POW in Nagasaki

ARMY SERVICE GUNNER NEIL M. REID 917155
241 BATTERY, 77th H.A.A. REGIMENT, ROYAL ARTILLERY

My pal and I at the age of 17 went to join the T.A. on 3rd May 1939, he failed the medical as he had flat feet and wasn’t accepted but I joined up.

I was at Gailes Camp, a T.A. camp in Ayrshire when war was declared. I stayed there for 2 weeks and came back to Edinburgh and commenced training. Our Regiment was going to France but as some of us weren’t 18 years old we were sent to Llanishen, Cardiff. I went from there to Ely racecourse, Lavernock, Penylan, Mardy Farm and then to Shetland in June 1940 for 6 months. On return from Shetland went to Wellington in Shropshire, on to Walgerten near Crewe and finally to Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow. Went from Glasgow on the Clyde steamer “Queen Mary II” to board “Empress of Australia” which was at anchor off Gourock.

I sailed from Gourock on “Empress of Australia” on 4th December 1941. Also on board was RAF 242 Fighter Squadron, which has been Douglas Bader’s squadron, (although by that time he was a prisoner of war in Germany), the squadron’s Hurricanes were loaded on a merchant ship which sailed with us. We were 3 Days at sea when we heard that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour. We sailed to Sierra Leone, Freetown and from there sailed on Christmas Day 1941 to Cape Town. On arrival at Cape Town the ship was not allowed to dock as somebody had brought a monkey on board at Sierra Leone and we spent two days chasing it around the ship to try and catch it. When it was finally captured the only thing that could be done was to throw the monkey overboard to drown, to enable the ship to dock.. After leaving Cape town we had to put in at the Maldives and later sailed without escort for 2 days before meeting up with convoy and went on to Java.

I landed in Java in February 1942 at Tanjung Priok and went to Dutch Army barracks in Batavia (now Jakarta), unloaded equipment and guns and stayed for 1 week. The Regiment entrained for Surabaya, the train was loaded with the Ack-Ack guns and we set off. At the first bridge the train couldn’t pass under because of the guns so we had to return to Tanjung Priok to unload them. I was then assigned to escort the guns to Surabaya by road, whilst the rest of the Regiment went on the train, 45 miles from Surabaya, near Sengon, there was a train crash and 98 men were killed, most from A Section (my Section). The crash was thought to be sabotage, the train crashed head-on on a single track section into another train which was carrying petrol, ammunition and rice.

I arrived at Surabaya with the guns and went to Sadwahan racecourse with 4 guns. I was at Sadwahan for 2 weeks and got bombed to hell as it was a Dutch Naval base. I was evacuated from there to Tilijap on the south coast, where we were dive bombed by Jap planes. At Tilijap we blew up the guns as the Dutch had capitulated at that time without putting up much of a fight.

Went to place, cannot remember name and then was captured by Japs, this was March 1942. We were taken back to Tanjung Priok to camp there and worked in the docks loading rice, peppercorns etc. The Japanese had a system that when you went into the warehouse you were given a coloured stick and had to return it when you left carrying your sack, the different colours went in 10’s for easy counting. When we cottoned on to this counting system we swapped sticks inside warehouse so confusing guards and making them lose count. We were beaten severely with bamboo sticks as punishment, forcing them to produce an abacus to keep count and we continued loading. Every morning they counted a party of 50 men and went off to warehouses to continue loading, I went with a few others on a small landing craft to a seaplane base as they wanted joiners. The workshop had woodworking machines, saws, drills etc and we had to make boxes to put Singer sewing machines in for the Japs to send back to Japan as plunder. We used to take bits off the machines as we were boxing them up so that they wouldn’t work when they got them back to Japan, we put the bits in our pockets and dropped them in the water from the landing craft on the way back at night. Whilst at the base the Jap marines in white uniforms were quite good to us, they filled a big aluminium tub with Carnation milk and ice and we could help ourselves. We did this for 3 weeks and then went back to loading rice etc.

