by Hill, David
I wouldn’t mind that, I thought.
Margaret Nicholls put her hand up and asked: ‘What do the girls wear?’ Anzac pretended to yawn.
‘For special festivals, they wear—’ She reached into a little suitcase she had brought, and held up something red and yellow and black. It looked like a woman’s dressing gown to me, but the girls went ‘Oooh!’, while Mr White said, ‘Very spectacular, Susan.’
She finished and we all clapped. Yes, I did: I’ve got lovely manners, too. Mr White said, ‘Well done, Susan.’ (I bet she loved that.) ‘Any questions, class?’
The first hand up was Terry O’Donaghue’s. ‘Does your mother like the Nips?’
Susan turned pink. Mr White went, ‘We will restrict our questions to Susan’s talk, thank you, Terence.’
Some kids asked about Japanese food, and Susan said that they eat lots of rice and bean curd and noodles. Yuk! Someone else asked how you say ‘Hello’ in Japanese. ‘I think it’s “Konnichiwa”. I only know a couple of words.’
I saw Barry’s hand was up. It’s not easy for my friend to ask a question, and the class went silent while he spoke. ‘Why are the Ja-Ja-Japanese so c-cruel to their p-prisoners, when we t-t-treat them so well?’ Again, I wished I’d thought of that.
Mr White answered instead. ‘A very good question, Barry. I think that during wartime, people sometimes behave in ways they never would during peace. New Zealanders can feel proud of their humane attitudes.’
Barry and I went home to his place together. ‘You blokes take ages to walk here,’ Clarry complained, as he clumped down the hall in his metal braces. He smirked. ‘Something wrong with your legs?’
‘Go and wash your hands, son,’ Mrs Morris told Barry. ‘Would you mind, Ewen?’
Some doctors think polio might be spread by germs. For a while, our school had buckets of disinfectant to wash our hands in, every time we went to the toilet or played outside. Terry got strapped by Miss Mutter for using the bucket to wash his feet once!
Clarry has been practising walking along the street and back without using his crutches. ‘B-Bet you had to hang onto the f-fence,’ Barry said. Clarry snapped, ‘Only a b-bit.’ They both went silent.
I did quite a lot of reading after tea. Bruce from the camp likes books (he can’t do much physical stuff because of his asthma), and he had loaned Dad some books about space. Did you know the planet Pluto has a moon? They found it a year or so back.
At nine o’clock we listened to the BBC News, with the bell of Big Ben striking before it. There’s been a big battle in the North African desert, at a place called El Alamein, with New Zealand soldiers in the fighting. Dad and Mum went quiet while they listened.
Mr Morris and Dad are building a little trolley for Clarry to sit in, so that he can be towed behind a bike. Barry and I can take him out to the camp after all.
Spectacular means remarkable-looking, while humane means civilised and thoughtful. In another hundred years, I might be able to have a conversation with Mr White!
THURSDAY, 12 NOVEMBER When I met Barry this morning, I knew something had happened.
‘C-Clarry fell over on the p-path. He was c-coming out to see me g-go, stupid k-k-kid.’
‘Is he OK?’
Barry shrugged. ‘Sc-Scraped his knees and hand. He doesn’t want to use his c-c-crutches.’
I thought of those steel rods the doctors mentioned, and shivered.
We came into the playground and stopped. Mrs Connell from the dress shop stood on the front steps, talking to Mr White. Talking angrily.
‘You tell me why our kids should have to hear about those filthy Nips! They’re killing our men, doing all sorts of awful things to prisoners, and you’re giving morning talks on them. It’s disgusting!’
Mr White sounded perfectly calm. ‘Mrs Connell, I appreciate your concern, but—’ he held up a hand as Mrs Connell started to speak again ‘—the talk was delivered by a pupil after her mother and I discussed the idea.’ He caught sight of Barry and me, and looked steadily at us. ‘I believe we all learned something.’
‘The Nips are our enemies! I don’t want our kids’ heads filled with disgusting rubbish!’
Behind Mr White, a figure in black appeared. Miss Mutter. Mrs Connell hesitated, then barged on. ‘You should be ashamed, giving lessons on filthy yellow Japs. I’ve a good mind to report you to the police. It’s disgus—’
‘Ishobel Connell.’ Miss Mutter didn’t raise her voice, but the other woman stopped straightaway. ‘Ishobel Connell, you’re being shilly. Ish thish the exshample an adult should shet?’
