The Ient Family: Family History

Getting Caught & Punishment!

The other one was when I was caught. We were on board a ship, two of us, and we got to the store and opened it, and dragged out this great big crate. It was full of cigarettes! If we could have got this back to the camp, life would have been a lot easier for everybody; cigarettes were the barter. You get what you like with fags. We pulled this crate out, then we heard a noise. Chris, the lad I was with, took a dive straight over the side. So, I’m stuck there. So I sat in the corner and a Jap came down. He said, 'What are you doing here?', and went on … yakkety yak, yakety yak he was full of hell. I said I fell down those stairs and I’ve hurt me head. He didn’t believe me, so he took me upstairs. This was an army ship so there were soldiers on board. They knocked me about a bit, then they stood me in front of a brazier about from here to there, I’m standing to attention in front of this brazier, at first a bit uncomfortable. Then I start to burn, singe and smoke. Then the Japs started kicking me, hitting me, and all the rest of it. Then this lad (a PoW from Hong Kong) had a word with these chaps. Now I’ve always had my suspicions, well, not suspicions, that’s the wrong word, but he spoke more or less in fluent Japanese. He was making the point that how could one man steal a whole crate of cigarettes – it was ridiculous. Anyway, this went on, and on. I’m still standing there. Anyway, when they finish talking, the soldiers kicked me about a bit more, cuffed me about the ears and gave me ‘25’[i] and told me to go, which I did.

But by this time a report had gone to the commandant, so when I got back to the camp I was punished a second time – well, two punishments. The first one was where they sit you right down on your haunches like that [demonstrating], and they put a bamboo rod behind your knees. At one time, it used to be barbed wire, but this was a bamboo rod. Then you have to crouch in a sitting position. And of course after two or three minutes it would stop the circulation going to your legs and you start to keel over. They then kick you back. This went on for about an hour and a half or two hours. Then, secondly, you get kicked about. I was never caught stealing again!

The other punishment we had was when we retaliated against some kids throwing things at us. We were digging coal and some Japanese kids, about 17, 16  or 17 years of age, start throwing lumps of coal at us, which was a bit off-putting for us. So one of our lads, a bit of a firebrand, he went up the hill and he got hold of one of these kids and thumped him. The worst thing, of course was the Jap kid just stood there – he didn’t expect to be hit by a prisoner of war, so our lad hit him and hit him hard.

Of course, our lad was dragged back to the camp to a little cell, only about as wide as this [measuring about 3’ with his arms out] and about 5’ 5” high and a grill here [demonstrating]. The punishment was that the prisoner had to stand crouched like this [demonstrating} with your face on this grid all day! You weren’t allowed to lie down. Well it got to night time, about 9 o’clock, and he had to crunch down in this little square and sleep the best way he could. You were allowed out every three hours, you walk around, and you got three bowls of rice – three handfuls of rice – which was as much as the commandant could put in his hand. Well, the Japanese, their hands aren’t very big, so that was what you got! That was your breakfast, that was your dinner, and that was your supper. No soup, no nothing, not even a cup of water. So that was the punishment. He was there for a week. He was in a bad way when he got out.

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