HOSPITAL SHIP

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 October 1945, Page 2

HOSPITAL SHIP

. ARRIVAL AT AUCKLAND. • AUCKLAND, October 3. The hospital ship Tjitjalengka has arrived at Auckland with 459 victims of Japanese brutality, neglect and semi-starvation. Most of them are British sailors, soldiers and airmen, the rest being Australians, South Africans, New .Zalanders, Indians, and Chinese. They have beri beri, dengue, tuberculosis, malnutrition and other illnesses contracted in Japanese prisoner of war camps. Many, have had a limb amputated. All patients reveal an indomitable spirit and cheer. The ship is. a Dutch vessel chartered by the Admiralty. She anchored in the stream to-night and will berth to-morrow morning, when patients will be transferred to various hospitals in the Auckland province. The ship leaves shortly for Wellington, where it will receive from the New Zealand hospital ship Maunganui some patients bound for Australia. She then will continue to Sydney. All patients and internees are from prisoner of war and internees’ camps in Japan. • They joined the ship at Tokio. When they came aboard at Tokio the majority were said by the ship’s doctors to have been in a pitiful state. Some were walking skeletons. Since then the majority nave made amazing progress. Nine have died. PATIENTS’ SUFFERINGS Patients interviewed aboard the hospital ship Tjitjalengka on arrival from Japan this evening, told stores in almost a detached manner as it speaking of a nightmare from which they had just awakened. It seemed it was hard for them to realise it was all over. Many of them had lost limbs, and some more than one, for no other reason than Jap. indifference to their plight. A man who could not work was not worth worrying about —that was the attitude of their captors. On the voyage to Auckland, the patients averaged a gain in weight of two stone. One ex-prisoner quoted a Chinese proberb to sum up thenfeelings towards the land of the rising -sun, which they were so glad to leave. “Men without honour, women without virtue, flowers without smell, and birds without song.” “In a nine-hour shift, four-men gangs had to produce 28 tons of coal, said Dvr. C. O. N. Tarlton, formerly a member of the R.A.S.C. in HongKong, one of the men who were forced to work in Jap. coal mines. We worked at the 800 metro level and had to walk inclines to get there. There were no safety precautions and hundreds lost their lives in tunnel blockages.” ’ Tarleton’s legs are paralysed but the doctors tell him he had a good chance of walking again. He came from the recognised hell camp known as 14D, a short distance north of Tokio. Food consisted of a tea-cup of rice per day and sometimes a little daikon, a tyne of pickled horse-rad-ish The prisoners whose boots wore out were forced to walk barefoot in the snow .and many lost limbs from frostbite. Others fell as they marched to* the mines and died where they lay, “After my legs became paralysed, I shifted to what they called a hospital. If anything it was worse than the mines,” said Tarleton. ‘‘Those of us who could still work a little were put on half rations. The rest got quarter rations. Tuberculosis cases were simply isolated in a hut and left without attention, and they died like flies. The prisoners never lost morale.”

RAILWAY CASUALTIES. “We will use the bodies of our prisoners as sleepers, if necessary. This railway is going through.” This was the greeting received from the Jap prison commandant by prisoners of war taken to work on the railway line which was to stretch through virgin territory from Tainbuzzayat m Burma to Bangkok. Five Australians aboard the Tjitjalengka, last night told something of their experiences on this project. Some-72,000 prisoners of war of all nationalities were set to work hacking dense jungles, and cuttings in precinitous mountains, and bridging endless river. The sector of the- line on which the Australians worked was completed at a cost of 27,000 white lives. “We had one bridge 180 yards wide over a ravine 150 feet said one of the party. “We called it the six hundred bridge, because that was the number of m£n we lost building it. Out of one working party of 1200, only 32 survived. They suffered from malnutrition, beriberi and all the ills of the jungle. Of the .worst were tropical ulcers and malaria. The men could not speak too highly of thenown medical officers, who despite lack of medical supplies and instruments never ceased to fight against the effects of lack of food continuous forced labour and the toll of tropics. Operations were carried out with hacksaw blades and scissors, and one Sydney specialist performed amputations with a butcher’s knife, which had to be sterilised and sent back to the cookhouse after use.

' WORST CAMP IN JAPAN. ‘ “In the last 12 months of the war the people of Japan found they had been sold down the river. Since 1942 they have been feeling the pinch. They’ve had no eggs, mild butter, cheese or good meat since then, unless they used the black market,” said a former Hobart journalist, Graeme McCabe, aboard the Tjitjalengka. McCabe, a member of the'R.A.A.F., was shot down while bombing a amvoy off the coast of Malaya in 1942. His pilot, Sergeant Bruce Lee, a New Zealander from Nelson, was killed when they were attacked by fighters. “The Japs died like flies last Winter and from all indications they are not going to be much better off in the coming Winter. The black market is almost semi-official, and sugar is as gold, as they’ve had none since 1941,” he said. , ™ n After peace was declared, McCabe managed 'to visit Hiroshima, the target for the second atomic .bomb. “Skeletons with burnt flesh still adhering to the bones lay everywhere, he said. “The stench was unbelievable and the destruction appalling.. A prison camp just outside lokio was mentioned by McCabe as being probably the worst in Japan proper. It was unnamed and no nominal rolls were kept. The prisoners were mainly American flyers shot down over Japan. “They treated them with unbelievable cruelty” he said. Some were kept two years in darkened cells They were not allowed t® sneak and were done over two or three times weekly. Some, went mad Others were lucky and died.