by Clare Flynn
Prisoner from Penang
Clare Flynn
Cranbrook Press
This book is dedicated to the memory of all those women and children who were incarcerated in Japanese internment camps between 1942 and 1945. Their courage and endurance in the face of years of extreme suffering is insufficiently acknowledged.
Prisoner from Penang © copyright 2020 Clare Flynn
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design JD Smith Design
“We have had a great deal of bad news lately from the Far East, and I think it highly probable, for reasons which I shall presently explain, that we shall have a great deal more. Wrapped up in this bad news will be many tales of blunders and shortcomings, both in foresight and action. No one will pretend for a moment that disasters like these occur without there having been faults and shortcomings. I see all this rolling towards us like the waves in a storm…”
Winston Churchill, Address to the British Parliament, 27th January, 1942
Prologue
George Town, Penang, December, 1945
She’s gone. I think I made her uncomfortable. The sight of me. My refusal to talk about what happened to me during the occupation. Evie’s my best friend – now my only friend – and I’ve just pushed her away.
I know I ought to feel bad about it, but I don’t. I merely feel numb. Seeing her with her glossy hair and strong nails, her firm tanned skin, healthy from the Australian sunshine and daily swimming, made me want to shrink away and hide.
I’m a wrinkled, half-dead crone, a bag of bones, broken, soiled, damaged by what I’ve seen and what I had to do. And I’m only a few years older than she is – I’ll be thirty-five next birthday and already an old woman. That’s what war does to you.
No. That’s what the Japanese have done to me.
When we were freed from the last internment camp, one of the doctors said that talking about what we’d been through would help us eventually come to terms with it. He was a big jolly Australian and kept spouting platitudes about troubles shared being troubles halved. All very well for him with his well-fed body, fresh out of medical school. His idea of trouble was probably waking up with a hangover when he had to sit an exam, or a dingo getting in among his daddy’s sheep. What could he possibly know about what we were going through? He was in the business of saving lives, not seeing them end prematurely, brutally, savagely.
None of us voiced disagreement with that young doctor though. We just stared at him blankly, as if he were speaking a foreign language. We didn’t even look at each other. We didn’t need to. We were all thinking the same thing – that we would never, ever speak about that place and what had happened to us there.
So, even though she is my dearest friend, I will never tell Evie about it. How could she possibly understand? How could she recognise her friend, her daughter’s teacher, in the creature I have become?
No. My memories are mine alone.
Yet maybe that Australian doctor had a point. I might not be able to tell anyone else, but perhaps one day, I could write it down. I can push it out of my brain and onto paper, then lock it away where it won’t be found – or burn it – and try to get on with the rest of my life. My ruined, broken life.
Part I
Mary’s Memoir
1
Singapore
Four years earlier, December 1941
Singapore was utter chaos the morning we arrived. The island was already bursting with people retreating from the steady advance of the imperial Japanese army down the Malayan peninsula. Refugees like us, who still believed the promises from the authorities that the island of Singapore was impregnable.
But it was not only the civilian refugees who were deluded. The military and the powers-that-be all persisted in that delusion – even though the mounting evidence was to the contrary.
There were uniforms everywhere – men convinced they would succeed in defending the place that was the symbol of British imperial power. They were ready to send the Japs off with bloody noses. That was the way they talked – all bluff, bluster and bravado, like schoolboys getting ready for a conker fight.
But those of us who had fled through the night, crammed into train carriages escaping from Penang, knew differently. We had witnessed the bombs falling and the buildings burning and the complete annihilation of the British and Australian air force there. We women were impotent participants in the shameful abandonment of our island home as we were herded onto the ferries and trains to escape. So much for the supposedly indomitable white population – we were all scuttling away, abandoning our Malay and Chinese friends, our colleagues and servants, to their fate. And the Japs knew differently too. After they had taken possession of our beautiful island, hoisting their flag to replace the white one, which the locals had no choice but to fly after we’d run away, we heard their taunting radio broadcast. ‘Hello, Singapore, this is Penang calling. Do you like our bombing?’ That was when I knew nowhere was safe. Not even Fortress Singapore.
That December morning, Mum and I, along with the other women without children, were ordered to leave the train as soon as we reached Singapore. Those with children, including my friend, Evie Barrington, with her two, were told to remain on board, ready to be evacuated by ship immediately. Most of those mothers had been separated from their husbands when we got on the train, expecting to meet them again in Singapore in a couple of days. As soon as they found out they’d be going straight to board a ship, some of them started wailing and crying while others gave vent to anger. Not Evie. Her husband was already dead, months earlier. Not from bombs or battles, but from blood poisoning after a fall down a disused mine shaft in the jungle.
