Authors: Martin Booth
The
hibachi
gave out little heat. To stave off the cold, Sandingham was wearing all his clothes – a
fandushi,
a pair of trousers, three vests, his two shirts, a padded jacket, his blanket, two pairs of Japanese socks and his clompers. Over his lap he had draped two hessian sacks that he had obtained from the lumber yard. He had been fortunate to be issued with the padded jacket, for only half the prisoners had such a garment and even then the lucky ones were forbidden to wear it outside the camp. He had got his because he was without his own uniform jacket. His clompers were of his own manufacture: they were made from a block of wood shaped to his foot and instep and had as uppers three sheets of hessian and a band of rubber tyre nailed to the soles. He had also been issued with a pair of
tabi,
but these were too insubstantial to wear in the bitter cold of winter and he had so far only used them in his few first weeks in the camp.
The forty-watt light-bulb dimmed, a guard’s hand somewhere in the camp closing down the power. With several others, Sandingham stood up and left the barrack room. It was dark outside and the wind was blowing down from the hills. It carried tiny flecks of white upon its back.
‘Jezuz! Is it gonna snow tonight.’
They walked down some steps cut into a bank and entered a long covered way. At the midway point to the end barracks they turned left into the latrines. The
benjo
was simple. There were no urinals or cubicles but just a wall against which one urinated down into a gutter-pipe sunk into cement, and a row of timber, box-like water-closets but with no flushing water. Anything dropped into them fell on to a wide trough and lay there until the civilian cesspit collectors, known euphemistically as ‘the honey bees’, hosed the troughs down into barrels. They were then carted off to the fields, drawn by plodding oxen, emaciated donkeys or equally emaciated children and old folk.
By the time they had completed their toilet it was thinly snowing big flakes that settled on the ground.
‘Hey, Joe – you humping tonight?’ Norb asked Sandingham.
‘All right. Yes.’
‘Your place or mine?’
‘Mine,’ another voice suggested. ‘Foursome is better than a twosome. Reminds me of this high-class knocking shop in Wahiawa. Twelve miles from Pearl. Officers only. Very select. One of them Go-gan paintings on the wall of some Tahitian broad with her bra off.’
‘Okay, Bill. Your place.’
If he had not been a prisoner, Sandingham would have baulked at the close physical company of such men. To be close to them would have aroused him and it would only have taken one of them to wake in the night and sense his rigid penis against his back or thigh, or his hand on someone’s shoulder or arm, for them to have known and subsequently ostracised him. But now there was no fear of that. Had not been for nearly a year.
Nearly a year. He was three days into 1943. It was over a year since the fall of Hong Kong, and Bob’s death and the end of normality. He forced himself not to think of what the past twelve months had brought him – and brought him to in its own vicious manner.
They collected their blankets together – Bill’s was of Australian Army issue and thick with wool: the guards had yet to discover it – and squeezed on to Bill’s
tatame,
a planked bunk, one of which was designated to each prisoner. To share the meagre supply of bedding and bodily warmth, they had been sleeping in groups since the week before the Christmas they none of them had celebrated except with whispered prayers after the lights had been switched off.
Despite the hardness of the bunk and the fact that Sandingham was second in from the edge – it could have been worse: he could have picked the shortest cotton – he was soon asleep.
The last words he heard were from the man on the outside who muttered, ‘C’mon, guys! Shift in a bit. Share your lice.’
* * *
The snow had lain for more than a week, added to every night by a fresh fall of, at the least, a few inches. It was not the snow that was so bad, however: it was the frost. By day, the temperature barely rose above freezing. If it did, a slight thaw set in, but it only melted the top crust which then iced like glass at nightfall when the air dropped to well below freezing. Walking was treacherous, for one’s bare feet were liable to adhere to the black ice, each step peeling off a layer of skin from the ball of the heel.
Taiso
was even worse.
