Death on the Hellships. Gregory F. Michno
were put to work picking bananas and hauling them aboard for shipment to the empire. They were warned not to eat any. After six days, Toko Maru was seaworthy enough to resume her voyage. Before sailing on the twenty-fifth, the prisoners were given a written set of instructions: they should eliminate bowels and bladder before boarding; they would only get one portion of rice, twice a day; they should not complain about the food; when toilet buckets were full, they should notify a guard and haul up the bucket to throw its contents overboard; no one was to climb the ladder without orders; no one was to touch anything on the ship; no one was to disobey an order; no one was to talk loudly; and no one was to move anywhere except within the hold.
The Japanese meant business. One night, a prisoner suffering from malaria and dysentery screamed that he had to be let topside for some air. They could not stop his yelling, or his rush for the ladder. A guard opened the hatch and motioned him up. As the sick man stuck his head up to deck level, the guard shoved a bayonet into his neck. He toppled and fell. It was an hour before the medics could stop the bleeding and sew him up. Because one man had disobeyed the rules, the rest would only get one ration of rice that day—Japanese justice.
Tenney hoped with all his might that he could end this horrible journey, and almost in answer to his pleas, he heard the ship’s horn. It was 7 October and they had reached Moji, Japan. In a dockside godown they stripped and were sprayed with delousing chemicals. They were given split-toed sandals and Japanese-style clothing, all too small. Tenney and his group of five hundred were sent to Fukuoka 17 Camp to work in the coal mines.38
A smaller contingent left Cabanatuan on 17 September. About three hundred men marched south to Manila, where they waited for three days in Bilibid Prison before boarding the 6,989-ton Lima Maru. The twin-screwed vessel, owned by the NYK Line, was built in 1920, was 445 feet long, and had a cruising speed of twelve knots. Otis H. King, Fourth Marines, called it “an old rusty freighter.” He heard that thirteen POW colonels and three generals were in the group, some of them with their orderlies still carrying their golf clubs. He doubted that the Japanese would allow the officers any golf time.
The three hundred were placed into a small forward hold, where the air immediately became stale as they packed in shoulder to shoulder. The hatch was covered, and only two forty-watt bulbs swinging overhead provided illumination. There were also two thousand Japanese soldiers in the other holds. “I was reminded of pictures I had seen of crowded slave ships of old,” King said. He was lucky to be against a bulkhead on which to rest, but those in the middle had to lay on top of each other to sleep. There were no toilet facilities. One prisoner guessed they were headed to Japan; another disagreed, believing Japan was too overpopulated to accommodate them. Not yet having lost his sense of humor, another man suggested that they had already killed enough Japanese in the Philippines to make room for them, and, he said, “maybe their women need our services.”
The Lima Maru sailed on 21 September. After four days the men were let out on deck to use the outboard latrines and wash in salt water, letting the waste water run down the decks and over the side. Daily meals came in individual boxes consisting of two rice balls and a watery soup. No one was pleased with the accommodations, but, King admitted, “it was like a tourist trip on an ocean cruise liner compared to the ‘Hell Ships’ that followed in our wake.” Even so, eight men died on the voyage.
