Eyewitness

by Garrie Hutchinson

  I had to move on in the morning for Mersing. I said goodbye to them all and I never saw them again.

  Horror of the Hellships

  Rohan Rivett

  Rohan Rivett was one of Australia’s great newspapermen. Born in Melbourne in 1917, Rivett was the grandson of Alfred Deakin, and was lucky enough to be taken to watch the 1930 tour of England by the Australians including Bradman, and at age 13 wrote a book about it. He studied at Oxford, but came back to Australia on the outbreak of war. He was at first unable to join up, there being limited recruiting for the A.I.F. in late 1939, and became a cadet at the Argus. He eventually enlisted in June 1940, but was lent by the Army to the Department of Information to make broadcasts.

  After Japan entered the war he volunteered to work for the Malaya Broadcasting Corporation in Singapore, and was discharged from the A.I.F. He made the broadcast on February 9th, 1942 announcing that Japan had landed in Singapore, and was eventually captured on Java in March and spent the rest of the war on the Thai–Burma Railway, mostly at the Burmese side. He wrote Behind Bamboo in Ferntree Gully, October–November 1945, in fulfilment of a promise to four friends who had died on the railway, ‘if I had the luck to come through. The book is dedicated to them and to all those fellow prisoners who rest forever in jungle graves.’

  Rivett also wrote of Behind Bamboo that:

  At various times, materials for this book have reposed in roofs of attap huts, in the bottoms of tins and bamboo containers, under the ground, in the framework of my bed and inside bandages strapped around my thighs and waist.

  After the war Rivett worked for the Argus again, before being recruited by Keith Murdoch for the Melbourne Herald. He reported the Chinese Civil War, worked in London and was appointed to edit the Adelaide evening paper the News in 1951. He was a great success. Twenty-one-year-old Rupert Murdoch inherited the paper in 1952, and worked in partnership with Rivett through the extraordinary business of being sued for criminal libel over the case of convicted murderer Rupert Max Stuart. Murdoch dismissed Rivett in 1960, unhappy with some of his decisions. He wrote for various publications including Nation Review and died suddenly in 1977, aged just 60.

  *

  And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

  Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines.

  And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

  Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell.

  —G.K. CHESTERTON, Lepanto

  We arrived at Tanjong Pryok station at dawn on 8 October 1942, and were marched to the dock across an area covered with scrap from wrecked aircraft and motor vehicles. Our first view of the vessel which was our destination was not reassuring. She was a squat, grey freighter of about 5000 tons and it was difficult to see just where the 1500 of us were to be stowed, particularly as large quantities of freight were being loaded aboard. This was Japanese supply ship No. 674, King Kong Maru.

  I finished the journey to the ship’s side barefoot, because the improvised sandals, made of leather straps and string, which were my only foot cover, had proved unequal to the strain. I had no pack for the miscellaneous canvas and other odd gear which constituted my entire possessions and, with odds and ends bound up with cord, I resembled nothing so much as a walking junk shop.

  At the foot of the gangway leading up from the wharf to the deck we were paraded and counted and then started to scramble up the narrow swinging steps. At the top, sentries herded us towards the top of the hatch where a perpendicular steel ladder gave access to one of the holds. Negotiating this with all one’s personal gear was not easy, and as usual the sentries were yelling and screaming in a high state of excitement. Peering down into the hold we were amazed to see that it was already packed with Bren-carriers. We were now driven down among these. Although the entire deck space at the bottom of the hold around the carriers was soon full, the Japanese continued to push men down until 189 of us were packed in. Prisoners had to get under and between the carriers but were not allowed to bestride them. We could not help thinking that, in the event of a sumatra, appalling carnage might ensue, for the machines were not secured in any way. We had seen enough of the storms in these waters to know that this boat would be flung about like a cork; and no-one relished the idea of having a score of steel juggernauts sliding about like live things among men so packed that there was no chance of dodging.

