766 results in Creative Writing
Bibliography
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Chapter 27 - Kinsaiyok
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Kinsaiyok was about 50 km, more or less, from Wanyai upstream on the river Kwae Noi. On the railtrack it was 172 km from Nong Pladuk and 120 km from Kamburi. There were narrow mountain streams which fed into the river and few plots of level ground on the banks. In the neighbourhood the riverbank became a cliffand near Saiyok (in Thai this means waterfall) a mountain stream became a waterfall which fell into the river from the top of a cliff, a beautiful sight. Kinsaiyok means New Saiyok, i.e. set up by the Japanese engineers, not a Thai place-name.
This was the point the labourers had reached in April 1943 and, in May, 3 Battalion of Railway Regiment embarked on construction of roadbed west of Kinsaiyok, which became the next construction base with radio hook-up for the engineers and a branch office for prisonersof-war and coolies, No. 3 Group. There were also the branch office of 42 Supply Unit and the Japanese field hospital.
Hardly had roadbed work west of Kinsaiyok begun than the rainy season started. The route ran along the high ground on the north bank and there were many small bridges to build over the small streams rushing down into the river. This in turn complicated the roadbed work. At Lintin, west of Kinsaiyok, an incident occurred when the embankment was washed away and at Kui Ye there was a good deal of earth shifting for the prisoners and coolies to do. At Hin Dat, over 200 km from Nong Pladuk, a hot spring gushed out, the well-known Hin Dat Hot Springs, and when the railway opened to traffic the Japanese set up a field hospital recuperation centre. (Futamatsu refrains from mentioning the ‘comfort station’ for ‘comfort’ girls set up here for Japanese soldiers and Korean heiho.) Brankashii, at 208 km, was the halfway point on the total 415 km length of the railway. Here was being planned a base for engine-sheds and installations for water and fuel supply. About 10 km to the west was Thā Khanun where 1 Battalion were to be stationed.
Chapter 5 - The Malayan Campaign
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For us who had left our homeland in October 1941 and come to the southern region, the opening of hostilities had begun in Saigon on 8 December. Many gunzoku, those who doubted whether war would ever start, were considerably disturbed on the day when it suddenly did break out. We disliked war and as members of an Army company called a bridging unit were apprehensive because, being in the end belligerents, we could hope for no advantages when hostilities ended. We were not ourselves in front-line battle-action but, writing this after forty years and reliving the life of being at war, I too, what with the sickness and the bombing, really do not know how I escaped death time and time again,. When they departed for the front, how many of our comrades could have known their lives depended on surviving the bombing or defying the demon of disease, how many could have forecast what lay in store for them?
In the early hours of 8 December the Japanese Army's 5 and 18 brigades, officers and men of detached units, landed in the teeth of the enemy in surprise attacks on Singora, Patani and Kota Bharu. Companies of 5 and 9 railway regiments also succeeded in their task of capturing the railway which ran inland of Kota Bharu and Singora. From Hat Yai, 5 Brigade got across to the Malayan frontier and pursued their attack down the West coast. The railway regiments followed up in pursuit, capturing engines and rolling-stock and set about securing installations along the railtrack. The enemy, with no airfields left in northern Malaya, destroyed his defence-line at Jitra near the frontier, was unable to hold out against a precipitous assault, went on withdrawing and at the end of December finally fell back to Taiping in the South. The main force of our Army thrust along the highway opposite Taiping on the road to Singapore City, made lightning attacks using bicycles in what were called bicycle units and broke through the enemy's position. By demolishing highway, railway and bridges the enemy made their withdrawal in this way by blocking our transportation facility.
Chapter 24 - Test Run
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By July the previous year about a year had elapsed since construction had started. The efficacy of the rush-construction ordered in March this year became manifest as the news came through that the excavation of the rocky hill on the Chungkai section of the track was within a few days of completion, as also was work on the plank viaducts at 103 km and 109 km. The completion of construction of the Mae Khlaung steel bridge together with the planned opening to traffic of the railtrack extension was under control of the engineers’ railtrack extension unit, 2 Battalion, who had previously been waiting at Kamburi station, eager to become wholly involved in the further extension of the railtrack.
