The Japs after VJ Day

This story is taken from an interview with George and Peggy Lapsley, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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The Japanese had very few prisoners, because the Japanese believed that if you’re taken prisoner it’s ignominious and you can’t go back to your family. So a lot of them would save the last bullet either for themselves of to kill a British soldier and then they knew they’d be killed. So there was very few. But there was a few of them worked in the hospital who had given in. And these Jap conquerors became totally and utterly subservient. They worked in the hospital, I was in the hospital, and they’d do all the menial tasks, cleaning and so on. But after you had the meal, any meal, they would come round with a dish, a bowl or a tin and took all the food that was left. It could be rice, meat, scallions, it could be anything, but it all went into the same bowl. And then they wolfed it. So these Japanese didn’t starve. These thin starved Japanese, became quite big bloated people from the food they’d eat. There was no fear in them.

They drove their own lorries for a while. Until we stopped it. We had to get a soldier or somebody, a sailor to go with them driving these lorries. Because as they were driving those big lorries along the street, don’t forget, the houses were made of wood. They would see a common or garden soldier, not a private but a Lance corporal. And of course, the jap driver, one hand went down and the other hand went up. And the lorry just go and knock down the houses and so on. This was the conquerer being saluted. And we had to stop. We had to get a man to grab the wheel while they were doing all this saluting. But they were subservient.

I hate them to this day. And yet I met, we met when we were on holidays once we met 6 lovely Japanese girls who were very nice and came down to kissed me bye-bye. But still, the Japanese were really, really cruel. We went to Changi jail and we went here there and everywhere. The Japanese were really, really cruel. Cruel people. The Bushido, I think they called it. They would kill. But they couldn’t go home, so they ...
I had a charpoy, which is a bed, and I used to work, and during the middle of the day you would lie down. It was too hot to work in the middle of the day. So I’d go down to my bed and lie in my bed. It was under an awning, which meant it was cool. But we got a new recruit, who of course, we’d say his knees weren’t brown, that meant he’d just come out. He said “Paddy, can I have a loan of your charpoy?” And I said, “surely”. But what he did was, he took it out into the sun to get more sunshine. There was a Jap in the school opposite. In the tower, who’d been there for days and days and days. And he shot him. And then the army came along and blew the top off this tower. That’s a cruel story, but there you are.

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