Enlistment with a close friend
I applied to join the Navy first, and I had to go for an exam and I didn't pass the exam, so that told me I'd have to wait awhile. And my mate says, "Well, I'm going to join the Army." I said, "Well I might as well join with you." So we both joined the Army. But when we were taken prisoner of war, he was in the first group that was sent to Borneo to work. And I was sent a Burma. Well, he died in Borneo about six months after getting there, of pneumonia.
Interviewer:
When did you find that out?
I didn't find that out until after I came home.
Yeah, a very close friend. We worked on the same jobs at the steelworks. Went rabbiting and poisoning rabbits and trapping rabbits together.
Chaos of evacuation at Singapore
We were told when we first fired on the Japanese and the Japanese went for us, they told us, "Every man for himself, get back out the best way you can." Well, everyone went this way and that way and that way in the jungle.
I didn't realise that Singapore was going to fall as quickly as it did or anything like that. But most of them did because they had come down through Malaya and they'd had been pushed and pushed and pushed. And they had told us they had such big guns that nobody could get to Singapore, but it turned out the big guns had the shells for them were the ones that would explode on steel.
They were just for shooting out to sea at the ships, but they wouldn't explode when they were fired into the land so none of those big guns on Singapore could be used. They were just useless to them. Well, the civilians, there was hundreds of civilians on this ship and there was nurses and there was heaps of soldiers and there was a full transport group of soldiers on there. They had no guns so they got on the ship in Singapore. There was young children and all and that took us to Java.
And of course it wasn't very long before the Japs landed in Java. First they told us they were going to take us from this part of Java to another part where the HMAS Perth would pick us up. And on our way, being taken there, we heard where the Perth had got sunk and the next day the Japs landed in Java and we stayed in this one town and they joined us up with a group of English soldiers that were there and a transport ship had brought a regiment of soldiers from the Middle East and they'd disembarked them in Batavia. The 2nd Pioneer Battalion. And we joined up with them and next thing, it was only about seven days, and they surrendered in Singapore and we were all taken prisoner.
Fall of Singapore
And the day we evacuated Malaya, we came across the Causeway and we hadn't been across the Causeway an hour when they blew the Causeway up. And then they gave us a feed and then we were taken out to parts of Singapore and the jungle of Singapore. And then about seven days later, the Japs came across. And about another seven days later, Singapore surrendered.
You didn't realise your war on what was going on and what you were going to expect in the finish. I didn't, anyhow. Only once, I fired up my machine gun once. That's the only time I ever fired a shot. We were lying there watching the river and that and next thing, a group come out of the bush behind us. And they babbled away in Japanese. Didn't know who we were, thinking we were Japanese. And when they realised that they weren't, that's when the Australians all laying there turned around and opened fire at all of them.
Well, I pulled the trigger on my machine gun that I had, and fired one magazine of shots, and that was all. Then we retreated because there was more Japanese there. And then as we retreated, we all got separated in different groups. And we walked through the jungle and we came across an English camp and we had no food.
And these Englishmen in these trucks, they had a lot of tin food and they gave us food. And they said, "Oh, well we're going." And we said, "Well, we'll go with you." And they says, "No, you can't." And they left us and they went. And then we got down to the watercourse on the, we didn't know whether it was the harbour or the river or what.
And eventually we got into a small boat and we paddled. We're paddling, we could see ships up in the harbour of Singapore. And we paddled. And next thing we saw a transport ship coming towards us and it dropped anchor. And we saw a lot of soldiers and that on it, and they're waving to us and we paddled over to it. And they lowered a big scrambling net. And the five of us in the boat got hold of the scrambling net and they lifted us on board.
We hadn't been on board very, very long and the ship picked up anchor and it set sail. And two naval vessels joined us and this was two days before the Fall of Singapore. And we didn't know where we were going or what was going on and the next thing, the Japanese come over and they started bombing.
Dropping bombs around the ships. And we got into one of the holes and one of the bombs hit the hull of the ship next to us, and of course that stirred up that much dust we couldn't see where we were or what we were doing.
