JAP CRUELTIES IN SIAM

Grey River Argus, 21 September 1945, Page 2

JAP CRUELTIES IN SIAM

Thousands Die

NEW ZEALANDERS’ SUFFERINGS.

BRISBANE, September 20. Eighty per cent, of the Australian and New Zealand forces of 5000 working on the notorious Siam-Burma railway died of cholera, said a New 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. Peers said there was a severe outbreak of cholera at Tamurah Pah camp in Siam, and because of lack of proper treatment, the force of 0000 was reduced to hundreds. Only the line work of a Melbourne doctor sa 1 - ed the others. He had worked unceasingly with crude improvised instruments. , , “I was unfortunate to get cholera soon after I arrived in Siam, said Feers “It was a bad attack and I knew I had but a slight chance of recovery. 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 the dead. I was thrown into 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 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. K.O.’d JAP GUARD.

Private M. A. Brennan, also of Nev.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, lie 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 the Australian doctor who used to sneak to him at night and give him morphia, lie would have died. A party of New Zealanders will fly direct to Auckland to-day. It will be the longest flight over made in a Dakota—l3oo nautical miles—and extra petrol tanks will be carried. Civilian women interned at Changi gaol, and later at the Sime Road internee camp, Singapore, were forced to undress in the presence of Japanese guards, said Sister E. M. Uniacke. of Taranaki, who was 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. The women internees were given 14 ounces of rice a clay, but it was infested with weevils and maggots. To supplement this diet, they 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. HONG KONG, September 19. Liberated prisoners from Camp Stanley report that an American airman who parachuted at Hong Kong last January was lashed to a wooden cross and shot dead after a mock trial by Japanese, who charged him with indiscriminate bombing. The trial was conducted wholly in Japanese, of which the airman did not understand a word. TOKIO, September 19. It is reported that General Kenji Doihara, Japan’s “Lawrence of Manchuria”, has been appointed commander in chief of the First General Army, replacing General Sugiyama. General Doihara will hold this post concurrently with his present command as Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Army. General Doihara was active before 1931 in Manchuria, where he was considered an advance agent for the militarists.