Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience

The Changi Prisoner of War Camp in Singapore, 1942-45

R P W Havers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135788773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Popular perceptions of life in Japanese prisoner of war camps are dominated by images of emaciated figures, engaged in slave labour, and badly treated by their captors. This book, based on extensive original research, shows that this view is quite wrong in relation to the large camp at Changi, which was the main POW camp in Singapore.

1 Life at the Changi Prisoner of War Camp, Singapore, 1942–5

Captain Alan Rogers of the Australian Army was a conscientious diarist throughout his time on active service with the Australian Army Medical Corps. His experiences are meticulously recorded and his feelings about situations and individuals also noted. On Sunday 29 May 1943, Rogers entered the following thoughts about his activities of the previous week: ‘On Wednesday night we were fortunate enough to get tickets to the Palladium and to see “I killed the Count” – a good play and magnificently acted.’¹ There are many conclusions that might tentatively be drawn from a brief diary excerpt such as this. Firstly, perhaps, that Captain Rogers was on leave in Sydney or even in London and that his efforts to forget the war, albeit temporarily, were proceeding according to plan. Such assumptions, however, would be wrong. While Captain Rogers was definitely remote from the front line, and the war in general, he was similarly removed from Sydney and London and any of the conventional notions that one might associate with the details of what Rogers himself provides. In fact, Captain Alan Rogers had already seen action with Australian forces in the jungles of Malaya. Rogers had also been present at the siege of the ‘impregnable fortress’ of Singapore during January and February of 1942. Rogers, along with thousands of British, Australian, Indian and other assorted allied personnel, endured the surrender of Singapore, an event famously summed up by Winston Churchill as ‘the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history’.²

In many ways the surrender was merely the beginning of another struggle against the odds as Rogers spent the following three and half years as a prisoner of the Japanese. Captain Rogers’s diary is not a trite discussion of wartime recreation but rather a record of events that happened inside what has been termed the ‘most notorious prisoner of war camp in Asia’: at Changi on Singapore.³ Such contradictions and incongruities are common place as far as the Changi POW camp is concerned. While the idea that Changi is different from many popular perceptions of it is interesting in itself, the notion that it was very much a unique establishment among Japanese-run POW camps is even harder to reconcile when set against more than fifty years of received wisdom about what a Japanese-held POW had to endure. What is also significant is that these conceptions and paradoxes of Changi were no easier to understand during the war itself. In fact those contradictions and incongruities, exemplified in Rogers’s and many others’ diary accounts, are collectively indicative of what probably ranks as the greatest untold story – and certainly the greatest enigma – of the Second World War.

The perception of life as a POW of the Japanese is simple and well known: that, caught between an uncompromising clash of cultures, Allied POWs were beaten, starved and worked to death by their Japanese captors, for whom the very idea of surrender was abhorrent and alien. To a large extent this apparent simplification is a more than adequate description and few men indeed can claim that their time as guests of the Emperor did not bring them into contact with one or all of the above treatments, if only for short periods. Accounts of captivity at the hands of the Japanese invariably focus upon the larger, well-known manifestations of mistreatment. The Bataan ‘death march’ for one; and, of course, the most famous and enduring image of Japanese inhumanity – the building of the Burma–Thailand railway, frequently referred to simply as the ‘death railway’. Under other circumstances, the construction of this railway across Thailand into southern Burma would have been lauded as a civil engineering triumph. British surveyors had considered a rail line across such country impossible. The Japanese, however, achieved the apparently impossible through sheer force of will and the lives of 12,000 Allied POWs and countless locally recruited labourers, romusha.⁴ The tragedy of the railway has become the leitmotif of Japanese brutality in the Second World. The central role of the railway in post-war memory was helped in no small part by the release in 1956 of the film of Pierre Boule’s novel, The Bridge on the River Kwai. The film is only loosely based on the book and, indeed, the book itself does not claim to portray real events (in the book, the bridge is not destroyed, unlike in the film where its collapse provides the shattering climax to events). Despite this, the film has come to symbolise the railway itself as well as the manner of POW/Japanese interaction. While the film has helped define the experience of POWs for those who have no firsthand knowledge it is still a representation. Few POWs will testify to the film’s accuracy – conditions on the railway ‘were never that good’ is a frequent comment.

