Invasion Rabaul (38 page)

While the women settled in at the Bund Hotel, the officers were taken to the Yokohama Yacht Club. They were surprised to find a lavatory with real Western-style toilets, and with childlike joy some of the men repeatedly pulled the chains, flushing away just for the fun of it. In the upstairs sleeping quarters, fresh
tatami
mats covered the floors, and thick white Imperial Navy blankets were provided.
“Damned good Aussie wool,” exclaimed one officer after feeling the soft material.

The comforts proved to be temporary. After receiving a medical screening for dysentery and other diseases, all but seven officers were scheduled for immediate transfer to Zentsuji, a large POW camp on the island of Shikoku. The exceptions included Joe Scanlan, John Mollard, Geoff Lempriere, and Ted Best, who were held for additional questioning. They remained “in quarantine” at the yacht club while fifty-three others departed by train on July 18.

After a journey of thirty hours, which included a ferry trip across the Inland Sea, the majority of Lark Force officers arrived at Zentsuji. The camp already held more than two hundred Americans captured at Guam and Wake Island, along with a few dozen Australian, Dutch, British, and New Zealand prisoners from Singapore. Also present were RAAF pilots Bob Thompson and Paul Metzler, who had been captured six months earlier by the cruiser
Aoba
.

The newcomers were pleased to see that their predecessors were in relatively good condition. Indeed, they were among the most fortunate POWs in the empire, for the Imperial Army used the camp as a model for propaganda purposes. The International Red Cross (IRC) and other agencies were conned into believing that
all
Allied POWs were cared for as decently as those at Zentsuji.

Toward the end of August, Scanlan and three others arrived from Yokohama with the disturbing news that Mollard, Lempriere, and Best had been sent to Ofuna, a secret camp run by the Imperial Navy. Captives sent there were not recognized by the Japanese as POWs; instead they underwent
prolonged interrogation, sometimes for months, which was based on a regimen of physical and mental intimidation. Interrogators used clever variations of the good cop/bad cop method to extract information, and the naval guards had carte blanche to abuse the prisoners at will. Between beatings, the captives were interrogated by well-dressed intelligence officers educated in American and English universities, whose job was to play the sympathetic role. Such methods were highly effective. Contrary to the popular notion that Allied prisoners bravely refused to divulge anything except their name, rank, and serial number, some gave useful information to the Japanese at Ofuna.

At Zentsugi, meanwhile, the general conditions remained favorable for several months. In late 1942, however, a new supply officer arrived and immediately cut the food rations. The POWs suspected that he was selling rice and other supplies on the black market.

The prisoners were also frustrated by a supposed goodwill gesture in early November 1942. Red Cross parcels were doled out at the rate of one small package per three prisoners, but most of the contents had either spoiled or were pilfered by the Japanese. Later, when the Red Cross delegate made an inspection visit to the camp, he was not sympathetic to the POWs. They doubted his allegiance, for according to their information, he not only had a Japanese wife but had lived
in Japan longer than he had lived in his native Switzerland.

With the onset of cold weather, the expressions of disgust and frustration among the prisoners became more pronounced. The winter in 1942 was brutally cold. The air near the Inland Sea was constantly damp, and Zentsuji was blanketed with heavy snowfalls. The prisoners spent a lot of time dwelling on their discomforts, which only made matters worse.

Finally, a brief distraction occurred on January 15, 1943. Fifty enlisted men, mostly Americans, departed for other camps, and a few hours later 149 new prisoners arrived. All were American army or naval officers captured in the Philippines. As bad as things had been on New Britain, the new arrivals had been through ordeals the men from Lark Force could scarcely comprehend. Having first survived the infamous “Death March” up the Bataan Peninsula, the Americans had been put aboard a hellship that transported them to Japan. Not surprisingly, they arrived in horrible shape.

The Japanese refused to provide any help or medical care for the newcomers. It wasn’t long, recalled Hutchinson-Smith, before problems developed within the POW barracks:

The morale of the new prisoners generally was very low. Many of them were so far gone as to be able to make little or no attempt to help themselves. It was a losing battle for the helpers to keep the rooms clean; many of the men were genuine dysentery patients without any power to control themselves, but others soiled their quarters, bedding and clothes for no apparent reason other than that they were almost completely demoralized. Some were quite capable of washing and keeping themselves clean, but there were others whose long hair was matted with filth and whose bearded faces were stained with the dirt of months of neglect.