Every dawn there was a roll call. After
tenko,
the prisoners were subjected to half an hour’s
taiso,
a cruel joke the fates played upon them. The Japanese, believing the best way to keep their PoW workers hale and hearty was to keep them fit, forced physical exercise upon them. The prisoners thus stood in their ranks as for
tenko
and jumped on the spot, swung their arms, touched their knees – few could make it to their shins, let alone their toes – twisted their hips and, if Pluto was in charge, did twenty press-ups, their hands and toes on the night’s fall of snow, their fingers slipping on the ice and turning blue.
After
taiso
they were given breakfast. This was usually a bowl of rice-mill sweepings. One had to be careful eating it in case there were small stones in the mix. A shard of gravel could kill if one’s stomach lining was badly shrunk and weakened.
With their fast broken, as the Dutch padre put it without losing sight of the irony, they formed up on the parade ground in their work squads. Sandingham was in Number Two
shotai.
His group was employed in the timber yards about four miles away on the outskirts of the city. Their work-gang boss, the
shotai-cho,
was Captain Alex Ryder of the REME who had been shipped to Japan from the camp at Changi, just outside Singapore.
On some days they were marched to the yards, on other days they were taken in a semi-derelict lorry, more rust than steel. With the icy roads slowing their marching rate down, and therefore reducing their working hours, the lorry had been prevalent of late.
On the way nobody spoke. In the late autumn they had joked or chatted quietly, but now there was nothing left. It was more important to bunch down low, reduce the body’s surface area and retain the warmth as much as they could, and for as long as possible. Talking expended heat. They just sat on the floor of the truck bed and moved with the motion of the vehicle as it rocked, slewed, crabbed and skidded along the road.
By the time they left the camp the sky was creamy-grey, with the promise of more snow. As they pulled into the timber yard compound the promise was fulfilled and the snow began to fall, rapidly becoming heavy. They jumped from the truck and were directed into the nearest of the three sawing sheds. In there was gathered the civilian workforce, standing in a huddle by the stove.
‘Wuk wun are!’ shouted the
hancho,
the foreman of the sawmill. This he then translated into Japanese for the benefit of the workers and the three guards who remained at the yard with the prisoners.
Sandingham was amused to note that the order should have come in English first.
Without question or any evident animosity, the Japanese workers made way for the prisoners to join them around the stove. The tarpaulin that served as a door over the entrance to the shed was lowered and the three bare light-bulbs that hung from the roof on flex were switched on. It was almost cosy.
‘We should be singing “Ten Green Bottles” or “Green Grow the Rushes-O”,’ said Alex adding, ‘I was a boy scout once.’
‘With steaming mugs of chocolate and marshmallows on the ends of willow sticks,’ Sandingham mused.
They spent the next few minutes explaining this ritual to the American second lieutenant who was in charge of sawdust. Once he understood, he left the group and swept up more shavings for the stove. With these put on the flames, the smoke thickened and puffed out of a crack in the galvanised tin chimney halfway to the roof. Sandingham watched the puffs, mesmerised by them.
This rest from work was more than welcome. It was, moreover, very rare. The
hancho
had not given them such a respite before. His decision now was forced upon him by circumstance, for the men had cleared the shed the evening before and they were unable to bring in new timber for sawing because the frost had locked the trunks and rough-cut planks together by freezing the sap. He was banking on the snow ceasing and either a thaw setting in or his requisition for more crowbars arriving from the central stores.
The wind buckled the tarpaulin and whipped across the floor, the iciness hitting their ankles. Everyone, Japanese and European alike, moved in closer to the fire, sitting on planks balanced on logs. Alex stood up to help with the next load of shavings and Sandingham found himself sitting between a couple of locals. The two races seldom spoke to each other except from necessity prompted by their common labours. Even then, they spoke in monosyllabic Japanese. The prisoners were fearful of reprisals if they spoke to the locals and assumed that the locals were afraid of being seen to consort with the enemies of their Emperor.
Glancing from side to side, Sandingham smiled at the two civilians like a man joining strangers on a bench before the departures board at Paddington station. All they lacked, he reflected, was a loudspeaker announcing the time and platform number of the next train to Bristol.
On his left was a man whom Sandingham guessed to be in his late thirties, perhaps slightly older. He was unhealthily lean and his face was so drawn that his already narrowed eyes seemed thinner still, mere slits behind which pin-pricks of light glimmered. His hands were calloused and one of them shook. In fact his whole body shivered intermittently, his teeth clicking inside his opened mouth which amplified the chatter.