It might appear difficult to reconcile material that purports, as Rogers’s diary does, to suggest that life as a POW of the Japanese had another dimension beyond the standard descriptions of overt brutality and suffering. While Changi itself was physically remote, located at the eastern tip of Singapore, from the realities of the railway it is inextricably linked with the events to the north in Burma and Thailand. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, the vast majority of the men tasked with working on the railway spent time at the Changi POW camp, either before departing or after the completion of the railway and in many cases, both. Changi was the effective jumping-off point for the POWs who worked on the railway. Secondly, and more controversially and significantly, it would seem impossible that the experiences of Changi were not in some fashion reflected in the behaviour on the railway. The unique role of Changi in shaping the responses to captivity that these men displayed on the railway is highly significant.

In the immediate aftermath of the Singapore surrender, the railway was part of an as yet unimagined future for the thousands of British and Australian troops who had been obliged to lay down their arms. Even without any foreknowledge of what lay in store, the prospect of captivity at the hands of the Japanese was, at best, uncertain. Prior to the surrender Allied propaganda had focused on the ‘otherness’ of the Japanese and few men had much of an idea as to what awaited them as prisoners of these ‘Orientals’. The future, in fact, was bleak. The death rates of Allied soldiers captured by the Japanese tell their own depressing story: 36 per cent of Australian POWs held by the Japanese died in captivity. The death rates of British and American servicemen similarly held as POWs by the Japanese are, respectively, 26 per cent and 33 per cent. By way of comparison the death rate of Australians held as POWs by the Germans was just 3 per cent.⁵

These bare statistics do not tell the whole story and certainly as far as Changi itself is concerned have little real relevance. Changi was different for a host of reasons. It was different, firstly, in the way the Japanese managed it and, most importantly, because of the way the POW population itself responded to the undoubted trials but also the challenges of captivity.

This book is an attempt to narrate the remarkable story of what happened at Changi from 1942 to 1945. It seeks, firstly and most importantly, to piece together the events at Changi during this period, to provide the ‘what’ element. Secondly, it discusses the ‘how’; the manner by which the POWs did what they did. Underscoring both of the above considerations is, of course, the ‘why?’; what motivated and compelled men to behave in the fashion they did? The answer to such a question may appear self-evident within the context of a POW camp. Survival, obviously, is the principal aim and the subject that occupies the mind for the greatest amount of time. While this is abundantly true of Changi it is, in itself, not the whole story of what went on there.

In fact, this book attempts to examine the experience of captivity from a slightly different perspective than would normally be the case with histories of POWs. It is not only about captives and captors, although these parameters are obviously very apparent. More significantly it is about the blurred lines of demarcation between captor and captive. That is not to say, obviously, that the Japanese were confused about whether they were captives or not. Rather, what was frequently blurred at Changi was where exactly the limits of power lay between the two separate groupings. While the complicated exchanges between the ostensibly powerful and powerless are the subject of many studies, the significance of Changi is that within the context of Japanese/POW relationships these boundaries are generally perceived to be firm and inflexible, to say the least. Not only were they more malleable at Changi than previously thought but the ends to which the comparative freedoms of life at Changi were put had far wider implications.

Descriptions and perceptions of Changi

Changi was the principal POW camp in Japanese-held South-East Asia. From Changi men began the arduous journey, by sea or more usually by rail, to work in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and on the Burma–Thailand railway. While the appalling conditions on the railway are well known, and provide the raw materials from which popular perceptions of Japanese held POWs are drawn, the altogether different conditions at Changi have received little attention by comparison. In 1946 the Australian, Rohan Rivett, formerly a journalist, published Behind Bamboo, one of the first accounts of captivity at the hands of the Japanese. He noted that, ‘At Changi we found a far greater degree of freedom and comfort than we had ever known in Batavia.’⁶ Kenneth Harrison was captured on the Malayan mainland and held at Kuala Lumpur. He wrote subsequently of his first encounter with Changi and considered that ‘Changi itself was rather incredible to us Pudu [Pudu gaol in Kuala Lumpur] men, and in many ways [it] could have been called a POWs’ paradise.’⁷ Lt.-Col. E.E. ‘Weary’ Dunlop was captured in Sumatra, some weeks after the surrender at Singapore. Dunlop was eventually sent to work on the railway, where he made his name as an outstandingly resourceful officer and doctor, and subsequently became a celebrated, iconic figure in his native Australia. In common with thousands of other POWs, Dunlop passed through Changi en route to the railway. On 7 January 1943 he arrived at Changi:

As we moved on we noticed splendid stone buildings in a beautiful part of the Island filled with British and Australian troops and – an astonishing sight – diggers on guard controlling traffic at points. All these troops are very well dressed, very spick and span, officers with sticks and ever so much saluting.⁸

Despite testimony such as this, Changi is frequently included in more homogeneous interpretations of the treatment of Japanese-held POWs. On occasion, Changi is described as being peculiarly brutal in its own right, a place where of the ‘nearly 150,000 young men’ captured at the fall of Singapore ‘only one in fifteen was to survive the three and a half long years to V.J. day’.⁹ This figure is doubly misleading. The number of men captured at Singapore was far less than 150,000, and certainly 50,000 men did not die as POWs.¹⁰ Although many men did die, they died on the railway and not while at Changi. Descriptions such as ‘one of the most infamous Japanese POW camps’ owe more to the worst excesses experienced on the railway than to the conditions pertaining at Changi itself and have combined to foster a ‘myth’ of Changi.¹¹ By May 1944, the month the POW hospital moved to Kranji in Singapore and the main camp relocated to Changi gaol, 680 men had died at Changi.¹² Although the erosion of the ration scale, over the course of the war, left many prisoners malnourished by September 1945, overt, premeditated Japanese brutality was generally absent at Changi. The only manifestation of coercion, on a large scale, occurred when the Japanese attempted to extract, from the prisoners, a declaration promising not to attempt escape.¹³ Even this event was comparatively innocuous when set against the conditions on the railway.

As is evident from the above quotations, Changi is often mentioned within the extensive literature concerned with POWs. What is significant is that it is frequently misrepresented and that little is known about Changi itself. For these reasons Changi is deserving of recognition and study in its own right. Ironically, while Changi might not be deserving of its apparently fearsome reputation, its role within the POW experience is significant and does need to be examined, with greater emphasis placed on what happened at Changi itself. As Captain Rogers’s diary suggests, life at Changi was almost more outlandish in reality than many of the myths that currently surround it. Even at the time, the experience of Changi was difficult to reconcile with more traditional images of POW camps. General Percival, the former General Officer Commanding (GOC) Malaya, and the man who signed the Singapore surrender, had difficulty in adequately capturing the nature of Changi. In a post-war letter concerned with events during the war, Percival felt compelled to emphasise this fact:

The Changi camp was not like an ordinary POW camp surrounded by barbed wire with a staff and guards of the detaining power. It covered a considerable area of ground, bounded on one side by barbed wire and on the other sides by the sea and was divided into sub areas each under a British commander assisted by a British staff. The whole was under my general administrative control assisted by the staff of headquarters, Malaya Command. We had our own Military police. The Japanese commander had an office at the entrance to the area and issued his instructions through my headquarters.¹⁴

The nature of this Japanese control meant that the POWs in Changi were afforded, initially at least, a far greater degree of freedom than they might otherwise have expected as prisoners. This freedom extended to their movements and, crucially, to the manner in which they organised themselves to face the undoubted challenges of captivity. In one sense, this freedom complicated matters as it delayed the realisation of becoming a POW and made the necessary transition that much harder. However, the comparatively gentle introduction to POW life that occurred at Changi helped those captured at Singapore to overcome the alleged stigma of losing Singapore.

Changi is deserving of examination for another important reason. The well-known British illustrator and author, Ronald Searle, was a POW at Changi and worked subsequently in Thailand. His graphic drawings of life on the railway depict thin, emaciated prisoners undertaking hard labour under the auspices of generally fearsome-looking Japanese overseers. Images such as these project and reinforce a particular impression of POWs of the Japanese: that of broken men, obliged to endure the wrath of their captors. POWs of the Japanese are invariably represented as being essentially passive, devoid of any power in a fundamentally unequal relationship between captor and captive. As with any impression, the truth is far more complex. At Changi the POWs were not broken and bowed men who cowed before their captors. By the end of the war they were certainly thin, but right up until the Japanese capitulation the POWs exercised a degree of autonomy and independence that continually frustrated their Japanese captors.

The behaviour of POWs at Changi challenges the understanding of the basis of power in captor/captive relationships generally. Specifically, it provides a new dimension to the understanding of the relationship between the Japanese and their prisoners, as well as emphasising the continuity of prisoners’ experiences, irrespective of the conditions under which they were held.

