by David
Kanchanaburi and the surrounding area contained several camps, most of which served as hospitals both for sick POWs and for sick romusha, who were transferred there from work camps further up the railway. Around 35,000 POWs, including F Force and H Force, had now been sent up from Singapore to build the railway. The numbers of romusha recruited or shanghaied to work there probably amounted to at least 250,000 men.
When L Force arrived at Kanchanaburi, it was split by the Japanese command into groups of medical officers (MOs) and men of other ranks (ORs), who were then sent to various hospitals. Lieutenant Colonel H. C. Benson kept a record of the movements:
4 MOs and 30 ORs to Ban Pong coolie hospital, Major Crankshaw in charge.
2 MOs and 10 ORs to Wang Yai coolie hospital, Capt. Lennox in charge.
4 MOs and 20 ORs to No 2 coolie hospital Kanchanaburi, Major Andrews in charge.
5 MOs and 40 ORs to H Force hospital Kanchanaburi Lt. Col. Benson in charge.1
Over the next twenty months, there was much movement of K and L Force personnel up and down the railway camps between hospitals, but Digger and his six mates remained together at the No. 2 Coolie Hospital.
It was opened as a base hospital in June 1943 for sick romusha. A coolie mandor (a Malay term for foreman) was in charge of discipline, cleanliness, feeding and general administration. A Japanese captain, assisted by a medical lieutenant, was in overall control of the hospital, but they only visited once a week. In charge from day to day was a non-medical corporal, who would prescribe treatment for everyone. Requests for drugs were usually met with abuse and often with physical violence. Digger knew that the Japanese could get a good price for their quinine from the Siamese traders, and so the fewer drugs they used the more there was to sell. The Siamese prostitutes who visited the Japanese officers weekly were paid in quinine.2
The No. 2 Coolie Hospital sat between the newly constructed railway line and the service road that ran parallel to it. It was built on old paddy fields. The whole area was level and flat, so there was no significant fall for drainage.
When the men of L Force were assigned to the No. 2 Coolie Hospital, the conditions were chaotic and revolting. Digger couldn’t see how anyone in his right mind could have regarded this place as a hospital. Hygiene and sanitation were non-existent. The latrines were open and swarming with flies, and the camp was flooded with their contents every day when it rained. The sick romusha defecated where they lay.
Hundreds of men were housed in just twenty huts, each about twelve metres by five metres. The patients lay side-by-side on bamboo platforms that ran along both sides of each hut. Dysentery was rife but there was no isolation areas. Patients who were unable to walk to the ‘latrines’ were carried into the death house, which was always full.
Here there were no sleeping platforms; men were left to lie on the bare earth, in their own filth. No medical treatment was given, and the Japanese did not considerate it efficient to provide food for them either. The romusha were dying at a rate of forty to fifty a day, in the most squalid and miserable conditions imaginable.
The accommodation for L Force members consisted of huts built with bamboo and attap palms, like those of the patients. The men’s first task was to clean them up as best they could, but Digger and his mates only had time to claim their place at the end of one side of their hut, away from the latrines. A low split-bamboo platform was to be their home for many months. Each man had just enough space to lie down.
The next day the MOs and a few of the orderlies were assigned to medical work, but most of the ORs joined manual work parties. The lucky ones were making roads around the camp. The not-so-lucky – including Digger and Yabba – were digging latrines.
The daily routine never changed: get up at dawn, queue for breakfast outside the cookhouse, eat your allowance of rice pap, parade in front of the Japanese guards and officers, get allocated to a work party and proceed to place of work with your guards.
Members of L Force were frequently bashed by the Japanese guards, especially during the first month or so after their arrival at the No. 2 Coolie Hospital.
Almost everyone got bashed in the first few weeks. Mostly it was for doing the wrong thing. No matter how the guard shouted at you – and they shouted at you constantly – if you did what you thought he was asking but had misunderstood, then invariably you got bashed, usually about the face and head with a thick bamboo pole.
You had to stand there and accept it. You did not complain or call out, if you could help it, and you most certainly did not retaliate. If you were knocked down, then the rule was that you stayed down, just curled into a ball, while doing your best to protect your vital areas, because then you’d be kicked hard. The general opinion was that it stopped sooner if you remained standing.
There were always a few men in the work parties who returned to the huts at night with swollen faces and black eyes. Certainly there were many who suffered broken noses and jaws. Sometimes they would order you to kneel and then pretend to chop off your head with a wooden sword, so you’d suffer a severe beating about the neck or upper back.
Some of the men just took the beatings and gradually became more and more withdrawn and depressed. But the Filthy Seven – or six of us, at least – were not like that. We talked about it at night and we fantasised about taking revenge. We had a bloody good go at thinking up what we could do about it. The obvious answer was to learn more of the language. Reg Young got beaten up several times and he stopped talking altogether, but we always included him in all the discussions and kept asking him questions and such, and eventually he came around.
I got to know one decent guard who spoke quite good English, Takeo Harada. He had worked for an Australian company with an office in Japan, so I got some Japanese language lessons off him – just casual like.