On Sandingham’s right was a much younger man. He was about eighteen. He did not shiver but sat stolidly facing the stove. Every so often, he lifted his hands up to its hot sides and rubbed them together with a washing action. His face was as drawn as the man’s and his ears were white with the cold.
Casting his gaze around the entire assembly, Sandingham noticed that every person present had a common denominator: his headgear. Everyone, from the guards to the boy at his side, was wearing a
boshi,
a little peaked cap.
‘What is a marsh-mullow?’
Sandingham turned to the man on his left.
‘I’m sorry.’
He was so surprised that the Japanese had spoken to him that he was unable to find an answer straight away.
‘What is a marsh-mullow?’ the man repeated, ‘You said just now you would like a “marsh-mullow” on a stick.’
‘It’s a sort of sweet,’ Sandingham explained. ‘You cook them over a fire. Make them warm and eat them.’
He could almost taste one, feel the soft, liquid sugar slide over his teeth, sticking to the roof of his mouth as the crisp hot shell rubbed and stung his tongue. It was a sensation as sensual as any he could imagine at that moment.
‘‘ank you,’ said the Japanese, and he returned to shivering.
From outside came the sounds of a lorry pulling up. The driver’s door was slammed shut and voices were heard dimly calling across the yard, the words deadened by the snow.
It had not occurred to Sandingham that any of his fellow labourers could speak English. Now it dawned on him that everything they had said about the Japanese, none of it very complimentary, had most likely been fully understood by at least one of them. And possibly passed on. But then, if it had been reported, where were the beatings, the reductions in food, the removal of fuel allowances, the restrictions on what tiny liberties they occasionally received? Obviously, it hadn’t. Their lives had carried on with each face-slapping having an obvious, if unjust, reason. Food was as scanty as ever.
‘What is your name?’ he ventured.
It came so naturally. The man had spoken to him. This was next in the common course of communication between one human and another.
‘Mishima. My name is Mishima. Mr Mishima. Mishima–san, we say. And you?’
‘Sandingham. Joseph Sandingham.’
‘Where do you live? I mean in England, not in Japan.’ He half-smiled. ‘We all know where you live in Japan.’
‘Near London. My family live near London. I have no home of my own at present.’
He hadn’t, and the fact hadn’t occurred to him before. He was homeless. Unless he counted the
tatame
in the barrack at the top of the bank, up the steps, past the latrines and ablutions. Second
tatame
down from the
hibachi
on the left of the room as you entered it.
‘I live two miles away. In a suburb,’ Mishima offered. ‘This is my son. His name is Katsuo.’
The youth next to Sandingham said, ‘Hajimemashite.’
Sandingham was about to reply incorrectly, ‘Genki desu. Okage sama de,’ but the father interrupted.
‘In English. In English.’
‘How you do?’ Katsuo enquired sheepishly.
Mishima shrugged the shrug of every father the world over who has his patience tried by a teenage son.
‘How do you come to speak such good English?’ Sandingham asked him.
‘I am a high school master. I teach English. Or I was before the war. Now my school is closed and we must all work…’
‘Wuk! Wuk!’
The tarpaulin was dragged aside. It had stopped snowing and the crowbars had arrived. Sandingham was detailed to prise planks apart. Alex Ryder started up the circular saw. Soon, the blades were screeching and howling through the wood.
* * *
From time to time, the
hancho
allowed the prisoners to take away from the timber yard sacks of sawdust and shavings which were utilised in the camp in the making of the fuel balls. Mixed with coal dust, the wood made for easier lighting and longer burning. It also emitted greater heat than the other variety of clay and coal mix. What was more, it gave the barrack rooms a scent of pine sap as it burnt and the prisoners were not slow to discover that if one inhaled the perfume of wood shavings boiled in water it cleared catarrh and eased coughs. The smoke that leaked into the room also seemed to cut down on the bedbugs, although Sandingham believed that this was a myth put about by those who sought continually to boost morale.