The Prisoner

This story is dedicated to my father, a prisoner of the Japanese for four years in WWII. Sadly he died before I ever understood the things that he must have experienced. My lack of understanding no doubt contributed to the estrangement between us, and my inadequate attempts to reconcile prior to his death.

As I researched the story, I found many accounts from other prisoners of war. The one factor they seemed to have in common was that they all spoke of what happened but very few commented on their feelings or emotions; maybe this is a result of their generation when men suppressed their emotions or maybe they just didn't want to think about their feelings. I don't know. I tried to think how I would have felt and realised that the terrible things they saw and heard were so far outside anything I could imagine that I had no idea how I would have reacted.

The story is fiction but all the parts of this story are taken from true life accounts of real people. Maybe I should dedicate it to their bravery and fortitude, and to the sacrifice of all those who died.

The more I read this, the more I feel it is woefully inadequate as a tribute but I need to put my ideas on paper.

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"You're free now," the American officer said. It seemed almost an impossibility after everything that had happened in the last few years.

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When I was first conscripted, I was sent to an artillery training camp in the Welsh mountains. There they tried to turn me from a student studying art and literature to a soldier whose job was to try to shoot at aircraft and kill their crews. Thankfully it was easier to forget that you were trying to kill other human beings when all you could actually see were aircraft with black crosses on; you could blot out the thought that there were other young men inside the planes who had been told to come and drop bombs on you. The sergeant major at basic training told us all how useless we were - doubtless he said the same to all new recruits - and proceeded to spend six weeks berating us and highlighting our inadequacies as soldiers. Of course nothing in my previous life could prepare me for this. I had been an ordinary young man, following my studies, trying to meet young ladies, joining friends for a beer in the evenings, listening to music and happy in the knowledge that I had parents and siblings at home to fall back on if things went wrong. I had never even felt like causing anyone serious harm now suddenly I was supposed to learn to kill.

I was filled with uncertainty and apprehension. Would I actually be able to kill if I had to? How would it feel to become a killer? It was frightening even to think about it, how much worse would the reality be. I began to smoke more than before, and, if the chance arose, to drink more too. At least anti-aircraft gunners didn't usually get to see anyone actually killed.

None of my training prepared me for the real horrors that awaited me. Having been sent to defend an airfield in South Eastern England, there were frequent air raids that meant explosions, and bomb fragments that whistled through the air whilst the guns boomed away. Adrenaline kept us going but after the raids the fear would return. Then the casualties began to appear: rows of corpses, sometimes mutilated beyond recognition, which left me nauseous and unable to face an evening meal. Many nights I sat outside my hut staring at the sky and smoking knowing that a young man or woman that I had been talking to, making friends with, would never be back to finish our conversation. I began to feel the pain of loss and yet almost immediately I found I was becoming accustomed to it; it was such an impersonal way to die because you couldn't see the person doing the killing, just the machine that they travelled in.

The news from home was not always much better; I began to dread letters that brought fresh news of old school friends that I would never see again. My older brother was in the Navy and I was forever anxious that one day I would be told he was gone. When the raids on the airfields finally ended and the Blitz attacks on London started, my unit was posted there. Now it was my parents and sister who became the focus of my apprehension. The knot of fear within my stomach had become an old friend; I was adept at hiding the tremble in my hand, it did not do to display fear: I was a soldier.

The next posting to the Far East had not seemed to make much difference. I would still carry my worries about my family but for a while I could relax on a boat: a cruise liner no less. There was always the threat of submarines of course but in my case, fear of the unseen did not seem as bad as the results of the attacks that I had witnessed. For eight weeks we sailed through the tropics with stops at all sorts of exotic ports. For a young man whose entire life had been spent in England this was eye opening. Our final arrival in the East Indies saw us land on an island under attack by the Japanese. We were posted to defend a forward airfield and set of as soon as our trucks were unloaded. Now I began to experience the jungle for the first time and here it was that I first encountered that smell and the mosquitoes.