He explained that the word for ‘Don’t understand’ was ‘Wakaranai’, but when I used it with other guards I still got beaten up – and sometimes worse than normal. It took a few more lessons to learn that what I should really have said was ‘Watasi yoku wakarimasen,’ which says the same thing but in a more polite or formal way that shows respect. I guess ‘Wakaranai’ was all that Takeo Harada required when I addressed him, but he forgot to make allowances for the other bastards!
We also learned to say thank you: ‘Arigato gozaimasu,’ or – even more politely – ‘Domo arigato gozaimasu.’ We were determined to survive at all costs.
Major Kudo, of the Malayan Command, was in charge of all the hospitals around Kanchanaburi. He was not a medical man but he still overruled most of the suggestions made by Lieutenant Colonel Benson and his medical team, with regard to how the hospitals should be run, who would attend to the sick and who would carry out the manual work. This just added to the overall inefficiency of the organisation.
Most of the workers on the railway were the responsibility of Japan’s Thai Command, but F Force, H Force, K Force and L Force were under the Malay Command. While inadequacies of food and medical supplies undoubtedly contributed to all deaths of POWs and romusha, this was much greater under the Malayan and Singaporean Command, while the Thai Command was better. No doubt this was to do with the distance from their respective IJA headquarters.3
These inefficiencies were the cause of the waste of L Force’s medical skills, since most of its members were forced to carry out manual tasks around the hospital such as digging latrines, constructing huts, carrying water and firewood, making roads, building air-raid shelters for the Japanese, plucking grass and burying the dead.
Before long, Digger and his mates were carefully observing how the camp was organised and supervised. They talked continually about how to survive, and about the opportunities they could find to get extra food or make money. The food in the camp was the very least that men could survive on. It was rice alone or rice cooked in onion water; very occasionally it had a smell of fish about it. They would also get ‘tow gay’, a mung bean, with their rice for the evening meal.
The Filth
y Seven knew the value of sticking together, looking after each other and above all sharing what resources they had. They were all determined to survive these conditions, which were much more severe than those at Changi had ever been. As Digger looked around, he could see that opportunities were indeed gradually appearing.
Digger had learned during his time at Changi that following certain rules helped to ensure survival under these conditions: take chances whenever they are presented; look for opportunities to volunteer; work outside the camp if possible; get to know the guards; know their behaviour, attitude and habits; test them, befriend them, ingratiate yourself with them, flatter them, bribe them, blackmail them. In short, do whatever is necessary to take advantage.
It was not long until such a prospect presented itself. After parade one morning, Mick, Yabba and Jack Sanson were ordered to join the guard Takeo Harada, who marched them out of the camp. They buried the dead romusha in a jungle clearing about 150 metres outside the camp. When they reported this to the rest of the Filthy Seven that evening, Digger smelled an opportunity. He determined to join them the following morning if they were again detailed. He planned to simply volunteer, using as friendly a manner as he could muster.
Volunteering for a task organised by the Japanese might at one time, earlier in the POWs’ captivity, have been looked down on as a kind of betrayal. Very soon, however, all were well aware that the name of the game was survival, and you therefore did almost anything to survive.
Digger had volunteered for many tasks at Changi in the past, and his motive now, as it had always been, was purely selfish. It did not in any way diminish the anger or hatred in his heart but he knew, as his mates did, that their first objective was survival. They discussed this frequently and at great length. All agreed that the Japanese would be beaten in time, and then their chance for revenge would come. Until that day they would concentrate on survival.
Chapter 8
Mates and Survivors
Between 15,000 and 20,000 sick coolies passed through Kanchanaburi, and from August 1943 to March 1945 total deaths were around 11,000. These figures are fairly accurate, as members of K Force and L Force were constantly associated with this hospital and were also responsible for burials.1
As it turned out, Digger had no trouble in joining the burial detail. A week or so later, Mick, Yabba, Jack and Digger were getting used to the routine. It was hard and unpleasant work and it stank, but it was outside the camp, and for the present they had a reasonable guard supervising them.
The first five or six hours of every day would be spent digging a new grave. It had to be big enough to hold fifty bodies, because they never knew how many there would be for that day. The grave had to be about 1.8 metres square and about 1.6 metres deep. It was hard pick and shovel work, but it was on the alluvial plain of the Mae Klong River and so the top soil usually went down the full depth of the grave. Each day’s grave was less than half a metre from the previous one. Digging was the hardest work but not the worst.
After the grave was dug, the bodies would start arriving from the death house at the No. 2 Coolie Hospital. They would be carried on stretchers made from two stout bamboo poles and potato sacks. The dead were so thin and light that two romusha labourers could carry two or three bodies at a time.
As the bodies arrived they would be tipped into the grave. One of the gravediggers would be inside, packing the bodies, placing them in the most suitable position so that each body took up as little room as possible. When the daily supply of bodies had been packed into the grave, the earth was piled high on top of it, to allow for settlement over time. On many days the bodies came to within a foot or so of the top of the grave. Quite often the first task the following morning was to rebury the arms and legs dug up by the dogs during the night.
