Descent into Hell: The fall of Singapore - Pudu and Changi - the Thai Burma railway

by Peter Brune

  A short distance further on we turned left off the Changi road. Here were some three storey buildings on a big square of land, mainly asphalted. Further on there are houses set amongst lawns and gardens. This is Selarang . . . One of the houses at the far end of the camp from the Changi road is to be our barracks. We will share this house with Headquarters Australian Army Service Corp . . .

  It is in a setting of what would have been a beautifully kept garden of tropical trees, shrubs and flowers . . . this is now quarters for one hundred and ten troops. We settled in wherever we could, sheds, garages, make shift huts. Anywhere outside would be better than the crush in the house which is home to most.

  My mate and I finished up in a hut native style with a palm leafed thatched roof. It had a little room at one end big enough for us to sleep in . . .

  This next morning the first thing we noticed was the rickshaw had vanished.16

  Nimbs’s experience was not unusual. He remembered a soldier with a collection of diamond rings on ‘a wire like you would see washers in a work shop. There must be a hundred of them.’17 Private Jim Stewart, 2/19th Battalion: ‘Well, I know one of our blokes had finished up with a beautiful watch and ruby and everything on it that he’d pinched out of a house out of Tanglin.’18 Thus, there would be some ‘affluent’ operators in Changi’s black market, others who were far more modestly funded but possessed a cash flow, and yet more who were ‘small time’ operators. And then there were very many Changi inmates—officers and other ranks—who would constitute both captive and deprived customers.

  The extent of such goods and funds entering Changi is hard to estimate accurately. Given Nimbs’s easy passage through the Japanese picquet with such a large ‘consignment’, one wonders why many more soldiers did not make the most of that pause in supervision and authority during the period 15–17 February 1942. Perhaps Private Gus Halloran, 2/19th Battalion, provides us with at least a partial answer:

  You’re fairly immature [Halloran was 21], and you don’t realize that you should probably, when the place has been surrendered, you should immediately go and rob a bank or something. I’d have liked to pick up a couple of books. I was getting old! But you’re still pretty unsophisticated youth . . . still pretty naive.19

  Many of Changi’s prisoners, therefore, were very much like Halloran—young and not ‘street savvy’ or ‘street wise’. Nimbs was 33 years of age as he entered Changi; he had grown up in Fitzroy in Melbourne; had cut cane in Queensland during the Depression and sent most of his wage back to his mother, and had, therefore, become very ‘street savvy’. Another character who will enter our story both in Changi and on the Railway is the 2/29th’s Private Paddy O’Toole. He too will go ‘under the wire’ at Changi, and will find all manner of ways and means to facilitate survival in Thailand. And he grew up in Richmond in Melbourne—like Fitzroy, another tough prewar suburb—started work at thirteen, got the sack at each wage increase based on age and was thus also a ‘street wise tough nut’. There were others again who like Corporal Jim Kennedy and Lance-Corporal John ‘Rocca’ Roxburgh, Signals, 2/29th Battalion knew of the black market but lacked the funds to participate.20 Private Wal Williams, 2/19th Battalion: ‘I would have only had the clothes I stood up in; I never had a change of clothing . . . I had a dixie, spoon and fork . . . no money.’21 He knew about the soon-to-be thriving market, and the identity of ‘about half a dozen’ of his battalion who were ‘going under the wire’.22 As our Changi story unfolds, there will be victims, those willing and able to participate, but thwarted by the unscrupulous behaviour of others. This more sinister side of Changi life surfaced from day one of captivity. WO 2 Bert Mettam, 2/29th Battalion:

  What upset me, I heard before we started the march, word went round that the Japs are grabbing watches. And so plant your watch. So I got my socks and rolled them down, and put my watch around my ankle, and covered it with my sock, and marched out to Changi like that. In the morning, I got up and I was going to have a shower, so I took my blasted watch off, and put it underneath my kit . . . the water had been cut off or something, and I went back . . . and someone had seen me do it. It must have been one of our blokes . . . helped himself . . . that was about the only thing I had on me that could have earnt me a few bob on the black market.23

  The British and Australians had suffered defeat in battle, the humiliation of surrender and were facing an uncertain future in Changi. The Chinese Singapore experience was to be far, far worse. Singapore was now to be called Syonan (‘Light of the South’), and Singapore time became Tokyo time. ‘Light of the South’ it may have been to the Japanese, but the Chinese immediately associated the name ‘Syonan’ with the arrival of a new Dark Age. As the Japanese entered Singapore looters were shot on the spot, or beheaded on the spot, and a selection of decapitated heads began to appear in key places such as the railway station, where they became a grisly warning of the consequences of running foul of the new master.

