PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 305, 27 April 1945, Page 7

PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE

Back in New Zealand After Three Years In Captivity

RESSED in an odd assortment of garments -the best they could muster after three years in a Japanese concentration camp — a small party of civilians, including seven young children, arrived in Wellington recently. During those three years they had. lived on fare that the poorest of coolies would scorn, and now will begin the process of building up again and getting their weight and general health back to normal. But all have undergone experiences they will never forget. One of the party, W. A. Atkinson, formerly of Auckland, told The Listener something of life under Japanese control in the Santo Tomas civilian internment camp, the largest in the Philippines. In the course of his business as representative of an English shipping company with headquarters in London, he and his wife and children were on their way from Shanghai to Calcutta. While they were staying at a hotel in Manila the Japanese arrived and took over. Three Days’ Food For Three Years "T had seen this coming and had put the family in a convent," said Mr. Atkinson. "The men were taken to Santo Tomas. We were told to bring enough food to last three days. What they should have told us was to take enough for three years, for it was that time before we were released. The overcrowding was frightful. Imagine five toilets for 500 men. And then the Japanese rules and regulations were very strict. If you broke any of them, however innocently, you were knocked about. Some men did, and found themselves in hospital. "All the time the camp food was very bad in type and quantity. We started with a starvation diet, which gradually grew worse. Our allowance was as much Tice as a tobacco tin would hold per day, and coffee that was made from grounds boiled up about 20 times. We watched each other getting weaker every ‘day. Some of the men were so thin that you felt you could twang their sinews like harp-strings. In the end the children stayed in bed nearly all the time, or just lay about, too weak and tired even to play." -------_-_-_-_-_-_-__="-"_"__~

His weight on going into the camp was 160lb., but he went down to 140lIb., said Mr. Atkinson. Since liberation he has put on about a pound a day. Liberation by Americans The release from Santo Tomas was carried out by Americans, who flew the internees to Leyte. Later they spent a short time in Australia, where they were given the warmest of welcomes and the kindliest of treatment. They were all intensely grateful to the Americans for bringing about their release and for their treatment afterwards. The troops did their best to make up for the long three years of captivity and really spoiled the children with their attentions and gifts. As one of the party put it, when the Santo Tomas camp fell to the Americans, it had as much significance to the internees and to Manilans as the fall of the Bastille to Parisians. ' Also in the party of internees were Mr. and Mrs, Boyd Sanson and their son, Michael, of Havelock North. Mr. Sanson was a rancher on a station in Bicol Province, near Legaspi, 480 miles SO NN LY

from Manila. When the news of the impending Japanese invasion was broadcast, he left on a 12 hours’ rail trip for Manila to pick up Michael, who was at school there. He and his son were captured by the Japanese and not until long afterwards did they learn that Mrs. Sanson, who was formerly Miss Barbara Pinckney, of Hastings and Christchurch, had escaped to the mountains, where she was looked after by the "boys." She gave herself up at Legaspi. Atrocities Understated Stories of Japanese atrocities were not exaggerated; they were actually underwritten. Mr. Sanson saw two girls suffering from severe burns. The Japanese had thrown petrol over their 15-year-old brother, and they were burnt while trying to save him. Their mother had been killed by machine-gun fire. Prisoners were not allowed to watch aircraft passing overhead. If they were caught in a breach of this rule, they were made to stand and gaze at the sky for three hours. Occasionally shrapnel from anti-aircraft fire fell on the camp. And then, when the city fell, the Japanese turned guns on the camp from the other side of the river and killed many internees. "No, I have no plans at the moment," said Mr. Atkinson. He was very tired and looked it. Other members of .the little party also showed very evident signs of what they had been through. Mr. Atkinson has six months’ leave from duty with his firm and will probably take his wife to visit two sisters in Auckland, while the children will go to school to make up for what they missed while under the Japanese. They had teaching of a kind in the camp, but it was only what the Japanese wanted them to learn. Now those three years have to be eliminated from their minds as far as possible. However, Mr. Atkinson hopes to return to the East when everybody is settled. Among the welcoming crowd at Wellington clearing station were representatives of the New Zealand Red Cross, who offered all possible assistance in the way of clothes and other necessities, not forgetting the ration-books.