At first Digger and his friends had to face some harsh realities about death in the Japanese hospital camp. But they were practical and realistic, and they got used to the tasks relatively quickly. They knew that the Japanese expected total compliance from their POW workers. Digger also knew that if they were able to provide such compliance, then any additional activities they might engage in would be less likely to be discovered.
One day, a couple of weeks after they’d begun the burial work, Mick was packing bodies into a grave. ‘What the fuck!’ he gasped, staggering back against the grave wall. The body that he had been trying to tuck into position had suddenly groaned, and a hand had moved in unison. ‘This poor bastard’s still alive,’ Mick shouted to those above him. ‘Give me a hand!’
Seeing the situation, Digger jumped into the grave to help his mate. They gently untangled an emaciated but living body from among the dead, then lifted it gently up towards Yabba and Jack at the surface.
Takeo Harada approached to see what the commotion was about. ‘No, no,’ he ordered in English, pointing to the bottom of the grave. ‘All body must bury – orders, orders!’
‘But he’s alive!’ shouted Mick.
‘Must bury all body.’ Talking in an uncharacteristically strict tone, Takeo again pointed down, this time menacingly with his rifle, at the bottom of the grave.
The Japanese army did not allow for any initiative on the part of men of the lower ranks. A private daring to countermand an order for humanitarian reasons – especially in relation to a romusha ‘work unit’ – was unthinkable. Takeo Harada knew that his life would become unbearable, as would the lives of the gravediggers, if they were to return from the burying site with a live body.
Digger and the others realised they had to bury this man, whether they wanted to or not, otherwise their own lives would be on the line. They very carefully laid him back in the grave. A kind of rationalisation went on within each member of the group. They quietly continued their work, piling more bodies on top of this unfortunate fellow.
They knew that this man, even if he was still alive now, was very close to death. Had they been allowed to return him to camp, his best bet would be the death house again anyway, and no one ever survived the death house. If they didn’t bury him today they would be burying him tomorrow. The burial ground was his only way out. There was absolutely nothing they could do. The poor bugger was as good as dead, and it wasn’t their fault.
This was all the comfort that the four gravediggers could have – that and the fact that they did not hear any sounds coming from below. Digger began filling the grave. They all had enough experience of the ways of the Japanese military to know that this was all they could do. An hour or so later, the earth was piled on top of all fifty or so bodies.
That evening nothing was said about the incident. No one was brave enough to bring up the topic for conversation. They slept that night, because hard work always made them sleep. They knew that the romusha bloke’s worries were now over.
This experience was repeated on several occasions over the next year or so.
One Korean guard – known as ‘Scummadore’ and nicknamed ‘Ted’ by the POWs, because it rhymed with ‘shithead’ – was perhaps the worst of all who regularly worked at the No. 2 Coolie Hospital. Occasionally he was in charge of the romusha burial detail, which was unfortunate for Digger because he’d already had a run-in with him. Scummadore was ugly as well as sadistic. He had obviously been involved in some accident, or perhaps it was a birth defect, but his arms were curved and came from his shoulders at a curious angle. This did not stop him using his rifle or a bamboo baton whenever he wished.
On the burial detail one morning, Digger asked Scummadore if he could ‘benjo-e’ – go to relieve himself in the nearby jungle. Scummadore had taken some delight in laughing and signalling him to carry on working. Digger had to ask again, of course, and Scummadore angrily granted the request and sent Digger on his way with a rifle-blow to his back.
Digger might have taken his time, as everyone did in that situation, but Scummadore was for none of it. He was yelling at Digger as he came back out of the jungle growth. The guard pushed a rock, about the size of a football, towards Dig
ger and signalled for him to hold it above his head. Digger was required to stand in that position in front of Scummadore, who sat himself on a tree stump and waited ready to thump Digger on the back the moment his arms tired. This was a favourite punishment of some guards. When Digger’s arms could no longer hold the stone above his head, he had to suffer a beating about the face, and then it was back to the gravedigging.
Digger dared not retaliate against any guard, though, no matter how badly he was mistreated. Those who retaliated were sent back down the line under escort, and were mercilessly beaten at each camp along the way, no matter what their condition. Many POWs died in this way.2
There was a hierarchy at the No. 2 Coolie Hospital camp, just as there was at all camps on the line, imposed by those who sat at the top of the hierarchy, the senior Japanese officers. Young Korean men were bullied and pressed into joining the Korean Prison Guard Corps. The rank of guard was below that of army private and they could never aspire to be soldiers, so all members of the IJA looked down on the Koreans. But they were still a rung higher than the POWs and the romusha.
Japanese army culture maintained discipline through informal means: the more senior meted out harsh physical punishment to those below them. The training of the Korean guards was basically three months of bullying by their Japanese masters, and they were encouraged to treat those inferior to them – the POWs – in a similar manner. Even food was allocated in accordance with the hierarchy. The higher you were, the better you ate.
But it was not all death and beatings at the gravesite. Occasionally, a small group of Japanese would march to a special timber shrine that was built right next to the gravesites. The Japanese party would then stand to attention as an officer ceremoniously placed an offering of food in the shrine. There was a short religious ceremony or incantation or prayer of some sort, and the party saluted, about turned and marched off again.