And we had to crawl out the hole that we got in. And then we were up on deck and one of the sailors, an officer, asked myself and a mate to come with him and we were picking up the bits and pieces of bodies that had got killed by the bomb. And he says, "Toss them overboard." He says, "There's no good us keeping them for a funeral or anything later."
So we were tossing them all over. And then later the bombers came back again and then all they done this time was machine gun the ship, but we got all in underneath the deck and nobody got killed then. That night, one of the wounded ones had died and they buried him.
Capture on Java
Well, we never saw a Jap for the first week. Never saw anyone. We had been told that we'd surrendered, and then one day a Japanese vehicle came and someone spoke to one of the generals and he said we had to march to this railway crossing and board a train, and when we boarded the train, it took us to Batavia.
Took a while, three or four days to get us there. They unloaded us here and we just stopped. And then we were in a camp in Batavia for a while when they chose all the fit men to go to Singapore, and that's when we were taken back to Singapore, but we only spent two days, three days there. Then they took us on the ship again and took us to Rangoon, and then they took us on another ship from Rangoon to Moulmein, I think it was, and from there we spent about four days in the big jail there.
We only had wooden platforms in the jail to sleep on, and we had practically no clothes or blankets or anything. There was a little hut in the jail yard and there was good bunks in there, and we asked the guards, "Did anyone sleep there?" They said, "No," and I said, "Well, why can't we sleep there?" He says, "You can if you want to," but he said, "I wouldn't if I was you," he says, "That's where we put the lepers. Anyone with leprosy that's in jail, that's where they go." So nobody slept in there. Then after about a week there, they marched us from there and put us on trucks and took us to Thanbyuzayat in Burma, and that's where we started the Burma Railway.
21st birthday
I had my 21st birthday on the railway, and the night I had my 21st birthday, we went to work and it was about midnight, and we were still at work, and they brought us out the rice and some sweet potato soup. A chap sitting next to me said, "Oh, geez," he says, "I got a bit of meat," and he's holding it in his hand and he's chewing away, and someone says, "Oh, give it to Corny. He's 21 today." And he says, "No," he says, "I never had this," and he held it to the light, and he had hold the leg of a frog.
A frog must have hopped into the hot soup, our sweet potato soupy water and got killed, and he says, "Well I've ate half of it, I might as well eat the rest," so he ate the rest of the frog. So I never got any meat.
Brushing your teeth on the Burma-Thailand Railway
In that camp you could buy a few things and clean your teeth, or if you didn't have an old toothbrush you used to fashion bits of ends of bamboo stick to rub your teeth with. And you had no toothpaste, well I used to use pot ash, ground a little bit of charcoal up and get pot ash and just scrub your teeth with a bit of a bamboo that you've fashioned on the end of it.
But then not long after that, I was down at the tap one day and there was a toothbrush there where a Jap had been down and he'd left it. So I took the toothbrush and took it back, and I disfigured the handle a lot in case anyone came around looking for it, and washed the best I could, and then I had a toothbrush for the rest of the time there. But then when we chosen to go to Japan, there was a lot different thing then.
Guards on the Burma-Thailand Railway
You got friendly with a couple. There was one guard, his name was Georison and everyone called him Georgie. He says "If it's good enough for the king of England to be called King George," he says, "You can call me Georgie." So everyone called him Georgie. Yes, he was one nice pleasant one who could help you where he could. But there was another one they called The Bull, he couldn't walk past you without hitting you or kicking you.
And he was on the ship when we got torpedoed and soon as we got torpedoed, there was prisoners running around, singing out "Let's find The Bull, let's find The Bull." So what happened to him, whether he survived and got picked up by the Japanese ship that picked the survivors up, I don't know. Well there would be 300 or 400 of us in the camp and there would only be about 40 or 50 guards. And of a night time, there would be about eight guards on guard duty but all they'd do is sit in their camp with no fences around the camp or anything like that.