The degree of POW autonomy at Changi was partially created by the Japanese themselves. After the Singapore surrender the Japanese were faced with thousands of prisoners and no clear idea of how to deal with them. The immediate response was to marshal them into the enormous British army base at Changi. Here, the POWs were left largely to their own devices with minimal interference from the Japanese, at least for the early months. This allowed, and obliged, the POWs to organise themselves. This level of autonomy served to foster a strong spirit of independence and esprit de corps among the POWs. These men, after all, had survived a massive defeat at the hands of the Japanese. The prevailing conditions at Changi enabled the POWs to come to terms with their own participation in this event and, by doing so in this manner, to rebuild their self-esteem and military pride, an important element in the struggle that was to follow.

The struggle at Changi stands in opposition to that of more conventional ideas of POW camps. Unlike traditional perceptions of POW camps, the struggle was not principally against the enemy who ran the camp, in this case the Japanese. Rather, the POWs at Changi battled against the cumulative implications of a lack of drugs, clothing and a ration scale that was always variable and unpredictable but generally characterised by depreciation. Life at Changi is as much about the internal dynamics of POW relations as it is about the interaction with the Japanese. In addition, the way men responded to imprisonment and deprivation is illustrative of their morale, while fitness is demonstrated by the survival rates of men subsisting on minimalist diets. All these considerations contribute to ideas of national identity. The Anglo-Australian fatality rates on F-force, one of the groups sent from Changi to work on the Burma–Thailand Railway, are respectively 60 per cent and 29 per cent. Figures such as these are frequently cited as evidence of the superior hardiness of the Australian soldier. Similarly, the responses to incarceration, whether by determined attempts to escape or by resigned acceptance, are also perceived to be a gauge of national ‘character’.

Paul Keating, the former Australian Premier, wrote in a review of The Burma–Thailand Railway that the trials of Australian POWs in Thailand and their determination to overcome adversity represented ‘the triumph of mateship’.¹⁵ For Australians the experience of their troops as POWs represents a very large element of their participation in the Second World War. The significance for Australia as a nation, and in terms of her wartime experience, may be seen in the fact that of the approximately 25,000 Australians killed during the Second World War, 8,000 of these died as POWs. Indeed half of the Australians who died in the war against Japan died as prisoners.¹⁶ While the British forces lost nearly double the number of men than did the Australians, these figures become overshadowed when compared to the overall casualty figures suffered by British forces in other campaigns against the Germans or Italians in North Africa and in Western Europe. This is so even when compared to casualties taken whilst fighting the Japanese in Burma.

The impact that POWs have had on Australian cultural life may be seen at the Duntroon Military Academy in Canberra. Here stands the ‘Changi Chapel’, one of the original churches constructed by POWs at Changi during the war years and now a national monument dedicated to the memory of all Australian POWs. Hank Nelson, an Australian historian who has written extensively on Australian POWs of the Japanese, considered that ‘Australians are generally aware of what happened to POWs under the Japanese’ and ‘in popular consciousness, Changi and the Burma–Thailand railway are probably as evocative as Kokoda and Tobruk, and just on a lesser rank than Eureka, Gallipoli, Phar Lap and Bradman’.¹⁷ Despite this apparent significance, it is only now that the crucial distinction between the railway and Changi has been rigorously examined.

Objectives of the book

The objectives of this book are in a way quite limited. The book is essentially a narrative concerned with detailing what happened at Changi from 1942 to 1945. It does have wider implications, however. The war fought by the Allies against the Japanese was different to the war in Europe – more brutal and more cruel, most certainly a ‘war without mercy’. Questions of race as well as of ideology were to the fore. Changi, of course, felt the effect of this dimension to the conflict most notably through the building of the Burma–Thailand railway. Few POWs at Changi could be under any illusions about their Japanese captors after that experience, nor even after Japanese atrocities in the fighting for Malaya and Singapore. Despite this context it does seem as though the Japanese behaved differently at Changi. There is a certain element of formal correctness (or what passed for such in the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) about the conduct of Japanese officers in their dealings with the POWs at Changi. Fundamentally, for all the well-documented examples of Japanese cruelty and indifference towards POWs in Changi, and there are many, the Japanese could have behaved in a far worse fashion than they did...