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The "Lisbon Maru"
After the atrocities of the camp at Shamshuipo, we all thought that we had reached bedrock, but no, there was worse to follow.
We were told to gather our meagre possessions together, embark by ship, to a "much gooder prison camp" (Japanese version). We looked forward to it with mixed feelings, knowing, and not trusting, the Japs, but we thought nothing could be worse than Shamshuipo. How wrong we were. Instead, for thousands of P.O.Ws, there was a quick death by drowning after a night in the hold of the slowly sinking ship battened down, with no water, no food and very little air, it was a living nightmare, but a kindly Jap lowered a bucket of liquid - urine!
We naturally drank.
On or about the twenty- ninth of September, 1942, a draft of approximately 1820 British P.O.W’s, embarked on the ‘bad ‘ ship, the Lisbon Maru, bound for Japan (I think). We were unceremoniously herded below decks, a few slaps and kicks here and there for good measure.
The bulk of the POWs were comprised of the following: -
Royal Scots, the Middlesex Regiment and the Royal Artillery.
On the first of October, another chap and myself were walking along the deck carrying a wooden bucket of rice and what we named slum, a horrible looking, evil smelling, concoction of some vegetables, thin and watery, when there sounded a dull thud from one side of the ship.
Then the Japs went berserk, slapping and pushing us into the hold again. An American submarine had torpedoed the ship. When we were in the hold, we were battened down, and the ship started to sink. The Jap ships in the area picked up all the Japanese troops that were on board our ship, leaving us to drown locked in the hold. As I have stated previously, chronological time had no relevance in certain conditions.
This was such a condition. so the period that we spent in the locked hold, fearing the prospect of certain death by drowning (in fact some men had already died in the hold owing to their physical condition ) was truly, to put it mildly , a living nightmare. Men were crying out through the night, begging for food, water, pleading for god to help them, but he must have been busy that day. All that they received was a bucket of urine, not our daily bread, even in these circumstances, there is always a humorist. Imagine the ship sinking, swaying from side to side, a voice shouting, "I’m bleedin’ ‘ungry".
Humorist - "Right, lay dahn and ‘ave a bleedin’ roll”. It was pitch dark, there was a wooden gallery above the floor of the ship on which the bulk of the men were lying, the men on the gallery could not retain their urine or their faeces any longer so we below received them with shouts of “you dirty bastards". Then, as the saying goes "came the dawn", with a salvation of sorts. Someone, (not the Japanese) organised a break-out.
The battens were quickly lifted. A shaft of light shone into the hold. Men rushed to a flight of flimsy wooden stairs leading to the top deck. The staircase broke under their weight and men came hurtling down crashing to the floor of the hold or the men underneath. I managed to climb up an iron ladder attached to one of the deck support pillars. When I reached the deck, it was half -submerged by the sea. The ship kept lurching to one side as the weight of the men from the other holds increased the weight on that side of the ship. Men were jumping into the sea, and looking for a piece of hatch cover, a plank of wood , anything that would float, to save themselves from drowning.
There were a few Jap naval ships in the area and they threw life lines over the side. Some of the drowning men climbed up them.
As they climbed the Japs gradually lowered the lines to the sea again. If any of the P.O.W’s managed to reach the deck rails, a shot would ring out, and a body would fall into the water. After this, we kept clear of the Jap ships.
The currents were so strong that the makeshift rafts our chaps were on kept going out to sea then back towards the far distant coast line again. I had managed to get onto a small, square cork raft, after swimming for about an hour (I think). At first I was the only occupant. Later I was joined by two exhausted chaps, on their last gasp. I helped them onto the raft as best as I could, and the raft carried us out to sea, in again, out again, in again. It was a bright sunny day (weatherwise). The chaps on the make shift rafts, were passing us in opposite directions.
Our spirits were comparatively high after our experience in the hold. To most, in the sunshine, it was like a day at (sarfend). 0n one of the journeys, I passed a raft partially submerged, owing to the weight of men on it. I saw one chap from this raft hailing me, "Hi Spooz, room for one more?”