You could have escaped but you couldn't go anywhere, you're in the jungle and you had no food. And there were six men dead from another camp escaped and they got caught about six days later. And they were brought back and they were all shot.
Construction of the Burma Thailand Railway
Well, all we knew, we were building the railway line so that they could transport the Japanese from Burma to Thailand and all those places up there. And while we were working there we used to see the Japanese troops coming down by truck and going past our camps. And that was what we were told, we were building the railway for.
And as I said, we lobbed there in the dry season, and the other end of the railway line was started up in Thailand and they worked towards down the Burma end, and they lobbed there in the wet season and of course they got struck with cholera and all those diseases that they couldn't get prepared for and they had terrible numbers of deaths.
Well, when we first started, we were just digging the soil, then eventually we were lying the sleepers and then the lines. But as we were losing that many men dying, there wasn't enough to carry the sleepers, so they brought coolies up and the coolies used to carry the sleepers and lay the sleepers, and we used to lay the lines. Well you went to work to lay the lines in daylight and you had to lay so many lines a day. Well, near the end of the line it took them that long to get the railway lines up to you, you mightn't get home til one or two o'clock in the morning, which you'd be still back out there going at six o'clock in the morning again.
Didn't matter how you were. You just sat there in the rain, of course it was raining, it was the wet season then, and you just sat there in the rain. Sometimes some of the men would be that sick, they would let four or five of them go back to camp, or something like that. But they kept most of you there until you laid the lines. But the Jap guards had to sit there with you in the rain too and of course they didn't think too much of it.
Home comforts
It was just before Germany surrendered, because they tried to take us aboard a ship there. And the captain wouldn't go to sea. He said he could nearly walk from there to Japan on those periscopes. So they took us off that ship, brought us back to the camp in Saigon, and we there for another week or so. And it was here that I was made a turban.
A toban is where you have to, so many men would to do anything that the Japanese wanted, guards. And their hut was close to the fence. And I was out washing the Japanese guards' clothes close to the fence and a French girl on the other side of the fence come by when she was speaking to us. And I asked her if she could get us any English-reading written books or a pair of scissors or anything like that. And she said she would see. The next day she came back and she said that she couldn't get any English written books, but she gave me a pair of scissors.
And about, that was where we were bombed by the Americans. And they bombed the docks and the ships just near there and one bomb lobbed about 500 metres from our camp when it lobbed on the tobacco plantation. And of course that spread heaps of tobacco leaf everywhere in the camp the next morning. And the prisoners were collecting all the tobacco leaf and everything making cigars, smokes out of it and...luckily I wasn't a smoker, but I can say, I didn't see men who would swap a feed for a cigarette.
I couldn't understand it in a way but we used to get issued with cigarettes now and again. And I can remember, one bloke used to, we used to get occasionally, it would like a crumpet or something or other screwed-up some thing of mixed meats and things, and all made up in a little ball like a tennis ball everyone would get, and this bloke used to swap his with me for a cigarette.
Living conditions on the Burma-Thailand Railway
Well, at first, we lived on our own food, but once we got to Thanbyuzayat and started on the Burma Railway, all we had was rice and soya beans. Well, actually it wasn't too bad at first. We did have some of our own food to mix with it. But once we really got started on the Burma Railway it got down to all you had was rice. And for breakfast you would get a big dixie full of real sloppy rice, which we called pap. And then for other meals you would get a heap of dried rice and you might get some boiled sweet potato potatoes, the juice, or some of the sweet potatoes as they used to pick them wild in the jungle there.
We used to even collect them ourselves and take them back and scrape them clean and boil them. And of course you had to boil all the water you drank and well, it was luckily we logged to start the Burma Railway in the dry season, but I'll admit we were short of water and any water they got, they had to boil for you to drink, but you could wash in the other water and wash what clothes you had. And of course after about three months your boots had worn out and then we worked the full Burma Railway barefooted and practically no clothes.