On Burma-side, 5 Railway Regiment at the close of the previous year had completed the lorry highway as far as Nikki. They now wrestled in earnest with making the roadbed, pushed on the railhead to a point about 30 km East of Thanbyusayat, set up their regimental HQ at Taungzun and, when their 1 Battalion had completed the temporary bridge over River Sittang, drove ahead with roadbed work, helped by 4 Battalion, who came from the East to reinforce them. They hurried on with the job, too, not being sure, with the rainy season coming on, how far they would get.
On Thai-side, too, in addition to the important section between Wanyai and Tamuron Part, each unit daily risked death in their endeavours to keep up with the volume of work, and there was still a little on the section uncompleted. From June a second railhead extension on from Kinsaiyok was nearly finished. At the time 9 Railway Regiment believed the railtrack could be completed by the end of August, Construction HQ inclining towards that bare possibility.
Reinforcements arrived at each site and prisoners and coolies were successively introduced into the outback. The year before, an engineering unit and a service unit had taken part in constructing the highway leading to the Wanyai and Kinsaiyok bases and they had opened to daily traffic with lorries, an infantry unit, reluctant prisoners and coolies all mixed up together., In the rainy weather wheeled traffic got through with difficulty on the muddy road-surfaces.
Chapter 15 - The River Kwae Noi
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Running by the town of Banpong flows this country's second largest river, the Mae Khlaung. In the neighbourhood of the town it is over 100 metres wide. About 50 km upstream from Banpong is the town of Kanchanaburi. The prefectural office is here: in those days it was a small town with a population of 3,000. Near it the Mae Khlaung (also known as the Kwae Yai) has a confluence with another river. On the one hand, the River Kwae Yai flows down without a break from the mountains to the North, on the other, the River Kwae Noi has its source to the north-west in the neighbourhood of the Three Pagodas Pass on the Burmese frontier. The two run a distance of over 250 km and the river-basins’ areas are calculated to be respectively 7,000 and 8,000 square km in extent. The river-basins are in mountainous jungle, it is a very rainy area and so in the rainy season there are many flash-floods and, the rivers being narrow upstream the water-level rises four to five metres a day, and at Kanchanaburi in the broad area of the confluence the volume of water rises in a short time, unbelievably, to 300 tons per second: the river widens and the overflow becomes like a gently flowing reservoir. Because the Thai-Burma Railway's route was aimed at the Three Pagodas Pass the River Mae Khlaung had to be crossed. Near the confluence, the river was some hundreds of metres wide at the time but although it was not deep the river-bed was silted up and a river-crossing there would not do, so the railway route planned to cross the Mae Khlaung about 2 km upstream of the Kwae Noi.
The route, having crossed the Kwae Yai, bent round to the left into the Khao Poon area on the bank opposite the confluence. The river then bent round right and the route ran back upstream on the northwest bank of the Kwae Noi.
Chapter 21 - The Base at Wanyai
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It was not until March that the rainy season began to end. Daily squalls became shorter and because there was no heavy rain it was low water in the River Kwae Noi. Even the water running down from small mountain streams dried up. The temperature fell morning and evening, and at night before dawn the warmth of a blazing bonfire felt good to us. It felt like Autumn in Japan. However, as the sun climbed so did the temperature, and the atmosphere grew dry as in a hot midsummer with us. As the day proceeded the cold and the night-dew ceased, but our ‘bedroom’, the mosquito-net, got damper and damper before dawn. The changes from Autumn to Summer and from Summer to Autumn were like daily seasonal changes and we had difficulty in getting used to them. From the year before the Japanese unit billets had become extensive and presented a lively scene. On Thai-side the jungle was cut back and cleared for 9 Regiment's HQ and a level clearing created, the buildings being mainly of timber and appropriately thatched with atap.
Okamoto Unit had a change of command, becoming Imanaka Unit. Under Lt-Col. Imanaka the Unit advanced to Thā Khanun. At Wanyai, the base for rush-construction was consolidated bit-by-bit: for this central HQ each unit had been building numerous billets and godowns for storing machine parts and provisions. Meanwhile the new earth works, on which the line had opened to traffic in the previous Autumn, were completed and the highway from Kamburi took oneway traffic. Lorries loaded with food and fodder for the engineers, coolies and prisoners came up and down the road, and cars loaded with supplies and machinery came and went one after another. Everyone's work in the jungle depths grew busily active and overflowed with liveliness. Thus there was a deep Spring flavour, it seemed, about rushconstruction in the jungle. On a newly-erected gatepost a sign-board was hung out, written in sumi with bold brush strokes, saying, ‘Imai Unit HQ’, and within the gate a guardroom was proudly set up.