Funny isn’t it, that both Evie and I had lost the men we loved before the war in Malaya had really got going. I’d lost two. Though my fiancé, Frank’s death was still unconfirmed, I’d stood and watched the Japs shoot down our RAF boys over the strait. I’d seen the airplanes explode in the sky, or catch fire, rolling into a spin and plummeting into the sea. I probably even saw Frank die. He’d warned me death was a strong possibility. The old Brewster Buffalos were ancient, underpowered and inadequate – no match for the Japanese with their faster, fleeter Mitsubishi fighter planes.
Frank and I had become engaged to marry just days before the bombing of Penang. He gave me the ring over a romantic dinner at the Runnymede. As the train moved through the dark Malayan night, I twisted that ring round and round on my finger, cursing God for once again dangling happiness in front of me, only to snatch it away as soon as my hands had closed around it.
Frank had known he was risking his life every time he climbed into the cockpit, every time the order to scramble came. But I didn’t. I believed lightning never struck twice in the same place. I’d already had one fiancé die on me, so this time – surely – my happiness was going to last. Life couldn’t be that cruel, could it? The man I’d been engaged to before, Ralph, had taken his own life after betraying me with a married woman who cast him off as soon as he’d dumped me. But I was soon to discover a depth of cruelty so extreme that back then I’d never have believed it.
That morning when I arrived in Singapore, I thought death had singled me out by taking both the men I’d wanted to marry. Now, I know better. Death doesn’t discrimina
te. It takes its victims whenever a chance arises. And war gives death so many chances. A veritable feast of opportunities to harvest people and to do so in cruel and unendingly creative ways.
The voice was all-too familiar and not one I wanted to hear.
‘Coo-ee! Mary, Mary Helston! Wait!’
Veronica Leighton pushed her way through the crowd of confused women and children pouring out of the station in Singapore.
Of all the people on the planet, Veronica was the only person I truly loathed. She was the meanest, most gratuitously spiteful, nastiest woman I had ever met. When she’d left Penang to move to Singapore with her civil-servant husband about a year earlier, I’d rejoiced to see the back of her. It was she who had caused Ralph’s suicide, and she’d also tried to make a play for Frank. And she’d done her best to make my friend Evie’s life a misery from the moment Evie landed in Penang.
I thought Veronica hated me too. Yet here she was, battling through the crowd towards me with a friendly smile on her face.
She took hold of my arm, steering me away from the throng. ‘Don’t go with everyone else. You don’t want to sleep on a camp-bed in a barrack room with a leaky roof. I have a nice hotel room lined up for you.’
Jerking my elbow from Veronica’s grip, I put my arm around Mum and started to move back towards the flood of other women. ‘Leave us be,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly, Mary. I moved heaven and earth to get that room for you.’
Seeing the look of scorn and disbelief on my face, she quickly added, ‘Well, I got it for Evie and her brats actually, but she wasn’t allowed off the train. I promised her to look out for you and your mother. She specifically asked me to make sure you got the room.’
I started to protest but seeing the exhaustion in my mother’s face and the long snake of women climbing into the back of army trucks, I hesitated, and Veronica pounced.
‘You’ve absolutely no idea what it took me to get that room. The favours I had to call in.’ She gave that little tinkling laugh of hers that had always irritated me so much. ‘Take it or leave it, Mary. No skin off my nose.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of others who’ll jump at it.’
Mum’s face was telegraphing a silent plea to me. With Dad somewhere on the road between here and Penang, she was feeling lost and overwhelmed and depended on me. I swallowed my pride and accepted the offer.
The hotel wasn’t grand, but it was clean and comfortable. After allowing us the rest of that day and night to settle in and recover from our journey and our hasty departure from Penang, Veronica arrived the following morning and asked if we would join her as volunteers at the military hospital.
Mum looked alarmed. She was worried sick that Dad had not yet managed to join us, and she didn’t want to commit to doing anything until she had news of him. I think the idea of being surrounded by wounded and dying men frightened her too – little did she know that she would soon become accustomed to the sight of extreme suffering and death.
‘Mum is completely banjaxed,’ I said to Veronica. ‘I’ll come but she needs to rest.’
A pair of finely shaped eyebrows were raised at me in reply.
On the way to the hospital – Veronica brought me there in the front of the ambulance she was driving– she asked if I’d had news of Frank.
I hadn’t even been aware that she knew his name. But I remembered she had tried to flirt with him at the Penang Club, and Veronica always made it her business to find out about everyone and everything.
‘No. I’ve had no news, but I fear the worst.’
‘Really?’ She looked surprised. ‘Shouldn’t you be looking on the bright side? Mustn’t be defeatist, darling.’
Her chirpy tone irritated me and I snapped at her, ‘If you’d seen the smoke over Butterworth aerodrome when the Japanese blew up our planes you wouldn’t say that.’ I bit my lip. I could have added that I had watched as the few RAF planes that did manage to scramble were shot down over the strait like fish in a barrel, but I chose not to mention that. I didn’t want to risk crying in front of Veronica.
