked its way along the camp roads. Chinese labourers were used to fill the barrels and they sometimes put small live fish into the tanks, knowing that the prisoners would capture these when the water levels dropped, and eat them. The fish were no larger than sardines and, when boiled gently, could be eaten whole with only the tail and head being cut off, for use later in the making of soup. The bones did not matter.

  He stumbled as he picked up a bucket clear of the road surface: his arms were wearying sooner than usual which he attributed to the onset of the next stage of starvation. The bucket tipped on to its side but did not roll over and spill its contents. Instead, a small trickle meandered through the dirt to the side of the road. Looking up, he saw Sally heading back from the camp guards’ quarters. She was trotting along with the boundless optimism dogs have when they are intent on doing something of which they are ignorant. As she drew level with Sandingham, something caught her eye towards the wire. She stopped and stood stock-still in the way fox terriers have, her pointed nose twitching slightly and her eyes and ears alert.

  By the wire was a rat, standing in broa
d daylight. It was near a patch of ground used for the emptying of the night soil from the sanitation buckets, and it was engaged in eating something on the ground, pressing the hard brown object down with one of its hand-like forepaws that its teeth might get a better hold.

  The terrier turned slowly. The rat, sensing it but not seeing it, stopped eating and looked up.

  Sandingham said, ‘No, Sally, no!’ in a small voice but with what he hoped was an imperious tone.

  The dog ignored him, the rat returned to its meal and the dog started to edge towards it. Even at forty feet, Sandingham could see the rat’s grey fur glistening in the sun and could not help himself thinking that the rodent was in a far healthier condition than he was.

  Speedy as her kind can be, Sally rocketed forwards, her pads grabbling for an initial purchase. Sandingham shouted for her to stop, heel, sit. The rat looked up, saw death closing rapidly upon it and abandoned its repast to flash towards the wire with the sensual fluidity of motion that rats can muster.

  Eagerly, the terrier was after it. Sandingham was powerless.

  The rat flicked through a run under the wire. The dog sped straight to the run and started to squeeze herself through after her quarry.

  There was a hum, barely audible, like a bumble bee fondling a tower of lupin blossom. The dog jerked, her legs scrabbling once more on the ground without pattern to their movements. Then she was still. An alarm bell rang. A patrol of guards doubled at the ready along the road to where Sandingham was standing sadly. Their canvas and rubber boots slapped on the concrete. They could see no escapee.

  Sally was dead. The power in the fence was momentarily switched off so that one of the guards could drag the dog clear by her hind leg. He carried her pendulously into the camp safety area and dropped her on the earth. She fell loosely, the bones and flesh already disconnected from the life.

  The guards formed up in double file and marched back the way they had come. No one else moved.

  * * *

  ‘Willy’s back.’

  He heard the word passed secretly down the row of bunks in the twilight.

  It was with an innocent and almost child-like joy that he anticipated the dusk every day. It was the only time when there would be no roll-call, no disturbance and no work, the ten minutes when he let his fatigued body settle on to the bamboo mat and the boards, his head resting on the firm pillow that was stuffed with rice straw, leaves and torn shreds of cloth. Around him would eddy a softened murmur of voices and, if he closed his eyes and ignored the itching on his shins, he could transport himself back to his school dormitory. The only effective means of escape that they had was the one that took them into sleep.

  The news that Willy Stewart had been recaptured and returned to Sham Shui Po drove all thoughts of peacefulness from Sandingham’s head. He said nothing but hoisted himself on to his elbow and listened.

  ‘Apparently, they caught him over a fortnight ago. Out on the Sai Kung peninsula, in a village called Tai Mong Tsai. He was living near there with Communist guerillas who were going to get him over the border into China and up the lines to Chungking. They were heading for the cove of Kau Tong Hau where there was going to be a junk waiting. The partisans were ambushed, though. Hell of a fight. Quite a number killed on both sides. Some taken and executed there and then on the beach. Revenge killing. Beheaded. By the sword, as usual. Willy was brought back.’

  ‘Where’s he been held since?’

  ‘In the cells under the Supreme Court, I heard. Now he’s in solitary … Tsutada’s been in on the questioning. And Cardiff Joe. Fujihara, too.’

  Sandingham lay back again. He wondered if Willy had put the willies up Fujihara, and doubted it. Cigarette burns, dislocated fingers and toes, deep bruising, loosened teeth with any cavities fully explored with hot needles, slivers of bamboo and rifle butts: all efficient means of stopping the willies being applied.

  ‘He’s to come back in here.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Senior Naval Officer told me. He got it passed in from some agent. Seventy-seven mean anything?’

  ‘All the sevens, seventy-seven. Anyone got a line yet?’ hollered a wit.

  ‘Shut up, you dumb sod! The Nips can pick up waffle like that and figure it out. You don’t need to play Housey to get the message.’

  Silence from the caller of numbers ensued.

  So 177 had been in on it. That must have been why he hadn’t been seen of late by Sandingham in the Chinese work teams at Kai Tak.

