Escape to Pagan

by Brian Devereux

  This was Mother’s favourite story, she was so proud of being British. Being British, she was convinced, saved both our lives that day.

  “At midday, you were not allowed to go out and play because of the heat. At this time my mother and I used to tie thick string around your waist to stop you sneaking out when we were asleep. To keep you occupied we got you to massage our feet; first you massaged my mother’s feet till she fell asleep and then massaged my feet. One day my mother was out so you massaged my feet until I was fast asleep. Out of mischief you tied my two big toes together with string. Suddenly I was woken up by the Japanese air raid siren. I got up quickly and immediately fell over – you began laughing and hopping around, while I called you all the names I could think of. By the time I untied my toes, the siren had stopped. I grabbed and pulled you down the stairs. We were only halfway to the shelter when I saw a British fighter plane flying very low firing its machine guns. It was coming straight towards us. My God, we were totally exposed! A bomb exploded nearby and took our breath away; my ears were ringing. We were caught in the sharp painful blast of sand and white dust which made our hair stand upright. Later we suffered with stomach pains. I was still holding your hand. Stay still Brian, look up and smile, I said, the pilot will see we are both British and stop attacking. The British pilot must have seen us as he did not drop any more bombs or use his machine guns again, he just flew away. Standing still and being British saved our lives that day, you know.”

  Mum always smiled with pride when she told this story. She was so convinced that we had been recognized by the pilot as British citizens. When older, I never had the heart to tell Mother that what the pilot probably saw was a mad-looking woman and her naked imbecile child, their faces smeared in ashes, hair standing up on end, staring up at him and grinning whilst being bombed and shot up. We must have looked as if we had just escaped from a lunatic asylum. I can remember this incident vividly; the shattering sound of the machine gunning and the compression of the bomb took our breath away and blasted our bare skin with stinging sand particles. The reason the pilot concerned stopped the attack was probably because he had run out of bombs and bullets.

  “Despite the war going badly, the Japanese still conducted their sacred ceremonies with such reverence on the big playing field near the camp. They seemed to have a solemn ceremony for almost every occasion. The haunting melody of the Kimigayo [Japan’s national anthem] was always played at the end of each occasion. We civilians often used to watch out of interest or for fear that any Kempeitai present would take our non-attendance as proof of anti-Japanese feelings. If any passers-by neglected to stop when their sad and lilting anthem was being played, they would get their faces slapped. Face slapping was part of their much loved culture. They were very sensitive about their rituals and expected everyone to worship their emperor who was related to the many Gods that favoured Nippon.

  “Due to the increasing number of casualties, dead Japanese body parts, usually fingers, were being burnt en masse at the edge of the playing field. The Japanese – or Nipponese, as they preferred to be called – were very meticulous in this ceremony and always wore white gloves. This state of affairs would not have been accepted at the beginning of the war. All the same despite the fact that the war was turning against them, they continued to perform these time-consuming sacred rituals with great devotion. That is, until they were on the run and starving. My mother was told by a Japanese soldier that once his parents had received his ashes, which were duly placed in the family shrine, a black flag would be flown from their dwelling place to show everyone that their son had died; it was an honour to give a life to the Emperor.”

  Allied soldiers were mystified by the amount of fingers and ears found in the knapsacks of the dead Japanese soldiers, and wrongly believed that the Japs were so hungry they were beginning to eat their own dead. In fact these fingers and ears of dead comrades were to be burnt and the ashes sent home to their families. However in the Pacific Islands, Tokyo was informed that some of their starving soldiers, who had been bypassed, were eating slices of meat taken from their dead comrades’ thighs. Tokyo was disgusted and sent back a strict order: “If you are starving it is still inexcusable to eat your dead comrades. However if you have to eat human flesh try eating the Americans.” Even before this order, some Japanese officers seemed to have acquired a taste for executed American airmen in the Pacific; they were encouraged by the much disliked Lieutenant Colonel Tsuji Masanobu, who recommended the liver, medium rare.

  “Very soon Tada u was becoming overcrowded. Jap troops were coming up from Thailand while many Japanese wounded were being brought from the front which was in the opposite direction, poor men they were just left with a few of their medical orderlies on the playing field to fend for themselves. Other Jap soldiers from different units completely ignored them and were deaf to their calls and requests for food and water.

  “These men were starving and some were eating jungle greens raw. It was said by the Burmese women who gave them water that some of the deliriously wounded soldiers were picking live maggots out of their wounds and eating them with chopsticks in the belief they were eating grains of rice.

  “Unfortunately we had to pass these poor soldiers when out foraging; many were so young. The Burmese helped these unfortunate men get water, as they were forbidden to visit the well for fear of polluting it. Most of the soldiers where suffering from gangrene; we had to cover our noses because of the terrible smell. Many, feverish, would call out to women passing by, mistaking them for their own mothers. Thank God these men only stayed on the field for a few days before they were taken by train to Thailand. I often wondered what happened to them. But after a few days the field was full of wounded soldiers again, ignored just as their predecessors were. Being badly wounded and not able to fight was considered a disgrace and a burden on the army.

