They learned that everything must be hidden from theNips. When soldiers searched the premises eggs went underthe house, oil went to the latrines, sugar went into the drain.
They learned to bow politely to Japanese officers; whatthey did behind their baclb I shall ignore.
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They learned to be generous, they shared everything, eventhe unsharable. They were helpful, even to jobs beyond theirstrength. They were sympathetic, their faces of sorrow whenthey saw us in trouble were almost unbearable. They werecheerful, resourceful, brave, and they did not complain.
Those children were: Fiona and Fenella, Anne, Rosemary,Danis and Dandi, Edith and Eddie, Yin Shing, Susan, Alastair,Bryan, Jan, Isabelle, John and Dickie, Carol and Michael,Sheena and Ranald, David and Derek, Jimmy, Vicki andTherese, John and Margaret, Peter and Frankie, Tony, Miteyand Kusha, Julie, and George — children of captivity.
Now camp work grew heavier, mothers grew more wornand nervous, and children grew wilder, running in packs likewild animals. As nervous pressure on the mothers increased,physical strength with which to meet it decreased.
We talked to Mother Aubon of the Enghsh Sisters’ bar-rack, of our worries. She listened sympathetically, and re-versed her former decision that she could not spare a Sister toteach the younger children. She reorganized the communitywork program of the Sisters so that Sister Frances Mary andSister Clitus from Sandakan convent, who were trained teach-ers, should join Sister Dominica with the medium-sized chil-dren, of which George was one, for two hours of schoolingevery morning.
I didn’t care if George learned anything or not, but theidea that he would be watched over for a short time daily bythe Sisters, and that for part of the time while I was awayworking he would be out of trouble, gave me new hope.
There were a few frayed-out school readers in camp thatthe older children had brought in. These we now attemptedto duphcate on scraps of paper, with pencils. We also madealphabet sheets, and Sister Frances Mary made wooden squareswith letters, to teach the children their letters. Pencils andpapers were both contraband in Japanese eyes, consequently
most of them had been confiscated, and they were now scarceand precious. However, the children finally collected a pen-cil each, and chewed the ends and broke the points with thesame agility as do children outside prison camps.
School was held in one end of the chapel barrack, and itwas no more popular with our children in camp than is schoolgenerally. George wept each morning when it was time togo, because he said he didn’t want to learn. Sister FrancesMary agreed that he didn’t, and nearly wept too. She saidhe didn’t like to concentrate. But I remembered that I didn’tat his age, and my brother didn’t, so I looked it up inFirst Five Years of Life, which volume was confiscated re-peatedly by the Japanese — and recaptured as often by me,by my telling the Japanese that the book was necessary to thewelfare of the camp children. I looked up “concentration”in the book, and ceased worrying, for apparently normalchildren didn’t like to concentrate.
In spite of George’s effort to the contrary he actuallylearned to read a little, while m camp, sounding the wordstearfully, as he bent over his ragged, grubby, homemadereader.
When the Sisters’ efforts to teach the children werebrought to Colonel Suga’s attention by Dorie and SisterDominica, he was interested and pleased; it aU fitted in withhis idea of our ideal concentration camp. He sent a black-board and chalk for the teachers, and allowed small slates andpencils to be purchased for the children, through the office.
In time the children were allowed out of the camp fora weekly walk, up the road to the top office and back. Theteaching Sisters took them, and on no account was a motheror secular woman allowed to go. We had too much interestin the men. Occasionally Colonel Suga distributed sweets orbiscuits from the veranda of his office to the children, andalways one biscuit at least came home to Mother.
Shortly after school commenced for George and his gang.
Companion Irene, a Church of England teaching companionfor the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel, took overthe six smallest children for two hours of organized play, theplay equipment being camp mud, mud, and mud.
Those women who taught our children worked hard andgrew worn, and tired, for them, and their faces became drawnand thin, but never did they cease to smile, and to be patientand kind. They followed the words of Christ, and suflFeredlittle children to come unto them.
It had been raining for three days and nights, and our campwas a muddy and depressing sight this Sunday morning. Thechildren were cross, and the mothers were cross, and thesentries were cross, and the sugar ration was late, and the ricegruel was burned.
