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Diary of Frederick Lloyd
Supplied with the kind permission of Steve Lloyd
1944
January - There was a lot of talk going around about work parties being formed to go to the Burma Railroad. Luckily for me our party was destined to go to Japan as soon as we could be loaded onto a bauxite ore ship the "Matsu Maru", we were put on board and herded below decks. The ore was so heavy so that only the lower part had ore and we were pushed into the four foot ledges around the outside of the hold, we only allowed on deck in small groups for fifteen minutes exercise each day. During the trip there were several submarine scares, had we been torpedoed, we were locked in and with the weight of the ore she would have sunk like a stone. The first land that we sighted was Formosa, but we stayed on the ship, but were then allowed more time on deck while at anchor. We sailed again until we reached Japan, the ship docked at Kobe. When we landed we were given a rough medical check and given inocula-tions, then they pushed us onto a train to Osaka where we spent the night, then on another train to Wakayama. We were marched across sandy soil for about four miles and entered into a brand new enclosed camp, still on this sandy ground.
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Maps of Osaka Camp - Drawn by Frederick
There were four barracks each for one hundred men, and a cook house with a "bathroom" next to it. The beds were a long raised platform about eighteen inches off the ground with a very thin layer of straw covered with a mat top. Fifty men each side. There were two small fireplaces but no stove or material to burn and no stove. We were given a small bamboo box 5"x3"x 4' deep for taking our rice meal to the "factory" across the sand dunes three miles away were we had to work.
The "factory" was a steel factory, making steel seamless pipes for the Jap Navy. The pipes varied in size from two inches to fifteen inches and usually twelve to sixteen feet long. We were split into work parties, one barrack had one shift another the second. I was put on a party that worked in the general maintenance section, and a big wide shouldered Jap was our supervisor, who turned out to be OK. Most days we took a trek (scout) cart to the beach to select two inch to four inch pebbles for the water wells around the very large factory site. We learned from him that all the land the factory and small town where all the civilians lived was built on reclaimed land from the sea, hence the very deep layer of sand everywhere.
The factory was really a small town, all the workers clothes, food, medical etc. was supplied by the company "Mitsubishi". Each day we got a small bowl of weak soup to go with our rice at the factory, and our supervisor was surprised when he found out how small our meal was. We had a similar meal at the camp each morning before starting off to work, the work day was ten hours, and the same again when we got back. This Jap soon got to be quite friendly and gave us lots of rest periods, he was very good at Judo, and always wanted to have a match with me. I was the senior rank in our group so he liked to throw me all over the place, but not viciously and he never hurt me or anybody else he picked out to have a Judo session with. We all got a cigarette each time we had our rest, plus matches, I usually got ten ciga-rettes which we shared anyway. I got him to try boxing one day, but a straight left on his jaw put an end to boxing and a return to Judo. But he took it with a big grin.
Unfortunately this easy work soon ended and I found myself in a large workplace at the steel factory, each morning we were made to line up with the civilian workers to do ten minutes of physical exercises before starting work, this included bowing to the east, or to the Emperor, I never found out which. My first job was scraping flaws out of the seamless steel tubes, vary-ing from two inch to ten inch and twelve to sixteen feet long, with a crude spokeshave, some of the guys got steel slivers up into their eyes and were sent to the factory hospital for treat-ment. This factory was like a small town with a hospital, and a very well equipped one at that. There was also a very large farm where tomatoes, digongs (a long turnip like vegetable), barley and other vegetables were grown, all in this sandy soil fed with "human manure". Some parties had to work on this farm, especially the "sick", who, when the barley started to grow, had to build wind breaks along the rows with last year's crop of straw and piled sand.
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