A PASSAGE TO TOKYO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 338, 14 December 1945, Page 10

A PASSAGE TO TOKYO

THIS is the fifth of a series |

of articles written for ||

| "The Listener" by

JAMES

BERTRAM

UR camp in Hong Kong was once described by a visiting journalist (Japanese) as a "garden city" in which he enjoyed "the best bread he ever tasted." We didn’t see it that way, of course. But a great many of us, with the fatal credulity of the herd, really fell for the Nip propaganda about their new camps in Japan. These were pictured for us-probably by ex-employees: of the’ Japan Tourist Bureau-as "rustic wooden buildings set in forests," with central heating. We should have to work, because "everybody worked in Japan". (that part was true enough). But the sort of work they mentioned was fruit-farming-memories of Nelson, and cherry-picking in New Zealand school holidays! -or canning-fac-tories, which didn’t sound too bad either. No job was bad, for a POW, that had any food in it; and almost anything, we felt then, would be better than making an airfield in Hong Kong or humping 500-kilo bombs when our own planes were really beginning to come over. The sea-trip wasn’t exactly inviting, after the: Lisbon Maru. But once’ in Japan, that rural atmosphere would be rather a pleasant change.

The Water Jump My own departure for Japan was strictly involuntary, and not unconnected with the British staff-officer whose equivocal role at Shumshuipo I have already referred to. There was a small matter of a news-sheet I was editing and circulating among the prisoners which came to this gentleman’s notice late in 1943. When the next draft for Japan was made up that December, I had been congratulating myself on having missed

it (the numbers were already complete) when a special order came out from the Camp Office. Four of us-an English officer who had done broadcasting for the BBC, two local newspapermen, and my-self-were detailed as a "Special Party" to accompany the draft. Nobody knew what part of Japan the draft was bound for: but we "specials" were going to Tokyo for "interrogation." It didn’t sound too good. That voyage to Japan-a fatal crossing for so many thousands of Allied prisoners, especially in the last year of the war-is something none of us is ever likely to forget. There were many worse trips than ours: of one convoy of 18 ships that left Singapore in ’44, only one ship reached Japan. But ours seemed bad enough at the time. Chinese Saboteurs Since we were going north in midwinter, they took away our greatcoats and left us with only two cotton blankets. Then 504 men were decanted into the *tween-decks of the two holds of a little China coaster of not mitch more than 1,000 tons. This ancient vessel had recently been salvaged from the bottom of the harbour and refitted in the docks at Hong Kong by Chinese workmen, who had

certainly done an excellent job of sabotage. The rusty engines barely turned, steam hissed fiercely or despondently from every joint in her pipes; and as soon as we were out at sea the water gushed merrily through her leaking plates, so that shifts worked day and night to keep the holds from flooding. The good old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens had nothing on us. We left Hong Kong on December 15, and it took us five days to make Takao, in southern Formosa, after a couple of major breakdowns. One of them halted the whole convoy at sundown, with our escort. destroyer circling furiously around while Japanese sea-scouts ineptly lowered a boat to send across to one of the other vessels for an engineer. That ship didn’t need an engineer but a wizard: I’m quite sure they would have abandoned us if there had been only POW’s aboard. But we were lying on top of a valuable cargo of ore; and so they finally brought us in to Takao, where the little coaster went into dock again-prob-ably for the duration.

A Friendly Crew Here we were transferred to a military trooper which had just come up from Rabaul, an old NYK liner, Clyde-built, with brand new turbines and by no means despicable armament. This was

a clear gain; and some of the best Japanese we ever met were the crew and gun-crews of the Toyama Maru. They bought fresh fruit and vegetables for us; and made us a magnificent "presento" of fresh pork for Christmas; and evérybody came to the Christmas concert on the for’ard hatches. One NCO of the gun-crew, a Christian and a gentleman with a fatalistic conviction that he would never survive the war, adopted our "special party" and entertained us royally, both at Christmas and New Year. He was homesick for Japan, and never tired of telling us how beautiful his tountry looked in the spring, how cheap fish was in the market, and how many oranges you could buy for 10 sen (a little more than 1d, the normaldaily pay of a working POW). : I remember that interlude in Formosa as one of the few bright spots in four pretty grey years. If all Japanese had been like these there would have been no war. But these were fighting men and sailors, returning from a dangerous mission; and it was always our experience that we got on much better with front-line troops than with depot troops or reservist guards. . Hollow Sea 2 The second stage of our voyage, north from Formosa, was bitterly cold, and the monotony was only broken by an