  The Japanese had began planning the elimination of anti-Japanese elements in the Chinese community throughout Malaya and Singapore during the Malayan Campaign. Since after the capture of Singapore, the 25th Army was required for operations elsewhere, it was deemed critical that the Chinese be purged quickly and ruthlessly. While General Yamashita issued the order, the detailed planning was undertaken by his Chief of Planning and Operations, Lieutenant-Colonel Tsuji.

  Singapore Town and the Island itself were divided into a number of zones, each with a Kempeitai officer in charge. The local police, through public loudspeaker broadcasts and posters, were ordered to inform all Chinese males between the ages of eighteen and 50 to report to registration centres within each zone. These areas were fenced off with barb wire and a selection process started. The Japanese deemed that Chinese who had worked for the British in any public service role or were community leaders, who had been in the volunteer military services, who were communists, who knew members of secret societies, who were involved in the China Relief Fund, or who were criminals were to be eliminated. Using documents gained from their prewar intelligence and from raids on Chinese organisations, large numbers of Chinese were immediately detained. Those allowed to leave were ‘chopped’, which entailed a stamp being placed on a document or the body.

  Although organised with Tsuji’s usual efficiency, the recurring Japanese Army trait of units operating as separate entities—which we shall further witness on the Thai–Burma Railway—meant that the implementation of the plan differed across designated areas. Some zones took days to complete their process, others merely hours as varying standards of scrutiny were applied to the hapless, innocent victims. The selected males were bound by rope, placed in trucks and taken to a number of execution sites on the Island, in what would become known as Sook Ching, or ‘a purge through cleansing’.

  Australian POWs soon became the disgusted witnesses not to the actual executions, but to the appalling aftermath. Gunner Richard Haynes, 2/10th Field Regiment:

  For days we had been watching truck after truck, loaded to the limit of its capacity with bound Chinese, disappear in the direction of Changi beach. From the rattle of MG fire we drew the natural conclusions, but they had not been verified. However a work party had been called out . . . They were coming in now. Walking through the stunted rubber by the remains of the 16 inch gun. Norley Watts . . . was in the lead. He was not talking as much as usual. He brushed one man’s inquiry off. ‘Just a hell of a mess, ole fellow. Just a hell of a mess.’ The 19th Battery bloke came back to the attack. ‘What the hell, Gee, you’re not starting to get secretive are you?’ Norley held his nostrils between finger and thumb. He shook his head but would not talk.24

  On 22 February 1942, Haynes and a number of his 2/10th Field Regiment mates were part of another Australian work party sent to Changi Beach. Haynes:

  We halted on the edge of the palms and surveyed the solution to our question . . . They lay in silent attitudes of violent death . . . They were piled in massed heaps of bloated humanity. They were
strung in long lines of blackened corpses . . . They had lain under a tropic sun for . . . days. The flies swarmed over the stinking abattoir. A breeze from the sea blew the goulish stench up to us. The tide had moved a couple of the singly bound ones. We could see them bobbing just off shore.

  It was particularly revolting, but compulsion, added to the fact that we had come a long way in the past few months made little difference to us . . .

  The long lines of well roped corpses gave us most trouble. We did not have a knife between us. Hammie wrested vainly with a knot gummed hard with blood . . . ‘Flamin rope would hold a team of bullocks.’

  Digger and I left him to it and did a spell in the pit we were digging.

