Authors: Martin Booth
A ten-year-old black Dodge saloon drove into the compound and stopped before the assembled throng of PoWs. Tokunaga climbed out of the front passenger door and, from the seat behind him, two guards dragged Willy Stewart.
An audible short buzz sounded from the ranks of prisoners. It was met with an immediate shouted order for silence.
Fujihara, the Kempetai officer, placed himself upon the low dais that would have been a sort of saluting base had they had passing out parades. He stood with his stocky legs apart, his hands resting on his hips in a tyrannical pose.
‘Prisoners! Pay attention! Colonel Tokunaga, commanding officer of this camp, tell me to say to you that any prisoner who escape from Sham Shui Po camp will be caught and severely punished. The rules for prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army say that the offence of escaping and being caught is death and ten years in prison.’
Pedrick said under his breath to Sandingham ‘Does that sentence run consecutively or concurrently I wonder?’
‘For a second offence of this kind, the rules say death and twenty years in prison.’
A few PoWs, farthest from a guard, muttered ironically at this piece of information.
‘Prisoners in rows to right of staff car – attention!’
Sandingham jolted himself upright. As he did so he noticed that only three rows of twenty or so men each were involved and this worried him as it did the others.
‘About turn! You march with Imperial Japanese Army officer.’
A squad of Japanese infantry lined up alongside the block of prisoners and the order was given to step out. They followed the Japanese NCO through the camp to the main gate, out of it and left in the direction of Lai Chi Kok. As they marched through the last of the Kowloon streets, silent save for the sound of their feet on the tarmac, local Chinese gathered on the pavements to watch them pass.
Everyone was apprehensive.
‘Stop!’
They stopped. A Japanese Army Isuzu TX40 truck passed them, followed by the Dodge.
‘Go!’
The NCO in charge knew only three words in English and was known by them – Stop-Go-Fuck: it sounded more like a Chinese name pronounced in the Cantonese dialect.
They were marched on to a narrow sand-and-shingle beach. Across the water, a mile away, the olive drab smear of Stonecutters Island hung in a developing heat haze.
Fujihara appeared from the far side of the Dodge.
‘Line up in twos.’
They did.
‘Attention!’
The sand shuffled as they brought their feet together. A cumulus cloud shifted over the sun and the glare off the sand lessened.
The Isuzu truck started up and moved off. It had hidden from their view a stout ten-foot breakwater post sunk into the shingle at the low-water mark. The tide was out. Seaweed had tangled round the foot of the post. Barnacles five feet up showed how far the high-tide reached.
Staked to the post was Willy Stewart. His feet were bound to the base. His hands were together, overlapping palm in palm, above his head and were nailed to the timber.
The Japanese troops divided into two groups. One, by far the larger, guarded the prisoners with bayonets fixed and muzzles pointing at them from hip height. The other, consisting of five men, were lined up under Fujihara’s orders. They were the firing squad.
He shouted a string of curt commands in Japanese.
‘Jesus Christ!’
Sandingham moved his head fractionally to the left. A captain from the Intelligence Corps stood there, his eyes wide. He could speak Japanese.
The rifles came up.
Another command.
Every shot deliberately missed, erupting tinily in the sea behind.
Another command and the rattle of bolts. Another oath from the linguist captain.
The second volley seemed to nick rather than hit him.
A third order. The captain said nothing. Tears were smearing the dust on his cheeks.
The bullets did not strike the head or the heart. They hit Willy Stewart in the thighs, in the lower abdomen, in the flesh of his biceps. He was far from dead.
Unable to turn away, Sandingham watched Willy gradually lift his head.
Discipline, he thought. Discipline. The maxim of the man they saw crucified before them: control yourself and you control the world.
His eyes were open and blood was dripping down his groin and legs.
Fujihara walked across the beach. The shingle sounded like an avalanche, the scrunch exaggerated by the gravity and squalor of the occasion.
He drew his sword, swung it back and struck at Willy’s neck. He missed. Too high. The sergeant’s jaw was severed.
He swung again.
Willy Stewart, who made no sound and shed no tears, died.
The sword, with its brown, red and white-woven braid over the ray-skin grip and its brass mountings, was wedged in the wooden stake. Fujihara tugged it loose.
