MORE CAMP HORRORS

Evening Star, Issue 25593, 20 September 1945, Page 5

MORE CAMP HORRORS

DREADFUL TOLL OF CHOLERA SIAM-BURMA RAILWAY NEW ZEALANDERS' SHOGKING REVELATIONS (Rec. 12.2 p.m.) BRISBANE, Sept. 20., Eighty per cent, of the Australian and New Zealand force of 5,000 working on the notorious Siam-Burma railway died of cholera, said a Now' Zealand army medical orderly, Sergeant S. W. Peers, of Auckland, who was one of a party of 16 liberated New Zealanders who arrived at .Brisbane yesterday afternoon. They were the first liberated New Zealanders to reach Australia from Singapore. Sergeant Peers said that there was a severe outbreak of cholera at Tamurah Pah camp in Siam, and because of a lack of proper i treatment the force of 5,000 was reduced to hundreds., Only the fine work of a Melbourne doctor saved the others. He had worked unceasingly with crude, improvised! instruments. "I was unfortunate enough to get cholera soon after I arrived in Siam," said Peers. "It was a bad attack, and I knew I had but a slight chance of recov.ery. In a few hours I had lapsed into a coma, and the next thing I knew I'was being lowered into a grave by some Australians. When I moved and showed signs of recovery they had the shock of their lives. It appears that when I was in the coma Japanese guards came through the huts and collected me among other dead. I was thrown on to a heap of dead Australians and left to await burial. Australian friends saw me there and dug a grave for me. It was just as I was being lowered that I rallied. Having cheated death so narrowly, I was determined to recover, and injected saline into my leg by cutting away the skin with a penknife. The crisis passed, and I recovered." Peers said the Japanese were not concerned with the high death rate, except that they shot Australians who had cholera to prevent it spreading to their camps. HANDS RESET WR.ONG WAY. Private M. A. Brennan, also of New Zealand, said that as a punishment for knocking out the Japanese guard in a Siam camp he had his wrists broken and set by a Japanese doctor so that the palms faced upwards. When he returned to Singapore an Australian doctor reset his wrists, and he can use them normally again. Brennan said that after his wrists were broken and reset the wrong way by the Japanese- doctor he was thrown into a cage. Food was tossed into the. dirt, and he had to crawl to it and eat it on the ground. But for an Australian doctor who used to sneak to him at night and give him morphia, said Brennan, he would have died. _ The party of New Zealanders will fly direct ■to Auckland to-day. It will be the longest flight ever' made in a Dakota—l,3oo nautical miles—and extra petrol tanks will be carried. INDIGNITIES ON WOMEN. Civilian women interned at Cliangi gaol and later at Sime Road internee camp in Singapore were forced to undress in the presence of Japanese guards, said Sister E. M. Uniacke, of Tafanaki, who is the first woman internee to reach Australia from Singapore. She arrived at' Darwin yesterday with 15 male internees and prisoners of war. She was employed at a large civil hospital in Singapore. Sister Uniacke said the Japanese guards forced native women to live with them. This probably saved the white women in gaol from being molested. Women internees were given 14oz of rice a day, but it was infested with weevils and maggots. To supplement this diet thev ate grass, leaves, and flowers. They started to catch snails, but the Japanese issued an order that snails could not be caught as they were camp property.