But the rain had stopped at last, and the children hadescaped eagerly from inside their prison barrack. The com-pound was full of half-clothed children wading in lakes ofdirty water, splashing each other, and throwing mud.
Apart from the general crowd stood two little girls and onesmall boy, with their faces pressed against the barbed wire,just inside the gate by the sentry box, looking hopefully downthe road.
The girls had worn dollies tied across their breasts, afterthe fashion of Malay mothers and babies. Their dresses andthe pants of the little boy (who had only pants) were wornand faded, and they had no shoes, but the faces of aU threewere bright with excitement.
For approaching the camp they saw a large gray motor carwith a red flag on it. All motor cars were a welcome excite-ment to them, but this special large gray one with the redflag on it was, in the children’s mind, the king of all motorcars — for it carried the Fling of the Camp — Colonel Suga —and biscuits!
The three children, Anne, Rosemary, and Jimmy, were
Children of Captivity 185
panting with hope as they watched the car approach. Slowlyit entered the camp compound, stopped by the road, and therotund Colonel got out and disappeared into the barrack ofthe Pontianak Sisters.
The three children raced over to the parked car, where theNipponese chaujffeur now sat alone. With an ingratiating lookat him, they quickly iosinuated themselves inside the opencar door, and seated themselves on the padded seat. Thechauffeur grinned. It was common knowledge that althoughthe adult prisoners were kept in their place, the childrencould get around the Colonel.
Once inside the car and seated in satisfying pomp the girlsnursed their babies, while they joined with Jimmy in playingthe popular game of “Going to see Colonel Suga.” This gameconsisted of Jimmy’s pretending to be Colonel Suga, and pre-tending to distribute Suga biscuits, sweeties, and fruit.
The game was progressing favorably when the Colonelhimself returned unexpectedly to the car. The girls wereslightly, very slightly, embarrassed, but not Jimmy.
“I was just pretending to be you. Colonel Suga,” Jimmysmiled, “and I was doing what I thought you’d do, and I wasgiving me and the girls biscuits, and taking us for a nicedrive.” Jimmy made this diplomatic explanation in the dis-arming voice of seven years old.
The Colonel smiled, and looked dioughtfuUy at the ex-pectant children. Then he saw his duty, and he did it.
“You come with me for a drive, and then to my home forbreakfast,” he said chivalrously. The children beamed onhim happily and without surprise; the Colonel had lived up tohis reputation.
The car started, the sentry saluted, and in another momentthey were out on the open road, breathing free air.
The children settled back in delight. They knew that thisgreat event would swiftly be broadcast all about camp, andbefore their return they would be celebrities.
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As the car rushed along towards Kuching it was unneces-sary for the Colonel to talk, as his guests entertained them-selves. Every green field and flaming canna, every house andbuilding, every motor and rickshaw, every cow and bullock,dog and cat, every bird in the sky, was commented upon. Tothe prison-bred children the trip was a series of miracles, cul-minating in the final perfect miracle of arrival at the Colo-nel’s house in Kuching.<
br />
Here the children disembarked confidently, and entered thelow tropical bungalow.
Like a good soldier, the Colonel’s first thought was fortheir stomachs. He had his orderly set before them a feast:biscuits, cakes, rambutan, cups of ihilk with sugar, and cupsof cocoa with a great deal of sugar. And when the milk andcocoa were finished the cups were refilled with coffee, sweet-ened again with more sugar. And when the coffee was fin-ished, the sugar could still be scraped out of the bottom ofthe cups. This sufficiency of sugar was to the small captivesthe test of a perfect meal.
When they had eaten all that they could hold, and that wasa lot, and had fed fruit to the Colonel’s pet monkey, andlooked at the picture magazine, the Nippon Times, and ex-amined the Colonel’s pictures and trophies, which Jimmyparticularly admired, they went outside in the garden.
Here Rosemary and Aime went mad with joy. Their de-light in seeing roses, and orchids, and congea, and daisies, andrhododendron, and Ixora, and caima, and balsam again, aftera year and a half in the dusty and beautyless surroundings ofprison camp, was complete. Jimmy pulled off an occasionalmarigold head, but his interest was centered in an arguspheasant feather he saw on the Colonel’s veranda.