All our guards were the worst of the lot. They were all Koreans and they enjoyed kicking you or slapping you or hitting you with anything. I'll admit they were cruel to us, but the Japanese were in a way cruel to them, they used to knock them around a bit, but they knocked us around. And then the first couple of camps, we had very bad Japanese officers in charge of them, and then when we started the lay the railway line we got a good Japanese Commander in Charge and things were a lot better.
But he couldn't do much for you. And even when we finished the railway line, he was the one man who was sent with us to the staging camp where they chose us to go to Japan, and he was also chosen to go to Japan with us, so we thought we were lucky to at least have him.
Prisoner on the Burma-Thailand Railway
I was 19 when I enlisted and I was 19 when I was taken prisoner of war. It all happened very quickly. Actually, I'd only been overseas three months when I was taken prisoner of war in Singapore. I was in the 2/19th Battalion and that was the first group that were chosen to be sent up onto the Burma Railway.
I went up there in 'A' Force and when we started all we were doing was digging foundations and building up embankments, and we started at the 56th-kilo camp and we worked our way backwards to the 26th-kilo camp, and then when we had all our embankments built they moved us back to the 26th-kilo camp, and it was from there we started to lay the sleepers and the railway lines.
And when we first started off the prisoners had to carry the sleepers and lay them in their positions, and then they would get the railway lines brought up, which astounded us because we came from Wollongong and the railway lines were made at the BHP steelworks in Port Kembla.
News on the Burma-Thailand Railway
Well, I think everyone expected to survive because we used to, in them days, we used to have wirelesses and get news. And we'd hear how the war was going on in Europe. But we realised that the war in Europe had to be won first before they could do much here because we used to get all the Japanese news and Japanese newspapers given to us. And they would tell us what they had captured here.
And of course they would exaggerate everything, but we knew that they were bombing Darwin and places like that. We realised it was going to take at least a couple of years, which it took a lot longer actually. But the suffering and the scrounging and what you had to do to keep survive kept you pretty busy.
Interviewer:
What was your state of health by this time?
Well halfway through the Burma Railway, I think I got malaria. And you used to be sick for seven days, and then you would probably go to work again. And you'd work for seven or eight days and next thing, you'd get down with another attack of malaria. I had 34 attacks of malaria while I was a prisoner of war. Actually 32 because I had two after I came home.
While I was in the American hospital, they treated us with all these different pills and things. And they practically cured us of it. I had one mild attack while I was on leave when I first come home, and I had one more attack after I was working. And since then, I've never had one. Actually I can say I've had pretty good health since then.
Red cross parcels and letters from home
We used to get the news, and know that the war was going our way, and it was while we were at Saigon, we'd left Saigon, they brought us back up on the ferry, back up to Cambodia. And it was there in the camp that night we heard from the French people that Germany had surrendered. And of course Japan still took us from there back to Bangkok, brought us all the way down through Malaya back to Singapore. And they were still going to win the war on their own.
And when we were in Singapore waiting for a ship to go to Japan, they took us from there out to a small island where they used to take us ashore every day off this small island to work on some dry docks that the Japanese were building ready for their ships.
Then one day they just said, "All men pack." And they brought us back to Singapore and back to River Valley Road and we only spent one day there. And it was the next morning, they issued us with our first Red Cross parcel. But it was one parcel between five men. And it was there that they gave us our first mail. And a lot of people got a lot of letters and some got none. I got five and I got a fifth share of a Red Cross parcel.
Sickness on the Burma-Thailand Railway
When you had malaria that bad, you'd be wondering whether you were going to wake up out of the fever. You'd be shivering and shaking. You'd shiver and shake like anything until the fever broke and then you would break out in a great sweat. You'd be just dripping wet. And if the fever never broke, well, that's when they used to die. And there was plenty of... I was on plenty of funerals where we had to take men and bury them.
Mostly, we had a couple of doctors, but they had no medical supplies to give you. All they could do was do what they could, if you had sores or anything like that, but any other pains or aches, they couldn't do much.