Guess who? You are right, it was Micky, he had turned up like a good penny. He swam to us, making a group of four. The rest of the time that we were on the raft is hazy. We were all in poor condition, exposure and fear was added to everything else that we had suffered.
Hallucination went hand in hand with reality, hope and desperate optimism, plus the instinct to survive blinded us to the desperate plight that we were in. From far distant land a lighthouse was flashing.
Mick and I made several attempts to guide the raft by getting into the water and pushing it towards the lighthouse, but it was an impossible task, the current was too strong and of course the land was too far distant. The two other chaps were just about finished. The ironic part was that we were in a shipping lane, ships were passing by in full view, but they did not pick us up, no doubt that they had been warned off by our friends, the Japs. So there we were the four of us, adrift on the pacific, somewhere of f the east china coast, being carried farther out to sea, then in again, at the mercy of the currents: thirsty, hungry, weak from exposure and the starvation by the kindly Japanese army in that hellhole of a prison camp, Shamshuipo. The other chaps were in a really bad way, on the brink of death. Mick and I could not help them, only watch, wait and hope for a miracle.
FOUR MEN ON A RAFT
THEN TWO DROWNED IN THE SEA
THAT LEFT MICKY AND ME
Where were we? Oh, I remember. Four of us floating about on a raft, as you may say, we were ‘all at sea’, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, awaiting a miracle to happen. A funny thing about miracles, they are not around when you need one, yet at my old Sunday school, when I was a kid, we were taught that they were a common occurrence, like curing leprosy, walking on water, paralytics picking up their beds and walking away with them. Wish that miracles did happen, they would save our country billions of pounds, and our present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, a lot of headaches. On reflection, I suppose that the only one on our raft that was capable of doing any kind of miracle was Micky. He did, as far as I was concerned, he saved my life.
We were so far gone at the end of that day, that evening, that night? The memory plays tricks, and, of course, we were in such a state of exhaustion that the time did not register on our minds, at least not on mine, it was like a bad dream or a terrible nightmare, a series of terrible events. The first to drown was the chap sitting behind me on the raft, who started to drink the seawater. I tried to stop him drinking it, but he resisted and even convinced me that it would stop our bodies dehydrating. I started to drink also, but Micky forcibly restrained me from doing it. The chap who had started it had already jumped off the raft. I must have blanked out at this time. Remember the tale ‘The Lady of Shallot’, when a hand emerges from the lake, and clutches a sword which came from nowhere? Apparently, in my confused state, that scene was repeated by the drowning man, his hand above the waves, the sword appeared and was clutched by the hand, and then the hand clutching the sword sank into the lake. It seemed so natural at that time, as if it was an everyday happening. That scene has haunted me for years, vivid nightmares, frequently at first, but much less intense and regular as the years passed. Yet the memories still remain, as others – our brutal treatment in the prison camps, the torpedoed ship in which our captors intended our forty-eight hours and us to drown, on the raft. It has taken years to dim the memories, but one can never completely eradicate the nightmare of those three years and eight months of Japanese hospitality.
All the rest of that first day that we were adrift on the raft, Micky, the other two chaps and I, drifted about on the sea, towards the shore, out to sea again. Soon exposure, hunger, and thirst dulled our senses. Then the rains came, buckets of it hurtling down on our bare skins (we had discarded our sodden clothing long since – they were an encumbrance). All the protection that we had were small strips of cloth around our dangly bits. Such modesty!
The weather turned stormy, huge waves came lunging at the raft hitting our stomachs, dependant on which way the raft was facing at the time. Ironically, we were in a shipping lane, but not one ship tried to save us – doubtless the Japanese had warned them all off.
I vaguely remember turning my head and looking at a rear corner of the raft, the other chap was lying across it, his head in the sea, lolling from side to side, his feet also. I watched him, fascinated, my head moving in time with his. I was beyond being shocked – that came later. Micky took over, he gently pushed the dead man in to water, say “the old raft is getting waterlogged, Spooz. He was a goner anyway”. I can still visualise that scene after all this time, about fifty-eight years, sometimes in my dreams, and at times after a stroll down memory lane. Throughout that night, it still rained heavily; the waves were, as they say in books, mountainous, hitting us again and again heavily on our stomachs, making us wince painfully, after the continual buffeting. I suffer from it to this very day.