Within a matter of weeks, three of the American officers died. The Japanese turned out in dress uniform for the funerals and made a big show of paying respect to the dead, but their hypocrisy infuriated the POWs.

On February 16, the camp administrators announced that all officers and warrant officers except those in sick bay would take part in labor services. The healthiest individuals were put in the “agricultural squad,” which grew vegetables and performed outdoor work that was deemed strenuous, at least for the stamina levels of half-starved men. The “gardening squad” cared for the prison grounds, and the “sanitation squad” had the thankless task of cleaning out the
benjos
and open-line drainage ditches.

Several more deaths occurred among the American officers during the spring of 1943, and that summer hundreds of new prisoners arrived, crowding the barracks. The Australians from New Britain and Singapore, numbering about ninety by this time, had become the old-timers at Zentsuji, though they barely took notice. The food rations were reduced again, and all of the prisoners grew thin. Hutchinson-Smith quipped, “there was hardly a respectable pair of buttocks in the whole camp.”

In addition to weight loss, the POWs suffered muscle cramps caused by the lack of salt in their diet. Most could not sit with their legs crossed for
more than a few minutes without feeling the prickly sensation of numbness. Blackouts and near-fainting spells were also common, especially during periods of exertion.

When several more American officers died during the last months of 1943, the camp seemed cloaked in gloom. Another cold winter set in, and the prisoners tried to distract themselves by performing variety shows and plays. The food situation did not improve, but news about the progress of the war, which generally sounded positive, helped to uplift the POWs.

Sometimes the Japanese themselves inadvertently brought good news. On June 10,1944, the camp superintendent asked Joe Scanlan if he thought the Allies would attempt a landing in Europe. Scanlan, in the presence of several other prisoners, replied that such an invasion was “essential to victory against Germany.” Amused, the Japanese officer asked Scanlan when such a landing might occur. The Australian replied that the weather conditions in June were ideal. At this the superintendent laughed. He then asked, “What would you say if I told you that British and American forces landed in Normandy four days ago?”

The officer went on to boast that the Americans would be thrown back into the English Channel, but the prisoners paid him no attention. The truth of the great offensive was out. “Needless to say,” wrote Hutchinson-Smith, “everyone was elated at the news but wisely refrained from outbursts that would undoubtedly have provoked the Nips.”

Greatly encouraged by the information, the prisoners managed to get through another brutal winter, and their optimism soared when American B-29 Superfortresses began striking the home islands in the spring of 1945. Although the POWs at Zentsuji did not experience the sort of close calls that had bothered them at Rabaul, they did feel the pinch of an increasingly acute food shortage. The ration of rice dropped to under three hundred grams per man per day, and even if more had been available, the cookhouse was constantly short of fuel for the coal-burning stoves.

Eventually, the Japanese were forced to close down the camp. On June 23, 1945, more than three hundred feeble Americans stumbled out of Zentsuji’s main gate on their way to other camps. Two days later it was the Australians’ turn to leave. Just prior to their departure, a young officer from the 2/19th Battalion succumbed to malnutrition. Captured at Singapore, Lieutenant Charles P. Furner was the only Australian to die at
Zentsuji. That it happened on the last day in camp was highly distressing to his countrymen.

From Zentsuji, the Australians traveled by train and ferry to a new camp in the mining region of Hokkaido, northernmost of the main islands. The first morning of their journey found them approaching the main railway station in Osaka. As their train rolled through the outskirts of the city, they were awed by scenes of utter devastation. For miles in every direction, virtually as far as the eye could see, the landscape was covered with mounds of debris and twisted wreckage.

Upon reaching the station the POWs were ordered off the train. Shortly thereafter, air raid sirens began to wail, and the Australians suddenly realized they were standing inside one of the few intact buildings in the center of Japan’s second-largest city. It wouldn’t be their first time in the line of fire, but this was no small-scale raid. More than one hundred B-29s of the Twentieth Air Force were coming from the Marianas to hit the Osaka arsenal on June 26; simultaneously, another seventy-one Superfortresses would hit secondary targets around the city. The POWs, able to hear the deep, throbbing hum of the approaching bombers, could not find any shelters to hide in. They did the next best thing, and sat on the concrete floor of the waiting room with their backs against the walls.

