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

by Peter Brune

  After the capitulation, the Japanese almost immediately realised the tremendous labour potential at their disposal. Just five days after the Australians’ arrival in Changi 200 men were marched into Singapore; the next day a further 550 were sent; on 12 March 3400 were despatched; and, in his monthly Changi summary for March 1942, Thompson would record that 2109 Australian POWs were residing at the Great World Amusement Park under the command of Major Schneider, and a further 1291 at River Valley Road under Major Anderson (2/30th Battalion).2 And replacement parties of varying sizes often left Changi and others returned due to accidents, sickness, or as the Japanese demand for workers grew or subsided.

  The Great World had been Singapore’s most popular prewar amusement park. Situated on about 2.8 hectares in the heart of Singapore Town, it provided instant accommodation for its multitude of new inhabitants. Gunner Richard Haynes arrived there in March and fondly remembered the ‘. . . combination of Beer Gardens, Cabarets and Side Shows. However, now were added the words “prison camp” to the three words which had represented to us many good times, and happy memories of Singapore Leave.’3 Some units camped in the large cabaret halls, others in the multitude of small sideshow stalls, but all made themselves relatively comfortable and relished the relative freedom of movement and the relative scarcity of Japanese guards. The Australians faced a 45-minute walk to the docks at Keppel Harbour each morning to begin work. Private Gus Halloran, 2/19th Battalion:

  You’d get up early, you’d have a breakfast of sorts . . . it’d be rice of some sort . . . there were Jap guards on the camp as a whole, but they were not living with us actually . . . they would go down with you, you’d probably have half a dozen or so guards [who] would take about a company size down to the wharf, depending on what sort of jobs you’d have. There’d be a sling party unloading a ship or something . . . you might have a sake ship, in which case you’d be unloading cases of sake or you might have a rice ship; you could be loading trains with rice or unloading, or stuff coming in from Kuala Lumpur where they had big godowns [warehouses] . . . and they were bringing that down to Singapore for transportation. And we’d sometimes go to a rail siding that was back from the wharf and unload stuff there and load it into trucks usually driven by our fellows . . .4

  Sergeant Stan Arneil, 2/30th Battalion, recorded that the godowns were ‘some 100 yards long. They were packed to the eaves with merchandise of every conceivable variety, from all ports of the world.’5 As work parties began to move over much of Singapore, an 8th Division record was kept of the locations of food dumps, military supplies, wireless transmitters, antiaircraft units and Japanese barracks. All of this intelligence was written in an exercise book complete with map grid references and or addresses, and found its way home to Australia after the war with Captain Adrian Curlewis.6 Thirty-six godowns and their contents were listed. A sample: ‘13 (cloth & cotton) 14 (shirts & shorts) 15 (sox) 16 (soap & blankets) 29 (Tin baths. Torches & batteries) 34 (boot polish. Fibre, tables) 35 (Toilet paper, lamps, aspirins) 36 (Newspaper, paint)’7

  From the time of their arrival at the Great World and the beginning of work in the godowns of Keppel Harbour, an age-old game was enacted: Sergeant Frank Baker, 2/20th Battalion:

  You see what happens in prisons and prison camps . . . it’s another world and no matter how you police people, or incarcerate them or whatever you do, you will not stop that [scrounging and bartering], because they will always find a way. And no matter what sort of supervision there is or what sort of punishment is meted out, they’ll find a way . . . you’ve got to survive! . . . you’ve got nothing to lose.8

  Both the quality and volume of goods scrounged by the Australians on or near the docks at Keppel Harbour were dependent upon two factors: the nature of the goods stored in the godowns and the level of security enforced by the Japanese guards. Frank Baker:

  Each Godown had a Jap in charge and of course you got to know which Jap was what too. There was Joe in number 46 and Mickey the Mouse was in, I think 48 . . . Mickey the Mouse, he was a quiet little bloke. All Australians! Ooooh! Ooooh! He’d just give you away! [leave you alone] You could take what you liked and do what you liked, he wasn’t going to worry about you because you were going to pinch ‘em anyway . . . Joe was in 46 and Joe was a bastard! . . . mostly tinned foods [in 46] . . . but Joe I think also had some connections with . . . people in Singapore. Joe had something going and if you took from there Joe didn’t get it you see. Joe was a nasty person . . . he’d work with them [the Chinese traders] he’d work with anyone for a quid . . . He’d only have to walk along the wharves and he’d find a few Chinese wandering around . . . there weren’t too many like Mickey the Mouse . . . But the normal bloke who had some minor thing going . . . he was alright, as long as he didn’t catch you stealing anything, as long as you were doing your work, they’d just walk around, they wouldn’t care. But blokes like Joe watched you, they had a hawk eye . . . but they still lost a lot of stuff because we weren’t mugs, we could pinch it too!9

  The prized items to be ‘pinched’ were consumables and tobacco for the individual and his mates, and goods which were in demand by the Chinese. Such sales of non-consumables raised a cash flow which in turn bought food or goods which might not have been available in a particular godown at the time.

  The Australian POWs on work parties in Singapore turned scrounging into an art form. Bike chains were placed in the inside of a belt or even placed inside a boot; prized sewing machine and gramophone needles were placed in the hair, or in the rim of a hat; cigarettes, tobacco and papers were similarly concealed; and when larger supplies of goods were moved, false pockets inside singlets, sleeves and pants were sewn. But perhaps the best known and most widely used container was the water bottle. Gus Halloran recalled that ‘. . . those big ambulance water bottles were the ideal thing. Fellows had cut the bottom out of them . . . they’d have . . . water in the top half, cut the bottom out, they’d solder them . . . they were great for pinching cigarettes.’10 Other popular water bottle items were sewing machine oil and sugar. Inevitably, as the Japanese became familiar with scrounging methods, subtle changes would occur, or new ones invented. Gunner Richard Haynes recalled that: ‘The first question going the rounds if we entered a strange place of employment, invariably was, “Do you know what rackets the Nips are a wake up to, here?”’11

  Once scrounged, such goods were either taken back to the Great World for consumption, bartered with Chinese walking alongside the Australians back to the Great World, sold ‘through’ or ‘over’ the fences of the park, or transactions were undertaken inside the camp with Chinese manning an official canteen. Very soon after his arrival at the Great World, Haynes was most impressed with the excellent exchange rate and the variety of ‘goods’ available:

  The first discovery of ‘The World’ was that to the natives, the British Malayan dollar was as good as ever. We were able, through numerous holes in the back fence, to buy anything from a Virgin [sic] to a tin of condensed milk. When I bought four tins of this latter for one dollar, the boys thought that I was kidding them. Their Changi price on March 21st was four dollars each.12

  There were varying degrees of risk in all forms of scrounging and bartering. The punishment for being caught in the act depended on whether the miscreant was a POW or Chinese, but most of all on the whim or mood of the Japanese guard involved. If caught, a bashing was inevitable. The term ‘bashing’ is reminiscent of our grappling earlier in our story with the term ‘straggler’. Bashing took a number of forms. Gus Halloran:

  . . . you’d get a bit of a bashing but that was nothing . . . it’s a bit humiliating to have your face slapped and stood to attention and in some cases knocked down, but on the whole they were not professional punch throwers . . . most blokes would be riding the punches pretty well anyhow.13

  Sergeant Frank Baker:

  I’ve seen a few hit with the first thing they could get hold of . . . Number 46 Godown . . . Joe would lay into you with a tin of salmon or whatever
he had to his hand, then he’d take the stuff off you and go away and sulk! Mickey the Mouse never bashed you at all, just shake his head and walk away. Others would pick up anything they could find and this was the danger! They’d do it spontaneously. Pick up anything! . . .14

  The point is that a ‘bashing’ might constitute a few slaps across the face, a number of punches and/or a few kicks, but, on occasions ‘the Japs used to work themselves up into a terrible rage’,15 which caused an almost complete lack of self-control and dire consequences for the POW. Baker’s reference to a guard ‘picking up anything’ might refer to a lump of wood, a rifle butt, or an all-in frenzy of punches and kicks from a number of guards. The bewildering aspect of such behaviour was that any of the above mentioned acts of violence might result from a minor issue—the punishment often did not fit the ‘crime’. A POW could not, therefore, readily apply any real sense of logic or predictability to any given situation with a Japanese guard. And the final frightening aspect of this behaviour was the fact that corporal punishment was normal within the Japanese Army. From 7 December 1941, through Japanese eyes, the lowest form of life was a POW—and he was treated accordingly.