  “As the war continued the Kempeitai at Tada u were becoming more paranoid and suspicious of everyone. All internee houses were regularly searched. They would just appear and begin shouting. We dropped everything we were doing and went straight down the stairs and waited below without speaking until they had finished. Any delay in leaving the room was considered suspicious. We only had a few possessions so the searches did not take long. Even the Burmese were under suspicion. The Burmese did not take kindly to these searches; they still had not achieved their independence as promised. They felt that they had jumped from the frying pan into the fire and their leader Aung San was becoming disillusioned with his new Asian allies. All the wealth of Burma was disappearing into Japan and the Pacific Islands. Despite the vast amount of rice grown in Burma there was now a shortage, and this soon applied to most local food items. Burma also had to support the occupying army with all its needs. The villagers said the Japs were now trying to get them to grow a different type of rice from Japan; this they refused to do.

  “Christmas came and went without celebration. However, one of the Jap soldiers in the barracks owned a gramophone and instead of playing carols, played his two favourite songs over and over again. One was called ‘Don’t fence me in’ by Cole Porter and the other was ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’ sung by Shirley Temple. We all prayed for liberation. The bombing increased and the Japanese began digging tunnels in and around Tada u. It seemed they intended to fight to the death. Frightening news began to circulate that the Japanese intended to kill all the internees and a mass grave was being dug. My mother’s thoughts once more turned to escape.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Froggy Comes a-Courting

  BURMA

  “The Japanese used to spread ridiculous stories. They claimed they were bombing America and Britain, and Thailand had entered the war against the allies and were sending troops to fight with the Japanese in Burma. My mother said it was time to escape. I was terrified that we would be caught and handed over to the Kempeitai.

  “The bombing by British planes had increased. All the air raid shelters had been taken over by the Japanese to store
food items. The air raid shelter near to us was filled with the best quality Brahmin rice and cases of Tate and Lyle white sugar. At first there were sentries posted outside the entrance, but later, as the sentries joined the soldiers who were being sent to the front, the shelters were left unguarded despite having no door. Although there was a shortage of food, none of the internees dared enter these shelters. Mother was still selling small cakes to the young Japanese soldiers in the afternoon, but now she was using gram flour, jaggery and palm nut oil; this small income helped us survive and enabled us to save money for our escape. It was also vital that we bought new traditional Burmese slippers.

  “There was a swamp within the boundaries of Tada u where we often foraged. We started to carry all that we owned on these trips in preparation for our escape. By now the guards at the checkpoint had become used to foragers. They were always interested in what we had found and wanted to know how it was prepared. These soldiers had to live partly off the land and cook for themselves. When the Japanese military kitchens arrived in camp, they looked like small locomotives with wheels and long funnels.

  “The Japanese in general did not like spicy foods but loved all things sweet; they even put sugar in their vegetable stews. My mother’s cakes tasted very sweet. One day while she was mixing the batter for the cakes a new regiment appeared from Thailand with many small pack ponies that were tied up under the trees opposite our terrace. Soon the pack ponies were joined by big mules. The animals were under the charge of a young Japanese officer based at Tada u – the one who had killed the two king cobras. My mother said from now on we would never get a good night’s sleep, as mules were very noisy animals. But fortunately for us, they did not make a sound.

  “One day as we were standing on our balcony watching the pack animals being fed, a group of working elephants ridden by their mahouts began passing by below us. As soon as the elephants smelt the pack animals all hell broke loose and the animals bolted, scattering their feed all over the sand. The Japanese soldiers went chasing after them. My mother and several other women immediately took their rice sieves and began sieving out the sand from the fallen grains before the Japanese returned. We now had some extra food for our escape.

  “Many years after the war I developed beri-beri. Water collected in my legs just below the knee and my legs began to swell. Every time I pressed my legs it left a visible deep indentation. It was the consequence of not getting enough vitamin B during the war.”

  We youngsters were frightened of the big pack mules and had seen them lash out at any village dogs that went too close to their hindquarters. But the small ponies were very mild and we could stroke them. The Japanese troops seemed fond of these small ponies. It is written in the Japanese soldier’s hand book: “Look after your pack animal, it cannot complain.” These animals attracted many wild birds like bulbuls, pigeons and sparrows that came to eat the fallen grain. The older boys used to shoot these birds with their catapults; small birds were part of the local diet. Whenever the working elephants passed by, we children always ran under the houses for safety. Elephants seemed to hate dogs, horses and quick-moving children.