Chapter 29 - Cattle Drive
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A British prisoner-of-war, Lieutenant Adams, was in Kinsaiyok camp for several months but in mid-June the prisoners, who were under Lieutenant Suzuki, the camp commandant at Kinsaiyok, were moved up-country to Konkuita. It happened that Kinsaiyok camp had bought a hundred head of cattle for their meat to take with them when they moved. Lieutenant Adams, as ‘cattle officer’, culled and took them out as beef cattle on the hoof into the depths of the jungle. From his interesting book comes the quotation from his chapter called ‘Cattle Drive’, an account of their journey on foot:
It was the dead of night. A guard woke me up and told me to go to Lieutenant Suzuki. I didn't like being called out like this. Had I breached a camp regulation or was he investigating an incident at Changi? I had no idea, knocked anxiously on the commandant’s, door, went in and there by Suzuki was Service Corps Captain Morris Janis who greeted me with a simulated smile. He told me that on our move to the new camp the 100 head of cattle would be accepted there, but someone was needed to supervise the move and had to be selected … I was ordered to do it. My recent anxiety fell away and I felt quite relieved, but this responsibility did not sound like a very pleasant job. It was, I understood, about 100 km to Konkuita. Janis explained that to take cattle on the hoof there would take perhaps ten days and in his opinion it would be a risky operation. He looked earnestly at my expression as he said, ‘You’re a butcher by trade, my friend, so you’ll have to get used to becoming a ‘cowboy’, won't you.’ He well knew my trade and recalled why I had become a Service Corps lieutenant. I undertook to do what he wanted but my feelings had flopped at the realization of what I was being expected to do.
I had to depart that very morning and Captain Janis told me to select 19 ORs whom I thought competent, to let him have a nominal roll, to give men their instructions, and that a Korean heiho must go with us.
Chapter 32 - Towards the Setting Sun
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In July, when the rainy season was due to start, in the construction work at Songkurai no distinction was made between day and night on rush-construction work. For the railway engineers, prisoners-ofwar and coolies alike, shouts of ‘Speedo!’ chased everybody up and the work went on without a break.
It was around that time when an incident occurred in which a British prisoner-of-war in the camp at Songkurai broke out and escaped. He was Lieutenant James Bradley, RE, who was blessed with good luck and after the war was repatriated. In 1982 he wrote an account of his escape, published under the title Towards the Setting Sun. I was given a copy by the author and was able to get his permission to quote parts of it, an account of the Thai-Burma Railway as seen by a prisoner-of-war.
Lieutenant Bradley hailed from Cheshire in England. On 13 January 1942 in the transport Duchess of Atholl (Futamatsu wrote Richmond in error), in company with part of the British 18 Division, he had entered Keppel Harbour, the port of Singapore. England had already declared war on Japan and they arrived as reinforcements for the defending army in Malaya. Bradley was an officer in 18 Division's 53 Brigade Group's engineering company: they moved into a frontline position at Ayer Hitam in Johore, but almost at once the British defence gave way to the Japanese offensive and by the end of January, inevitably, they had withdrawn into Singapore Island. On 15 February the commander of the defending army, Lt-General A.E. Percival, as the resources of war were dwindling and sources of water supply were drying up, ordered his total forces to stop fighting, and surrendered to the Japanese Army.
Barely a month after Lieutenant Bradley had landed in Singapore the surrender took place. He became a captive, and ended up by being imprisoned in Changi prisoner-of-war camp. Since the Spring of 1942 several tens of thousands of prisoners-of-war were accommodated at Changi, and around that time there was set up a labour force for the Thai-Burma Railway construction which was being started, and prisoners were moved in successive batches to the Thai-Burma area.
Chapter 1 - Departure for the Front
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The policy of continuing the war between China and Japan was not approved by America and, with their anti-Japanese freezing of assets as well as of oil in the southern zone, our country was increasingly under coercion. Diplomatic relations between Japan and America becoming difficult, secret preparations were pushed ahead in case by any chance it came to war. So far as we knew at the time diplomatic negotiations between Japan and America were believed to be succeeding.
