Life (and death) on the Death Railways
For those workers recruited in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, the journey started at the railway marshalling yards near Brickfields; it was in unventilated and overcrowded wagons, with over thirty men in each. Food stops were irregular and sanitation minimal. Thus by the time these train-loads of workers arrived at the primary marshalling facility at Ban Pong in southern Thailand they were already tired and stressed. Campbell noted that the journey ‘undoubtedly played a part in the genesis of disease’. At Ban Pong transit camp the workers were allocated in batches to various Japanese Railway Field Company butais or camps further up the line. The selection for different butais was a lottery, but one with critical consequences for individual workers. The worst and most stressful work was at the ‘sharp end’ of the railway, deep in the jungle and involving long marches followed by brutally hard labour, carrying heavy wooden sleepers, cutting jungle, stone quarrying and so forth. Sanitation in these camps was of the most primitive kind, and the perimeters were little more than open latrines. In the hot, humid conditions of the jungle this was the perfect recipe for the spread of infectious diseases, for which there was little or no medical treatment. Workers literally died like flies – undernourished, overworked and suffering from deadly diseases such as beriberi, cholera, dysentery, malaria and dengue.
One such camp was at Hintok in which 1,500 Malayan labourers were engaged in ‘embankment work’. Accommodation was initially in tents, which leaked appallingly in the monsoon. There was gross overcrowding and sanitation was negligible. Cholera was the big killer in this camp, with ten to fifteen workers dying day. The worst days were ‘driving days’ in which Japanese guards with bamboo sticks as whips would compel all but the near-dead to the work site for intensive ‘drives’. This was a far cry from the recruitment promises of a three month contract, one to two dollars per day, and regular food and proper accommodation. Many workers sought to abscond by moving into the jungle, but diseased, emaciated and in a formidably hostile environment, this was for many of them little more than a slow form of suicide. At the end of the war, however, when the British were seeking to collect these workers into welfare camps, a surprising number slowly emerged from hiding, having led a feral existence along the jungle fringes.
The testimony of individual labourers conscripted for Japanese war work is frustratingly meagre. One such survivor was V. Kumarasamy, who in 1943 as a young man volunteered for one of the early drafts. He was swayed by the promise of a regular wage. Many of the early recruits - mostly illiterate and ill-educated - had no idea of what they were letting themselves in for; many believing that ‘Thailand’ was an estate elsewhere in Malaya. Kumarasamy said that from his estate near Kuala Selangor there were four major recruitment drives each drawing in upwards of one hundred men. At the end of the war, only a trickle returned. He managed to escape and made his way back to Malaya, literally selling the shirt off his back to survive. He was caught on the border and placed in a Japanese-run police cell but escaped once again, this time making his way back to his family in Prai, who were able to hide and feed him. Had he not managed this, Kumarasamy would surely have been yet another nameless and unknown victim.
War Criminals?
After the war, as part of the Kuala Lumpur Small War Crimes Trials, the British heard charges against Captain Ori Masami, Sgt. Maj. Mishima Hiromu, Sgt. Shimizu Shotaru and Corporal Takao Matsuichi who were all Japanese medical administrators based at hospital camps at Krabury on the Kra railway. These men were charged in that ‘they have in their care civilian inhabitants of occupied territories who were employed in the construction of the Kra railway were together concerned in the ill treatment of the said civilians resulting in the death of many and causing physical suffering to others’. Despite death on a huge scale, the defence produced Malayan witnesses whose testimony exonerated the individual medical officers of personal culpability. One such witness was Abdul Razak bin Abdul Rahman who had worked in the Malayan Railways Survey Department and was dispatched to work at the Kra hospital at Champorn. Under testimony, he said that he never saw any torture or serious maltreatment of workers (he admitted to beatings, but said that on the whole they were light) and instead highlighted the fact that the initially good supply of medicines dried up towards the end of the war and each hospital had, at best, only one qualified doctor.
A second witness, Omar bin Ahmed, who was a medical ‘dresser’, was sent to the Kra peninsula in late 1943 where he stayed until the Japanese surrender. He too noted the steady decline in medicines and said the workers were weak from poor food, sickness and over-work. From his hospital he estimated there were on average two to three fatalities per day. But with respect to the hospital commandant, Captain Ori, Omar bin Ahmed said he was ‘quite fair except when he was slightly drunk when he would scold the patients’. With this and similar testimony, the cases against the arraigned medical officers proved impossible to sustain and they were acquitted. The evidence rather highlighted a chronic and systemic decline in food, drugs, medicine and personnel and the conclusion reached was that the death of the many thousands of Malayan workers was down to systemic problems of neglect and Japan’s dwindling resources rather the deliberate actions of the individuals arraigned before the court. One observer noted that ‘it can be said that the Japanese Officers were as cruel to their own soldiers…’.
Chapter Thirteen
Governance
The Japanese occupied Kuala Lumpur for three years and eight months. They arrived proclaiming a ‘New Order’, part of an ‘Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’, in which the ‘liberated’ peoples of Asia under Japanese leadership would be offered freedom from the old European colonialists. But the details of this freedom were left largely unarticulated and the early promises were soon replaced by disappointments and set-backs. Despite the stirring rhetoric, the Japanese administration was in the end characterised more by political oppression than by enfranchisement or genuine nationalist progress.
