by Peter Brune
On 16 September 1942, Captain Reg Newton was finally allowed to visit Sergeant Ken Bell and Lieutenant Ken Archer was permitted to see Van Renan and Harvey. The condemned sensed their fate. Goodbyes were said, and Newton promised that last messages would be given to next of kin. When the eight exhausted, food-deprived and shackled prisoners were put in the back of a truck, without their gear which was left lying near the vehicle, and with picks and shovels ominously stored in the back, all ranks in Pudu gathered to see them off. Ken Harrison would later record his last farewell to his 4th Anti-Tank Regiment mate:
For a few long minutes we stood staring at the eight bound men. Twice I tried to call to Ken Bell, ‘See you in Singapore, Ken,’ and twice I got as far as ‘See—’ and I could not go on. We smiled, but our smiles were strained, and as the big gates swung open and the truck jerked forward, there was little hope in our hearts.42
The prisoners were driven through the streets of Kuala Lumpur to the Cherus Road Cemetery where they were made to dig their own graves and shot.
Our Pudu Prison story is crucial to the 8th Division prisoner of war journey to the Thai–Burma Railway, because it is a perfect example of how some of its leaders—and other ranks—were conditioned, prepared, or indeed shaped for leadership in an environment that would prove their ultimate and most exacting test of survival. When writing a part of the 2/19th Unit History, Captain Reg Newton actually spelt out his Pudu lessons. The Japanese, he realistically observed, were the victors, and as such, the Australians would be forced to make the best of food shortages, deprivation and cruelty. The pertinent question was how to beat the system, how to make good the lack of food and medicines and above all, how to handle ‘the Jap’:
. . . for at no time did they tell the truth and deliberately set out to belittle and cloud any issue . . . If you were told to move at a certain time you could rest assured that there would be delays. If you were told you would go by truck the chances were you would walk. If you were given permission to buy from canteens or on work parties you could be sure that you would lose something.43
But ‘Roaring Reggie’s’ most valuable lessons concerned what we now call ‘man management’. The Japanese were respectful of authority: they admired officers who ran a tight command; who interposed themselves between a mere private and his Japanese or later, Korean aggressor. Because saluting, bowing or any other mark of respect was demanded in their army—at the cost of severe corporal punishment when it was lacking—Newton quickly realised that the Japanese mind liked nothing better than an ‘apparent’ European display of respect; and that, from an Australian perspective, officers had the responsibility to work for the greater good of those under their command. ‘This method of handling the Japanese was easy to use when it meant easing any pressures to save somebody or obtain an advantage.’44 Newton was, of course, not the only leader to have learnt these lessons. Prior to his arrival in Changi an Australian officer named Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop had learnt precisely the same lessons in Java.
We now return to the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 and enter Changi. It, too, would produce some outstanding leaders, but its unique POW environment would have some dire consequences for many future Thai–Burma Railway prisoners. In terms of understanding the new master, Changi was a false world.
24
LIGHT OF THE SOUTH
When hostilities ceased at 8.30 pm (British time) on Sunday 15 February 1942, 50 000 Commonwealth troops laid down their arms on Singapore Island. And of that number 14 972 were Australians. Within a few short weeks, the aggregate of Australian captives grew: Java 2736, Timor 1137, Ambon 1075 and New Britain 1049.1 Singapore had been the commercial crossroads to the British Far Eastern Empire. Changi, situated on the eastern side of the Island on a peninsula of the same name, would become a virtual marshalling yard for the eventual collection of most British Commonwealth POWs, and then the distribution point for slave labour across much of the newly won Japanese Empire.
On 16 February, the 8th Division troops were ordered to stockpile their arms in Tanglin Square. The Australian Official Historian has stated that the Japanese sent ‘only picquets’ into the city that day, and those Japanese troops were ‘quite friendly, refrained from looting, gave cigarettes to their prisoners, and appeared to be under perfect control’.2 That temporary vacuum of power in Singapore Town, from the time of the capitulation until the arrival of substantial numbers of Japanese on Tuesday 17 February, is critical to any real understanding of Changi Prison. While only limited numbers of Japanese entered Singapore Town, and the vanquished congregated ready for captivity, extensive numbers of the local civilian and military population were busily engaged in looting Singapore and the Island itself. Some of this was on an individual basis, but much of it was highly organised and on a very large scale. The end result was the formation—and impressive longevity—of a thriving black market both in Singapore and in Changi. The desire to participate in that market would influence the conduct of very many prisoners of war. Further, not much time would pass before the Japanese became significant participants.
In terms of its physical appearance and the manner of its administration, Changi was not an orthodox prison. There were no towers manned by armed guards, no walls illuminated by searchlights and three of its boundaries were defined by the coastline. Further, in sharp contrast to such prisons as Pudu, there was not the ever present threat of beatings, humiliation nor any other immediate or long-term Japanese presence within its extensive perimeter.