Gunzoku, civilian auxiliaries of Japanese nationality, were called up nation-wide, higher management, junior management and other employees according to the district where they were born. Special Railway Bridge Unit was formed of gunzoku, as an auxiliary of a railway regiment. In the battle-zone, a railway regiment's role was to work on the enemy's railway lines and to administer the rear organization. In the event of an outbreak of war in the southern war theatre (to which we suspected we were due to join, being equipped with light summer clothing) the whole force to which we were attached had a complement of about 2,000 men. I was attached to unit HQ and in addition to me there were thirteen gunzoku senior officials in the four working companies. There were about seventy junior officials of NCO rank and altogether about 500 gunzoku were attached to the HQ and working companies. The unit was due to be sent to the Malayan front as a part of the Expeditionary Force with the Imperial Guard Division, who were nick-named ‘Miya’. Junior officials wore swords at the hip but ordinary employees had side-arms only and did not have rifles. Because we gunzoku for the most part had no experience of military training (the junior officials did not even know how to salute) we were all at sea and confused.
In the afternoon of 24 October our transport, the Hakuroku maru, slipped her moorings in the port of Ōsaka. She passed through the Straits of Shimonoseki, moving out to the open sea and that evening passed in the offing at the western tip of Kyūshū through the chain of five islands and we saw from the ship the last trace of Japanese land like the shadow of a sea-borne bird.
Chapter 14 - Thailand
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In those days in 1942 Thailand was a constitutionally-based monarchy with a king over the government. In ancient times this country was called Jamu and was a Burmese colony. In Japanese literature the character tai (Thai) was used but Thai in Siamese was a contraction of Pratet Thai which means ‘Thai monarch’. At the start of the Second World War, Prime Minister Phibun's pro-British party held the reins of government. For strategic reasons Japan had to demand transit over Thai soil. On the Cambodian border her Army watched its chance and made increasingly threatening demands for transit. Prime Minister Phibun quickly agreed to cooperate with the Japanese Army, and consequently with the start of hostilities a switch from the British to the Japanese side became urgent and advantageous to Thailand. However, this provided a superficial change and in 1945, with the war turning to Japan's disadvantage, she changed back in the end to a pro-British diplomatic stance. In South-East Asia at the time I think it would not have helped her to stay as she was, a nation which had yet to establish her standing in the world.
In the Spring of 1942, when the Thai-Burma Railway was begun, this country co-operated on the construction. The Japanese Army in its prosecution of the war found no obstacles in the way of its military transportation, co-operating with Thai National Railways. Between Banpong and Kanchanaburi the building of the roadbed, and between Kanchanaburi and Wanyai the re-modelling of the highway on Thai-side were planned to be apportioned out with the Thai, but the plan did not work out. It seems that the prisoners-of-war received intelligence from England itself, and from the outside world they had reports from a pro-British organization's secret manoeuvres, and beginning in 1945 the targets for bombing in the Kanchanaburi area were indicated by partisans. It seemed evident that Japan had no friends.
The Thai usually brag about their country's superiority, their feelings run high, their manner is that of being sticklers for prestige. In weighing up the pros and cons of their behaviour one must record that the educational standards of some of their officials were high but the practice of bribery among them persisted.
Chapter 23 - Survey Unit
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Wanyai was 125 km from the starting-point at Nong Pladuk. The route skirted a high precipitous cliffon the river bank, then moved on to a hilly zone. Then for roughly 25 km it carried on to the north-west and reached a grassy plain surrounded by thick jungle. There were no trees or shrubs on it and a marvellous hot spring made it swampy. The plain was about 100 metres up from the river level, and a station was being planned here, at Tampii. From the site of the proposed station down to the riverbank the section of track was on a down gradient and had to cross a ravine 30 metres deep.
When I returned to Wanyai in March the CO asked for a study of the route alongside the river. I investigated the point I have just described and worked out that a bridge would have to be 100 metres across, maximum of bridge-piers over 30 metres with 4-metre spans on a wooden bridge, clearly an unstable construction which would oscillate under the weight of a train. I explained to the CO how dangerous this type of bridge design would be and ventured to suggest to him a modification of the route.