It was the smell that told you that you were somewhere that was definitely not England, that and the humidity and the heat. It was worse at night because then the mosquitoes began biting.

Even travelling in trucks pulling the Bofors antiaircraft guns, the smell permeated the cab; a damp, musty smell of rotting wood yet aromatic and earthy, infused with the scents of tropical plants. The noise of the engine drowned out the strange calls of the nocturnal animals, but that smell meant you could not forget that you were in the jungle. That one thought inevitably led on to a second thought: the Japs were in that jungle somewhere too. We might actually have to face our enemy now. The fear began to re-emerge as we moved closer to the front lines. When the trucks were stopped, the sound of gunfire could be clearly heard.

Quite how our officers made such a mess of things I'll never know but within a couple of days we had been taken prisoner. If everything before had been beyond my experience, nothing could have prepared me for what followed.

Almost immediately we discovered that our captors would not be showing us any consideration. Gerry, a mate, had been injured during our capture and was finding it difficult to march with us. A Japanese soldier beat him to the ground with a rifle butt and then used a bayonet to kill him: murdered him in cold blood. All the other shocking sights of this war paled away by comparison. A friend murdered in front of my eyes and nothing I could do to help him. I was swamped with a deluge of emotions: frustration at my inability to help my mate, anger at the Jap soldier who killed him, fear that I might be the next to be killed, sorrow at the loss of a friend. Thank God I didn't know it was going to get worse; I might not have been able to control the tears that threatened to embarrass me.

Food was in short supply and often worse than what would be fed to animals, only our extreme hunger made it edible. Even water could be withheld, and often was, to punish us for some imagined offence. Any attempt at escape would bring violent punishment, usually involving the death of the escapee as well as their colleagues. Death was rarely as kind as shooting: bayonets and officers swords were the favoured methods. I could not have believed that I would become used to the sight of a man being made to kneel down and then beheaded. I actually stopped feeling the shock although maybe at another level it was still there, just not registering on my conscious brain. I suppose that it is the mind's way of coping with the trauma.

If what we experienced then was hell, the journey to Japan was an infernal torment that was worse than any nightmare. Several hundred of us were herded into the hold of a cargo ship and shut in. There were buckets for use as toilets and if someone remembered they sometimes got emptied. Once we were underway, we found that food and water were once again woefully inadequate. This was probably a blessing in some ways. Once the bad weather came, many of the men had sea sickness and although this added to the already foul smell in the hold at least there was not much in their stomachs to be vomited back. We spent several weeks in the dark, fetid purgatory with the smell of urine, excrement and vomit, until we reached Japan. Every day would see more men die from disease and injuries since there was no medical treatment. I don't know whether it was worse to see friends murdered or allowed to die lingering deaths. Each one seemed to take another bit of my soul, and yet there was no more shock left in me. The bodies would be taken up daily and thrown into the sea without even the dignity of a burial service.

Our arrival in Japan at least saved us from the ship. Now we were back in close proximity with our captors though, and it was clear that they had nothing but contempt for us. I had been used to being told off when my work was unsatisfactory, even in the army, but now it would result in a violent beating and often there was no explanation of what was wrong. Each camp I was moved to had different rules, the commandants could make their own. I was expected to speak Japanese and punished if I didn't understand. Every day we worked from dawn to dusk, hunger was a constant friend, disease was a curse that most suffered from, and death was our only escape; I would lie if I didn't admit that a part of me considered that as a way of escaping. I locked my mind into compartments into which I could put the death, despair, fear, anger and misery that I faced daily. Many days I went through like a zombie. Occasional letters from home kept a tenuous link with the old world of my youth but I would never return there.

After four years, those of us who were left were finally liberated.

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"You're free now" said the American officer

But I could never be free again; my mind was forever a prisoner of the awful memories, full of terrible visions that would haunt me to my death, nightmares that would fill my sleep forever.