LOST PRISONERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25346, 30 October 1945, Page 3

LOST PRISONERS

NO NEWS IN SINGAPORE VICTIMS OF ENEMY'S HATE MANY UNTRACED CHINESE (By W. E. Parrott, New Zealand Herald Special Correspondent.) SI NO.A PORE. Oct. 15 Hope is fading into despair in hearts of many waiting at Singapore for news of lost relatives and friends who during the Japanese occupation (if the Indies were whisked away into oblivion. There is still no news after weeks of victory, not even definite news of death from one of a score of enemy-inspired savageries; there is at best uncertainty, with the scales tipping day by day to tragic certainty. Most of those who wait are natives or British-born Chinese, but there are also several scores of Europeans. They haunt the offices of organisations dealing with the repatriation of prisoners of war and internees; they examine the lists of newlv-traced personnel and scan the faces of those arriving from all parts of the indies. For, just as in normal times Singapore is a centre into and out of which flows the trade of the East, so today it receives and distributes human victims of the Japanese. New Zealanders Accounted For

Rapwi (Repatriation of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees) has a substantial organisation in Singapore and in five weeks has. handled, in cooperation with other establishments, about 40,000 people of European origin. Excluding a large contingent of Dutch in Singapore, this is tho vast majority of those Europeans known to have been held in the Indies. By land and sea and air they have been collected over thousands of miles from Bangkok to Batavia, from Penaiig to Morotai. Many have returned or are returning to homes in every continent. Except for a few who are remaining for varfous reasons, most New Zealanders have now been accounted for and have been sent by air to the Dominion. The Royal New Zealand Air Force Evacuation Flight has closed its Singapore headquarters, although the specially formed New Zealand contact team will continue its efforts, with the help of Rapwi, to trace further New Zealand personnel. Dutch Unable to Leave Rapwi has still to dispose of 2000 Australians, IOQO Indians and about 300 who wish to go to the United Kingdom. One of the biggest problems is the immediate future of about 6000 Dutch in Singapore who desire to return to the Netherlands East Indies, but who are prevented from doing so I) v the unsettled political situation. Back to Java must also lie sent many hundreds of underfed and sickly Indonesians who were brought to Singapore as labourers and abandoned by the Japanese to their fate. In reverse, there are# many Dutch and other Europeans in Java and Sumatra at present unable to escape to the outside world. But this untangling of the threads of countless human lives will bo found impossible in the case of thousands of Chinese. Their relatives in Singapore and throughout Malaya will wait for news in vain. These threads have been broken by the Japanese and the ends have been forever lost. The Japanese hated the Chinese of Malaya with a deeper hatred than that which thfiv bestowed upon the British. They hated them not. only because China was at war with Japan, but also because the Chinese in Malaya were loyal to the British country of their adoption. Obviously the Japanese could not obliterate the entire Chinese population, but they rounded them up by'the thousand, imprisoned, tortured | and killed many and sent others to uni known and untraced destinations. Mass Killings of Chinese

Only now arc coming to light some of the most shocking stories of Japanese treatment of the loyal Chinese. There are tales in Singapore of piles of human bones found in the city reservoirs and of others discovered in newly unearthed communal graves. On a sandy beach a few paces from where this is being written 56 Chinese were lined up and shot one bloody day and those who did not die from bullets were butchered with bayonets. There were other orgies of mass murder. Into the wilderness of Borneo, into the forests of New Guinea, into many another island of the Indies, groups of Chinese from Malaya were taken and put to work in Belson Camps of Japanese model. Time and again those who survived were moved on to other camps until even the Japanese official records could not trace their movements. They were lost anywhere in the mass of land and sea between Tokyo and Timor. Tire Chinese have set up their own organisation in Singapore to attempt to find these people, or to find their graves. Daily come crowds of relatives to give and seek information. It is not only the natural wish to learn the fate of loved ones that inspires this constant inquiry; it is t lie stark necessity of finding the family breadwinner, for many a Chinese household has been left destitute beneath the storm of Japanese aggression. To trace these thousands is a task of monumental size. Failure can be the only outcome in countless cases, failure even to establish the certainty, time and whereabouts of death. The days slip by and still 110 word arrives. That is why hope is fading into despair in the hearts of many who wait for news at Singapore.

LONDON STATUES PROTECTION IN WAR MANY MOVED TO COUNTRY Measures taken to preserve London's statues irotn war damage have been described by the Times. Some, such as those of Charles 11. at Chelsea Hospital and of George 11. at Greenwich, had to be protected on their sites. Others were moved out of London, and among these were those of William 111. from St .James' Square, George 111. from Cock spur Street, and General Gordon irom Trafalgar Square, as well as Rodin's group representing the Burghers of Calais from near the Houses of Parliament. Above all, perhaps, among these evacuees was Le Sueur's lovely equestrian statue of Charles I. from Charing Cross—possibly the noblest of London sculptures This was moved to the garden at Mcntmore, but it was thought that its fine carved plinth, by Marshall, would suffer irreparable damage if it were shifted, and it was therefore protected where it was by being encased in brickwork. This brickwork caught the eye of the military authorities, who, reaiising the strategic position it occupies, built round it the strong-point which, at the time of writing still stood there dominating both Whitehall and the Mall. Tt is curious to note that the spot is not far from that on which a battery was placed in the days of the Commonwealth. Many London statues were evacuated to Berhamsled and stood in the grounds of the ruined castle. SYDNEY TOWN CLOCK The tower and clock removed from the Sydney General Post Office in 1942 as an air-raid precaution will bo restored. Announcing the decision, the Postmaster-General, Senator G. Cameron, said that the work, including certain structural alterations to the building, woidd cost about £67,000. Tt would be begun when circumstances permitted. Housing and other building projects bad to be given priority. It was evident that many residents of Sydney were anxious that this historical and symbolic, architectural feature of the G.P.O. should be restored.