One day in late March Daihonéi sent a staff officer to the base at Wanyai to see how the construction was going on. The CO mentioned to him the problem of the bridge and next day we took him as far as the point where the problem lay. Down from the cliff-top the river surface could be seen glittering like silver. In the vicinity dazzling sunlight poured down, the greens of the trees and shrubs took one's breath away, and from the jungle at one's feet the heat seemed to be boiling up.
Mōri, the Survey Unit commander, came out to meet us, pointed out the bridge-building site and explained the problem. It was a precipitous place and both on the map and on the ground a difficult spot to build a bridge. The staff officer was appalled at this topography and turned to Colonel Imai, saying, ‘Regimental commander, why not try a switch-back?’*
Contents
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Chapter 28 - Diseases and Epidemics
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With the advent of the rainy season the hardships on the construction-sites were caused not only by the rain but also by fierce and terrifying air-raids by the enemy. There were, too, disease epidemics. In the River Kwae Noi area along which the route ran, in the river-basin people did not live right in the jungle, but some contracted malarial fevers and were subject to outbreaks of various other infections. The demon of ill-health represented a fact of life which had to be expected, threatening their lives. When outbreaks of fiercely contagious diseases occurred such as dysentery, cholera, bubonic plague and so on, they spread widely in a flash along the waters of the river. To the Thai, this was nothing new. When the Japanese Army were planning the railway construction, counter-measures against epidemics were considered in real earnest and so, after the first step of investigating a route for the railtrack itself, the question of prevention against epidemics in the water-supply was also considered. To make the interior of the jungle fit to live in one had to be prepared to investigate assured supplies of drinking water and so on. Precautionary measures were taken by the engineers against epidemics of infectious diseases and vaccination and immunization of Japanese troops were enforced. In the rainy season of 1942 few of the engineer units and a minority of prisoner-of-war labourers were affected by such conditions so it was possible to go a long way towards defence against invasion by this demon of disease. In 1943, the year in which in March, in the rainy season, the order for rush-construction was being enforced, river-flooding at the work-sites was widespread. Concurrently, numbers of prisoners and coolies were precipitately increased. The number of labourers reached a total of some 100,000 men. As you may well imagine, for such vast numbers, to take foolproof measures of protection was impossibly difficult to achieve. On top of that problem, it became difficult to transport food and fodder and the shortage of supplies for the entire workforce caused standards of nourishment to decline. A slump in general health continued, rehabilitation from fatigue was hampered, and few escaped illness of some sort or other. At times like these when attacked by viruses a patient's condition was likely to stop improving.
Chapter 7 - Surrender
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On 10 February 1942 the Japanese Army had confronted the British Army on Bukit Timah heights on Singapore Island. The Army Commander in Malaya, Lt-General Yamashita Tomoyuki, despatched to Lt-General A.E. Percival, the British Army Defence Commander, a note demanding a parley. The text had been written in English by Lt-Col Sugita, Intelligence Commander at HQ, and was dropped by aircraft into the British lines. The gist of it was that General Yamashita expressed his respect for the gallant fight put up by British Army troops but that, encircled as they were, it made good sense to make a cease-fire in the battle and to advocate a surrender as men would be uselessly, and increasingly, sacrificed: if by any chance this advice was not followed, in a general offensive even more would be lost. The note ended: ‘The truce-bearer must hoist the British flag and a white flag, and must proceed on foot along the road leading to Bukit Timah.’
On 15 February the truce-bearers as instructed hoisted the white flag and a Union Jack, and accompanied General Percival along the road to Bukit Timah. In a room in the Ford factory, which was on the hill above the troops’ position, the two generals conducted their parley. Their conversation at the parley was printed in a special ‘ Singapore’ issue of the English post-war production, a monthly magazine called After the Battle (November 1981). It was described from beginning to end and said that General Yamashita conducted it calmly in a gentlemanly manner: General Percival, who was urged to accept unconditional surrender when pressed for a prompt answer was said to have turned rather pale and in a low, small voice answered, ‘Yes.’ General Yamishita is said to have threatened him but in fact this was not true: he spoke in an ordinary conversational tone and is himself on record as saying, ‘I did not take up a positively overbearing attitude’, a statement quoted in an article in The Southern Cross, a bulletin of the Singapore Nipon-jinkai (the Association of the Japanese).