Back and forth went the raft, night turned to day, with no abatement in the weather, or the waves, which were still punishing our stomachs, the temperature rose during the night. Mick and I sat close together, it is funny (not ha-ha funny), but our skins touching together at the shoulders seemed to impart a warmth through the whole of our bodies. It was a long day, for all that I remember of it. We were pretty well gone by then. I recollect dawn breaking, the sun shining through the clouds, the rain still teeming down, the waves still behaving badly. A piece of flotsam floated by the raft - it turned out to be a soggy piece of cardboard. In the mental state that I was in, it seemed that Micky performed an Olympic dive into the sea, swam ten Myles from the raft and back with the flotsam, and with superhuman strength, ripped it in two and said “Here, Spooz, half for you and half for me. Actually, I suppose he slipped into the sea, reached and grabbed the cardboard, then divided it between us. So there we both sat under the pouring rain, the waves bashing the hell out of us, holding pieces of soggy cardboard over our heads. Then I had a flash of sanity! The thought shot through my tired mind “What a pair of p---s! Here we are, soaking wet, waves playing volley ball on our stomachs, yet we sit, holding these stupid bits of cardboard over us for protection”. I suppose I must have completely blanked out at this time. In my delirious state, I imagined that I had flung the cardboard as far as I could up into the air (about two inches, I suppose). It seemed to climb up a sunray, then changed to a perfect black non-soggy square shape. It gyrated very slowly, it’s corners very pronounced as each one turned towards me, climbed at a slow but constant speed toward the sun. I thought, it that hits the sun, there will be a f------ great explosion – it did! There was! I woke up in heaven, an old, angelic Chinese, sans wings, dressed in traditional Chinese peasant’s clothes, black trousers, black blouse, her grey hair plaited in the customary pigtail. She was feeding me a warm sweet liquid from a china bowl, with a china spoon. Then I blanked out again. It must have been a long time later that a loud voice woke me up. It was the pub-trained singer, Mr Micky Myles, who was seated at a table at the corner of the hut, which we were in, with four of the Chinese rescuers who had taken us from the sea. It seemed that Micky had held my head above the water all through part of our second day, and the following night, until we were saved in the early hours of the morning by a Chinese fishing boat, after having spent forty-eight hours on the raft. That miracle had occurred after all. Now our rescuers appeared to be blind drunk. Mick was trying to teach them (all, or at least, few of them had, I supposed never seen or heard a Scot in their lives) to sing “Ah belong to Glesga, dear old Glesga toon”. The Chinese gents appeared to be enjoying it, but seemed to be singing one of their own Chinese songs. I did not see the kindly angelic elderly lady again, but, after all these years, in my mind, I can still see your benign, sympathetic face. No doubt you have long gone, but, wherever you may be, bless you, and thank you for your kindness to me. I hope that whatever powers may exist, have rewarded you for your compassion toward a fellow being.
Later on we were joined by more of the rescued, also in bad condition, in fact one of them was on the point of death, and rambling incoherently. The following day, we were gathered in one of the huts, seated on the floor against a wall, when there was a patter of feet, and suddenly some Japanese sailors rushed in, with fixed bayonets, which they pointed towards us. We attempted to get to our feet, but, in our weakened condition, it was a very slow process. The Japanese sailors, seeing our efforts, sheathed their bayonets at a command from one of their senior ranks, pulled out cigarettes, and handed them around to us. There was quite a bit of coughing and choking, as we had not had cigarettes for a long time. After we had finished coughing, choking and smoking, the Japanese sailors carried us to the shore, put us aboard their rowboats and onto their ship.
We were taken to an island at which they were based, treated quite well, given good food, and accommodated in what we assumed to be a judo room, fitted with soft flooring on which we were to sleep. A young cadet officer was posted over us as a guard. During the night, the dying man was very thirsty, and the young guard had a silver jug of milk, apparently his own rations. He indicated that I give the milk to the dying man. I fed the poor chap, but soon after that, he died.
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