Changi had been the main peacetime base for the British Army, and contained some seven different camps in an area of about 25 square kilometres. Included in its infrastructure were ‘transport lines . . . workshops, various administrative buildings and parade grounds, all types of playing fields, theatres, social halls, community centres, and the many bungalows for the married quarters of various ranks’.3 Changi’s administration would also prove highly irregular. After the capitulation, both the conquerors and the conquered knew that escape was unlikely. The Japanese, therefore, did not segregate the prisoners’ officers from their men but placed responsibility for the administration in their hands. The prison was to survive on its own resources for a few days and then be provided with only the most basic of supplies. Further, the Japanese warned that by April it was to be self-sufficient other than for rice supply.
To administer Changi, General Percival retained his four principal subordinate commanders: General Heath (III Indian Corps); Major-General Key (11th Indian Division); Major-General Beckwith-Smith (18th Division); and he promoted Brigadier Callaghan (CO of the 8th Division Artillery) to major-general to command the AIF in Major-General Gordon Bennett’s absence. Changi was then subdivided into five basic areas to house the above commands: Southern Area (the former Singapore Fortress troops); an 18th British Division Area; an Indian Corps Area; the Australian area was Selarang Barracks; and the nearby and centrally positioned Roberts Barracks would soon became a combined hospital.
Percival’s biographer has recorded that once in Changi, the General ‘. . . could be seen sitting, head in hands, outside the married quarter he now shared with seven brigadiers, a colonel, his ADC, cook sergeant and batman’.4 Percival was thus a lonely, forlorn figure who ‘discussed his personal feelings with few’, and spent a number of his first days ‘walking around the extensive compound, ruminating on the reverse and what might have been . . .’5 Such a disposition—an understandable one—permeated throughout the prison. And one of its chief outcomes was an attempt by senior command to deal with apathy, low morale and initial idleness. From a senior command perspective, the answer was simple: retain a high degree of military discipline. The AIF command embraced this idea with some relish.
Captain Rowley Richards, RMO, 2/15th Field Regiment:
The next day [17 February 1942], we watched one of the British units passing by. There were numerous trucks bulging with officers’ mess equipment: cane chairs, typewriters and no doubt a full set of cut glass, silver
candlesticks, china and cutlery. Soon after, Lieutenant Theo Walker, the intelligence officer, brought instructions from Divisional Headquarters [8th Division] that we were to leave for Changi . . . Furthermore, all food and medical supplies were to be left behind, to be transported at a later date; no vehicles other than water carts were to be taken; and each man was only to bring whatever personal belongings he could carry on his own back during the long march ahead.6
Understandably, Richards’s CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Wright, fuming over ‘the blatant arrogance of the Brits’,7 decided to ignore the order and pack trucks with supplies and drive them to Changi. The 2/15th Field Regiment left Tanglin with four supply trucks, a van loaded with food, three water carts and with Richards driving a truck full of medical supplies. Lieutenant-Colonel Wright, leading his troops, walked to Changi. Upon arrival at Birdwood Camp (located quite near Selarang Barracks), an ‘incensed’ 8th Division major abused Lieutenant-Colonel Wright for disobeying divisional orders, and did so in front of Wright’s gunners. The supplies were handed over—other than a cache of rations and medical equipment which were hidden in a false wall and were to later prove invaluable. As our story unfolds, there will be no shortage of Australian officers—some of whom had failed in battle—who assumed privileges in Changi. Private Gus Halloran, 2/19th Battalion:
We weren’t madly enthusiastic [about them] . . . they wanted to re-establish a military discipline that reflected on them, and everyone said, ‘Well you bastards made a mess of this!’ . . . we were down on the beach and we lit a fire . . . and a crowd of people from Division came up . . . ‘Put it out! We’re not going to have that sort of conduct here!’ We thought, ‘Oh well they’re a pack of bloody stuffed shirts.’ We were going to cook something I think . . . we thought, ‘Well this is typical of the sort of senior officers you have.’8
Gunner Richard Haynes, 2/10th Field Regiment, noted the behaviour of officers in a nearby infantry unit:
It would seem that the two predominant things on the agenda of the indictment . . . were firstly . . . their commandeering of so great a portion of their allowed space, to be used as Mess and Quarters, that overcrowding and congestion in the ORs Lines became unbelievable. Daily, men who had spent the night virtually in the arms of their neighbours, staggered to the upper floor with wood and water for their unloved commanders. There they were greeted with the obvious fact that almost the entire floor was that untouchable of all the Holies . . . ‘The Officers’ Mess’. The second . . . was . . . without precedent in the Australian Lines. Whereas all other units officers were content with their portion of rations allotted by a W.O. Q.M., [these officers] apparently were not, and they had first choice of the particularly lousy rubbish that the I.J.A. was disposing of.9
As late as October 1942, Russell Braddon—newly arrived from a very different prison, Pudu—observed that, ‘Changi was phoney not because of the mass of men in it but because of the official attitude behind its administration’.10 He noted the preferential clothing allotment to divisional officers so they might keep up appearances; the finding of menial and at times unnecessary and repetitious jobs merely designed to keep the men occupied; and, critically, that many officers ate in separate messes, kept poultry, and had numerous privileges not seen by the other ranks. For a soldier just arrived from Pudu, this unreal and privileged atmosphere did not sit well. The issue is that Changi was indeed an unreal world. And those most affected by that artificial environment were some officers who were to fail dismally on the Thai–Burma Railway. Perhaps Private Gus Halloran, 2/19th Battalion, best sums up a not uncommon POW Changi experience:
The blokes in Changi [who were there permanently], they’ve always been sorry for themselves; you always get this frightful business about ‘they were in Changi’. Changi I always thought was . . . a rest camp . . . you weren’t doing anything serious or drastic . . . you were probably not eating terribly well, but you were not required to do anything extraordinarily energetic, at least not in the time I was there . . . we were there for about three weeks before we went to Singapore [on work parties], and we were there again when we came back . . . prior to going to Thailand. Our blokes used to maintain their interest, they used to tell lies to one another, I don’t think they dwelled on the war—we’d been surrendered, as far as we were concerned we hadn’t put our hands up, and we were proud of that . . . we believed that a decent fight could have been made of it, and hadn’t been. So we felt really frustrated by that.11
The above described attitude to Changi and its administration shouldn’t be interpreted as purely Australian. In his book, Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, R. P. W. Havers cites a number of British officer examples concerning the very same ‘affliction’. He notes one Changi British sergeant claiming that the Brigadier’s house and accompanying officers’ quarters were out of bounds because ‘They didn’t want us to see their suckling pigs.’ Further, Havers cites examples of ‘our own officers [making] things worse than the Japs’, and wrote that soldiers were required to ‘pick up leaves from one of Changi’s extensive lawn areas’.12
While British and Australian troops were experiencing their first days in captivity small numbers of soldiers were still working in Singapore Town. Until the Japanese could arrive in sufficient numbers and take over the complete administration, elements of the Australian Provosts remained at their posts. Captain Alf Menz led them. Menz’s diary:
16 February:
I was instructed by H.Q. A.I.F. that we were to retain our arms & maintain control until the Japs took over, we were the only controlling body at the time.
Busy all day collecting stragglers & dispatching to Tanglin Bks the assembly area for the A.I.F.
17 February:
Another busy day, stragglers still coming in but we are getting short of transport & petrol now, as Japs are taking what they want. We had to toss our pistols in today and it hurt, we have been so busy that we have not appreciated to the full the fact that we had capitulated but losing our arms brought it home to us, we feel naked.
18 February:
I have managed to retain my little truck & have done quite a few trips around town & to Tanglin with a few stragglers, nearly all drunk. I don’t think I left them in any doubt as to what I thought of them. We all assembled at Newton Circus on Bukit Timah road at about 2.30 pm preparatory to marching the 16 miles to Changi to the P.O.W. Camp. We had to carry all our own gear, consequently only necessities were taken, they got heavy enough. A weary march, stopping & starting all along the way, arrived about 3 am.13
This book began with the AIF’s 4th Reserve Motor Transport Company’s Driver Joe Nimbs’s account of the fall of Singapore, while serving as an ambulance driver based at St Andrew’s Cathedral. After the capitulation he too remained on duty for about five days:
We have had to do a lot of dirty jobs but cleaning out the morgue is the worst stinking job we have been allotted, it was chock-a-block full of bodies the dead of many nationalities. Some have been here for some time and are at various stages of decomposing all of them civilians. Many have been stripped of clothing. Most have died of wounds. The stench is overpowering. Some of the troops are sick and vomiting. It takes a lot to bring ambulance personnel to this. We will be bloody glad to get away from this lot . . .
Most of the shops have been flattened. All have been stripped by looters.14
Particularly significant is Nimbs’s description of corpses being stripped of clothing. Trade in clothing would become a thriving Singapore and Changi business. Nimbs:
Having heard the Japs didn’t search the main body of the troops when they went to Changi we [Nimbs and a mate] decided to load some pretty risky gear, a lot of watches, cameras, binoculars, and other valuables had been wrapped in torn up ground sheets and buried around the cathedral. As it now seems possible we might get them out to Changi they are being retrieved. This morning we loaded the rickshaw with all sorts of gear, a lot of which had no chance of getting past a Jap search, but we decide
d to take the risk. The only way we could hide the gear in the rickshaw was to put it under our ground sheet and army packs. Not much of a smother but that’s all we had.15
For good measure, Nimbs sewed two watches in his singlet by lifting the bottom of it to sew a pocket. He also took his diary. Taking turns to pull the rickshaw along with his mate, Nimbs had an uninterrupted ‘ride’ to the corner of Changi and Tampines Roads:
Suddenly there is silence. A road block came into view. We could see the armed Japs who are manning it. We pulled into some sort of Army Unit as we got closer. We could see the road block consisted of a barb wire fence on both sides of Changi Road with a chain across the centre strung between two posts. Several huts with attap roofs are nearby, a long table and some cooking gear under one of them. Many bicycles are about the quarters . . .
As far as we could see there were about twenty Japanese guards at the road-block. One of the Jap guards opened the road-block by pulling the chain to one side. We walked through. Will we be searched? I was wondering if I should have brought notes that I had written. My friend was pulling the rickshaw. One of the guards seemed amused; he said to him in fair English, ‘You are now a Chinaman.’ Unbelievable they didn’t even stop our party.