When the work was completed at the docks in October 1942, the whole camp was put on a ship which took 2 days to get to Singapore. We were taken off, de-loused and then put aboard a ship called “Singapore Maru” and sailed from Singapore on 30th October 1942. It was an ancient ship about 6000 tons, which had chains running down both sides to control the rudder, every 15 minutes when the ship changed course (to prevent a submarine lining up to fire) the chains rattled down the decks, 24 hours a day making sleep impossible. The conditions on board were atrocious, we set off with about 1,100 POW’s on board and sailed via Saigon and Takao in Formosa and finally to Nagasaki and on arrival at Nagasaki only 480 POW’s were still alive, most died of dysentery, malaria etc. Whilst at sea the Japanese Captain and Officers of the ship turned out every night for burials at sea of the men who had died that day. At first the bodies were wrapped in cloth and weighed down with the pig-iron ballast from the bottom of the ship, but as the numbers rose the ballast was running out. Later burials did not have enough to weigh them down and the bodies would float on the sea. We docked at Nagasaki on my 21st birthday, the 25th November 1942, we were then taken across the bay to Fukuoka Furyo Shuyosho, a mining camp, were I was held until cessation of hostilities.

The camp was a mining camp, one compound of which they used as a POW camp, the other housed Korean and Japanese coal miners. The Jap Sergeants were mostly ex-servicemen who had seen service in the Japan/China conflict in the 1930’s, one had only one arm, another had only one eye, but the lower ranks were conscripts from the village and they treated us worse than any others. The guards marched us down to the mines in the morning, about 5 mins march away where we were handed over to the civilians who ran the coal mine, 60 men went down the mine on each shift. The coal mine was owned by Mitsubishi. On the march to the mines we used to walk right through the village every day and depending on the guard we would stop at a little shop. If the lady in the shop had any cigarettes she would give them to us.

I was given a lamp and went down the pit and dug coal for a 12-13 hour shift, but if the conveyor belt broke you could be longer. I sometimes did dynamite, that was hard work, but shorter hours. Other times I shovelled coal onto the conveyor belt, other times timbering (putting props up and then one across the top). One day the roof collapsed, I heard a crash and ran forward out of the way, but three of us were trapped for 3 hours. I worked there from November 1942 until the end of the war.

The camp was all British except for a doctor who was a U.S. Lieutenant Commander captured in Guam and an Australian Army Chaplain called Harry Thorpe who used to tear the pages out of his bible and give them to us for our roll-up cigarettes.

In the camp we slept in huts which were separated into 6 bedded rooms. We slept on straw mats and had a type of quilt which we could put under or over us. We had a bath every night, it was a big concrete bath with a concrete seat around it, in the middle was a big steel chamber with timber straps where a fire was lit to heat the water. About 30 people were in at a time and we waited until a Jap guard went in to the bath and we pinched his soap.

I worked 7 days a week and had 1 day off a month when the Jap guards took us for a walk. While we were on the walk the Jap guards went through all our possessions to see if they could find anything.

At the end of 1943, a year after I arrived in Japan I had a hernia operation carried out in the local hospital by a Jap doctor under a local anaesthetic. A Jap nurse held my hand during the operation and held a little mesh over my eyes. I had the operation one day and was back working in the mine the next day and on light duties for a week.

Towards the end of the war I was working in the mine sawmills cutting timber for props etc. I had acquired a pair of Australian Army boots, which the sawmill foreman, a Japanese civilian, liked. I said to him I would give him the boots at the end of the war.

When the Japs were losing different islands in Pacific, we were slapped across the face for no reason, so we knew we were winning the war. The U.S. Airforce bombed Moji, which was a major supplier of electricity to the mine, causing the mine to flood, so nobody went down the mine again.

Just days after the bombing of Moji the 2nd atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on 9th August 1945. We were all in camp by this time as the mine was flooded, although the surface workers still carried on working. It was late morning when I saw a plane flying over at high altitude, 1 or 2 minutes later the bomb went off. I was about 4 miles across the bay, we saw two big mushroom clouds rising up. About 2 days after the bomb was dropped the sawmiller told me the war was over.