Mrs Connell opened her mouth again, but no words came. More kids were listening now.
‘Our job ish to educate children,’ Miss Mutter told her. ‘If that meansh they hear things you don’t like, you may make your complaint in a proper way. Now off you go.’
Mrs Connell’s mouth opened once more, then shut once more. Mr White smiled politely at her. ‘Off you go,’ Miss Mutter repeated.
Off Mrs Connell went, lips pressed so tight that you could almost hear her teeth crunching. Miss Mutter glared at us kids. ‘And if you people aren’t in your clarshrooms by the time I count to five, you’ll feel my shtrap around your legsh. One … two …’
Off we went, too. Fast.
‘I don’t like the Nips,’ Anzac said at playtime, ‘but it’s our business what we learn.’
‘Yeah,’ went Terry. ‘Boy, I wish I’d seen Miss Mutter!’
News spreads fast in a small town. Dad called me into the kitchen when he came home. ‘I hear you had a visitor at school this morning, son?’
I told him what had happened.
‘Nosy old chook!’ Mum said.
Dad nodded. ‘The Japs reckon any prisoners they capture are cowards, and deserve to die. Sooner or later we’ll have to live with them, though. Bert White is right.’ (Bert? I’d never thought of teachers having first names.) ‘But keep quiet about it, Ewen. A lot of people think like Mrs Connell.’
Some good news I’ve saved until last: there’s pictures in the town hall this Saturday! And some boring news. There’s going to be a dance in the hall sometime, raising money to buy presents for troops overseas.
FRIDAY, 13 NOVEMBER Friday the thirteenth! I was careful all day. Dad left early for guard duty. There’s a new camp commandant coming in a few weeks; I wonder what he’ll be like?
Clarry is OK. Just a few scrapes on his hands and knees, like Barry said. He was stupid trying to walk without crutches, but he wants to do the things Barry and I do.
Our blokes have won that battle at El Alamein. The New Zealand infantry and artillery were right in the thick of it. The Nazis are losing. The British Empire and the Americans are going to win. Friday the thirteenth is a good day after all!
SATURDAY, 14 NOVEMBER I’ve been writing this journal for three weeks! Mr White is right about this being a special time. Funny thing is, I enjoy writing about ordinary things, too.
Something not-ordinary happened today. Barry and I biked to the POW camp again. Clarry looked pretty down when Barry started getting his bike out. Then Mr Morris appeared. ‘Right, young Clarry. Ewen’s dad is coming to help me build that trolley, and we need a boss to show us how.’ Clarry grinned and grinned.
It’s been a fortnight since we last biked to the camp, and I could see new buildings inside the barbed-wire fence. The fence itself had more levels of wire; the top must be ten feet off the ground. Big spikes stuck out everywhere; nobody could climb over that. The ground where we’d seen the Nips working was empty, the soil raked up in long neat rows.
We got to the short gravel road leading to the main gate and sat on our bikes, watching. Inside the wire, a few guards with rifles and bayonets over their shoulders walked up and down. A couple more were in the watch-tower, gazing around. Figures in blue shook blankets at hut or tent doorways, scrubbed big pots beside a tub of water, swept the dirt paths. It didn’t look like anything to do with war.
We wheeled our bikes a bit clo
ser. A group of prisoners was forming up by the main gate, guards calling orders to them. We edged closer still.
The big gates swung open. A guard saw Barry and me, and shouted, ‘Stay there, lads!’
The prisoners headed for a pile of pine logs lying on the ground and began lifting them. The logs were heavy, and it took three or four men to carry each one.
A really little bloke was on the end of one, struggling with it. They started towards the main gate, but you could see that he was going to drop it.
The nearest guard grabbed the log. He said something and grinned at the little Jap, who bowed to him. The guard gave a pretend bow back, and his lemon-squeezer hat fell off. All the guards burst out laughing, and some of the prisoners smiled.
Some of the Nips glanced at Barry and me. I was going to say ‘G’day’ to them, I decided, like Barry did last time. As the next lot began to move past, I opened my mouth.
My friend beat me to it — again. ‘K-Konnichiwa,’ he went. What? Then I remembered Susan Proctor’s morning talk.
