French Indo China

Jack and I, with about another 1,000 other men, left Thailand on 5^th June, 1944 for Japan under Major Seekings. When we got to Singapore the Japs were worried about their convoys were being attacked by the American blockade, so they found us work on the docks. Conditions in Singapore were very bad, even the rice ration was cut down to the absolute minimum, we had to boil and eat leaves from the hedges to survive. There were no cats or dogs left it was that bad. To survive we would pinch anything, seven of us were caught trying to smuggle some oil after working in the dock area, the Jap guards lined us up in the sun and beat the hell out of us, I thought this was my lot. The body can take more then you can imagine, and when they had finished the beatings, I survived. One of my mates got caught stealing bananas off a tree on the way back from work, he was put in the hold that night, (the hold was a pit dug in the ground with a bamboo grill over it). In the morning I went to see him and although thirsty he was all right. That night I couldn't find him anywhere, I searched throughout the camp only to find his head on a bamboo pole. The horror of that day will never leave me, why take a life for such a trivial act of survival, I will never understand their mentality.

In January 1945, when things couldn't get any worse, we were moved to Saigon, French Indo China in the Haruyasa Maru under Major Seekings and Captain Spooner with 218 other English POWs, it was like heaven compared with the last two years.

Camp 10 was situated on the Rue Catinat, which was a main thoroughfare between the native quarter and the French quarter. The huts were of timber construction except for the hospital which was of bamboo structure with an attapi roof. All the huts had electric light.

Rice was still our main diet but we actually got meat twice a week and eggs to buy in the canteen. Jack and I wrangled good jobs, this time as carpenters. We were paid 40 cents a day, this helped us put more food into our still swollen bellies and within no time our weight was up to 10 stone. There was also a remarkable change in the way the Japs treated us. Germany had surrendered and they knew the end of the war was near. The guards then started to go missing and we heard the Americans had dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are no words that can ever tell you how I felt. It was like being awakened from a bad nightmare, was I awake or still dreaming, would it start all over again. When the realization came that the Japs had surrendered, a few tears were shed by us, but not the Australians, they went in search of the our guards. The beatings and abuse were too fresh to be forgotten, and all the pent-up emotions of the last few years were let out, many guards lost their lives over the next few days.

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