Antiaircraft guns began firing at approximately 0845. The POWs huddled nervously, mindful of the plaster ceiling high above the center of the waiting room. Soon the whoosh of falling bombs became audible, followed by the crump of explosions. The blasts came closer, some hitting so close to the building that the doors blew in. Clouds of dust billowed through the doorways and windows, showering the men with debris. In the middle of the attack, some of the POWS and guards got up and staggered to the
benjos
. But they were unusable, clogged with inches of accumulated filth because the city’s water service had been destroyed.

Hutchinson-Smith tried in vain to appear indifferent as he sat against a wall. His expression caught the eye of James W. S. Chisholm, a captain with the 2/18th Battalion captured at Singapore. Getting on his feet, Chisholm sauntered across the room in the middle of the raid, stopped in front of Hutchinson-Smith, and said, “You’re a bloody liar, and so am I!” It was just the tonic they both needed.

The occupants of the train station endured the explosions and billowing dust for more than an hour before the attack finally subsided. Later, when they climbed back aboard their train, they saw that a large, eight-story building near the station, previously undamaged except for broken windows, had been reduced to a heap of smoking rubble. Other nearby damage included a still-burning train. The POWs’ extraordinary luck had held once again.

I
F ANYTHING, THE FEMALE PRISONERS HAD ENDURED MORE HARDSHIP THAN
the officers. Shortly after the men departed for Zentsuji prison in July 1942, the women were moved to the Yokohama Yacht Club. Quartered upstairs in the clubhouse, they found the food and living conditions quite tolerable. But when winter approached, the Australians discovered that they weren’t accustomed to cold weather. Some of the older women, especially Mary Goss, had lived in the tropics for fifty years or more and felt chilled even when the weather was actually mild. Later, when the temperatures dropped below freezing, they experienced real misery.

The Japanese kept the captives occupied with menial tasks of the sort their own women were obliged to perform. Each prisoner was given bundles of silk thread and taught how to hand-knit tiny drawstring bags. They would hold miniature
charms called
omamori
—wooden tablets inscribed with Shinto incantations for good luck—which soldiers carried in battle. The women also produced hand-made envelopes out of colorful paper, but later they started eating the glue when their food was severely rationed. When the Japanese discovered this, they put a stop to envelope production.

In the late summer of 1943, the women were moved temporarily to the police headquarters building of Kanagawa Prefecture. About two weeks later they returned to the yacht club and discovered that a pair of tough characters had taken over as supervisors. One man, known only as Komatsu, had an advanced case of tuberculosis; the other, nicknamed
“Basher,” was a sadistic individual on furlough from the army. The women endured a great deal of face-slapping and intimidation from both men until the following spring, by which time Komatsu had died and “Basher” had returned to active duty. The man who replaced them was much different. Fat and elderly, with a congenial disposition and a penchant for singing, he was nicknamed “Papa-san,” an unavoidable cliché.

In July 1944, after two years in the relative comforts of the yacht club, the women were moved to the village of Totsuka, west of Yokohama. Taking their belongings—which by this time included some old futons and thin blankets—they moved into their new “home,” a low, wooden structure built around three sides of a central courtyard. As the women spruced up the empty rooms, they realized with horror that they were in a former tuberculosis hospital. There was no indoor plumbing, only a well outside with a hand pump, and the
benjo
consisted of slits in the floor above a concrete pit.

The amount of labor they were forced to perform increased significantly. They had to haul coal and firewood, piled alongside the main road near the village, uphill to the compound. The women drew water for cooking and washing from the well in heavy pails, and then emptied them into a large barrel outside the cookhouse. The captives, who also had to operate the pump for the local villagers, often made more than one hundred trips a day to the well. During the harsh winter of 1944-45, said to be one of the coldest in the previous thirty years, the pump was frequently frozen until mid-afternoon. It would thaw for a few hours, during which the women had to pump all the water for the villagers and their own needs before the handle froze again.