abortive conspiracy to take over the ship. We ploughed along the China coast through héavy seas, and the old transport lost quite a bit of her superstruc-ture-including what was, for us, the most important part of it. It was a com. mon sight to watch a couple of hundred men, many of them suffering from dysentery, queuing up along the plunging deck to use the single surviving latrine. It was moments like these the Nips usually chose to call a muster parade and lecture us solemnly on the familiar theme: "You must take care of your health!" It is only fair to remark that we were in a Japanese regular transport; this was precisely the accommodation their own troops got. It wasn’t till I slept in an American APD after the surrender that I realised how the U.S. Marines: went to war-on Virginia ham and icecream. Wars are all much the same, I guess, when you get to them; but still it’s better to travel saloon than steerage, and this is something the Americans understand. In the first _week of January we crept down the island-studded shores of Korea and made a nervous dash across the dangerous straits, where the weed-strewn masts of sunken vessels bore witness to the activity of Allied submarines. And I don’t know who was most pleased when we finally sighted the lights of Moji, our people or the Nips. Once more they’ broke out the saki to celebrate a safe home-coming; and that, for most of us, was the last celebration we were to have until August, 1945. At Moji the draft went ashore, and disappeared in a snowstorm in the direction of the railway station. Our special party of four was gathered up in a lorry and deposited in the darkness outside a large building on the outskirts of the city. "Japanese prison-camp," the friendly guards told us. "You see-no watchtowers, no electric wire!" They drove off into the night.

Nightmare Camp It had once been a YMCA hall. Imagine a_ large, "gloomy suburban theatre, with four or five tiers of wooden bunks built up on ‘scaffolding to the roof. Though the dim interior was filled with men, not a sound broke the freezing silence as we marched to our sleep-ing-mats in a cornet of the ground floor. "No speak," said a little spectacled interpreter very earnestly, as he handed us wood-pulp blankets. We crept into our kennels and gazed mutely at the wooden framework-it was just like the hold of the trooper-with its perpendicular ladders mounting over our heads. Blankets rustled then, and mournful eyes peered down at us. All faces had the prison-pallor that was soon to become so familiar (we were only three weeks away from Hong Kong and the sun). To our horror, we noticed that there was not a face unmarked by scars or bruises; many were permanently disfigured. Even the foetid hold of our (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) transport had enclosed a certain rude life and vigour. "But these are ghosts," I whispered, "and we are in the tombs." "Kyotski!" bellowed a voice suddenly, and a shiver of anticipation seemed to run over the silent bunks. A shambling figure, grotesquely draped in a cast-off Japanese greatcoat, stiffened to face the Duty N.C.O. "Why don’t you salute? You must salute!" Throaty Japanese, to us still an unknown language, but one doesn’t get the meaning wrong in this sort of situation. Humbly the figure stood, humbly uncovered the thin shaved skull for punishment. Taking his time and enjoying it, the kashkan swung his scabbarded sword high above his head with both hands. "We must teach you discipline-daro." The sword swung down; the tottering figure collapsed, then stiffened and straightened again. Slowly the blood trickled from the gaping scalp. "Kyotski, you!" The offender must stand rigidly at attention throughout the night. He did salute, of course; but the Duty N.C.O. wanted to make a demonstration-prob-ably for our benefit. One could pile on the details, but this will suggest the atmosphere. Moji wasn’t the worst camp in Japan by any means; the mines up north were worse," and some of the chemical factories. We stayed less than a week in the place; and. because we were going to headquarters in Tokyo they didn’t dare beat us up. Bnt they drilled us by the hour in the winter blizzard, having found we didn’t know the Japanese commands and the inspection-routine ("Tenko is sacred") that was enforced in all camps in Japan. And despite their vigilance, we managed to exchange views with other prisoners in the camp. "Keep tgavelling, matey," the hoarse whispers advised us. "This ain’t no home-from-home." About 400 RAF and, Javanese had been the first draft in this camp; 250 were dead within six months. Then more drafts, or the survivors of ‘drafts that had been bombed and decimated on the way up. The men worked on the docks in Moji, in factories, as linesmen and steeplejacks. The hospital was full of broken ribs and broken spines. Above all, poisoning the air and creating this horrible atmosphere of tension and sudden violence, the guards never left them day or night-surly, warwounded reservists who had _ carteblanche to work off all their spleen on defenceless prisoners. One night, by the single "smokestand" in the great hall, a pleasant-faced Scottish doctor gave us a light. A few hours later he was a cot-case in his own hospital, recovery doubtful. This «was what we had come to in Japan, where the camps were pleasantly set in pinewoods, and where one went cherry-pick-ing in the summer. ’ To Tokyo From Moji we crossed to Shimonoseki by the new tunnel beneath the harbour, and made the long day-and-night trip to the capital by ordinary express. It was the third time I had made this journey-pleasant enough in the days