And yet, even though I knew instinctively that Frank was dead, I couldn’t help but harbour the hope that he might appear among the wounded, so being at the hospital felt right. To acknowledge that he was gone forever was too painful. In the meantime, I would try to take some comfort in helping care for other poor wounded men, whose wives or girlfriends were far away.
‘I’ll find out for you. I know everyone who’s anyone, including Brooke-Popham,’ she said, referring to the Commander in Chief of the British Far East Command. Veronica had never been slow to drop names. ‘If your chap’s dead, it’s better that you know, so you can get on with the rest of your life.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘Although what kind of life is that going to be? The idiots in power are still making out that we’re safe as houses here.’
I wanted to scream. She was the most insensitive woman I had ever met.
The Alexandra British Military Hospital was about four miles to the west of the city. The pride of Singapore, the newly constructed hospital was said to be the best military medical facility in the world and had opened only about six months earlier. Staffed by Queen Alexandra nurses shipped in from Britain and Australia, the mass influx of wounded men meant they now needed to be supplemented by volunteer civilian nurses. The hospital, which boasted all the latest modern equipment, including x-ray machinery and air-conditioned operating theatres, was able to accommodate over three hundred patients.
As I approached the entrance to report for duty, I was nervous. Being medically untrained, I felt an imposter entering the building, a three-storey, white stucco, colonial style building, surrounded by lawns and trees.
I was asked to report to an office on the ground floor, where a harassed middle-aged civilian woman ticked my name off a list and told me to go up to a ward on the first floor and ask for Sister Brewster.
The nursing sister was dressed in a crisp white uniform with matching starched veil. She looked me up and down and gave her head a shake, evidently asking herself why she was having to deal with an unqualified minion.
‘I don’t know why they keep sending us VADs. It’s trained nurses we need. Just make sure you don’t get in the way.’
‘I’ll do my best. What would you like me to do?’
I expected to be given auxiliary nursing duties – washing out bedpans and sick bowls and changing beds. As a schoolteacher, I was long past the point of being squeamish. I’d had to clean up after many small children when they were sick or had accidents – often the kind that required clean underwear.
‘The boys in here are badly injured. Some of them need help with writing letters home. Think you can manage that?’
‘Of course. I’m a teacher.’ I tried not to sound as affronted as I felt.
She cracked a smile. ‘I didn’t mean it in that way. It’s just that some of the chaps are in a pretty bad state. Don’t want you blubbing over them or fainting on me.’ Seeing my expression, she added. ‘You think I’m joking! The last VAD we had up here only lasted two hours.’
‘I think I can manage better than that.’
All the beds in the ward were occupied. I’d no idea so many soldiers had already been injured, nor the scale of their injuries. I swallowed. I was nervous as I approached the bed to meet my first patient.
At first, I thought he was asleep. I was about to move on to the next name on my list. But something made me linger a moment. I picked up the chart hanging on the end of the bed and read that he was Australian, twenty-two-years-old, a victim of shrapnel wounds from shellfire, now recovering from an operation to remove his right arm.
As I put the clipboard back, I saw he was awake. He’d just had his eyes closed.
‘G’day,’ he said cheerily, immediately putting me at ease. ‘You’re a new girl, aren’t you? Where you from?’
He was a good-looking chap with light brown curly hair, blue eyes and a friendly smile. His accent left no doubt as to his natio
nal origins.
‘Penang. I arrived here yesterday.’
‘Hear you had it bad up there. The Nips have been giving it quite a hammering. What’s your name, Sheila?’
‘It’s certainly not Sheila.’ I couldn’t help smiling. ‘It’s Mary.’ I glanced up at the sign above his bed. ‘Nice to meet you, Corporal Murphy.’
‘Call me Charlie. We Aussies don’t stand on ceremony.’
‘Righty-ho, Charlie it is. Now, we’d better get on with it. I’ve quite a few lads to see today.’ I pulled up a chair at his bedside. ‘Who are we writing to?’
‘Mum and Dad.’ He told me their address and I wrote it down, waiting for him to start dictating. He thought for a moment, before saying, ‘Dear Mum and Dad, sorry it’s taken me a while to get round to writing to you, only I’ve been so busy having a good time I never seemed to find the right moment to pick up a pen, but at least I’m doing it now. Don’t be worrying about me as I’m having a ball here. Not seen any action, just a bit of trench digging and bashing the parade ground. I’ve been doing a lot of swimming and going to parties. Singapore is a bonza place.’
I had been struggling to keep up, but I stopped and stared at him.
He shrugged, then tapped his nose. ‘Don’t want the old dears worrying unduly.’
My mouth gaped wide. ‘You’re not going to tell them about your arm?’
‘They’ll find out soon enough. A one-armed soldier is good for no one. Army’ll be sending me back Down Under as soon as there’s space on a ship. Women and children first.’
‘But surely your parents must know what’s happening here? They’ll have seen the news reels.’