The harbour of Hong Kong and the reservoir were so full of dead Chinaman that they were unsafe even for bathing. Dead bloated bodies were everywhere. At North Point Camp I saw an incident of punishment that none but the savage could inflict. A Chinese boy was caught stealing by the guard. After being beaten he was made to crawl into a section of earthen drainpipe about four feet long and ten inches wide. When the boy had crawled in the pipe was stood on end and he was left head downward with his feet waving above the pipe. Throughout that hot day the pipe stood there and soon the legs stopped waving. When it was taken down in the evening the boy was dead.
I will pass over the treatment of white women at the time of the surrender. I saw their bodies littering the road. I did not hear of one case where some of the Japanese Officers made an effort to punish their troops guilty of this type of atrocity.
I have tried to keep my narrative to what I actually saw, however, this was told to me by those who did witness the incident. The Japanese soldiery ransacked a British Hospital unit and murdered the patients. The staff, which included a group of red Cross Nurses, was taken prisoner and a guard put over them. That night the guard raped all the nurses, bayoneting those that resisted. This incident came to the attention of the Japanese staff. A Japanese Officer, accompanied by one of our imprisoned Majors, visited the hospital and interviewed the surviving women. The members of the guard were paraded and the nurses were asked to identify their assailants. The younger women, hysterical and ill, were unable to do so, but some of the older ones were and they positively identified several of the Jap guard.
The Japanese Officer took out his revolver and handed it to the British Major saying, “Shoot them!” After the Major refused to do so the Japanese Officer stepped forward, put his revolver to the ear of the first culprit and shot him, then shot the others.
Torture of the prisoners was not unusual. Several of our boys had splinters of bamboo forced under their fingers and toenails. Some suffered the water torture where water is forced down the throat and when the stomach is full, bloated and extended the Jap would jump upon the prisoner’s stomach.
For certain diseases the Japanese doctors subscribed cure would be to burn the body in several places with hot coal. From this Japanese cure arose a new form of torture. I saw a prisoner forced to lie over hot coals fresh from a fire and do hand presses lowering and raising his body over the coals. Endurance only prolonged his ineluctable (Can. Oxford Dictionary, ineluctable – unable to be resisted or avoided) fate. When fatigue and exhaustion finally overtook him, his body dropped down into the cinders.
A more refined torture was the withholding of red Cross Supplies and letters from home. In all the four years of my imprisonment I received exactly seven letters and the other prisoners about the same. At Shinagawa Camp in Tokyo I saw whole sackfuls of letters, which the Japs were too indifferent to distribute themselves and refused to let us distribute. Bags of mail were burned at Tokyo before the eyes of the prisoners. Red Cross Supplies were stolen and consumed by the guards. Some were stored and allowed to rot. The little that was issued was used as bait to sick and exhausted men working. “No work! No food.” seemed to be the motto.
I think my reader will agree that the Japanese have proven themselves through the acts of their Army and of their camp Officials to be cruel, heartless and indifferent to the sufferings of others.
