Treatment Of P.O.W. Magically Changes After Capitulation

Northern Advocate, 6 September 1945, Page 5

Treatment Of P.O.W. Magically Changes After Capitulation

(Rec. 1 p.m.) SINGAPORE. Sept. 5. It is estimated, though not substantiated, that of 16,320 members of the A.I.F. taken prisoner in 1942, 5000 have died, says the Australian Associated Press correspondent. A.I.F. records at Changi prison camp, in the eastern part of Singapore island, where 4589 Australians are concentrated, has proof that 2563 have died since the Bth Division was captured. The remainder are scattered in camps in Thailand and Malaya and an accurate count of these is not yet possible.

Gut of 3489 A.I.F. taken prisoner in the Dutch Indies, 444 have died. Many Australians were lost among the 5000 drowned when Japanese ships were torpedoed. It is understood that conditions are desperate at Palembang, Sumatra, where 70 prisoners, including women and children, died in May. In the Changi camp, Singapore, built to hold 600, there are 13,000 Australian, British and Dutch. All except the Australians 1 are crowded three or four in a cell. The Australians are in bamboo palm thatch huts. There are about 700 hospital cases and many more suffering from malnutrition and beriberi. A magical change came over their treatment with the capitulation of the Japanese. Troops who were deplorably underfed on rice and poor vegetables, suddenly found themselves eating frozen meat, fish, sugar and butter and smoking cigarettes the Japanese had released from food stored on the island.

It is officially stated that 87,000 prisoners passed through Changi camp after the fall of Singapore. Eight hundred and fifty died there. At one time during the occupation, the camp housed 50.000, although built for 600. The prisoners subsisted on just over the starvation level. Deaths, it is estimated, totalled 13,000 in Siam, to which country many prisoners were transferred for work on the notorious Bangkok-Moulmein railway. A preliminary report reveals that 52,000 Indians were prisoners on Singapore, of whom only 15,000 remain there. The prison hospital handled 80,000 patients and performed 10,000 operations.