Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
Enlisting with mates
Oh, well they realised, all of my mates, whatever we did, we always did it together. I was in the Cameron Highlanders, the militia before the war, and then we all decided we'd join the AIF. My brother, he had to put his age up, and mum and dad agreed to say he could go with us. Yeah. But I didn't go to the Burma Railway.
See, I was in the Changi Hospital when he went up north to work on the Burma Railway. So I didn't know he was alive myself until I got released and back in Manila. That's when they put lists up of prisoners that were recovered, and that's when I realised my brother was still alive, and two of my mates as well. One was all right. Two was all right. But one of them had died.
Happy feet
Then you've got the different diseases. Beriberi. Mylagia, where the skin would come off your tongue. And beriberi, what they used to call happy feet. You couldn't sleep of a nighttime. Your feet would be aching that much, you'd have to get up and walk. You'd see all the guys walking around. And then you'd be dead tired and you'd finish up you'd be going to sleep in the daytime and you wanted to also sleep at night time. It was shocking.
Storing bully beef
Mainly going around, well, the parties I worked was going where all the food dumps were out in the jungle part of Singapore. They wanted to confiscate all the tins of bully beef and biscuits and all that, and they had us working and taking it back from the jungle and putting them in houses where they'd probably shot all the Chinese.
So they used these houses for storage and scrounging all the stuff. Well that, of course that would have all eventually have been shipped back to Japan because we know that because when I went to Japan, we used to have the job of working, unloading the ships with all the loot that they brought in from down south.
"Australian bastardos"
I can tell you a funny part of it one time. We're bringing these cases of bully beef inside this house, and there's this little Japs, he's only a short guy. He finished up. He calls into the room, and he could only say a couple of words of English. He said, "Australians bastardos." He got up on one of the boxes, because he's that short. Stood on a box, and he grabbed hold one of the guy's Aussie slouch hats. He put a tin of bully beef on the top of this box, and he put the hat on top of it, and he says, "Shame of how we were thieving tins of bully beef."
When he lift then hat up, the tin of bully beef was gone. They stole it underneath his nose. Course, he put on a show about that. Because we all started to laugh. Why don't you feel really small? It's only one against 30 of us, so he had to see the joke, how he was beaten. Right in front of him. Yeah, yeah.
'Black Jack' Galleghan
I can remember, when I was in the hospital, for my eyesight. This guy in charge was called Black Jack Galleghan. He had us stay. Black Jack was coming over to the hospital and visit some of the boys. This guy just in an ordinary, old pair of shorts.
He pulled him up. Said, "Hey, you know who I am?" "No." He said, "I'm Colonel Galleghan, CO of the Australians." The guy said to him, "You know who I am?" He said, "No. Who are you." He said, "I'm Sir Julian Taylor, the second surgeon to the king." He said, "I think I deserve a salute." We thought it was a bit of a joke, yeah. That was put over Black Jack.
A spoonful of marmite three times a day
South African Red Cross ship came into Singapore and the Japanese allowed it to come in, and they took off all the medical supplies, and I was given a spoonful of Marmite three times a day to stop me from going totally blind. The guys either side of me were blind. Their eyesight came back, so they were able to see, yeah.
How they got on after that, I don't know. When I came home, I used to feel terrible because a lot of people thought I was stuck up, because people's faces, well, if look at you now, I can't see a complete face. It's all parts of a face. And the further you get away, well, I can't recognize them at all. And it used to be embarrassing. People will think I was stuck up, and it used to get me down a bit about that, but over the years I got used to it.
Torpedo attack
On the way over there was 11 ships in my convoy. It was an old tramp ship ours, called the Weills Maru. I think it took us nearly three weeks to get to Japan, and I was on board, up on deck where [they were doing] haircutting, and this day, the siren went on the boat. All Japs went running everywhere, and next thing, this thing shot across the front of our boat. It was a torpedo. There was a Japanese cruiser was escorting 11 ships. This one cruiser, and they fired two torpedoes at it, and they missed it.
They never hit the ship. But they dropped depth charges. The depth charges made the engines on our boat conk out. We were left bobbing around in the ocean. The other 10 ships went, left us. This is lovely. We didn't know whether they got the submarine or what happened. We thought, "Well, if it comes back, it'll definitely probably get us this time." Of course, two days later, the siren went again. We were all herded down below. Put the hatch on. Canvas on top of that.