  Eventually the untangling was complete and with the digging of the first pit, we began to carry, on make-shift stretchers, the gruesome relics up to their resting place amongst the palms. The rolling of the gentle surf upon the beach added music to our work, but it could not stifle the appalling stench of the human slaughter house. The day drew on. Any scruples we might have had were lost. The day wore away. The sun went down on the day of memory. We were still carrying the victims of barbarism to a resting place in their massed graves . . . Kerplunk . . . kerplunk, the pits swallowed them up symbols of the ruthlessness we were to know in years ahead. Up amongst the grass on the higher land, a couple of Japs watched us . . . Our hands stank that night. We could not eat our rice.25

  Accounts vary as to the number of Sook Ching victims. The Singapore Chinese community were to later estimate the slaughter at somewhere between 30 000 and 50 000, while the prosecution at the postwar War Crimes Trials would conservatively estimate 5000. A Japanese reporter attached to Yamashita’s HQ would later claim that he had been told that the toll was 25 000. In the end, Sook Ching was yet another Japanese disgrace, another episode in a trail of infamy that had began in China at a multitude of venues such as Nanking and would continue throughout the Pacific War. But perhaps Alan Warren has best summed up another injustice:

  The British administration at Singapore made remarkably little effort after the war to determine the extent of the Sook Ching death toll. It was not in the interest of the returning colonial power to draw attention to its failure to protect its subjects.26

  The Chinese took enormous risks in Singapore in both their black market ‘business ventures’ and their support of the British and Australian POWs. We now turn to the first fifteen months of the Australians’ incarceration in Changi Prison. The reader should be aware that some mention will be made of POW work parties sent to Singapore, and also the formation of work parties sent to the Thai–Burma Railway. These two subjects will be dealt with in detail later in our story.

  25

  PURGATORY

  We now turn to an examination of Changi from the time of the capitulation until May 1943—the first fifteen months leading up to the departure of the last of the substantial forces to leave Changi for the Thai–Burma Railway.

  Whilst in captivity in Changi, the 8th Division’s DAQMG (Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General), Major Alan Thompson, wrote an extraordinary document. Written in a ‘Log for Motor Lorry’ journal (because of the acute shortage of paper in Changi), he kept a detailed day by day diary of Changi’s prison existence.1 By cross-checking this account with official records, private diaries, manuscripts and oral history interviews, a far more complete account of life in Changi emerges than ever before.

  The initial problems confronting the Australians in Changi were the provision of food, water and accommodation, the maintenance of hygiene and the care of battle casualties and the sick.

  Abject hunger would soon become the immediate consequence of captivity. Until 23 February—the first five days in Changi—the troops ate what was brought in with them. Such tinned supplies were sufficient, and in many cases, lasted some number of weeks as modest supplements to the Japanese ration.2 On the 23rd the Japanese issued their first ration scale. Thompson, using the imperial system, meticulously recorded each ration item per man per day—right through Changi’s existence—up to three decimal places. Such ration scales will be listed in our narrative correct to one decimal place using the metric system. The initial ration scale was: rice 500 grams per man per day; meat 50 grams; milk 15 grams; sugar 20 grams; salt, tea and cooking oil 5 grams each. In addition, each prisoner was initially to receive 40 cigarettes per month, and 100 ‘latrine sheets’ per month.3 Clearly, with the Australians used to a diet containing at least 4220 calories per day, their new intake was insufficient and lacking in such basic necessities as protein. The Australian Official Historian, Medical, would record that:

  From the very first the great risk of serious malnutrition was realized by the medical services in Changi . . . that unless substantial appropriate additions were made serious manifestations of deficiency diseases would quickly appear, beginning with beriberi, owing to the limited capacity of the body to store thiamin. The importance of avoiding an excess of carbohydrate in relation to thiamin in a dietary [sic] was realised . . .

  The early onset of the thiamin and riboflavin groups of deficiency was expected; only too soon was this prophecy fulfilled.4

  Beriberi was a major health issue for the prisoners of Changi and would prove even more so on the Thai–Burma Railway. Caused by a deficiency of the vitamin B1, its symptoms were swelling of the legs, the abdomen and sometimes the face. Cardiac beriberi involved fluid around the heart, its effects were sudden and often meant death.