Willy’s head was sandy around the raw and jagged severing and the moist eyes were wide and vacant. It rested on its side against his feet, bedded in the seaweed. Blood fountained jerkily from the stump of his neck, blotching the sand.
They were about-turned and marched back. The body was left for the tide.
Sandingham felt nothing but an emptiness in his chest and an incomprehensible howl in his brain that could not get out. He had felt more obvious sorrow at the death of the dog.
* * *
The five hundred officers, selected by a seemingly random process beyond their powers of reason, were lined up at the main gate to the camp and would have presented a wryly amusing sight had it not been for the evidence of sickness, indignity and malnutrition in their ranks. They were accompanied by one hundred ordinary troops who were to serve as their batmen.
Most were dressed in the remains of their uniforms – khaki or white shirts, shorts, knee-high socks and peaked caps – but some wore less orthodox items of attire that would have shocked their officer-training sergeants into hoots of derision and sarcasm. One wore a Chinese Hakka woman’s hat, a broad, flat top with an array of black, folded curtaining hanging six inches down all round; several others wore coolies’ rattan hats with pointed cones like the roofs of pagodas. Chinese-style cotton jackets, singlets, a pair of cricketing trousers and a lightweight, once-cream cassock lent an amateur pantomime atmosphere to the occasion. Their baggage and loads were as curiously incongruous – some carried military kitbags or suitcases upon their shoulders, or in each hand. Some balanced large parcels tied with cord and wrapped in sheets upon their heads, like African washerwomen heading for the nearest waterhole with the village laundry. Others – those luckier or deemed weaker by their fellow prisoners – transported their meagre belongings in home-made hand-carts, a wooden Chinese barrow with a solid front wheel and a number of babies’ prams.
The order was given in Japanese from the front and relayed back through the rows in English. With a large escort of guards, they marched out of the camp and headed off through the streets, watched surreptitiously by the local Chinese from the shadow of shop-fronts and balconies. Cyclists, a few cars and a convoy of military trucks passed them by. Children ran alongside them until seen off by the butts of the guards’ rifles.
For three-quarters of an hour, the straggling parade stepped eastward until it reached its destination near the Kowloon Hospital. It was a camp previously constructed by the Hong Kong authorities to house Chinese soldiers who had deserted from their forces and who were fleeing from the advance of their enemy in the Sino-Japanese War.
One of the officers, walking near Sandingham with his possessions collected on a two-wheeled cartlet, said ruefully, ‘Well, bugger me! I built this bloody place and now I’m in it. Make your own bed and lie in it. Well, I’m damned!’
As they entered the camp, it became obvious why they had been moved. The number of successful or attempted escapes from the Sham Shui Po camp had annoyed the Japanese and caused them to lose face with their high command in Tokyo, the local Chinese and the prisoners themselves. There was a need to separate the officers from the men to discourage such escapades, and this new prison, Argyle Street camp, was set to segregate would-be offenders from those they led and so bring a stop to ‘home runs’. The prisoners realised this at the moment of arrival.
The camp was not built in the Japanese manner, but with what was now construed a perverse British efficiency. Six guard towers surrounded the camp, each with a machine-gun and a searchlight mounted on it. There was a high fence all round the camp, and this was electrified. Walking out was impossible; so was crawling out, effectively: the ground was alternately too sandy or too stony for tunnelling. Once in, save for labour detail exeats, one stayed in.
Tokunaga arrived and addressed the prisoners. The gist of his words were to tell the assembled that this was a camp for those who were not exactly model prisoners. His speech was translated by an interpreter whom they had not seen before. He was of average height, with pointed ears and he wore a military cloak, highly polished boots and a good-quality wristwatch. He spoke with an American accent.
When Tokunaga had left in his Dodge staff car, the interpreter continued. The prisoners would have laughed had they dared.