Propaganda and Mobilisation
One area of public life in which the Japanese excelled was in propaganda and public mobilisation. Initially their core message of a ‘New Order’ found a ready and willing audience, and a forgiving one as early disappointments were put to one side in the hope of a better final outcome. One key tool in the Japanese armoury was the radio. They boosted the number and range of vernacular languages and also the technical capability of the service. Prior to the war, in Kuala Lumpur there was just one transmitter in Petaling Hills and a receiving station in ‘Kato Road’. In April 1943 the Japanese introduced an additional 10Kw transmitter in Bluff Road and converted the old Guthrie building in Jawa Street into a new radio studio. In September 1943, they brought a 50W medium transmitter from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to enhance their propaganda effort.
Alongside enhancing vernacular radio services, from September 1943, in order to curb their pernicious influence, American and European films (which seemed anyway to be on endless repeat) were banned from local cinemas and only Japanese or ‘Axis’ films were permitted, though there is little evidence that either German or Italian films ever made the long journey to Kuala Lumpur’s cinema screens. In practice, Indian films were screened as before but instead of the pre-war British and Hollywood fare, Kuala Lumpur’s movie-going public were now offered ‘Syo Ri No Ki Roku’, ambitiously described as a ‘mighty Nippon production’. Failing that, those who preferred their films in English could choose to watch ‘Union Jack is Down’, a stirring movie about the fall of Hong Kong.
The Japanese made an early effort to promote knowledge of their language and culture. The local newspapers all carried basic guides to Japanese (Nippon-go) and in schools, Japanese language lessons were supplemented by the singing of Japanese songs at the start of each day (one of the legacies of this era are the memories of elderly Malaysians who can still recall the blood-curdling nationalist songs they were taught at school by the Japanese – even if they don’t understand the words). The Jap
anese pulled down public signs in English and replaced them with Japanese alternatives. Kuala Lumpur, unlike Singapore which became Syonan, retained its name but some local place names were changed. ‘Coronation Park’, for example, was re-gazetted as ‘Rizyo’ to commemorate the fall of Singapore.
The Japanese were keen to exploit significant anniversaries to inculcate a sense of their history in the peoples of Malaya. On 8 December 1943, the Japanese celebrated Dai Toa Senso, or the second anniversary of the attack on US and British forces. In Kuala Lumpur this was marked by a large rally held on the padang where Governor Shotaro Katayama spoke about the course of the war. With battles raging in the Solomon Islands and on the border between Burma and India, this period represented the high-tide mark of Japanese expansion. But signs of strain were already evident and Katayama spoke with frankness and honesty in noting that the allies ‘who were miserably defeated at the outset of the war… are now increasing their hostile strength by mobilizing their entire rich material resources..’. Katayama concluded his remarks with the predictable demands for greater support and sacrifice.
The Kuala Lumpur wartime press was censored and controlled in much the same way as its pre-war British counterpart. The local newspapers carried a surprising amount of news from the West – the Japanese clearly able to glean (from intercepted radio broadcasts) a wide and extensive news service from the United States and Britain, though inevitably every story was presented in a manner which supported the Japanese cause. As the war progressed, however, and the Japanese position deteriorated, there was a subtle shift in Japanese rhetoric. The public confidence of 1942 and 1943 was slowly changed by a defiant sense of embattlement; the mood changes from a victor’s crowing to denial mixed with the threat of bloody-minded nihilism.
More Carrot and Less Stick
From late 1943, in response to a deteriorating military position, the Japanese began to exhibit a more emollient approach to the local population, including a somewhat softer attitude to the Chinese. This did not stop the Kempetei from going about its business, and the stick was always there – and usually not that well hidden – to complement the carrot. But as Japan’s position deteriorated there was a subtle but perceptible softening in policy. One example of the more emollient approach was the establishment of the Selangor Advisory Council, which was intended to allow senior representatives of the local communities to liaise with the Japanese administration. The Malays were represented by a cousin of the Sultan of Selangor, Raja Haji Othman bin Raja Yahaya, the Indians by the Chairman of the Indian Independence League, M.K. Ramachandran, and the Chinese by Choo Kia Peng, a prominent businessman and Vice Chairman of the Selangor Overseas Chinese Association. In real terms the Advisory Council never amounted to much but it did at least represent an effort on the part of the Japanese to reach out to the local communities in a more accommodating manner. In more practical terms, around this time the Japanese also started to recruit manpower to their local militia forces and, evidence that they were now increasingly on the defensive, they also revived air-raid precaution measures and the testing of blackout drills.
The Japanese also sought, in a rather contrived and formal manner, to develop links on a social level with the local communities. For example, while Choo Kia Peng was appointed President of the Selangor Club, Governor Fujiyama and the Head of Selangor Railway Board, Maj. Gen. Kamada, were both appointed Honorary Patrons, though there was little evidence that by adopting these positions there was an increase in fraternisation or that the Selangor Club became a place of easy interaction. Despite these efforts at assimilation, the overriding impression is that on a social level the Japanese largely kept to themselves; photographs from the period tend to show groups of Japanese socialising amongst their own. Language, if nothing else, was always a barrier but so too was fear.
