THIN BUT CHEERFUL

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 61, 10 September 1945, Page 4

THIN BUT CHEERFUL

PRISONERS' EXPERIENCES

(R.N.Z.N. Offlcia! War Service.)

■ SINGAPORE, September 7. The New Zealand prisoners of war at Changi, the largest prisoner-of-war camp in Malaya, have come through three and a half years of starvation and the grossest brutality showing few signs of the treatment they received. AH look thin after years of a diet which up to a fortnight ago was entirely inadequate, but their spirit is amazing, their minds are alert, and the traditional cheerfulness of the New Zealand servicemen is very much in evidence. The greatest anxiety of the men at present is that the years of internment and ill use might in some way have made them different from the men of the world outside. It has been possible to reassure them unreservedly on this point. Except for obvious .signs of continued under-nourishment, there was never a more normal crowd of New Zealanders. They were kept surprisingly, well informed on the affairs of the world outside through an illicit radio organisation which equipped itself with sets contrived from the most unlikely scrap and functioned without intei-ruption from the earliest days, though death was the penalty for discovery. The news, they said, was the one thing that enabled them to carry on, but all admitted that the strict discipline and good organisation maintained by the prisoners themselves was a very large factor. Ten days passed after the Japanese surrender before prisoners were told by the enemy, and in that time they had scrupulously to avoid giving any indication that they knew. Every man, of -coux'se, has his own story of senseless brutality or organised cruelty, but all insist that there was much in the camp life which made them laugh, and that this is the side they prefer to remember. 12,000 IN SPACE FOR 600. Changi was built as a civil gaol to accommodate 600 men. The present population is 12,000. Forty cells, built to hold one convict each, have accommodated 200 in the last four months. The average daily ration has been 490z of rice, less than one ounce each of oil and sugar, half an ounce of salt, and a pinch of tea. Gardens, which were worked by those considered unfit for heavy labour, produced about 13oz of greenstuff, which was mostly unpalatable, but just kept them above starvation level. On this diet the men were forced to do the heaviest manual labour, 10 hours a day. The diet, preponderantly of rice, upset the men badly at first, but eventually they became used to it. Treatment of the sick was particularly bad. There were no medicines available, and the Japanese apparently assumed that a sick man did not require as much food as a well one, and cut down his rice to about soz. The camp diet was augmented to a small extent by food bought and smuggled in, but rocketing prices outside steadily reduced this source, as the meagre pay was not increased. Hunger forced the men to eat dogs,