  In No. 2 hold, which was a good deal bigger, 744 men were crowded so that not all had sitting room and sleep was only possible lying literally one on top of the other. The remaining 567 prisoners were jammed into No. 3 hold at the other end of the vessel.

  It was nine o’clock in the morning when we clambered down into the hold. We remained there for the next 96 hours. Well before midday the heat at the bottom of the hold became almost intolerable, there being no ventilation. We soon discovered that the total issue of liquid was one and a half pints of tea per man per day. No water for drinking or washing was allowed, although we were bathed in sweat and soon indescribably dirty. Yet the Japanese on deck used to frolic and play under the hoses for hours on end through the worst hours of the day.

  Three times a day buckets containing rice and soya soup with a little radish floating in it were lowered to us. We were not particularly hungry by Batavia standards, because we still had the tinned rations from camp stores that were issued before we left the Bicycle Camp. But our thirst was intolerable and grew worse as the long hours of the day wore slowly by. We moved away from the wharf to the mouth of the harbour, but did not leave until just before dark.

  The harbour itself was strewn with shipping destroyed by bombing or sabotage. One or two boats had been turned over and now lay with their sides and keels protruding foolishly above the water. All that could be seen of several other vessels was the tops of their masts as they rested on the bottom of the harbour. When I thought of Tanjon Pryok as I had seen it at the beginning of January en route for Singapore, bristling with ships of all nations, with naval launches, submarines and flying boats arriving or departing amid the shoals of freighters and liners, it seemed as if the port itself had died. The wharves were virtually deserted, and everywhere the eye encountered only wreckage, desolation and the reminder of what had once been. It was amazing that after seven months of occupation the Japanese should have done so little to put this great port in working order again.

  My view of the harbour was obtained only by loitering on deck for a few minutes on the pretext of going to the latrine. This was the only excuse under which one could get out of the hold for a moment. The latrines consisted of three small boxes on the starboard side of the ship into which a tall man had to crawl like an animal. These had to serve the needs of the thousand prisoners in the first two holds, many of whom, in the succeeding days, developed dysentery and diarrhoea. It was not surprising that men sickened quickly in the fetid, stinking atmosphere at the bottom of the unventilated holds.

  Representations to the Japanese on behalf of the sick produced vague words but no results. During the night of 9–10 October, less than 48 hours after coming on board, an A.I.F. man died. He was the first of scores whose deaths were directly attributable to the sapping of their resistance through dysentery in the hellships, although some did not die until months later in the Burma jungle.

  Those with compasses told us that we were heading northward, and Singapore was now the goal favoured by popular rumour, which this time proved correct. After anchoring for some hours off the Rhea Archipelago on the tenth, we steamed slowly through many minefields to the examination anchorage at Keppel Harbour, where we dropped anchor towards noon on 11 October. We were all kept below until late afternoon when we were allowed on deck to gaze at the neighbouring island of Blakangmati and at the beaches where scores of Chinese volunteers had been massacred with machine-guns after the capitulation.

  There was more evidence of life in Keppel Harbour than at Tanjong Pryok, with boats, ferries and lighters ch
ugging to and fro; but to those of us who had known it in other days this harbour, too, seemed to have lost its vitality and something of its soul.

  Next day we tied up at a wharf and at noon, after many ‘tankos’, were piled on to trucks. We passed many 8th Division A.I.F. prisoners rolling oil drums along the wharves, but were not allowed to talk with them.

  As we drove around the eastern coast of the island towards Changi we saw little evidence of the wreckage which parts of the town had undergone through Japanese bombing and shell-fire. Many of the ruined buildings had been cleaned up, and men from the Middle East who had not known the city before were surprised at the fewness of visible scars. We drove along New Bridge Road and then through the heart of the city, along Victoria Road, past Kalang airport and so northwards up the east coast of the island towards Changi.

