"BAMBOO TREATMENT"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 29, 3 February 1945, Page 5

"BAMBOO TREATMENT"

British Prisoners Suffer Under Japanese TRAGEDY OF LOST FREIGHTER Rec, 10 a.m. NEW YORK, Feb. 2. Among the prisoners released when 400 picked Americans and Filipinos raided a Japanese prison camp in Eastern Luzon, 25- miles behind the enemy lines, were Britons who were captuied in Singapore and transferred to Thailand, where many died from cholera, bubonic plague and malnutrition during 18 months of prison labour, says the New York Herald-Tribune correspondent on Luzon. Signalman Thomas Farnswortn, of Lancashire, said: "I wore a G string and went bootless for 18 months. The Japanese gave us bamboo treatment. I suffered a fractured rib. The British were returned to Singapore and then packed into a stinking hold of a 9000-ton Japanese freighter last July and told that they were going to Japan. Many of the prisoners died from malnutrition at sea. The freighter sank off Subic Bay on September 21 and men driited aIL day while Japanese destroyers rescued only Japanese. Britons who reached the shore were immediately arrested and taken to Tangatan camp."