We couldn't have got out, so it was just a matter of waiting to be torpedoed. We heard the firing, the gun up the front of the boat and on the back of the boat. It all went quiet, and we heard this laughter going on. It turned out it was a piece of bamboo was bobbing around the ocean, and they thought it was a telescope of a submarine. We were pleased. So we managed to get to Moji, Japan. Yeah. Long time after the other boats.
Working in Japan
Most of the time, when you're working in Japan, you worked in the rain and snow, clothes got soaking wet. Some of the guys were too tired to change, and the killer over in Japan was pneumonia. So I did everything in my power to make sure and as soon as I got home I'd change to warm clothes.
Always have a change of clothes. As I say, some guys were too tired, and a lot of guys, you could tell they'd been a prisoner of war for so long, they'd had enough. And because of sickness, you could tell that they didn't want to fight on anymore.
Japanese guards
When we got to Japan, we were hated by the civilians. The kids going to school used to throw stones and spit, and yell out "Hiyo, hiyo" and put their hands up. Rub it into us. But as the war went on, you could tell the war was changing to our side. They'd tell us where there was stuff to steal, and get some for them. Even the Japanese guards, they'd have us take it out, because they never got searched by customs. Well, they got searched by customs, but we never. We got searched by the army. So they were very cunning. They got us to take it through customs. Soon as they're out of sight of the customs, we'd have to hand it over to them. But then you got back to camp, even though you had stolen stuff on you, you got searched, you got bashed up.
You got, it depended on what you had and the quantities you had. You got bashed up. They wouldn't stick up for you. But some of the Jap guards would, knowing that we'd do the same thing for them another time. So you got to know the Jap guards. They were all nicknamed. Horseface, Yagi, that's the Japanese word for goat. Chinless wonder. Smiler. Gentleman Jim, Maxie, because he looked like Maxie Baer, the boxer. We had nicknames for them all.
Jack Gilding, a good mate
This guy that I'd become very friendly with. I never knew him before I was a prisoner of war, Jack Gilding from South Australia. And one of the first jobs I had in Japan was I had to go into a bin and shovel this black graphite dust out. And where I went in, it was only big enough for me to get in and I had to shovel this thing. I could only stay in for so long. I had to wear a mask and I had to have a white paste on my face.
And if you didn't have that paste on, as soon as the sun hit you and melted that, it burned your skin. My eyesight being bad as it was, it was making, I was going to go blind. I complained but this chap was a mongrel of a chap, we called him Speedo. He was the boss, I had to go in. This South Australian boy, Jack Gilding, he volunteered and he said "I will go in." We became very good friends. We finished up, we convinced this Speedo, you could make a shovel and pull it out.
Nobody needed to go in there, scoop it out. He agreed and that's what they did. So Jack and I became very good friends and we used to work on ... We were put on pushing trolleys like they use in the mines and we finished and we thought we're going to win this guy over. So we could even say "I'm Johnny-san." And Jack Gilding was Jackie-san. And he was Speedo-san. To finish up, we got him to learn more English and unbelievable how we won him over.
The mad doctor
As I say, the mad doctor, because he was crazy. When we first went to Japan, we used to didn't have to work on Sundays. Some days, you worked Sunday as well. Then you got one Sunday off a month. If he was in charge that day, you'd rather be at work, the beggar. It was a torture to be in. We were in a warehouse, three story warehouse, and he was so torturous towards you. He'd come up, I was on the first floor.
He'd have us count in Japanese. "Louder. More louder." He'd be shouting, and there was three sections on the floor, and he'd have each section counting loud. Then he'd race up the steps to the second one, he'd have them running on the spot. "Faster." You could hear them running on the spot. Then he'd duck down to try to catch us, if we were still counting. It was torturous. Especially if he had been drinking sake. I remember one day I was washing my clothes, and I heard this click, clock, click, clock, click, and I hear a thing.
I didn't know it was him because all he had on, was his naked, he had a fundoshi which are underpants, they'd wear what are called a fundoshi. That's all he had on, this fundoshi. I didn't know he was a mad doctor. Of course, he carried on, he swung me around, whacked me across the face because I didn't salute him. I didn't know, because he's naked. So that was the sort of guy he was, and another time, in the winter time, you were never allowed to have a shower.