There was different bits of herbs that we used to gather that were grown, that we used...And of course, all along the Burma Railway, there used to be paw paws growing. We used to get the green paw paws and boil them and eat them, things like that. You had to scrounge and do anything to get anywhere and survive. It's like I said, some people would offer their last meal for a cigarette.
Toban and the omelette
We worked on the railway and we were at a Japanese camp and there was Japanese soldiers and all that there, and we had to go over there to get water for the Japs. Jap guards took four of us over to get this water for them. And when we got over there to their kitchen we noticed all these bags of salt and sugar and things packed outside. And we took the water back and we were still sitting out there on the railway lawn, waiting for railway lines to come, and a couple of hours later when they come, we laid them, and then it was all men back to camp.
And on the way back, one of my mates says, "Let's get a bag of salt." So we snuck over to the camp because the guards in the pitch dark they weren't going back with you, and everyone wandered on back along the railway line to find their way back to the camp, and we got a bag of salt. And we're walking back along the railway line and next thing we heard Japanese voices down in front of us, coming towards us, so we just got off the side of the railway line and squatted down near some bushes, and these couple of Japs went past us. We got back on the railway line and carried the bag of salt back to camp.
The next day we sold most of that for 5 cents a sausage tinful. As we used to get 5 cents a day for working on the railway, the Japs used to pay us, and you could buy a few things with that 5 cents. Oh, well, we probably only made a couple of dollars and we kept it to sprinkle the salt over the bare rice that you used to get was quite good.
Stealing to survive
And in one camp where I was made toban, which meant you were the Japanese slave. I had to look after the seven guards. You had to go and do their washing while they were on guard duty. When dinner time came, you had to go down and you'd have to carry a pole with a hook on each side and you'd carry the rice in one and their other food in the other and of course, a Jap guard would go with you. And the only good thing about it was you got your meal out of their food while you were. And this day, the cook had made big omelets as well for them and the guard said he wanted eight omelets and the cook says in Japanese "You only had seven guards." And the guard says "And one for the toban." And of course, he says "So and so, the toban." But he did get eight omelettes, when we got back to the Japanese camp, the guards gobbled up their omelets and then the guard got the other omelet and he says "Toban." And I got a big egg omelette that night. That was about the best thing I'd eaten for a long, long while.
Rescue at sea
Then it came right over next to us and one of the sailors dived off the boat and swam over to our raft with a rope and they pulled us over next to the submarine and then they ... You put your hands up and they would pull you aboard.
Well, the sailor that dived into the water and got us tied over, he got up there on the submarine and he stuck his foot back out for me to get hold of and he pulled me over close to one of those pictures shows me where I'm being pulled aboard the submarine and I'm pleading with them when I put my hands up not to grab my arms because they were just one big scab.
And they got me on board and I was amazed we could walk. And they said "Go over there" and we walked over towards the hatch cover and they said "Drop your clothes off and go down the hatch". And just as I dropped my clothes off, I heard a voice call out "Planes! Planes!" And then there was a panic, everyone. And then all of the sudden, they says "No, it's all clear! All clear! It's only birds."
While all that was happening, they picked up one more raft after that and there was only one man on it. And then the submarine went down below and they got going and one man died that night. And they did service and gave him a proper burial. And one of the sailors who was the medical officer on the submarine, he went around and he was doing all he could for the prisoners. And they fed us, first, they just gave two spoonfuls of water and then they gave us cups of water to drink and then they gave us soups and good food and then for about seven days we sailed on the submarine til we got to Saipan and then when we surfaced, they cruised in next to the mothership and then they sent down ice cream and apples.
Of course, we were amazed at the food that we got. And I suppose we'd all put weight on in the seven days we were on the sub with this food the subs gave us. And of course, the sailors on the submarine all gave us their clothes and there were 72 of them and 73 of us.
There was one prisoner that died, there was only 72 of each when we got there but we'd made a hell of a mess, with all the oil on our bodies and that, on the submarine and they fed us like lords and then they took us up into an American tent hospital.