Hellships Lima Maru and Lisbon Maru. U.S. Navy
It took thirteen days to reach Takao. The next morning, 5 October, they debarked and took a train north, to a town that King remembered as Tychu. Their trip to Japan would be delayed, as they spent the next month working in a rock quarry. Before sailing, the prisoners were required to indicate their professions, and King and a buddy said “telephone line repairmen” in the hope that they would be given outdoor work and, consequently, a better chance to escape. When they eventually reached Japan, they would end up in an electric shop in Yokohama.39
By September, more prisoners were being shifted to Changi, Singapore, which was a collection point for distribution to Burma, Borneo, and Japan. More than one thousand Australians of Sparrow Force had been captured on Timor and were put in Usapa Besar Camp for six months, where conditions were fair and treatment reasonable. The prisoners could sit among the coconut trees near the beach and wistfully wonder when the Australian forces would rescue them; after all, they were only four hundred miles from Darwin. There would be no rescue. Instead, on 26 July, the 1,871-ton Samurusan Maru, an ex-Dutch ship, carried a number of them from Kupang, Timor, to Java, arriving on 5 August. In early September, Nishi Maru, called “a dirty, rusty old tramp steamer,” sailed from Timor, to Java. It had been the British ship Kalgan, a 2,655-ton passenger-cargo vessel built by Scott’s Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in 1921 and seized in Bangkok in December 1941. After a stop at Surabaya, Nishi Maru took fifteen hundred Dutch KNIL and Aussies to Tanjong Priok, arriving on 12 September. Following behind was the 5,813-ton Dainichi Maru, built in 1922 and now owned by the Itaya Shosen Company. Hauling more Dutch POWs and the remainder of Sparrow Force, it sailed from Kupang on 23 September and arrived in Surabaya on the twenty-ninth.
The men from Nishi Maru found themselves in Bicycle Camp, Batavia, which at this time contained about 500 British, 500 American, and 2,000 Australian prisoners under Brig. A. S. Blackburn. Notice was given to the British to start packing. After midnight on 14 September, they were rousted out of bed to begin the march to the harbor. There were 473 British POWs, mostly of the RAF, and 1 Australian. Flt. Lt. Charles Johnstone was born near Melbourne but joined the RAF in 1940 when it was recruiting Australian pilots. Now he trudged along with his unit, exhausted upon reaching the docks in the late afternoon. Waiting for them was ship “No. 2106.” They were lined up, counted, and their kits were sprayed with a disinfectant. Once aboard they were given a towel ten inches by twenty-seven inches. With a piece of string to secure it, it would become a loincloth—standard clothing. The guards ordered them not to mix with the other prisoners, but they could not tell RAF from AIF, and the men mingled freely. Johnstone was glad to see the last of Batavia. “We thought we had been given a bad time and things could not be worse,” he said. “What little we knew of the future.”
The RAF contingent was placed in one small hold, where tiers of bed spaces had been built up along the sides. They couldn’t fit. The other POWs who had been aboard since Timor, told them it was best to have some men sleep at night, and some during the day. Only half of them were allowed on deck at any one time, so a roster system was instituted to assure every man had a turn. Six small “cabinets” were built over the side, but with dysentery rampant, they were crowded twenty-four hours a day. But, said Johnstone, “we were allowed to urinate over the stern.”
They ate rice and fish-head soup, served twice a day in buckets carried down to the holds. One storage room was packed with fish. The cooks cut off the heads and tails and boiled them up with some stale Soya sauce. The heads floated on top. “With all these eyes looking up at you and the stuff smelling, looking, and tasting like vomit,” said Johnstone, “there were always plenty of leftovers.” The guards ate clean slabs of dried fish, laughing at the POWs’ discomfort. Charlie sarcastically concluded, “This soup was a masterpiece. Not only did the Japanese get square with the white races, they got rid of their offal, and at no cost.”
It took four days for Nishi Maru to reach Singapore. Three men died and were buried at sea. No cause of death was given, but dysentery was the likely agent. Many men were afflicted and unable to reach the latrines. The stench and the rolling of the ship caused an overpowering seasickness that could not be overcome. Johnstone recalled one man who climbed up the ladder, was unable to control an abdominal cramp, and defecated in the face of the man below him.
They nearly cheered when the freighter dropped anchor. Such a dirty, smelly lot created amusement for those watching along the waterfront. With their heads recently shorn of all hair in Batavia, they looked more like pigs just released from a sty. As they marched the ten miles to Changi, one more man collapsed and died. It was midnight when they reached an old, empty Indian barracks, found bags spread on the floor, and flopped down to a fitful sleep. In three weeks they would continue their journey.40