Chapter 35 - End of the War
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In early August 1945 I was sent officially to Saigon from Southern Army Field Operations Railway HQ. My task was to have some engines, which had been sent urgently from Japan, transported to Bangkok. The war situation was deteriorating daily, and even in Bangkok enemy planes came over and bombed our HQ and godowns in the wharves. There was no answering gunfire from AA-gun emplacements in Bangkok and rumours were generated among the worried citizens that we had run out of ammunition. The Army of Occupation in Thailand were making preparations for the final decisive battle (see the editor's Introduction) and the local Japanese residents thought they ought to join up.
It was four years since the war started that I had visited Saigon. It had seemed quiet and peaceful. It was a beautiful town, tidy, and both the greens of the avenues and the Western-style buildings in the ordinary streets seemed not to have changed in those four years, but the citizens in their life-style were feeling something of a strain in financial difficulties.
Immediately on arrival I contacted Inoue Unit, the Saigon materials workshop of Southern Army Field Operations Railways. I went to the wharf in the harbour where the engines were being landed. Several of them had been dismantled (presumably c.k.d.) and the parts piled up. To arrange to get these engines transported I called on the HQ of the French Indo-China Japanese Expeditionary Force. Thereafter by daily visits I kept contact with the HQ asking for transportation either by lorry or by ship whichever proved convenient.
Southern Army GHQ had moved from Singapore to Saigon. At the Japanese French Indo-China Army HQ, too, there were two gunzoku sent by Railway Bureau. They were Kawakami Juichi who had been my contemporary at the Ministry of Railways and Kikkawa Kichizō who had been my contemporary at university. We went into quarters, found within the city limits with HQ's help, and inevitably in these quarters talk of the departed spirits of our friends came uppermost in our conversations. One evening at midnight we heard the sound of footsteps in sandals on the lower floor, but when we got up and looked there was no sign of anybody. The next night at the same time we heard the same footsteps.
Postscript
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When I completed my draft of Across the Three Pagodas Pass I felt there was something missing from it. My account was mainly restricted to my own experiences on Thai-side and there was not enough about what lay beyond the Three Pagodas Pass in Burma. Again, my knowledge of the Allied Forces’ administration of the railway was limited to hearsay only. I regret this, and feel there is no excuse for it.
Records about the railway are scarce and I used much unofficial data, using articles in foreign magazines to aid my efforts. If you find errors and inaccuracies please be so kind as not to hesitate to point them out, do not hesitate to correct or to amend.
The quotations from the two ex-prisoners’ memoranda are abridged versions and are translated into Japanese as best I could from the English texts. I shall be glad if my little record enables people who had experience in the railway in those days to recall it, glad, too, if those who knew nothing about a railway we left in a corner of south-east Asia take an interest in such historical facts.
So I close, and first express my thanks for the kindness of several people from whom I received data and photographs and have been allowed to quote from their works. Especially I have the honour to salute the former prisoners-of-war, Geoffrey Adams and Jim Bradley.
Foreword
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Summary
The root cause of The Pacific War lay in Japan's invasion of Manchuria and China for eventually this led the United Stated to restrict its exports of oil and scrap metal on which Japan was heavily reliant. This policy was intensified after Japan joined the Tripartite Pack with Germany and Italy and a total ban on all strategic materials was imposed by Britain, Holland and the USA after Japan had occupied parts of French Indo-China in 1940–41.
This development left Japan with only two real choices – to withdraw from China and Indo-China as a condition for the lifting of the sanctions or to make itself self-sufficient by seizing the remaining territories of the South-East Asia. The weakness of the Western powers following the German victories in 1940 then encouraged those who favoured what was thought would be a short war and on 7 December 1941 Japan launched her secret attack on the United States’ fleet based at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. This was largely successful so that although the American aircraft carriers escaped damage as they were out of port the Japanese established temporary superiority at sea. However, what was regarded as an act of treachery had the effect of uniting the American nation and it became grimly determined to defeat Japan and its European allies.