The prisoners with the post stopped dead. Silence for a second, then two of them went ‘Konnichiwa’, and bowed. Others watched.
‘Yeah, konnichiwa,’ I said, too. This time, there were smiles as well as bows and words. Behind us on the road a car had slowed to a stop. Maybe they were going to join our little chat.
‘Alright, lads.’ It was the guard who’d told us to stay back. ‘These blokes have got a job to do.’ But he didn’t sound annoyed.
Then voices began yelling. Voices from the car. ‘Shoot the sods! Dirty bloody Nips! Shoot the yellow dogs!’
The prisoners’ smiles disappeared. A couple looked angry; a few looked nervous. Most of them had no expression.
‘Filthy Jap pigs!’ yelled another voice. ‘Shoot them!’
A couple of guards shouted back, waving the car on its way. Rifles were unslung. The Japanese men shifted closer together. Inside the barbed wire, silence had fallen.
The car spluttered off, trailing more yells. ‘You two get going,’ a guard ordered us, and we did.
Clarry’s trolley is great. It’s got a proper metal link that fits around the base of a bike seat. Barry and I spent the afternoon riding around the streets, towing Clarry. He sat there, legs stretched out in front of him, going ‘Faster, slave!’ and calling out to everyone.
We used the trolley again, pulling it along with a cord, to take him to the pictures after tea. We all went, MacKenzies and Morrises.
The town hall was full. Everyone stood for ‘God Save the King’; even Clarry hauled himself up on the seat in front. There was a newsreel showing British fighter planes in the Battle of Britain and the damage from Nazi bombing raids on London. There was a Woody Woodpecker cartoon, and we all laughed like mad.
The main film was The Great Dictator, with Charlie Chaplin doing a takeoff of Adolf Hitler. In the story, he was called Adenoid Hynkel and he walked around giving crazy Nazi salutes and knocking people’s hats off, or poking them in the eye.
We walked home afterwards through the dark streets, Clarry rattling along on his trolley, which his dad pulled.
Today was a special day. I’m glad I’ve got this journal, so I can remember it.
SUNDAY, 15 NOVEMBER The BBC News tonight said the Nazis suffered a really big defeat in the El Alamein battle, and they’re retreating.
‘Well done, lads,’ Dad went while he rolled a cigarette. ‘Wonder if Charles Upham was there?’
Charles Upham is a New Zealand soldier who has won the Victoria Cross twice. He got the first one after attacking a German machine-gun post with grenades while our blokes were fighting on Crete. Then, just four months back, he won a second VC for charging a whole lot of Germans, during a battle in Egypt.
I wish I could do something like that. I wonder if Dad would like to be there, fighting with his mates.
MONDAY, 16 NOVEMBER I keep thinking about that car at the POW camp: the men in it yelling at the Japanese. Dad says most guards treat the prisoners OK, but there are a few who wouldn’t mind a bit of trouble, so they can show the Nips who’s boss.
There are nearly five hundred Japs in the camp now, and about a hundred guards. The first military prisoners should arrive soon.
TUESDAY, 17 NOVEMBER Nothing.
WEDNESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER Actually, one thing did happen at school yesterday. Snobby Susan Proctor and Margaret Nicholls were going into class, and Barry went ‘K-K-Konnichiwa’ to them. They smiled, and Susan said ‘Konnichiwa’ back. I thought my friend had better taste!
Dad didn’t get back from the camp until after I was asleep last night. They’re working flat-out, fencing a new area for the Nip military captives. I guess that’s why those prisoners were carrying posts on Saturday.
At breakfast today, Dad had this tiny wooden carving of a fish. It looked really good: fins and eyes and even little scales.
‘Got it from a Nip for half a dozen cigarettes,’ Dad said. ‘He’s a furniture-maker back home. I think that’s what he was saying. Tiny little bloke, but good value building the huts.’ I wondered if it was the prisoner from Saturday, who’d almost dropped the post.
Air-raid practice at school today. Not the sort where we all head for the shelters; instead we practised what to do if enemy planes attack while you are in the street. You lie up against a fence or in the gutter. We lay down on part of the tar-sealed playground instead, pretending it was a gutter. Miss Mutter told off a couple of the girls who didn’t lie down properly in case their skirts got dirty.