Seeing the girls’ joy at the flowers. Colonel Suga cut anarmful for them to carry back to camp. Then with their armsfull of neat packets containing more cakes and rambutan, afew tactful copies of the Nippon Times, for propaganda pur-
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poses, the argus pheasant feather, a packet of real toilet paper,and the flowers, the children piled noisily into the gray carwith the red flag, and started home again.
The journey back was all too short, as the sights of Ku-ching were again absorbed by the enraptured eyes of the ex-cited children. All too soon the barbed-wire barricades of thecamp appeared, the sentry saluted, and the car stopped outsidethe gate. The children jumped out and waved a warm good-bye to the Colonel.
The treat was over, but there was still great satisfactionahead, for the thrilling story of “What I did at ColonelSuga’s House” would be told and retold to the rest of thecamp children for many days to come.
Meanwhile the Colonel himself must have smiled with sat-isfaction. It is not often that a military man achieves a blood-less victory.
The camp water supply was sometimes cut off. At suchtimes it was necessary for us to go to a pond a mile away forbathing and washing, and to carry water home in emptygasoline tins for camp use. Mothers and Sisters found thejourney inconvenient, but the children enjoyed the sport.
One night I started a bedtime serial for the children. Ididn’t know it was a serial, or for the children, when I startedit; I thought it was one short story for George alone, quietlytold, to put him to sleep.
Usually at twilight George and I retired inside our well-patched mosquito net to bed. We listened to the childrensinging, and then I told him stories for a few minutes, andthen he went to sleep. KBs favorites were: the story of Daddyshooting the elephant, of Daddy knifing the python, of Daddyshooting the deer, of Mummy shooting the crocodile, ofMummy taming the apes, and so on. With repetition the ele-phants and pythons and deer and crocodiles and apes per-haps multiplied, and their measurements perhaps extended.
Children of Captivity 189
and their strength and passion perhaps increased. I won’t saythey didn’t! We strive to please!
And we pleased. Soon I found that eager small faces werebeing held quietly and breathlessly to our mosquito net, smallnoses were rubbing against its grime, small ears were beingpatiently strained to listen, small voices were asking anxiously,if I hesitated while adding feet to the python, length to thecrocodile, or strength to the ape, “And then what? Tell usthen what? What happened then?”
I couldn’t say “Go away, this is only for George!” whenthis was aU done so delicately on their part. No noises, norude arrangements beforehand, no asking to come inside thenet, no asking anything — except just to hear! Just small whiteshapes creeping up from the barrack, and standing patiently,anxiously, pantingly, waiting to learn if it was one elephant,or ten, which that intrepid, magnificent, daring, dauntless,fearless and fine Big Game Hunter, “Keith of Borneo,” hadjust shot that night!
So “Keith of Borneo” had to live up to his audience. I neverdid enjoy letting fact bind my fancy, and now, with mychosen clientele, we cut loose from all truth.
There were we, surrounded by barbed wire, held captivesby the Japs, with four feet by six to live in. But we traveledthe jungles through, we journeyed by air and by sea, we con-quered the infinite spaces, we wrestled the bloodiest beasts,we slew the blackest villains, we married the blondest brides— and for that time in the dusk and gloaming of prison, wewent free.
After we had made the jungles safe for the tiniest toddler,we turned to Jack the Giant Killer.
“. . . Just a small fellow like Vicki there, he was, andbrave like Vicki, too. With blond hair, like Vicki’s. NowJack was very clever, and farseeing, like John, I think . . .And, say, when Jack shinnied up that beanstalk — no, I thinkit was a very tall coconut palm like the one that grows outside
190 Three Came Home
our camp — well, when old Jack shinnied up that coconutpalm, and got to the top, he found — Now what do you thinkhe found, Therese?”
Therese, who has seen her father beaten up, in prison camp:“He found a gun to shoot all the Japs with!”
“No, he found a road that led to a house. And in the househe found a very big meal laid out for him on the table. Now,what do you think he found on that table to eat, children?”