  The conversation changed to a new topic. No one wanted to dwell on the subject of CSM Stewart, for they all knew that when he was finally returned into the hands of his brother officers there would be little left for him save death by disease. He would be so weakened that anything minor, not to mention pellagra or beriberi, would get under his reduced resistance and finish him off.

  He was glad the number being bandied about was incorrect, albeit only slightly. It might protect the truth from reaching their gaolers’ ears. There were a few prisoners who were willing stool-pigeons.

  ‘You’re very quiet at this time of the evening, aren’t you? Everyone else shooting the bull.’

  Sandingham stretched himself over the edge of his bunk and peered into the gloom of the one below. Their tier was against an end wall and farthest from a window. It had been warmest in the cold months but now, after a hot day, that part of the hut was the rankest and hottest.

  ‘I like to think before sleeping.’

  ‘So do I. What do you think of?’

  The previous occupant of the bunk had died the week before. The newcomer was only recently moved in and was welcomed, but had yet to fit into the particular camaraderie of the hut that manifested itself at night, away from the tortures and ills of the day.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Sandingham rejoined warily. He did not even know the new arrival’s name although they had worked together.

  ‘Bingham,’ the other man replied obliquely, feeling the suspicion implied by Sandingham’s look in the failing light. ‘Rob Bingham. I was transferred here from Stanley. I’m not services but a civilian. I’m a dentist, hence my arrival here. Dental surgeon. Formerly of Kowloon Hospital.’

  Rob, thought Sandingham. Robert. Change the R to a B. All that was needed.

  ‘I know. I was your table muscle the other day.’ Bingham half-laughed at that, a short, stunted laugh that was unfunny before it began. ‘Sandingham. Joseph Sandingham. Army. I’m called Joe.’

  The dentist held his hand up and offered what looked in the semi-darkness like a hybrid between a pencil and a twig.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ask no questions. Just chew the end until it frays and then rub your teeth with it. And don’t throw it away afterwards. Re-use it. In lieu of tooth powder, it will do you a surprising service. Chinese use it. Herbal.’

  With the delicacy of a man testing for poison, Sandingham did as he was bid. The stick tasted of mild licorice. He worked it over his teeth and, sure enough, it removed the furry scale to which he had grown unpleasantly accustomed. His tongue ran over his polished incisors. His mouth was fresher than for weeks.

  ‘It’s hell in Stanley,’ Bingham volunteered. ‘Mostly civilians. They’ve a lot of wives and children there, too. In the civilian prison. And Chinese. A lot of the guards are Indians. Mostly friendly, save the head man. He’s called Ramdad. He’s got it in for the British and gone over to the Japs. He’s a right bastard, that one. Hardly any food. I saw one of our chaps – a Hong Kong Bank official who’s not been drafted in to run the colony’s economy – for God’s sake! – for the occupying forces – baking a rat on a spade over a bonfire. Seems he’s quite a chef de rat cuisine.’ He chewed his own tooth stick meditatively before going on. ‘Much illness. Deaths creeping up from diphtheria, children getting measles and one dead from it when I left. A Chinese commits suicide from time to time: they do it by shoving chopsticks down their throats. Seems to be a sort of traditional method. It’s the loneliness. The mos
t terrible thing is the loneliness. And the uncertainty. Some of the wives and girlfriends are lost. But even in there, romance raises its head in the prison grounds. The cemetery. The vegetable plots, so-called.’

  ‘I think of romance,’ admitted Sandingham. ‘In the minutes before sleep.’

  ‘I’ve a photo.’

  The dentist moved his hand up and down the lining of his tropical-weight jacket, extracting a passport-sized picture of a woman in her middle age with a flower-print dress on, holding a cocktail and smiling. Her hair was fashionably permed. He passed it up to Sandingham.

  ‘My wife. She’s dead.’ His voice dulled.

  Offering a platitude, Sandingham hoped it sounded sincere. It was hard to feel sincere about anything except the rigours of being cooped up and the unholy bloodiness of camp life.

  ‘One good thing, at least,’ said Bingham. ‘She died three months before the … Well, before this. Cancer.’

  From a specially fashioned pocket in his blanket, Sandingham took out his photo and held it for Bingham to see but not take. There was just enough light by which to see the inscription on it: ‘Bob: Penang 1939’.

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’ Sandingham spoke cagily and Bingham realised the under-meaning. ‘More my brother officer. We were very close. He was killed…’

  Somewhere in the room, in the deepening shadows, he thought he could hear a man say, ‘I and you’ll … I and you’ll…’

  ‘I understand, son.’

  An outside light came on and Sandingham refocused his eyes and was surprised to see that Bingham was an elderly-looking man in his mid-fifties. He had not taken much notice of him as he stood his turn levering molars free and disregarding the grunts and mews of agony. His voice was younger than his years, but he was not. He had thinning sandy hair that had not been cut to a stubble, freckles around his liquid brown eyes which were ready to laugh or show sadness. He could see that the man’s wrists were wiry and very strong, the ligaments standing out like tensile steel straps under the skin.

  Their fellow occupants of the surrounding bunks were at the far end of the room where there was a game of cards in progress.