The Japs boarded the roof of the huts, painted them black and painted P.W. in white on the hut roofs, I think they had to do this under the terms of the surrender. Later U.S. B29 planes came over and dropped messages to say food planes were following.

It was raining the first day the planes came over and dropped food on Moji, next day nothing happened but on the following day planes with P.W. Supplies painted on the underside of the wings flew over, the bomb doors opened and a large pallet stacked with 60 gallon steel drums welded together in 2’s were dropped. The Parachutes attached to the drums broke away almost immediately and the drums dropped like bombs, 2 Koreans in the next camp were killed, we went outside camp to escape. The pallet was so large we floated it out on the sea to use as a platform for swimming out to and diving off. Two days later the planes returned this time with smaller cardboard cartons filled with tins of peaches, salmon, soup and Spam and they dropped 100’s of tons of food over the following weeks.

We used a horse and cart to take the stores to the camp, I and two others took the cart with some soup, salmon and Spam to the sawmiller. I also gave him the Australian boots and presented his son (who was about 15 or 16) with a pair of U.S. Army boots with great ceremony. We also took food to the hospital where I had my operation and took sweets and chocolate to the village school. When they dropped the food they also dropped clothes, so by the time we left Fukuoka Camp we were all dressed in U.S. Army gear.

In August 1945 we entrained at Moji bound for Wakayama, passing through Hiroshima on the way. Hiroshima was destroyed except for a few stone buildings remaining, but that was nothing compared with Wakayama. Wakayama was totally devastated, with the charred remains of every building stretching as far as you could see, it had been heavily bombed with incendiaries and all the buildings were burnt to the ground. As the train pulled into Wakayama station we were met by nurses from the American hospital ship U.S.S. Sanctuary and an Australian Marine band from H.M.A.S. Perth.

I left Japan 3-4 weeks after being fed by air drops and went on hospital ship U.S.S. Sanctuary to Formosa, transferred to ship called “Marine Shark” and sailed to Manila. Transferred to camp on shore for approximately 2 weeks where I met Edwina Mountbatten, she sat on my bed. I was there for approximately 2 weeks before sailing for Hawaii again on the “Marine Shark”. On the way the ship kept breaking down including the air conditioning, it was like a sauna. As the ship drifted they used to play the song “Drifting and Dreaming” on the loudspeaker system. When we arrived off Honolulu we didn’t dock as H.M.S. Implacable, which was also taking ex-POW’s back, was in before us and it took 4 days to round up all the men from shore before they could set sail. U.S. engineers came on board for repairs and Hula girls also came on board with leis. Left for America, ship broke down again 2 days after leaving Honolulu, eventually arrived at San Francisco, sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Disembarked at San Francisco and went on a ferry which took us to Angel Island, Fort McGeorge. Whilst we were there the Canadian Army took over and kitted us out with British army uniforms and we got our army pay to give us some spending money. Left there and went to big camp in Seattle and stayed there for approximately 2-3 weeks before going by train to Vancouver. From there we went on the Canadian National Railway across Canada and down to New York. At every place we stopped, people were at the stations handing out magazines, chocolates, cigarettes etc, the journey took 4 days. On arrival at New York we boarded the liner “Queen Mary” where we were told to cater for ourselves and clean up as well. After a few choice words were spoken, we were excused all duties.

I arrived in Southhampton in November 1945 and then travelled by train to London where I was met by a big Scots Guard who carried my kit and then travelled on to Edinburgh. It had taken 3 months to get home and had to be built up gradually, because in August when the war finished I only weighed 5 stone. I was demobbed on 2nd January 1946.

I have been back to Surabaya in Java for 2 days in 1991. I have not been back to Japan but would like to go and see the place where I spent almost three years. I was given the opportunity during 1999/2000, through the Far East Prisoner of War Association, to return to Japan organised through a Japanese woman, married to an Englishman, called Keiko Holmes, paid for in the main by contributions from the Japanese in the spirit of reconciliation. The terms of the offer included having to stay with a Japanese family and to say that you forgive them for what they did during the war. I could never forgive them for what they did and refused to go.

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