  The treatment handed out to the Chinese was worse. Lance-Corporal John Roxburgh, 2/29th Battalion:

  Once going in at one of the wharves, going into a warehouse, I saw a kid of about eight or nine throw a cigarette . . . and there was a high fence . . . over the fence to anyone; just a cigarette not a packet. There was a bloody Jap guard there and he got this kid and he started to belt him, fists first, hands, and then eventually the rifle butt to the back of the bloody head and on the side of the head, and that kid eventually was just lying on the ground just bleeding . . . the poor little bastard . . . unbelievable, and I thought they were just bloody animals.16

  The Australians were witnesses to the Chinese receiving the ‘water treatment’ and saw the numerous impaled Chinese heads displayed at key venues such as the Singapore Railway Station. But although the scrounging and bartering might abate temporarily during and after such ‘purges’, it soon reappeared. Life went on.

  Gunner Richard Haynes has left us with one intriguing question, and one equally succinct observation concerning the Japanese role in the black market on Singapore Island—and later by extension—the Thai–Burma Railway. ‘We cannot understand the Japs yet. Are they dumb? Or are they just giving us a go?’17 At the time, the Australians were inclined to think that ‘they’ were just ‘dumb’. One of the most famous postwar Australian stories illustrates the point. Hank Nelson, in his book, P.O.W. Prisoners of War, Australians Under Nippon, recorded a speech given by a Japanese officer to a number of Australians concerning their scrounging: ‘When a Japanese mounted a box to admonish an Australian work party over cigarette stealing he said: “Now you Australian soldier you think we know fuck nothing that’s going on here. You are wrong, we know fuck all!”’18

  Japanese such as ‘Mickey the Mouse’ probably did know ‘fuck all’, but the issue is that many of those guards knew and were involved in a lot more than the Australians understood at the time. ‘Giving us a go’ was the farthest thing from their minds. Making money—at varying levels of sophistication—was uppermost. The point is that on the Thai–Burma Railway some Australian (and British) commanders would appreciate the nature of the ‘game’ and the Japanese involvement in it, and one in particular would turn that knowledge and understanding into a positive and decisive method of ensuring a high survival rate in his battalion.

  Gunner Haynes’s observation:

  The value of goods disposed of through this valuable source, cannot be estimated in dollars, but in lives that it might have helped save. Some of the proceeds found their way back to starving Changi, some were hoarded against that rainy day so soon to come, to buy those dozen eggs, that, eeked out, pulled a convalescent shadow [on the Railway] up from the depths. Only in this unknown estimate of lives can the value of the trade be appreciated, and recognition to the mercenary, ever bartering Chinese be granted.19

  The truth is that many Australians were to later leave Changi in top physical condition because of their time at work camps on Singapore Island. Sergeant Stan Arneil, 2/30th Battalion, recorded that after being in the Great World: ‘We were still in excellent condition after working hard on the wharves for months and having eaten (stolen) the very best of food.’20 Private Wal Williams, 2/19th Battalion went further: ‘At that stage we were in pretty good nick . . . at Changi we weren’t getting too much food, but once we got into [the godowns], I’d say we were living better there than we were in the army.’21 Life at the Thompson Road camp also improved Lieutenant-Colonel Pond’s physical condition: ‘I noted on the 29 September 1942 [he arrived there on 5 May] that my weight was 10 stone 11 lbs, the heaviest for years, and my waist was a little bigger too. It would seem that although we thought we were being badly done by in the matter of food, we were not being starved at that stage.’22 Not unlike the troops over much of the Island, Pond’s diet was therefore more than adequate. But, unlike the other ranks, he was unable to work for a degree of fitness, and so resorted to ‘a plunge bath . . . after a little PT in the morning’.23 A number of the work camps on Singapore Island, therefore, were responsible for maximising the chances of survival on the Railway.