before the war, with its charming glimpses of the Inland Sea, its brief views of Hiroshima and Osaka and Kobe and the chief cities of Japan. And that crowded third-class carriage seemed heaven after the Moji nightmare. Here were the common people of Japan again, as I had known them before: nervous countryfolk -with their baskets and their babies, owl-like students, worried-looking old men. They looked at us curiously, but they were not hostile-given the chance, they would have been friendly. As a matter of principle (and to stretch our legs) we offered our seats occasionally to heavilyburdened peasant women, often with one child strapped on their backs and withy another in their arms. The women accepted our offers with surprise and gratitude; then the Staff Interpreter made a curious® protest. We must not give up our seats to civilians: after all, we were soldiers, and we were travelling with the Japanese Army. The Army sat down; civilians must stand. There’ was no getting around this; but wé@ felt we had made our first public propaganda point in Japan. At Shinagawa station, just outside Tokyo, we were met by a certain Corporal Watanabe. This harmless sentence will have a meaning to most POWs from Japan (see Time, Life and other American papers for an account of "The Bird"; and what he did to the former Olympic miler Lou Zamperini and others). Under this genial conductor we were taken through darkened streets to the Tokyo Headquarters Camp at Omori, where I was to remain for the rest of the war. The Gilded Pill Our "special. party" got a special re-ception-in the cells. I was to learn to know that guardhouse cell pretty well later, in common with a select company of American fliers and general malefactors. It wasn’t-so bad this time, when. there were four of us together, though

we got very bored and miserable as the days passed, and quite incredibly dirty (Japanese cell accommodation provides no washing facilities of any kind; and we slept over the toilet). But at last they got around to our interrogation: and then the pattern behind the curious variations in our treatment suddenly emerged. Oh yes, they knew all about us (did they know all about me, I wondered? I remembered the long dossier I had been shown at the Kokusai Bunka Shinkoku in Tokyo in 1938, with everything I had ever written against the Japanese militarists carefully tabulated). We were four writers and broadcasters; we had seen what conditions were like in a common prison-camp-"not ah/ very pleasant." But of course, it would be quite unnecessary for superior people of our talents to work like coolies and live in bugridden barracks. We could go to a "much more beautiful" place, where we would have good food and a measure of personal liberty. If we earned it. What was required? Oh no, of course we wouldn’t be asked to write anything against our own country. But we could study Japanese art and history, we could tell our misguided countrymen what the Japanese really were like, (I thought of the Lisbon Maru; I thought of Moji.) And of course, if we felt this war was a bad thing, if we thought a quick peace and a negotiated settlement might help things all round, why, the Japanese Army Press Bureau would be delighted to provide paper and a typewriter. They might even see that our most admirable ideas were given a certain currency.

The "more beautiful" place was, of course, the notorious "Bunka" Camp in Tokyo, where a small group of former members of the Allied forces quite apart from all other prisoners, writing for Japanese journals, producing a regular daily English-language and musical radio programme, making the script for "Tokyo Rose" and so on. I cannot write at any length here about the activities of this

group, for many of them face charges to which they must make their own defence. Among them were two or three open traitors; two were on General MacArthur’s first list of war criminals. There were others with outstanding war records, who had been lured or forced into the game and were kept there by every kind of pressure. Some who were taken to "Bunka" refused to collaborate in any way, and suffered the e&xtremes of Japanese coercion before they were transferred to the toughest of working camps. I don’t know what kind of decoration they get for that. | Meet An Old Friend But one thing I knew: most emphatic ally, I wanted nothing to do with "Bunka." My own interrogator was a very smooth gentleman in exquisite civilian clothes, whose face behind rime less glasses seemed vaguely familiar. Desperately I searched by memory, while I stalled diplomatically on all questions about the war. Writing would make no difference, I insisted-I, who had once believed that journalism could mould national policies! The war in the Far East would be fought out to a military decision, however long that took. For my own part-liar again!-I did not care for Japanese culture; on the contrary, for the sake of my health I would rather be out working with my comrades-in-arms. : The long interviews closed at last; @ second interrogator (former Asahi core respondent in New York) was frankly. hostile, and I think he wanted to put the screws on. But my friend in glasses waved a hand airily (he wads the: boss) and suddenly began talking about Oxford. Did I remember Yasekawa, who was at New College in my time? It all came back. This was Ikeda, of Balliol; he held the rank of marquis under the Empire. We had met vaguely at certain Eastern societies I had once frequented. What he remembered of me was that I had been friendly with Chinese and Japanese undergraduates, in that self-regarding academic universe that seldom has the time to be polite, to orientals. And this, I am sure, told in my favour: whether he had seen that dossier or not, he pretended little interest in my subsequent. doings in China, and the touch of warmth’ in his cold official manner was a protection against his colleagues. So we parted, talking about rooks in the elms of Magdalen; and I never heard any more about "Bunka" and special accommodation. That was that. We went back to our cell, -and a week later the officer with us became so ill that he had to see a doctor. So we were released from the guardhouse, and transferred to the main strength of the camp.

What I was to learn at Omori was not Japanese culture, but how to steal, swear, sweat, and shiver in company with some of the cheerfullest rogues and bravest Britons who ever descended on the docks and railways of Tokyo; and incidentally, to work harder than I had ever worked in my life before. ~ (To be concluded)