Margaret, who is nine, and remembers home: “He foundchocolate cake and strawberry ice cream.”
George, who knows only captivity, and to whom theheight of luxury is . . . “He found an egg! ”
Thus began the serial. . . .
For months we lived with Jack the Giant Killer, who slewgiants, killed Japs, came in an airplane and dropped parachuteswith sweets in Kuching camp, put his grandmother throughcollege, married and had many progeny, and in time becamea very good friend of the brother of the slain giant, who wasa good giant, and whose name was . . .
It was simple to run a serial, for the children were thor-oughly oriented before the story began. Better oriented thanI, who couldn’t always remember what I had told. So wealways started the story thus:
“Now, children, who remembers what happened lastnight.?” And apparendy I was the only one who didn’t re-member.
But none of this put anybody to sleep, including me.
Jack girdled the world from Holland to visit Ther^e andVicki, to England for Susan and John, to China for Edithand Eddie, and home to America for George. Jack girdledthe world; we went with him in spirit, but meanwhile ourbodies grew thinner, weaker, more tired. And in time, then,for me even to unroE a serial took too much energy atnight.
So I put Jack to bed early one evening, surrounded by hisfriends, his giants, his Kuching meals, his Borneo jungle pets,
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his war bride and his offspring, his airplane, his ox and ass anddog and cat. I put him to bed — and he never got up again.Said Vicki “But what happened? What happened then?”
I: “Nothing happened. He just went to bed. He’s tired andhe’s staying there, that’s all. Tliat’s the end.”
Our barrack was regarded by nonresidents as a dirty hole,a stinkhole, a pesthole, a hellhole. It was Hades let loose on arainy day. It was the final crash of a brass band throughoutfeeding hours. It smelled of kids, pots, and wee-wee. Thenoise started at 6 a.m. and continued until 6 a.m.
But there was one hour after supper at night when thetype of noise changed. The children were all in bed then, themothers were too, being too exhausted for anything else.Then took place that sudden transformation to which chil-dren are subject when the dusk falls: thirty-four little devilsbecome thirty-four little angels. They smell good, they speaksweetly, they squeeze your hand, they even want to kiss you— and they sing! Trage
dy came and went in our camp, butwe never missed a night of singing.
“Kiss Me Good Night, Sergeant Major”; “Good Night,Daddy and Jim”; “Christopher Robin Is Saying His Pray-ers”; “I Think When I Hear That Sweet Story of Old”;“One Finger, One Thumb, One Arm, One Leg”; “Hark, theHerald Angels Sing.” And always without fail, to end upwith, in bed: “God save our gracious King . . . God savethe King.”
I can never forget the sound of those children’s voices,singing — with nothing to sing for. If their song could havebeen broadcast to the outside world I think that hearts wouldhave broken. I have stood outside our barrack at night, listen-ing, and weeping with pride and love and sorrow for thoseour children.
I said to begin with that we brought them aU through alive.But perhaps they brought us through alive.
The Enemy
Nekata and Kubu^ the chief inquisitors, accompanied by fivemihtary pohce officers and five guards, arrived in camp at8.30 one morning and ordered everyone to leave the bar-racks and remain outside. Armed guards were then stationedabout us, while the officers entered the barracks to search.Fortunately they started at the end barrack from mine,searched thoroughly in the first two, less so in the third, andwere as exhausted as we were by the time they had reachedthe fourth barrack, in which I lived. Usually searchers paidparticular attention to my belongings, searching eagerly fordiaries; today they confiscated my old bankbooks and weresatisfied.
In the middle of it all Colonel Suga and two cars with visit-ing personages arrived. Apparently Colonel Suga did notknow about the search, which was being conducted by Ne-kata, and he had brought the personages to see his Ideal In-ternment Camp, Lo, there were the Happy, Cheerful In-ternees outside rmder a clump of rubber trees, hemmed inby sentries with guns, the daily work of the camp suspendedand the kitchen empty, while the military police probed ourpersonal luggage. Suga gave us one look, then walked hastilyaway towards the chapel barrack, beckoning the personagesto follow.
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