THE’ CAN-OPENER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 369, 19 July 1946, Page 29

THE’ CAN-OPENER

A Story from a Japanese Prison-Camp

(Written for "The Listener" by

JAMES

BERTRAM

(I) TE. .WILFRED STOKES, P= The Londoners, was a "natural," though the Orderly Room of that famous’ regiment had found-in the years of his peacetime soldiering -- more pungent names for him. More simply, Wilfred Stokes was a thief, He had far and away the longest crime-sheet in the battalion; and the weeks he had done in "the Glass-house,"

4aiG@ ©na tO end, would have reached trom his native East Ham to Aldershot. No one élsé, in a self-respecting regiment, could ‘have stood up to that record and still worn the King’s uniform, But there. was something about "Wilfie," as’ he was universally known, that melted official justice like morning dew. By the time he had finished explaining the precise nature of the temptation and promised soulfully never ‘to do it again, everyone-from the ColourSergeant to the Colonel-was usually in tears. .Wilfie would seize the propitious moment to produce from nowhere a grimy photograph of his very attractive wife and small daughter. "That’s' my girl," he would say hoarsely, blowing his nose in an easy and natural manner. "Allus thought a lot of me, did Nellie." And as he pulled a sleeve across his nostrils, the photograph would vanish like magic into thin air. For there was nothing Wilfie could not do with his fingers. "That man Stokes is a menace," said the Colonel, when Wilfie came out of detention barracks a week before the Japanese attacked Hong Kong. "But we can’t send anyone home just now. I only hope that one day he'll be more of a nuisance to the enemy than he is to us," The Colonel went down with the Lisbon Maru; and the Japanese saw to it he did not survive to give evidence about that. But he would have liked to hear the rest of the story. * Fs ILFIE didn’t win any decorations in the battle of Hong Kong, though The Londoners-in that brisk little bit of fighting-more than upheld their reputation when another famous British regiment did not. But we may still catch a fleeting glimpse of him in the unofficial history of those days. The Colonel had come round the advance machine-gun posts in Wanchai right at the finish, when the garrison was pushed back into the city itself, and things were pretty hot. Wilfie, who was a company runner, had the to turn up at the same time, unshaven. "Good God," said the Colonel. "That man ‘s scruffy! — Tell him to aaats at once." "No water here, sir," said the sergidnt laboriously. He might have added that his section had been in action for three days without a break. "Then drain off the Vickers," snapped the Colonel. "The guns need cooling any- way. I can’t have my men going around

looking like that." So Wilfie had a quick shave in hot water, punctuated by Japanese mortar-shells; and a few hours later Hong Kong surrendered, * * * {Tt is highly doubtful if Private Stokes would ever have let himself become a prisoner of war, if he hadn’t been near the stores after the surrender, and got in on the rum. So when Victoria Barracks were surrounded and cordoned off, Wilfie was already inside, in the cells. That was the beginning of his four

years of miartyrdom. But the martyrdom, in this. particular case, was not altogether onesided. The whale might have swalJowed Jonah, but this was a Jonah who could. make himself pretty uncomfortable for the Japanese whale. We heard a lot of Wilfie’s exploits during the. next year, when all units in Hong Kong were together in one big camp. Pilfering may not begin in a prigoncamp, but unfortunately it does not end there either. Every now and again, though, something happened in a big way. A whole sack of sugar was missing from the Japanese stores, or a. whole ‘case of cigarettes

vanished from the officers’ canteen. Then-just as, in Chicago’s palmy days, a connoisseur might read of a particularly inclusive killing and murmur "Capone" — the knowing said, "Wilfie!" There are cértain advantages in being a universal scapegoat. Wilfie spent most of his time in jug, which at least \kept hi: off working-parties. And if he complained mildly about the number of times he had "carried the can" for some-, one else’s misdemeanours, there were always the other times when he’s got away with it. Still, it was a relief to the senior officers in the camp ‘when the Japanese decided to send a first draft of prisoners to Tokyo, and suggested that any "undesirables" in the ranks should be given priority. For the first time in the -history of the United Services, all unit-commanders were in complete agreement; the name that headed the list of that first draft from Hong Kong was Private Wilfred Stokes. ‘ a * # [tT was a year before I saw Wilfie again, in rather curious circumstances. I had just been transferred to Omori HQ Camp

in Tokyo, where with YY three companions I spent a fortnight in the guardhouse cell. This cell is important, for it was to be the scene of Wilfie’s apotheosis; so I must take a moment off to describe it. Omori Camp was a drab collection of wooden huts of orthodox military pattern, built on a flea-ridden sandbank in Tokyo Bay. The guardhouse which so hospitably welcomed us stood just inside the main gate, and rather resembled an outsize New Zealand garage. It had

three main divisions within its oblong. In front, which was open, was the guardpost itself, where half-a-dozen Nips with an N.C.O. were on duty day and night, and where the sentries patrolling the camp reported every hour for their relief. Behind this open front were the guards’ ‘sleeping-quarters, with tatami mats down one side and a corridor down the other. Finally at the back of the building, chill, windowless, and bleakly lit by electricity, were the cells. Of these, the one in which we found ourselves was about twelve feet square, with panelled walls of Japanese pine on three sides, and a massive wooden grille, divided by heavy batons into six-inch squares, across the front. Once the door in the grille had been locked upon a prisoner, it was- never opened until his release. Food was passed in through the wooden bars by the guards. ‘The interior of this cell was completely bare of furniture. Nearly one-quarter of the floor space, however, was taken up by the concrete coping of a drop-toilet, or

benjo, of the traditional unsavoury Japanese sort. All in all, we decided; a good place to get out of. When finally we did get out, and were being marched across to the Camp Office to be registered, we noticed at once a shabby figure in the remnants of British battle-dress digging a vegetable patch in one corner of the sandy yard. Fore and aft it wore an enormous placard, like the caricature of a London sandwich-man. The black letters screamed at us:

"Bless my soul," said the young officer of The Londoners who was with us, "if it isn’t Wilfie Stokes!" Head in air he marched pat, while I gazed in dismay at this wrétched victim. whose shoulders drooned so path-

etically beneath their badge of shame. Wilfie dug on stolidly, though when .he raised his shock head, with short-sighted eyes peering dimly behind metal-rimmed glasses, I thought I caught the ghost of a wink. Then I was quite sure that I read the soundless movement of the lips "One up on the butt, mate!" We had been given a smoke 'to celebrate our release. Watching the guard’s . eye, I flipped a half-smoked Hikari across the sand. Wearily Wilfie stooped to clean his spade: an instant later there was no cigarette to be seen, but a spiral of smoke curled briefly in front of the thick glasses. "Thanks, chum!" the lips signalled again; and that was that. * * * YEAR passed-a year, for me, of fairly strenuous activity on. the wharves and railways of Tokyo, where with some of the roughest and most loyal companions in the world I learnt to shift cargo, and how to become a pretty fair amateur thief myself. We didn’t see much of Wilfie, in all this (continued on next page)

1 AM A THIEF !! ! GREAT DISHONOUR OF BRITISH ARMY ! !

THE CAN-OPENER

(continued from previous | page) ‘time. For six months he had vanished into a. | Tokyo civilian _ gaol, where he made envelopes and lived on seaweed and picked up an amazing amount of Japanese thieves’ slang. But whenever he came back to Omori, he was always in trouble. He never stole from his comrades, as I had reason to know, for I slept beside him for several months. But he stole from the Yanks or from the Dutchmen, just to keep his hand in; and ot course at all times, and as much from a sense of duty as from inner compulsion, he stole frora the Japanese. Very rarely he appeared out on working parties; and I shall not soon forget the scene at Shiodome when Wilfie was spotted by a yard-detective behind a pile of sleepers, casually humping a sack which on examination proved to contain forty tins of salmon and half-a-dozen bottles of sake. "Forty tins!" screamed the fu. "What can you want with forty tins?" Wilfie palmed his glasses and said nothing; he never said anything, when he was caught by the Japanese.

He took one of the worst beatings we had ever seen at Shiodome for that little lot; and though he went down four or five times, once with a broken eardrum that would never hear again, he always got up slowly and jerked his unshaven chin at the raving guards. "Die hard!" is the unofficial motto of The Londoners. Wilfie, with all his borrowing ways, was a Londoner still. The climax, however, came with the Red Cross parcels. * * * OR months, everyone knew, there had been American Red Cross parcels in the camp. It was an amiable habit of our captors, whenever a Red Cross shipment arrived, to store the stuff in bulk as long as possible-so that everyone on the Japanese staff could get a good cut at it-and then, after the main bulk of it had dwindled to reasonable proportions, to make a reluctant issue to the prisoners. Most of us, who had learnt our philosophy the hard way, just tried to forget there was such a thing as good American canned food left in the world; and that by some ancient tabu known as international law, this food belonged to us. To the morally frail or venturous, however (you may choose your terms), the presence of these parcels -even under a quick-triggered Japanese guard-was a perpetual challenge.

And Wilfie, as a "natural,". was the first to succumb. After taking risks that might have qualified him for several more conventional awards for gallantry, he got away with the only award he wanted: a dozen Red Cross parcels. "Ain’t we s’posed to get one a month?" he demanded. "Fair enough! I ain’t had a parcel since the last shipment in Hong Kong." Unfortunately not long afterwards he was caught by a guard fishing tins of Spam out of a water-barrel during an air-raid, and there was only one answer to that. For reasons best known to themselves, the Omori Camp staff did not seem to want an official inquiry into the matter of Red Cross parcels; so Wilfie was lucky. Instead of being sent back to his envelopes and seaweed, his punishment was to be an indefinite confinement, on one-third usual camp rations, in the guardhouse cell. With hands lashed together in front of him, and other public marks of obloquy, Wilfie was marched off the square under escort, and disappeared from view. It was pure coincidence, of course, that a fresh consignment of the American parcels arrived next day. And since the Japanese canteen was already full to overflowing, this latest batch was stacked for extra safety within the guardhouse itself, where it formed a double tier of (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) boxes along one wall. Nice for the guards, we thought, seeing the outer end of the stack with its neat Red Cross‘ lettering, "INVALID FOOD PARCELS," as we marched out to work. It won’t take them long to get in on that.... And we felt a bit sorry for Wilfie, who would’ have to look on and watch them scoff it in the small hours. (To be concluded)