The Ient Family: Family History

Becoming a POW

Anyway, we eventually found a Jap to report to. The first Jap I saw was this little fella who was directing us into this compound in Java. A whacking place, barbed wire compound, all the way round, no electric. There were thousands and thousands of us. There were Dutch, Malayans, Brits, Yanks, New Zealanders, Aussies and Chinese, but no Japanese. We were all milling about in this compound, and this is where we started to live on rice. Rice was our diet from then on in. We got fed three times a day with rice. The Japs didn’t know what to do with us, because Japanese don’t take prisoners. The Geneva Convention, which no doubt you’ve heard of, indicates, among other things, that you treat prisoners in a certain way. You’ve got to give them the same rations as your ‘enforcers’, you’ve got to pay them for any work they do, you can’t put them in any areas of danger. The Red Cross would have been party to it. But Japan didn’t sign the Convention, she wouldn’t sign it at all, because at the time it was introduced, in the '30s, Japan was at war with China. Japan didn’t want to take prisoners in China; I mean Japan would be outnumbered! They didn’t bother with prisoners. Anyway, I’ll come to that a little bit later on. So there we were in this whacking great big compound – they didn’t know what the devil to do with us. So they said you’ve got to march back where you came from, back to Batavia [Jakarta]. So by this time things were getting a bit bad in the tropics, your shoes were going, you know what it’s like, perspiration and all.

Reminds me – just diverting slightly – you know the Scots came down marauding in England, they got down as far as York and their shoes were wearing out, so word was sent back for some shoes and some stockings. They could neither read nor write in those days, so it was word of mouth. So in Scotland, you know, shoes are called brogues, and the socks are called hose. So instead of saying brogues and hose, they sent down rogues and hoes and that’s why Yorkshire is full of them!

Laughter.

Turning back to his talk Chick went on: We were badly shod and we were in a bit of a bad way, so we had to march back over the hills, occasionally getting some transport by trucks and train. It was difficult because they’d blown up the bridges. It was an absolute shambles. We finally got back to Batavia. Up til this time, it had been a bit of a joke, I mean we were 20, 21, 22 and ... And we saw it as a bit of an adventure. When we got back to Batavia I knew I was a prisoner of war because the monsters had put us in this great big civilian prison, a massive place. It was terrible! We were marched through these whacking great big doors and in front of you there was a whole semi-circle of cells. Now these cells may take 40, 50, 60 or even 200 men. So they marched us up and pressed us into these cells, different sized cells, and crammed us in.

Well it’s in the tropics, humidity about 90, 95, certainly it’s up the 85 or 90 °F [29 to 32 °C]. Not much water; there was a barrel of water in the corner and a little hole. So everything had to be done in that corner, that’s where you get a drink or you did your toilet. They had crammed us in there and we were there for three days. Horrendous! Well, this is where the trouble started. There wasn’t sufficient room for us all to lie down on the bed boards. The place was full of bugs; not the bugs that we see in England, ours are nothing – these things were so big that if you had a saddle you could have thrown one over and road them back to England, they were this big! If you killed them the stink was horrendous, and of course they went for all the warm parts of your body, inside your leg, inside your arm and your neck, all the warm parts; biting and all. This is how the lads got ‘tropicalosis’ [probably Chick’s name for various medical conditions]. There was no medicine of any description. As I said, they kept us there for three days, eventually letting us out about 50 at a time to have a bath. Marvellous!

Then they formed us into working parties. There was a thousand of us, but it wasn’t too bad, I mean, the sun was shining, we’re getting three meals a day, rice and soup or whatever. We were out of the cells by going to these working parties. We were buying or bartering stuff from the Japanese cigarettes or whatever. It wasn’t pleasant exactly, but nobody was getting knocked around, not yet! Well, the first thing we had to do was learn some of their language, because these Japanese thought that the louder they shout at us the more we’d understand.


NEXT

---