The Ient Family: Family History

The Terrible Journey to Japan

After about 6 months in Java, they said pack your kit, which was a bit of a laugh! I mean, all I had was my fork and spoon, chopsticks, my gum boots and a few things. They marched us down to the docks and onto a boat bound for Singapore. We got to Singapore, we were on the docks, and we thought, well, they’re going to take care of us here. Well, they put us under a hosepipe, a thousand of these blokes on the docks being hosed down to get us clean. Then they came round and dusted us all with this powder, whatever it was. I said (to those around me) –well, they’re looking after us at least. Now lined up on the quay were ships – ‘ships’ in inverted commas, they were all tramp steamers really. In 1930, when things were bad, particularly in this part of the world [North East of England[i]], we were selling old ships to Japan as scrap. Well, the Japs didn’t scrap them at all, because many of them became part of their Merchant Navy. Now every ship I ever worked on, whilst a POW in Japan, was either built on the Clyde or the Tyne or the Wear.

Anyway, back to our situation in Singapore, we were told to get on board these ships. They were horrendous!  If you talk to any of the WWII prisoners [POWs], you will get different views. The Jews, for example, they’ll tell you about the gas chambers, that was their war in Germany. If you talk to the Yanks, they’ll talk to you about death march in Bataan[ii] where they marched them up and down, up and down, til they all died. If you talk to the Dutch, they’ll tell you about the atrocities that were carried out in Sumatra [modern day Indonesia]. If you talk to the majority of the British servicemen, they’ll tell you about the railway in Thailand. If you talk to people like us, we’ll tell you about the journey from Singapore to Japan proper, it was horrendous!

It was one of the worst episodes that I ever experienced. They jammed us down into the hold of the ship along with everything they could take to Japan, including cars and coal and oil. The ship we got on was loading down to the Plimsoll line[iii] before we got on, with bauxite [aluminium ore] which was wet and damp. The ship was loaded down to the gunwales[iv] more or less before we got on. They piled us onto these ships down one ladder into this hold. In our ship, there were three holds and the hold we were in measured 60 ft x 80 ft (approx. 18 m x 24 m). There was 286 of us down there! 286 in this small hold, crammed in tight and we were in the tropics! This journey was horrendous, no two ways about that! The ‘Dai-nichi Maru’ was only about 3000 tonnes. It took us 28 days to go from Singapore up to Japan proper.

To give you an idea of what it was like, I will read two paragraphs from a book written by a chap in the same POW camp as I was. It is called ‘The Emperor’s Guest’[v]:

‘‘Throughout the voyage, the food had been of very poor quality and quite insufficient. After Formosa, the portions of rice got smaller and smaller. What was far worse was the diminishing of the quantity of water provided; for men wracked with fever this was unendurable deprivation. It was then that dying men drank each other’s urine – it was then also alleged that shrouded in the shadows of darkness, men would open each other’s veins with razor blades and suck each other’s blood. Many knew they’d got hours to live, many knew they’d never see the light of day again. Despite the ministrations of comrades, there was nothing that the latter could do to alleviate the agony.’’

This was the start of all our troubles. We sailed out of Singapore and we were battened down in the hold. The hatches went down and that was it! We could feel the ships’ motion but we could not feel the wind. The ship's sides were hot. Imagine you were down there with all these 280-300 men in this hold with rats and God-knows-what flying all over the place. There was no water, nothing at all to start with, and obviously there were no toilet facilities, you just did it wherever you could. You found a place and you laid down. They kept us down there for three days then they opened up the hatches – the place was stinking to high heaven! Obviously but we weren’t allowed on deck.

They gave us two meals a day, we had a bowl of rice about ten in the morning and to start with we had sweet potato soup. Well, it was rotten before we got it, so I didn’t have any of that sweet potato soup. I had managed to accumulate a rather a lot of sugar. I have a sweet tooth! There is rather a lot of sugar in Java and I was living on rice and sugar. Water was two or three cups a day and that went down to one cup a day. This when the men started going down [becoming sick]. They were bitten by the bugs – they got tropical ulcers. We were now going from Java at 90 – 95 °F gradually north and when we got to Japan it was November. When we got there it was snowing, freezing perishing cold, and there we were in khaki shorts, khaki shirt and straw hat and gum boots and knife, fork and spoon. This was all I had.

So this was the horrendous journey we suffered. By virtue of the changing climate you got pneumonia, then through lack of vitamin B you got beriberi[vi]. This is where your body just swells up; it gets full of water like phlebitis[vii]. When you press on your leg the indentation stays in. Your neck swells and you’ll waddle like the ‘Michelin Man[viii]’.  So you got beriberi. vitamin B cures that in no time at all, if you can get it. We only got ‘polished rice’. Rice in its original state has got a little husk which contains the vitamin B but we only got the polished rice – hence no vitamin B! Later on, we asked for these husks to be given to us but they said no, you can’t, it’s for the pigs! Then a lack of vitamin C and you get Pellagra[ix]. You get ulcers – a mouthful of ulcers, you can’t drink, you can’t swallow. The men got  pneumonia and so on. We were getting all these diseases on the way to Japan proper. We had no deaths at all until we got to Taiwan – it’s Taiwan now, in those days it was Formosa. And strangely enough the first  death was on November 11^th, Armistice Day – that’s how I remember. The body was taken up the top; they’d found a Union Jack from somewhere, this lad was buried with full military honours. The Jap officer turned up with white gloves and uniforms, saluting and bowing and all the rest of it. As the body went over the side they were throwing rice bowls, cigarettes, and sweets over the side. I mean if they’d given the bloke that in the first place he wouldn’t have died! But he’s being celebrated now that he was dead, he’s a warrior, and he’s going to his Valhalla so now he gets buried with full military honours.

After this first death, things got desperate with more and more deaths. Firstly, we had six Jap officers turning up, then there were five, then there were four, then there was three. Eventually, there was no ceremony, the bodies were just dumped over the side and that was the end of it.

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