  We now come to another important work party issue. Sergeant Stan Arneil, 2/30th Battalion: ‘News from Changi and from other work parties came in to us from time to time. Although we had no reliable communication with Changi we managed to send messages and occasional parcels of food to friends still in Changi.’24 Such parcels of food and tobacco were not hard to send, as the trucks transporting POWs back and forth were driven by Australians. Jim Stewart, 2/19th Battalion, remembered receiving orders ‘from Changi as to what food to send back to Changi—mainly Marmite’. He also recalled being told to watch for medicines, and that some were sent.25 Paddy O’Toole, 2/29th Battalion, also recalled limited medicines being sent in.26 Such movement of supplies back into Changi was both desirable and prudent. But Sergeant Frank Baker, 2/20th Battalion, despite the fact that he could not remember ever being told to scrounge medical supplies, had an eye to the future. He was to later serve with Captain Reg Newton’s Battalion on the Railway as an orderly to Captain David Hinder, Newton’s RMO. Baker: . . . I used to carry a bag with me with a bit of medical stuff in it, not much, but I could pinch enough down there. And there was one thing you could always do and the Japs didn’t object to this, if you had somebody sick, and there was some medical stuff available, you could go and get it.27

  At the same time, Baker scrounged priceless, if limited, medical supplies:

  Almost anything that you would find in a normal chemist shop . . . I got some, not plenty, because those things weren’t very plentiful . . . there was no thought of us going back to Changi. You lived from day to day, you didn’t know what you were going to do. You were in the Great World for this length of time, and then they started to chop you about, they sent us to Havelock Road, to River Valley Road, to Delta Road . . .

  [Baker scrounged] . . . particularly stuff that wasn’t necessarily medical; marmite for instance . . . that was the biggest thing as far as the treatment of beri-beri was concerned and deficiency diseases . . . bandages, instruments of various kinds, Doc Hinder I think got instruments from me that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. Coming from those parties . . . bandages, if there happened to be ointments . . . for instance Tiger Balm, good stuff!28

  The quantity of drugs and general medical supplies that made their way into Changi—both brought by individuals and bought by 8th Division purchasing parties—is hard to ascertain, but Baker maintained that it must have been a significant amount.29 What is of interest to our story is that the systematic scrounging by POWs such as Baker certainly had a pronounced influence on the survival rate for some battalions on the Railway.

  The numerous work parties on Singapore Island also gives us an insight into ongoing leadership issues in Changi, and later on the Railw
ay.

  It will be recalled that Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Black Jack’ Galleghan had been in command of a work party to Caldicott Hill prior to assuming command back in Changi in July 1942. Lieutenant-Colonel Pond observed that: At the Caldicott Hill POW camp—the Australian part—Lt Colonel Galleghan was the OC of No 3 Group where he & his HQ lived in some style & comfort. The Group HQ was pervaded by quite an air of self promotion for the staff called Galleghan Brigadier, Capt Dillon of the ASC was Brigade Major and Lieut Eaton was Staff Captain. In fact the ASC officer Goddard the Sergeant-Major and the Sergeant Clerk were the only ones not promoted!30

  An extraordinary event occurred during May 1942 that clearly demonstrates the compartmentalised nature of the Japanese command structure. After having said their goodbyes to the Japanese officer in charge of their camps (Abamatsu) and his ‘Yokoyama unit’, the Australians suddenly found themselves ‘unsupervised’. Lieutenant-Colonel Pond:

  . . . there was no work from 18 to 26 May both inclusive. All troops were in the lines for the first three days but then in the absence of guard started to straggle out to the Kampong & as far as Singapore. On the 22, 23 and 24 May more than a hundred troops were away from the camp in spite of parades & muster roll calls which we arranged. The Japanese did not interfere at all. Men went down the main roads, saluted Japanese & were allowed to proceed. They rode in buses and trams with the Japanese. Some were even given meals in cafes by Japanese officers. There was no set of restrictions at all on troops moving about. The Japanese were disinterested & this made discipline very difficult for us to enforce. The freedom allowed to our troops by the Japanese in this period was incredible, & bore no resemblance to the ordinary treatment of POW. Two of our officers . . . went to Singapore to see what was doing and they were welcomed everywhere, even to the extent of being given a lift home by a Japanese soldier who made a special trip out to the camp with his truck.31