Lost in translation?
The Japanese civil administration - the Gunseibu or the Military Administrative Department - imposed a thin layer of Japanese control over existing British governance structures, albeit a layer which imposed huge changes to policy and practice. The minutes of the unexceptional Kuala Lumpur Sanitary Board for 20 February 1943 offer a rare, albeit oblique, insight into the relationship between the local community leaders and the Japanese authorities. The Sanitary Board, although its name hardly conjures up great expectations, was in fact a significant local body responsible for most of the main urban services, such as water, sewage, lighting and cleaning the roads. It had also, from early colonial days, included on its council a range of local luminaries from all of the main communities, giving it political and social significance.
In his opening statement, and setting the tone, the Japanese Chairman of the Sanitary Board, Mr. Y. Tatsuno, noted that ‘We have been ordered by the Central Government of Japan to function only as a part or unit of the military operations which must necessarily be concentrated on the one definite object in view, namely, to win the war... It is not an opportune moment for us to discuss the details of how Malai [Malaya] should be governed or how the Sanitary Board should be administered. On the contrary our whole hearted efforts should be concentrated on winning this war.’ In a somewhat more conciliatory tone, Tatsuno then noted that ‘The sole aim of the Board is to see the citizens of this town are kept a happy and contented lot and that the town itself is maintained in a healthy and sanitary condition...especially [given] the presence of the garrison here.’ Nevertheless, his last injunction lends suspicion that Tatsuno was primarily concerned about the health of Japanese troops in Kuala Lumpur and was less so by the overall health and well-being of the citizens of Kuala Lumpur.
A growing problem in the war years was a rise in the practice of prostitution. Before the war, and in a bid to curb prostitution, the British had banned women from working in Kuala Lumpur’s ‘eating houses, coffee shops or street stalls’. Since the Japanese occupation, however, these bye-laws had been ‘neglected’ and women – many of them struggling financially – were employed in increasing numbers in the city, with many of them selling sex. The Sanitary Board discussed this problem, and the local members leaned towards the implementation of measures to clampdown on prostitution. It may have been a language problem, but more likely reflected more robust Japanese views on the subject, because Chairman Tatsuno’s contribution was to note that working women could be categorised into three types; taxi dancers (paid dancers who would sometimes offer additional sexual services), waitresses and ‘service girls and private prostitutes’. His solution to the growth of prostitution was to recommend that ‘service girls [be] medically examined by a lady medical doctor’; and this was the one tangible outcome of the inaugural meeting under the Japanese of the Sanitary Board, held more than one year after they arrived in Kuala Lumpur.
Chapter Fourteen
Daily Life
Personal Relations
The relative status of occupier and occupied was deeply unequal. The diary of a Japanese soldier, captured on the Arakan front in 1944, carried an entry from mid-943 at a time when he was based in Kuala Lumpur. In this he noted that the ‘native population beg for the rice left over from the meal so I conserved a portion for them’. Japanese control of food represented one of many points of power and authority they held; another was the fear that stalked the army and most particularly the Kempetei. The gulf in power and wealth between the Japanese and civilian population spilled over and influenced all aspects of relations, including the personal and the sexual.
The comfort house system was designed to cater for the sexual needs of the Japanese garrison, but inevitably there was also casual and informal fraternisation between local girls and Japanese soldiers and civilians. There were very few Japanese women in Kuala Lumpur, so there was inevitably an enthusiasm on the part of the occupying Japanese to fraternise with local girls. In early June 1942, the classified advertisements of the Malay Mail carried a barely concealed request for a local concubine: ‘Wanted – by a Nipponese gentleman attractive girl for secretary, able to speak English,
unmarried, and aged between 19-25. Good family. Apply with latest photo.’ A few days later a similar advert sought ‘Two smart English speaking girls as companions to Nipponese officers.’ These may have been veiled lures, designed to entice local girls into the comfort house system, or they may have simply been brazen attempts by Japanese men to find local girls – it is impossible now to say.
Details of these casual liaisons are now hard to find, though it is likely that, as in Penang, girls working in restaurants and bars would have been amongst the first to establish relations with individual Japanese. Poverty and food shortages played a role, as the Japanese increasingly used rice and food rations as a lever and weapon in day-to-day relations. This view is echoed by the research of Abu Talib Ahmad in Kelantan and Johor, who noted that there even Malay girls were drawn to prostitution during the occupation due to the dire economic circumstances. It may have been, therefore, that casual, short-term sexual favours and affairs were not uncommon but it appears that deeper relationships were few. Certainly, any local girl setting up a brazen, open relationship with a Japanese man would have set herself up for ostracism or worse from her community. After the war, there was little evidence - in the same way, for example, that occurred in France with girls found guilty of liaison horizontale with German soldiers - of systematic retribution against local girls who had developed relations with Japanese soldiers, suggesting that such relationships were rare.
Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945 Page 14