Went to the Morrises’ after school, and all three of us played a new game. It’s called Sink the German Navy. You have a bit of paper with squares on it. You put a battleship (eight squares), two cruisers (five squares each) and other ships on the paper. The others try to guess what squares your ships are on, and ‘sink’ them. None of us wanted to be the Germans.
That reminds me. Terry O’Donaghue has a jigsaw which shows evil-looking Jap soldiers invading Australia and New Zealand. He says he thumps the Nips in the face every time he puts it together.
Clarry was sore today. The visiting nurse had come; she massages his legs to help with the circulation. Otherwise he might get gangrene, where your feet or fingers start to rot and have to be amputated. Makes me sick to think of it. So Barry and I let him win most of the games.
THURSDAY, 19 NOVEMBER Mr Morris brought over yesterday’s Evening Post. Parts of some pages are blank where the censor has decided that the news might help the enemy. Mum and Dad were reading the latest Roll of Honour. ‘Nobody we know, thank goodness,’ Mum said. Dad nodded. ‘Not today.’
I had a look before I left for school, and the names seemed to go on and on. KILLED IN ACTION: ADAMSON K J (MAJOR), DUNEDIN … DIED OF WOUNDS: PENROSE A (CPL), TARADALE … WOUNDED AND MISSING: HEREMIA J O (DRIVER), BLENHEIM … Over a hundred of them. Imagine all those telegrams arriving at houses across New Zealand.
Some other kids had seen the Roll of Honour, too. Margaret Nicholls was telling the girls about someone in Carterton whose dog started howling one afternoon last year. Later, they found it was the same time their son was killed by a machine-gun in Greece.
The big news is that the first lot of Jap military prisoners are due to arrive at the camp in the next few days. Nobody knows how many there’ll be. Some were so badly wounded that they died on the ships bringing them to New Zealand. Some will go straight into hospital (with guards) when they get here. A few were found floating on bits of timber, three days after their cruiser was sunk.
FRIDAY, 20 NOVEMBER A few Home Guard blokes stood outside the council offices as we biked home, talking to some girls who work there. I can’t wait to get to secondary school and the Army Cadet Corps. They have battledress uniforms like real troops do, except with shorts.
I asked Dad if Barry and I could ride out to the camp tomorrow, and maybe take Clarry. He shook his head. ‘Not just now, Ewen. Nobody knows what it’ll be like when the new lot of Nips arrive. Stay clear in the meantime.’
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nbsp; No cards with the Morrises this Friday night. Mr Morris is doing extra train-driving, since one of the apprentice drivers has just turned nineteen and has been called up by the army.
SATURDAY, 21 NOVEMBER Felt annoyed that I’m not allowed to go to the camp. I think Dad guessed this, because he sat in the kitchen after breakfast and talked about it, while he rolled his tinful of cigarettes to last him for the day. Tobacco isn’t rationed; in fact there’s more of it being made — they say it settles people’s nerves.
‘I know you want to have a look, son. But it could be tricky out there for a while. There are Japs who tried to throw themselves back in the sea after the Yanks hauled them on board, they’re so ashamed of being captured alive. Anything might happen. It hasn’t been too bad with the civvie prisoners. But this lot …’ He shrugged.
‘Isn’t there anyone who can make them see sense?’ Mum was wiping the table.
Dad shrugged again. ‘The Japs signed the Red Cross agreement about how to treat prisoners of war, years back. But their generals don’t believe in it. There’s a Swiss government bloke who’s supposed to keep an eye on them here, since Switzerland isn’t in the war, but nobody knows if they’ll take any notice of him.’
He stuck the tin in his tunic pocket. ‘Time I was off. You’re commanding officer here, Ewen. Make sure your mother carries out her orders.’
Mum snorted and slapped him with her dish-cloth. Then she stood watching him ride away. I heard her sigh.
Since we couldn’t go to the camp, Barry and I towed Clarry around a few streets on our bikes. Mrs Morris made him wear an extra jumper, since he feels the cold so much. It was Barry’s turn to tow the trolley, so of course Clarry was giving him orders: ‘Down here. Not here — I mean there!’
We were starting back, watching out for pot-holes, when we all jumped as loud yells burst out, somewhere on our right. Then we ducked as a shot cracked, followed by a second one.
Barry realised what it was first, like he always does. ‘Home G-Guard!’ He and I stood on our pedals, heading for the Domain, with Clarry bouncing behind me, going ‘Hurry!’