‘Right, youse guys,’ he commenced, ‘my name is Niimori Genichiro and I am the senior interpreter hereabouts. You got that?’ He waited for a few nods. ‘I was educated in the US of A, and I come from Chicago. That’s my home town. So I know just what all you limey guys can get up to. So don’ try nuttin’. Work rotas as before. You still go down to the ay-ro-drome. Others arrange general camp duties. Any of youse guys got questions for that?’ None of the guys had. ‘Right! Now this is one of my interpreters here.’ He pointed to his left where there stood a Japanese officer of swarthier than normal appearance. He was unshaven, grinned in an uncouth manner and his uniform seemed a size or two too large for him. He stood as if to strut out at any moment. ‘He is called Inouye Kanao. When you speak to us, you call us Mister or by our rank. Okay? No need to get too famil-ar but we want to get along with all youse guys. Got it?’
They got it.
Within hours, Niimori Genichiro was dubbed ‘Panama Peter’. Inouye Kanao was ‘Shat-in-Pants’, for the seat of his trousers hung sack-like from his behind. Later, he was to be renamed ‘Slap-Happy’. That was earned by his other, less amusing trait.
Once in the barrack assigned to him, Sandingham sensed depression hovering over him again, an invisible force pushing inward upon his most private thoughts: the march through comparative freedom had affected him in a manner he couldn’t assimilate. The ferry trips to the Kai Tak workings, which he no longer took, had not deepened his awareness of imprisonment and yet the passage through streets, past shops and people had. The normality of it hurt him deeply. He sat morosely and miserably on his new bunk, the middle of three, and stared at the boards of the one above. Someone down the barrack was singing. The tune was ‘Chicago, My Home Town’.
* * *
‘Silver paper?’
‘That’s right. Lining of tea chests, cigarette wrapping … Anything. Silver foil of any sort. We need it. But it mustn’t have a hole in it. And as creaseless as possible, please.’
‘Why?’ queried Sandingham. They were starving, dying of nutritional diseases and diphtheria, pellagra and hollow despair and this man wanted silver paper.
‘Do you know how a radio works?’
‘No. Not really. Just how to use one.’
‘Well, the condenser is made of silver foil. Or so I’m told. And someone wants it.’
Silver paper reminded Sandingham of the bars of Cadbury’s or Fry’s chocolate that he had bought every Saturday with a penny from one of the red dispensing machines on the platform at Liverpool Street station. Gold lettering on a red wrapper? He tried hard to remember – such little things were becoming of considerable importance for him – but couldn’t. Only the taste came back to him. He had always obeyed his mother. Screw up the wrapping and either put it in the ticket bin by the barrier or place it on the floor under the seat in the carriage so the cleaners could take it away. Garbage to one man is treasure to another: it was always so, and always would be. What one man threw away another could live off. Which meant, of course, that the first could, too. How much better to share and have no waste.
For several weeks he collected silver paper avidly. Then he was told they had enough. Then, a week later, it started again. One of the sheets must have had a pin-prick hole in it. The condenser didn’t work. It had to be unwound and begun all over again.
* * *
‘Owow!’
The bawled, meaningless exclamation shook Sandingham into standing to attention. He let the camp-made wooden hoe fall from his hand on to the dusty ground. A cloud of dry soil rose from it and hung in the humid air.
More shouting at him was accompanied by the slancing noise of a sword being drawn from the scabbard.
He attempted a salute. His hand was too heavy and hot to lift.
A string of Japanese words sprayed around him like flung grit. His head hammered. The sun had made the skin of his shaven scalp contract like a steel skull-cap. His shoulders burned. When he could gather his thoughts, he found them concentrating upon calomine lotion and cucumber rind.
‘Kare wa netsu ga arimasu.’ The accent was Australian.
The reply from the Japanese sergeant was rapid. Sandingham hung his head from exhaustion. He seemed to be suspended from a point between his shoulders.
‘Atami ga itain desu. Atami ga itami desu.’
The sergeant said nothing. He turned and sauntered off in the direction of other gardeners. Every three steps, he swung his sword in an oblique, upwards and sideways slash. The blade audibly hummed in the air.
Just as he felt his knees begin to sag a steadying arm ran itself under his and held him tight. He was guided towards the luxurious coolness of the barrack hut, taken to his bunk and helped on to it.
‘You want to watch Napoleon. He’s a right bastard. Practises lopping off PoW heads with that sword of his.’
It was the same Australian voice, soft and burring. Sandingham was too weak to say anything.