  “We got everything ready to escape. I was so nervous. Then something happened that nearly spoiled our plans. The following day the officer in charge of the pack mules started talking to my mother. He would stand at our doorway in his shiny boots nervously clicking his sword hilt up and down. You were always interested in his sword. One day he lifted the hilt just high enough to show you the chrysanthemum symbol embossed on the blade. He was not good looking like some of the Japanese, and your grandmother thought he looked like a startled frog. His name was Lieutenant Kobayashi. He wanted to improve his Burmese and would ask how to pronounce certain words. My mother would be listening to every word and answer his awkward questions sternly in Nippon-Go. My mother did not think he belonged to the Kempeitai, as they would not lower themselves to clean up after pack animals. I think he was just lonely and wanted to educate himself. Everything we told him he would write down in a small book and ask us to check it. He always wrote very slowly and had beautiful handwriting. He smelt of Pears soap. We had no soap left and had to scrub ourselves with coconut husks. He told my mother he did not like the war and was glad he was in a supply unit. He said how hard it was being a recruit and how the other soldiers had forced him to climb a smooth wooden pole in the barracks and ordered him to chirp like a cricket, ‘yipe – yipe – yipe,’ they would beat him when his feet touched the ground. He would also miss his rice.

  “This young officer used to visit two or three times a week and because of this we could not escape. One day he gave my mother a bar of Pears soap that had been half used. Sometimes he would give my mother an aluminium container full of henjo or henko, a kind of vegetable stew, which we were very glad of. My mother would give him any leftover cakes. She used to say when she saw him coming towards our house: ‘Look out, here comes young Lochenvar to court you.’ One day he came to say goodbye, as he was leaving for the front. We never saw him again.”

  Being young herself my mum must have been flattered at the attention of this Japanese officer. “He was always a gentleman,” she would say. All Japanese equipment was stamped with the sixteen-petal royal chrysanthemum, as they belonged to the Emperor. Fine swords that were made by craftsman for the samurai class only had a fourteen-petal chrysanthemum on the hilt. Initially many Allied soldiers collecting samurai swords wrongly believed that the swords with the sixteen-petal chrysanthemum were more valuable than the fourteen-petal versions.

  “News kept filtering in; the British Army had crossed the Chindwin and Irrawaddy and the Chinese army were now approaching Bhamo. We never knew if these rumours were true or not. We watched the Japanese closely. They said that the British were using black cannibals [East and West African soldiers]. This really appalled and worried the Japanese soldiers in Tada u: how could they join their ancestors if their bodies were incomplete? It was also said that black soldiers mixed their cornflakes with Japanese blood. We had never heard of cornflakes!

  “The area was now being shot up by American and British planes on a regular basis. Thank God it was mostly the other side of the barracks the planes concentrated on; all the same people were being killed including internees. Despite the British and Chinese being so near, the Japs were still conducting anti-guerrilla operations against the British-led Kachins.

  “The day finally arrived when, to our surprise, the majority of soldiers left for the front line. Tada u was now almost devoid of troops. This was our chance to escape before more troops arrived so we gathered together all our meagre possessions without telling a soul and headed off on our last foraging trip: we would not be returning. My mother decided we should head in a westerly direction towards the British advance. Apart from soldiers building new tunnels there were only a few Jap soldiers guarding the road block. We went to the small river first [that fed the swamps] to collect water spinach and found several Burmese men in the river collecting big fresh water prawns off the bodies of dead pack horses. We never touched these prawns [tiger prawns] as we knew they also ate dead human bodies. We had seen it with our own eyes.

  “While the men collected these river prawns, their women fried them in a pan over a fire on the riverbank. We approached them so as not to look suspicious. As we drew nearer we were shocked to see several Japs dressed only in their fundoshis [traditional Japanese undergarment] also in the river working with the Burmese men, turning over the carcasses of the dead animals to reach the clusters of prawns underneath. We could smell the dead animals. Dead animals smelt different from dead humans.

  “My mother stopped and talked with the Burmese women, who she knew. We then moved away along the edge of the river to the swamp pretending to look for soft-shelled crabs; there we would be hidden from view. By now we could no longer smell the dead animals, just the delicious aroma of the big prawns frying in garlic and ginger. As we were now out of sight of the checkpoint, we slowly made our way to the main road
beyond, pretending to look for edible plants; the road was our boundary. My heart was thumping in my chest as we crossed the road: we could now be shot. Instead of running around you were very quiet, even though we had not told you we were escaping. Now in the lantana scrub, we began walking as fast as we could between the dense bushes. My mother roughly knew the direction to take to the Shwebo plains. The monsoon would soon begin again.

  “We continued walking as fast as we could to place as much distance between us and Tada u. It was now about midday and we were pushing through the lantana bushes when we came to an open space full of dead bodies. They had just been thrown there. Animals had been tearing the bodies apart. Thank God we could not see their faces. We often wondered what happened to the poor people from the big white house after the Kempeitai had finished torturing them. Perhaps some of the internees living in our terrace who disappeared during the night were lying here unburied. We hurried away from the smell and the clouds of flies.

  “Planes often flew over us but it was difficult to distinguish who they belonged to as the bushes were so thick and they were past us in a split second. After a mile or so the lantana began to thin out and before long we were walking on the edge of cultivated fields in plain view. Unusually there were no Burmese in the area and we would soon find out why. We had now run out of water and were very thirsty. Following a path that led us under a line of trees we were now in the shade out of the blazing sun; water dominated our thoughts. Suddenly my mother whispered … ‘My God Kate … don’t look up and don’t turn around, there are Japs in the trees above us … just carry on walking.’