  A number of the shops were still shuttered and closed, but most were open, although business seemed very poor, which suggested that most of them had little to sell. Groups of Japanese soldiers wandering round the streets were the only new feature, but the crowds seemed smaller, quieter and more idle. Once again, as in Batavia, one felt as if a blight were hanging over the city. One could understand how London must have seemed to Pepys and his contemporaries during the Great Plague.

  I suppose that superficially there was still something left of the colour and bustle that had made cosmopolitan Singapore, with all its ugliness and vice, so pulsatingly alive. But an indefinable shadow seemed to lurk over the city even in the more crowded thoroughfares. There was brought home to those of us who had lived there before a feeling as if a dead hand had been laid on the very throat of the city. We were to see more of this in other cities before long.

  *

  We stopped on the bare wind-swept plateau which surrounds the grim stone walls of Singapore jail at Changi. All men were ordered out of the trucks and lined up for a tanko. Pessimists were already offering ten to one that the jail was our destination, when the order came to climb aboard again, and the trucks proceeded through the Chang barracks to the extreme north-eastern tip of the island where we stopped below the peace-time barracks of the Gordon Highlanders.

  Here we spent the next day and the following morning, renewing acquaintanceships with thousands of members of the 8th Division and of British units who were quartered around us. All the officers in the Java party were the guests of British messes.

  At Changi we found a far greater degree of freedom and comfort than we had ever known in Batavia. Japanese sentries seldom appeared inside the large area in which the prisoners were confined. Sikh guards were seen occasionally, and movement from section to section of the area was restricted, but after the incessant persecution of Batavia, Changi appeared to us like a P.O.W. heaven.

  The feeling was strengthened when we discovered that a Red Cross ship had arrived a few days before with 1700 tons of supplies for the prisoners. We sampled some of this at mess and an issue of foodstuffs was made to us before we left on the morning of 14 October. The most ragged of us also received khaki shirts and shorts from the British Q store which had been left entirely under British control by the Japanese.

  After the hold of King Kong Maru, these hours in Changi were like a holiday, and we were bitterly disappointed when we learned that our stay was to be so brief.

  The Australian officers were visited by Colonel ‘Black Jack’ Galleghan, A.I.F. C.O. in Changi, who told us that 8th Division morale had never been higher, and that the boys were ready to play their part as soon as the British were ready to retake Malaya. It was cheering, although some of us felt that the end was still a long way off.

  In Changi, in accordance with British Army tradition, a very determined attempt had been made to maintain discipline and morale with a strict observance of military custom. Saluting was still the order of the day, both between officers and men and among officers themselves. Some of the Americans from Java did not take kindly to this state of affairs, and this led to a famous episode. A very senior British colonel was walking down the road when he passed a man who, like most of us from Java, was dressed in very ragged and nondescript fashion and carried no insignia of rank, these having been removed in Batavia by order of the Japanese. The pukka colonel barked gruffly: ‘Well, my man! Don’t you know that you should salute?’ The American ensign thus addressed stared at the glowering officer in bewilderment. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ thundered the Britisher. ‘I’m Deputy Acting — — of Malaya Command.’ ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the Yank imperturbably, ‘I’m Ensign H —, Acting Admiral for the American Pacific Fleet, Changi area.’ Legend does not disclose the sequel, but I can vouch for the truth of the story.

  On another occasion, some Americans in a mess became increasingly irritated to hear two British officers lauding General Rommel. ‘After the show he’s put up, I hope to goodness he comes through alive,’ said one. ‘We can’t afford to lose a military genius like that. After the war …’ ‘After the war,’ interrupted one American drily, ‘I suppose you’ll take him to England for stud purposes.’

  On the morning before we left, we were all issued with a card on which we could write a 25-word message home. This lifted a great weight from the minds of many, for we were told that the cards would go home immediately. So we went down to the harbour again more cheerfully than might have been expected. Alas for our hopes; the letters did not reach Australia until September 1943 – eleven months later.

