Escape to Pagan (29 page)

“As the storm began to grow and the waves grew higher, the sea was now crashing over the wooden raft. Jack's strength was failing and he would not be able to grip the raft much longer. By now he had been in the water for many hours. Then as if by a miracle he felt a powerful surge of warm water on his legs and the raft seemed to have moved into a calmer sea; even the rain and wind felt warmer. Darkness had fallen. Jack had another drink of rainwater. The water gave him strength and he thrashed his legs to propel himself onto the raft. It was while he was doing this that his legs came into contact with something big under the water.”

Whether the unknown object under the water that his foot had struck was a dead submerged body of one of his comrades – or a shark – is difficult to say. From that moment on the fear of sharks took root in the Sergeant's mind. He would soon see his demon.

“At first he thought he could hear sea birds and hoped he was drifting towards land. It was not long after that he noticed a light nearby; the Chinese fishermen had found him. The birds he had heard earlier on turned out to be the sing-song musical voices of the keen-eyed fishermen. They knew the currents. The fishermen climbed onto the raft and helped Jack onto their junk. Out of the cold wind he was given
warm water and a strong Chinese cigarette. He noticed other prisoners on the deck; some were dead, one of the dead had a leg missing. The fishermen were taking the raft in tow. You know, I used to pray every night that he was still alive; I used to pray for a miracle – my prayers were answered.

“Jack had swallowed a lot of sea water and soon felt sick. It was while he was being sick over the side of the junk that he saw a large shark just below his head in the dim light of the lantern. He noticed it had a round, blunt-looking head and indistinct dark stripes over its body. After the war he came to the conclusion that his demon was an adult tiger shark, common in the waters of the orient.

“Back on land Jack and others were carried off the fishing junk and given some clothes, more water and a small bowl of rice. They then slept in one of the huts out of the rain; Jack was too tired to think of escape.

“Tam and Willie had been somehow separated from Jack but managed to reach an island where they joined up with other prisoners who were planning their escape to the mainland about a mile distance across an inlet. But first they needed something to eat, and so headed to the nearest village. The villagers gave them food and water. Sitting around a blazing fire warming themselves, they put off the escape till the following day.”

The following morning this group wasted precious time discussing their escape, when boats containing Japanese marines arrived and recaptured them. To the prisoners' great surprise they were treated well by the enemy. Japanese naval vessels took the prisoners to a wharf on the Whangpoo River in Shanghai. Around thirty-six seriously ill prisoners were taken to a hospital in Shanghai; Sergeant Devereux was among their number. After being pulled from the sea his deep neck wounds were open and raw but were free of infection and maggots. All the necessary drugs were available in Shanghai and the prisoners were given adequate treatment there. The food for the sick men also greatly improved due to unknown benefactors.

The so-called “healthy” survivors at the docks were issued with a small amount of rice and given new thin corduroy clothing and put on the
Shencei Maru
bound for Japan. At the docks before boarding, the British Officers and the Japanese took a roll call. Out of the original 1,816 officers and men, 842 were drowned or killed during the sinking, five died on the
Shencei Maru
on their way to Japan and 244 died subsequently in Japan, making a total of 1,091 deaths in total. Just 725 survivors were left.

By this time the sinking of the
Lisbon Maru
was world news, and the Japanese (not wishing the true facts to be known) had allowed representatives of the world's press to be present on the survivors' arrival in Japan. The prisoners had been warned that their answers had to favour the brave Japanese who had risked their lives to rescue them after the Americans had deliberately sunk a prisoner of war ship.

CHAPTER 20

Journey to Tada u

BURMA

“My mother found a bullock cart driver willing to take us to Tada u for two hundred Burmese rupees. On the morning of our departure, we noticed that Gunso Enoda and his soldiers had already left. We never saw him again. As we now had transport there was no need for the pram. It was so nice not having to carry or push our possession. There were three covered carts in total and their drivers; one with our possessions and the other two with supplies for villages along the way. At night we slept in the cart. Thank God we were no longer travelling on our own.

“We knew that Tada u was a military transit camp for Japanese troops, but the thought of living in a solid house with a tiled roof seemed wonderful. Unfortunately, a nasty shock awaited us. It took us many days to get to Tada u by bullock cart; travelling at the speed of a slow walk and sometimes having to get out and push when the wheels got stuck. At times the bullocks just stopped. On other occasions, if a dead snake lay on the track, they refused to move forward.

“During the journey we stopped at different villages. At night the drivers lit big fires, taking turns to guard their animals. Stopping at a village for water, we were told that a tiger had killed and carried away a man out collecting wild honey the day before. Prior to that,
the headman informed us, a local teenage girl was taken by a tiger as she slept against the thatch wall of a hut. The tiger tore through the thin walls of the hut and dragged her away. Her body was never found. I began to worry but my mother said that by the time the tiger was hungry again we would be safe in Tada u. If a spare village hut was available we'd pay to stay in it. I was grateful we had the Japanese document, as some of the villagers looked very fierce and were armed. The Imperial Japanese Army stamp at the top of the document worked wonders as many Burmese could not read the kanji script.

“Sometimes we walked close behind the bullock cart, placing you on the back where we both could keep an eye on you. If we let you walk on the track you always stuck your little hands in the cow dung and played with the wild elephant droppings, looking for big dung beetles. Wild elephants often used the bullock tracks at night and sometimes attacked bullock carts and their drivers who had stopped to rest. Passing some of these sites we could see elephant footprints among the ashes of the old fires. We heard the occasional elephant in the distance, but it was the tiger I could not stop worrying about.