At about the same time Japanese forces began landing in Thailand and were quickly able to advance down the Malayan Peninsula. Japanese tactics were then to prove so decisive that on 15 February 1942 Singapore itself had been captured. These victories were achieved at relatively little cost due to the weakness of the British armed forces which was partly due to most of their intended equipment – especially aircraft and tanks – being diverted to aid Russia. However, this very success created its own problems for the Japanese authorities. In Singapore these were caused by the very large numbers of troops taken prisoner for whom little or no preparation had been made.
Dedication
- Edited by Peter N. Davies
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- Book:
- Across the Three Pagodas Pass
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 June 2013, pp v-vi
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Chapter 30 - Living in the Jungle
- Edited by Peter N. Davies
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- Book:
- Across the Three Pagodas Pass
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 13 May 2022
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- 01 June 2013, pp 147-153
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Summary
WATER
In the hot season you welcome cool water. Throughout the year there is no clear distinction between the four seasons in the various countries in the South but it is always hot and for various reasons water is important and precious. There are many encumbrances in the way, both physical and psychological, to prevent one getting used to heat. Cold water goes a long way to alleviate discomfort and drinking, bathing, rinsing clothes are several ways of using it. On occasions when one finds there is little or no water it is a serious matter. Men can't live without it, and life in the jungle without the blessing of water is incredibly difficult. In our life within the secluded boundaries of Thailand and Burma there was so much rain and abundant water-courses but the water did not always serve a useful purpose. The brimming waters of the River Kwae Noi were fearfully muddy at times and could not be used for various purposes. Water-courses in the jungle were dirtied by rotted vegetation, animal excrement and so on and could not, therefore, be drunk. It was impossible to dig wells to get at underground water. In particular there were times when bacteria abounded in water causing terrible contagious diseases, and it was, therefore, essential to keep water clean and sterilized.
People who had to live for some reason in the jungle invariably collected rainwater and used that. Even rainwater could become bacterial but they used their wits and kept it pure. In the earthen pots in which they collected rainwater there were mosquito-larvae but these local inhabitants drank water unconcernedly with the mosquito-larvae in it. That larvae bred in it showed it was pure. When offered water with no larvae in it we were quite apprehensive and did not feel like drinking it.
Into the Kwae Noi fed mountain streams and along them any people living there soiled the water with their sewage. This did not prevent them from using it for bathing and washing clothes but it was quite unsuitable for drinking. The upcountry people's life-style and that of our boatmen was to drink rainwater and they were invariably equipped with earthen pots to collect it. They did not drink river water.
Chapter 10 - Preparing Construction
- Edited by Peter N. Davies
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- Book:
- Across the Three Pagodas Pass
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 June 2013, pp 41-44
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In our bridging unit we heard of the fall of Singapore at Nibontebal. The temporary bridge over the River Krian gave us pride and satisfaction during the occupation of Singapore. Since our departure for the front, for the first time we felt happy, feeling at ease in that Malayan Spring. The feeling of seasonal contentment with the dry season was very slowly ending. The rainy season was approaching, squally periods grew longer, and the green of the mass of trees grew daily in luxuriance. After the occupation of Singapore public peace and order in Malaysia were stabilized and the Japanese Army's Military Government saw to it that popular sentiment also became peaceful. British rule was replaced by a new administration which was adapting itself to the situation. Even at Nibontebal, which had been evacuated, the women and children were coming back home, and in the town the feeling of tranquillity was like floating on calm water. Even around our quarters the chanting voices of children began to be heard, singing songs in Japanese. We, too, said our few words in Malay: the outlook of the populace had become gentle and quiet.
In the towns shops opened up for trade. A Japanese Army military scrip circulated at Malay-dollar equivalents: price-values were not clear but Japanese people could shop. Somehow one got used to the tastes of unusual fruits in the Malay Peninsula, of durian, mango. All this comes back into memory, somehow or other one grew to enjoy the way of life in the southern region. On the other hand, victims of endemic diseases like malaria and dengue fevers appeared and the military doctors were kept busy. Under the Military Government throughout Malaysia the railways and bridges damaged in war action began to be restored. The bridging unit had instructions to repair railway bridges and each labour unit moved onto its construction site. Unit HQ moved to Taiping and I was stationed at Nibontebal, as an advisor on Krian River rail bridge restoration, attached to 3 Labour Unit who were in charge of the work. The bridge had been bombed and the third bridge-pier in mid-river was under water: the truss we had made had fallen.