We had guys that were good at picking locks. They could pick locks, because the showers were locked up at winter time. These guys would pick the lock, and we'd go and have a shower, all down in the shower, and it's freezing cold. You just dive in, get washed...you're covered in black dust, and in walks mad doctor. Rips off his sword, and he made me stay under that shower, and freezing cold water coming down. He'd make you turn around, so he could whack you across the backside with his sword. He was torturous. Well, apparently, he go hung after the war. I saw the records of the war, and he was one guy that did hang, yeah, from Kobe. The mad doctor...Taki I think his name was. Yeah.
The bombing of Kobe
We were bombed out. It was a fantastic sight. Unbelievable, I'll never see fires like it again. Kobe is a big mountain range, it goes right through from Osaka to I don't know how far south it goes. When the Americans come over, they bombed, they come over and they bombed with 500 pound oil bombs first. The next wave they'd come over and drop incendiary bombs. On the mountains it looked like lava running down the mountain, the incendiaries lighting up the oil bombs when they exploded and filthy oil everywhere.
And it was just like lava running down the mountainside. Then they used to bomb in a circle. And all the houses in Kobe was two and three stories high, weatherboard, pine wood. Inside was all mats and stuff, so you can just imagine those poor civilians had their air raid shelters dug in the houses and in the laneways and they just got cooked. Flames were shooting thousands of feet into the air.
We were able to see this because we were in a warehouse that the windows had steel bars and a big steel shutter, so it could be shut up so no weather could get in when it was raining and snowing. And we could look out and see what was going on. And the poor civilians, there must have been thousands was killed, cooked. Terrible.
Kobe House: A lucky escape
This area, Kobe. We called it Kobe House. We thought, "They must have known we're a prison camp here. They missed us." That wasn't right, though. We were just about ready to go to work, and 7:00 o'clock in the morning, and the air raid sirens were going, and you could hear the planes coming. They sound a lot closer. Then, all of a sudden, we heard, the bomb was coming down. The 500 pound oil bomb hit our building.
As I say, it was a three story building, with an attic up top. The attic, it was stacked with all the winter clothes, blankets, grey coats. It stopped the bomb from coming right through on us. We'd all gone down. The guys on the top floor come down to the first floor. Our floor was packed. We couldn't get out because two big steel doors, padlocked on the outside, so we were locked in, and we were ablaze. Well, the English, they were in a warehouse next to us. We were only separated by the width of a car. Being in two warehouses together. They were lucky. The bomb blew a wall out. They were able to get out, and they made the Jap guard unlock us and let us out. Otherwise, I would never be here.
Senso oeru - War finished
They marched us to work this morning, and when we got there, they left us standing, and you could see they were all congregating around the main office. I think it was called Sampa Ku a shipbuilding people, a stevedoring company. Anyway, we saw women starting to cry, and some men crying. That's strange. Then after that they came. "No work today. We're going back to camp". They never said anything about the war being finished.
Just said, "No work today. We're going back to camp." Of course, we had start march back to camp. By that time, these other working parties from along the wharf, they were marching back, and I called out, "What do you know?" Of course, some of the Japs had broken the news to some of the boys. Japanese word for war was senso and oeru means finish. They say, "Senso oeru." Anyway. Hope it's true. Because we all knew that if there had have been a landing in Japan, we wouldn't have got out.
They'd wipe us all out. Because we had been drilled to be parade at a minute's notice, to be taken out on parade. That was going to be the end. We got back to camp. This Japanese, he'd never known to hit the guys, and he'd sort of try to get you out of trouble. He said, "Senso oeru" War finished. He and a couple of these Japanese guards, they went away, and they come back with cases of oranges and apples, and dished them out. So we knew then the war was over.
Food drops
Well, the next day, over come the B-29 bombers dropping these 40 gallon drums. Some were welded together, one was full of food, the other one was full of clothing. Some were just single, and the parachutes were all different colours and it was a beautiful sight to see them coming down. And the only ones that got injured was the Japanese, because when they came down they were going to come down really fast, and apparently a couple lost their lives trying to get there before it hit the ground, but they got hit. It hit the ground, it hit them as well. A lot of the stuff got squashed as well, I mean hit the ground too hard, it was solid landing on a road and it squashed it. It bust the 40 gallon drum open but most of the food was saved, and the clothing.