“Fortunately the rains were now just light, the sun grew warmer. Duck and chicken eggs were now more readily available to buy from the villagers. Rice on the other hand was hard to come by. We always ate hot omelettes containing onions, garlic and chillies for breakfast, and then had them cold for lunch with Burmese white bread called palmo. This was where you acquired a taste for stale bread.

Some of the villages we passed had been burnt to the ground by Japanese patrols for being suspected of harbouring insurgents. The Japanese try as they might could not subdue the hill tribes.

“Now we were in the jungle-covered hills the cart drivers became more afraid that their animals could be stolen by hill tribes or attacked by carnivores. We moved at a snail's pace on the uphill climbs. By this time we had eaten all our rice taken from Yu but my mother still had a few small bags of sugar, tins of golden syrup and flour which were vital for making cakes.

“Long before we reached Tada u we could see the pagoda. Before entering Tada u we were stopped at a Japanese check-point and produced our permission to travel document. Moving on, the track led past an
overgrown dusty and dilapidated sad-looking cemetery, a large pagoda and a Burmese village, before reaching the brick and wood accommodation built on thick square wooden stilts. We waited under the trees in the shade while my mother went to see the Japanese commander. She told him we came south to escape the Chinese soldiers and showed him our permit to travel given to us by Sergeant Enoda. Several people came out on their narrow balconies to look at us but they did not seem very friendly. At the back of these houses were several large barracks and next to these was the military jail. In the distance and to the left of the row of houses was a big white building which had large barn doors.

“The terraced houses must have been built by the British for a cavalry regiment, as there was space under them for horses. Outside the terrace under a line of trees were many water troughs. On the other side of these barracks were the administration buildings where the Japanese officers lived. The second row of terraced houses were reserved for Indian soldiers and their families. These areas were out of bounds to us internees.

“My mother got permission from the Japanese Commander Major Watanabe to move into an available room. The commander made it quite clear that we were internees, responsible for our own welfare and food and not allowed to go beyond the boundaries of Tada u as we would be shot. When we first got there, many of the small houses were empty; we picked the closest free accommodation by the stairs not far from the well. There were few Japanese soldiers on guard duties when we arrived; the rest had left to fight the Chinese.

“Soon all the rooms on the terrace began to fill up with new arrivals and their children. None seemed to have their husbands with them and they were not Burmese speakers. There was only one man who lived in our terrace with his family who worked for the Japanese in the administration block, an Anglo-Indian called Clive Thomas. Another Anglo-Indian girl in her twenties called Maureen Johnson, who lived with her mother having lost her father during the fighting, also worked in the Japanese admin block; it was the only way she could survive.

“My mother and I prayed you had forgotten all conversations we had had about Jack and our past life; luckily you were never very bright and your head was always filled with all kinds of mischief and useless rubbish. Nevertheless we were always cautious when speaking
in your presence. It was only after a few days that we found out from the other internees that the large white building with the barn doors belonged to the Japanese Kempeitai. This building was a prison where the inmates where tortured. Even the ordinary Japanese soldiers were terrified of this building and never went near it, referring to it as: ‘the very bad house'.

“Occasionally at night we heard the screams of human beings in mortal agony as they were tortured by the Kempeitai. We were deeply disturbed by these sounds and prayed to God that their suffering would be short. The Kempeitai had been selected for their sadistic nature and were masters of human suffering and despair.”

At Tada u my two guardians stopped teaching me personal details like my birthday and surname, and where I was born etc. I remember being asked the date of my birthday at Alexandra Military School after the war. I did not know; I couldn't even spell or remember my surname. My birthdays were never celebrated, with one exception, my seventh. As I did not know my birthday I did not care. Perhaps my dear mother forgot to re-educate me after the war; if she had, it must have gone in one ear and out of the other, another useless talent of mine.

“We were told we would receive a pass that allowed us to travel within a specific area around the camp to buy food from the markets and forage in the immediate countryside. Many internees died of starvation and disease, and particularly malaria as we were in a malaria belt. Fortunately we never contracted malaria. Later there was also an outbreak of cholera and enteric (typhoid). The Japanese, who were terrified of cholera and typhoid, asked the Burmese to dispose of these bodies; they refused. Some poor Tamil families including children were brought in and forced to do the job of burning the bodies. These poor people, we heard later, were sent into Thailand to work on the death railway.

“On arrival the new internee menfolk were forcibly removed from their families by the Kempeitai and taken to the Kempeitai building or
transferred to Rangoon. Many families could not survive without their menfolk and died quietly in their rooms without anybody knowing. Maureen told us that some of these people had committed suicide. Poor people, the rest of us might have been able to help them if we had only known of their plight. I suppose their fall in position, change of circumstance and not knowing the fate of their men was just too much for them to bear.

“My mother asked for permission to sell cakes, which was granted. These privileges of travelling to find or buy food extended to all who lived in the first row of the terraced houses. The second row where Indian families of the INA
[Indian National Army]
lived, had total freedom and were fed by the Japs. The Indian women and children never mixed with us. Christmas 1942–1943 came and went without celebration it was just too painful to bring back older, happier memories. Around April 1943, my mother returned from the market and whispered to me that the British army had crossed the Chindwin: this would mean liberation. We began to observe the Japanese at Tada u hoping to witness signs of panic; we were soon to be disappointed.”

We lived in Tada u for around three years. Some of my memories of it are still vivid: I can still hear the voices. I don't think Tada u was a prisoner of war camp as such; I cannot remember ever seeing it surrounded by barbed wire or having a daily tenko – again many questions I should have asked Mother. In fact I have never learned of any enclosed civilian prisoner of war camps for women and children in Burma.