  To remedy these deficiencies, a number of measures were taken, including the decision on 22 April to produce yeast as a means of combating beriberi;5 rice polishings, which were the husks or grit from rice and taken as a bran substitute, were used ‘when obtainable’; various types of grass and leaf soups were made; gardens were started; and marmite, which was held in limited supply was used very sparingly but most successfully.6 On 6 March, the Japanese ordered that Roberts Barracks should become the combined British and Australian hospital. There had previously been a hospital in the barracks with an impressive range of medical expertise and reasonable equipment (by POW standards). It had an administration that was able to provide modest but crucial financial assistance and therefore limited extra rations and equipment. Changi had a special ward with a ‘diet kitchen’ known as the ‘fattening pen’, which was used to supply extra rations for patients who had lost much weight and required better nutrition.7

  The death rates in Changi during its first year (February 1942–February 1943) are ample proof of the success of the administration and the medical services. The fact is that, although no POW experience under the Japanese was in any way pleasant, the survival rate in Changi compared well with other camps. Eighty-two Australians died during that first year: dysentery 29; battle wounds eleven; malaria six; beriberi four; diphtheria two; typhus one; accidents ten; and, of great interest but somewhat ambiguous, were seventeen ‘miscellaneous’ deaths.8 The other interesting statistic is the death rate compared to admissions. In February 1943, for example, there were 702 admissions: dysentery 242, malaria 58, beriberi four and diphtheria seven. The deaths for that month totalled four—all from dysentery.9 A POW admitted to Roberts Barracks, therefore, stood a strong chance of survival.

  Water was another early problem. As the pipeline from Johore and the causeway had been damaged during the fighting, water was not only in short supply, but had to be boiled. At first the engineers employed 22 water carts brought in during the move into the prison, and also used ‘a swimming pool in one of the ravines, a Malay school reservoir and two underground storage tanks’.10 The early water ration stood at 2.25 litres of water per man per day and one litre for hospital patients. On 22 February, repair of the pipes commenced and six days later Selarang Square possessed a water point and, on 3 March, the pipeline supply commenced.11

  Accommodation was very cramped but the extensive buildings, grounds and the climate allowed a number of inmates to sleep in the open, and ‘many built wood and wire stretchers to lift themselves
from the concrete floors’.12

  Another immediate challenge for the AIF in Changi was sanitation. A. J. Sweeting recorded:

  In the conditions then prevailing flies—fed by corpses, offal, rotting garbage and unprotected latrines—bred in thousands, and outbreaks of diarrhoea and dysentery had begun within a fortnight of the arrival at Changi . . . soon hundreds of men were working in shifts digging latrines to a depth of 14 feet and boreholes to 12 feet. The Japanese provided timber to build fly-proof structures over the latrines, and thereafter admissions to hospital declined monthly.13

  In a further effort to enhance basic supplies and facilities, a forestry company was formed in March to travel out of Changi sometimes by truck, but mostly by prisoner-drawn trailers, to supply unit cooks with firewood; a poultry farm was begun and limited numbers of eggs (mainly for the hospital, and medically prescribed) were provided; a fishing program began; the few available tools were collected and placed under engineer supervision and use; and parties were detailed to bring in sea water for salt production when the salt ration was reduced.

  The creation of an education program, to become known as ‘Changi University’, and an entertainment program will not be examined in detail here, other than to acknowledge that they contributed to the morale of POWs. Of more interest is the work of a number of self-interested amateur historians. Not long after arriving in Changi a vigorous and prolonged effort was made to complete AIF unit diaries, write reports and deliver a series of lectures from Malaya Command and AIF officers concerning the campaign in Malaya and Singapore. Lieutenant-Colonel Kappe, 8th Division Signals, undertook the AIF research and writing. The lectures were rather guarded in nature, because speeches presented to both a combined and confined British and Australian audience had to be diplomatic.14 In terms of committing still-fresh memories of the campaign to paper, the AIF unit diaries and reports, when concerned with the fighting, times, dispositions and tactical outcomes were to prove of immense historical value. But, as we shall learn, the report of Colonel Thyer and Lieutenant-Colonel Kappe’s Operations of 8 Australian Division in Malaya 1941–42 was distorted and biased. We have already recorded Brigadier Duncan Maxwell’s Changi talk with General Key concerning his ‘withdrawal’ from his causeway dispositions, and Maxwell’s consequent conciliatory appendix in the 27th Brigade Unit Diary—and Key’s subsequent real thoughts.