Bart Richardson - Ill-treatment of locals

Running time
1 min 17 sec
Date made
Copyright
Department of Veterans' Affairs

Transcript

We only met them once, fortunately. They were hopeless. The unfortunate ones, really unfortunate ones, were the locals.

The Japs would bring them up from the south and advertise they show you a picture show somewhere in the town and everybody was invited.

Of course everybody would go. And when the hall was full, they'd kick out the kids and put the men on trains and send them up to Thailand. There was no record of who went up, they didn't know who they were. They had nothing with them when they got there. They had nothing to eat with. Used to put their tucker on a bamboo leaf and eat with their fingers. And they died like flies. They really did. They were the ones that really suffered. Nobody would ever know how many there were.

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