Leaving the Burma-Thailand Railway
We were taken ashore there and we only had to walk about half a mile, and we were taken to a former French Foreign Legion camp. And there was 200 English ex-prisoners of war there, or prisoners of war, and they'd been there the whole time.
Fed well, looked after well, and were having a real good time. And they were amazed when we told them the stories of how many died. Of course, they were interested because they had heaps of English friends back. And it was a big, strongly built huts, long huts and double-decker bunks inside. And we were put in these and then we used to have to go to work.
We worked on the docks where they were unloading things off ships and things like that, while we were waiting to get our transport ship to go to Japan. And they had a canteen there and you could buy bananas and fruit every day of the week. You could buy toothbrushes, toothpaste and things like that, and it was all supplied by the French.
And one day, the guard house was right at the entrance to the prison camp and it was right on the road that was across the road from the docks. And they used to get a couple of prisoners every day to go out and sweep the footpath with homemade brooms. I was chosen with about four others and one day we were out there sweeping the footpath and a couple of nice Dutch girls, French girls came riding past in the book on push bikes.
And they said, "Hello." And they used to go like this, V for victory. And I just put my fingers up V for victory to them and one of the guards saw me. And he come out and babbled away in Japanese and holding his fingers up. And then I got a clout across the face, this side, and another clout across the face that side. And then he says, "Speedo, back sweep".
Boarding the Rakuyo Maru
Then the next day it was all men, pack and they marched us down to the docks. And when we got down to the docks there was two ships there. And one ship was to take 1500 prisoners, another was to take the other 800. Well there was about 750 Australians I think. And we were supposed to go on the ship that was to take the 800, but they marched us onto the wrong ship. So they had to make up the number of Englishmen on the same ship as us. And the other ship just had the 750 Englishmen on it.
When we eventually sailed, when we went aboard, we had to go up the gangplank and first they took on heaps of young Japanese people, injured Japanese soldiers, and then a heap of Geisha girls, and then they took us up. As we were going up the plank the Geisha girls were spitting at us.
We were taken on board, and first they put us all down in the hold. But as you went on board you had to carry a big tube of rubber. This was about 18 inches by 18 inches and it had a handle on it and they told us that was our life preservers. But as you went up they packed all them down in the hold. Of course that hold was full of rubber.
They put us all down below, and you had about two foot square for each prisoner and the bit of gear that you had. But after the ship sailed they relented and allowed so many hundred up on deck and I was one of the lucky ones that was up on deck. Well, you never got any better treatment or anything. It just meant more room for those down in the hold.
And you only got one cup of water a day, but luckily on the second night it poured rainin', it just fell down. Everyone caught rain in their dixies and had a good wash and a good drink of water. And other days, to have a wash, they had a salt water hose going all the time and you'd go over there and get under that.
US submarine attack on Rakuyo Maru
The submarine surfaced. The name of the submarine was the [USS] Growler and it attacked the destroyer. Luckily they fired two torpedoes at it head-on and one of the torpedoes hit it. That caused a fire and a lot of damage to start with, then the second torpedo they fired blew it up. Well, I was on deck when the first torpedo hit it and there was only a bright flash from that. And the Japanese guard near us says: "Oh, a fire on the island." And when the next torpedo hit that destroyer and it blew up he never said anything. But the prisoners near us said: "Hello, the island's blew up".
And then the panic started. That destroyer - that submarine pulled out of the chase then. As it surfaced to dodge depth charges they lost track of the convoy and the other three submarines attacked the convoy and they sank a transport ship near us. I was on deck and we saw all this. Then they sank a transport ship on the other side of us. And then there was an oil tanker about 500 metres from us and they sank it. But before it sank you could see the Japanese sailors trying to run along the deck in the burning oil and [then] it exploded. Then they sunk an oil tanker on the other side of us.
And then we copped one. Luckily the first torpedo hit the hull on the forward part of the ship which was full of rubber and that took most of the shock, but the big splash of water that came up over the deck washed us and roughed all up against the deck cabins and things like that. And the people down in the hull, the water poured down on top of them and of course they were screaming and panicking.