  As our trucks sped through the Changi area, scores of slouch-hatted Australians came out of their tents to wave to us. We cheered them and waved back; but a minute later, on our left, we passed a grim reminder of the stern realities we were facing. This was the cemetery where all those who had died in Changi since the capitulation lay buried. Many of these graves belonged to men who had been mortally wounded in action, but one couldn’t help wondering how many of these dead might have been saved if we had not been under the Japanese.

  As we passed the Kalang airport, Singapore’s civil aerodrome, from which a handful of Buffalos had sought to defend the city until one by one they were eliminated by the enemy’s overwhelming numerical superiority, we noticed that the Japanese had laid down two broad asphalt landing strips across the field. I remark on it because it was the only piece of Japanese military work which we saw in three and a half years of captivity which really looked a good job.

  At the docks the Japanese sentries were in a particularly vicious and truculent frame of mind and a number of men were bashed as we were herded on board Mayebassi Maru, Japanese supply ship No. 722. Our party of 1500 had now been augmented by the 200 men who had left Batavia five days ahead of us and also by some Dutch. We left a handful of the sickest men in the P.O.W. hospital at Changi. In all, 1799 prisoners were crammed into two holds forward and one aft on Mayebassi Maru.

  We had imagined that nothing could be worse than conditions on the trip up to Singapore; but two minutes on the Mayebassi convinced us that we had been wrong. As I peered over the shoulders of those in front of me at the edge of the first hatch, I saw that two upper tiers in this hold were already occupied by Japanese troops. From the lower of these a forty-foot ladder descended to the very bowels of the vessel, where the floor space was already half covered by piles of Japanese gear, boxes, bed-rolls and other miscellaneous articles, including a tractor. The actual area of the hold was 75 feet by 48, and into this 650 prisoners were now driven.

  From the bottom of this pit the patch of daylight at the top of the hatch seemed as remote as the clouds from the depths of the Grand Canyon, and it was obvious that nobody would be able to lie down in comfort. A group of us climbed on top of the highest pile of gear, perhaps 20 feet above the bottom of the hold, and there we perched precariously in the pious hope that we were at least a little nearer to fresh air.

  No written words could convey the depression which seemed to settle on us in the depths of that pit. We did not know how many days lay ahead of us, and previous experience had taught us that we should be confined her
e until the end of the trip, however long that lasted. Suddenly, a lad from Wagga, Micky Cavanagh, called out in a ringing voice, ‘Don’t let them get you down, chaps. We can take it! Are we down-hearted?’ The Japanese, crowded along the rail of the tiers above, like visitors at a zoo peering down into the animals’ pit, must have been amazed at the vigour of our response. The spell had been broken. The boys were not going to be licked, however grim things might become.

  For the next 54 hours we lay sweltering in this unforgettable hole without a breath of fresh air. The ship lay stationary in Keppel Harbour so that the canvas vent in the prevailing dead calm brought no air to us in the depths. What little air filtered in at the top of the hold was drawn on first by the 200 Japanese quartered in relative comfort above us. We had thought the King Kong Maru an inferno. We realised now that it had been only one of the outer compartments of the Jap P.O.W. hell. Now we were in the central torture chamber – the grill de luxe.

  Within an hour most of us had stripped to the skin, but even so the perspiration rolled down us in streams, and on the precious occasions when we got half a pint of tea or hot water to drink, it seemed to escape through our pores within three minutes. For acute and sustained physical discomfort, the holds of Mayebassi Maru beat even Serang to a frazzle.

  At night some of the men simply lay on top of each other. Those of us who were on top of the gear tried to sleep with our heads perhaps three feet above our feet dangling below. My head and back were on a sloping roll of coir matting while my calves and feet tried to retain a precarious purchase on the bonnet of a small tractor feet below. Any man who got two hours of sleep in the twenty-four was doing very well.