And then the second torpedo was only about 10 to 12 seconds later than that and it hit the engine room. And when it hit the engine room the ship sort of just dropped about 10 feet. And it sort of laid over on its side a bit like this a bit. But then all the Japanese were getting into the lifeboats and getting away and we were tossing rafts over. So many men were getting on each raft. And we got down to there was only one raft left and there was eight of us. And we said 'Well, we'll have a drink of water first. So we went and got a belly full of water and we tossed that raft over and we all jumped in the water and got [on] the raft.
We'd only got about 100 metres away from the ship and another Japanese naval boat came back flashing lights everywhere, and then it got torpedoed. And the concussion of those torpedoes hitting the ship affected our stomachs and I got as sick as anything and lost all the water I drank. Well then we got on the raft, eight of us, and we pushed our way away from the ship a bit, and all the rafts kept coming in close together and we were all pretty close together.
Waiting for rescue after the sinking of Rakuyo Maru
On the first day on the raft, the water was very calm. And when you sat on the raft, the 18 of us, the raft used to go about this far under the water but then the life jacket you had on would take your weight and you'd just float up and down with the rise of the current.
Well we just talked of good things back in Australia and what we'd so when we got home and all this. No one talked of death or not being rescued or anything. And then on the second day we noticed a couple missing. We spotted a Jap - dead -you used to see lots of prisoners floating in their lifejackets that were dead and we'd say "Oh, there goes so-and-so and there goes so-and-so".
Then I spotted a Jap come close to us and he had a water bottle around his neck. And I says "Well, I'll get that water bottle." So I dog paddled about five metres to it, got the water bottle and I was flat out dog paddling back to the raft. They pulled a stick from under the raft, we'd been shoving sticks under the raft and bits of plank and that under the raft to help hold us up higher. They poked the stick out and pulled me aboard and we got the water bottle, it had no cork in it and was full of salt water.
That was I think the second day, and then on the third day it rained. Well, we put our hands up to our mouths like this, and I'd say everybody would have got a couple of good mouthfuls of water. It was still very calm and the water was warm and the nights were warm and the days were warm. Well, they were hot the days, because you got badly burnt. All my arms were burnt right up here and right up there. And where you were in the water all the time your skin had gone - you only had skin, you got practically no flesh under the skin - it had all congealed up and sort of come in to look like big scabs.
On the third night, we still had about 16 of us on the raft. When daylight come the next morning, there was only nine of us left. I never saw one of them disappear. On that third night I got into the middle of the two rafts that we'd joined together and took my lifejacket off, tied a strap to my arm and lay down in about six inches of water and had a sleep. And I slept very well, because we were very, very tired I'll admit and knocked about, we were only skin and bones.
And then the next morning there was only nine of us on the two rafts and we were floating around and we saw this, looked like a small fishing trawler, going to rafts about four or five kilometres away from us. Someone kept saying "Oh, it's a small ship". And then it started coming closer to us, and we're waving and waving, and when it got closer we realised it was a submarine.
The [USS] Pampanito happened to come up to have a look around and spotted these rafts with people on them. They didn't know who they were or what they were. They came up and they mounted machine guns on the deck and they came over close to one of the rafts. By this time all the rafts were five and six hundred metres apart, or two kilometres apart, and we're all black with oil of course. One bloke had fair hair and he sung out "You sink us and now you want to shoot us!" And the sailor sung out "Who are you?" And he says "We were Australian and English prisoners of war." And he sung back "Well, we'll throw a rope and the man with the white hair only grab it".
He grabbed the rope and they pulled him aboard, and they were smartly satisfied that they were prisoners and they radioed, and another submarine surfaced straight away. The submarine that first spotted us, it cruised around picking up prisoners. It had a crew of 72, and it picked up 73 [survivors] and I was one of the prisoners that it picked up. I was on the second-last raft that they came to. We had two rafts joined together and we did have 18 prisoners on the two rafts but eventually when we were picked up there was only nine of us still alive.
