This is the final part of a four-part article on the history of the Institute of Teacher Education Batu Lintang.
At the Lintang camp in Batu Lintang during the Japanese occupation, the Old Lady (also called Mrs Harris) was what kept the morale of each internee and prisoner up. It was the words that were released from her mouth that gave everyone a sense of hope.
Whenever a British soldier passes by a woman from the women and children compound, to cheer her up, they would sing of all the good things that they have heard from the Old Lady that week. “It won’t be long now,” wrote Agnes Newton Keith in her book ‘Three Came Home’.
The Old Lady isn’t a being, but rather a homemade radio device made by radio mechanic Sergeant Leonard Beckett. Also known as ‘the box’, it offered news from the outside regarding the real situation between the Japanese and the allied armies.
Her life was gained from oddments gathered by the intelligent Beckett. The most important component of the Old Lady were resistors and valves from a deaf civilian’s hearing aid.
Smuggling and deciphering
As communication was restricted between the camp, the compounds and the outside world, the internees and prisoners of war (POWs) obtained some information about the progress of the war from a newspaper that the Japanese allowed into the camp.
According to history professor Dr Peggy Day, this newspaper was full of Japanese propaganda and false news, but the prisoners learned how to read between the lines, so they still found it useful. The Japanese eventually banned this newspaper as they became more fearful of the prisoners having any contact with the outside world.
“However, a group of male internees made an arrangement with a certain POW who often worked outside the camp to engage a Chinese man to continue supplying them with the newspaper after it had been banned,” revealed Day.
“The POW would go and get the newspaper and, according to one version of the story, he would attach a stone to it and throw it over the barbed wire from their compound into the civilian men’s compound. But the newspaper smuggling operation was eventually discovered and the investigation was turned over to the Kempeitai, the brutal Japanese military police.
“Numerous prisoners were taken to Kempeitai headquarters in Kuching, interrogated and beaten. These included the ringleaders but also those suspected of being involved and those who the Japanese felt should have known about the operation and put a stop to it.”
In the end, nine internees were convicted and given various sentences. Four of the nine died of starvation, sickness and ill treatment in a Kempeitai jail. The remaining five were murdered about six weeks before Japan surrendered.
The last year of hopelessness
When the Pacific War started in 1941, the prisoners had hope that the war would only last several months. It never crossed their minds that it could last until 1945. What lasted barely half a decade felt long and harsh.
During one of the times when memoir author Keith was given the chance to meet her husband, she wrote that she remembered sitting quietly with him. When it was time to say goodbye, Keith said that they would look back reluctantly.
“Some looked back, striving to hold the moment longer. Always, there was the feeling that danger, destruction and death would strike before we would meet again. Each meeting always seemed like the last.”
By 1944, rations were beginning to be scarce as the Japanese had reduced the food portions for the prisoners at the Lintang camp. “Our food ration, then, as supplied by the Japanese per person per day, was as follows: one cupful of thin rice gruel, five tablespoons of cooked rice, sometimes a few greens, a little sugar, sometimes a little salt and tea.”
This was because the allies had blocked the shipment of rations from coming in, as the Japanese officers explained when asked. And when food became limited, though the same hard labour was enforced, Day shared that this was when the prisoners’ health, especially the Other Ranks, deteriorated.
“The people at Lintang camp became severely malnourished, while some contracted diseases such as beri-beri, typhus and dysentery. Food becomes precious. If you do not have anything valuable like a piece of clothing, a wristwatch, or jewellery to trade on the black market for food, then you will starve,” she said. Had it not been for their garden produce, the death toll would have been higher.
Planes up above
While at a garden not far from the camp on March 25, 1945, Keith spotted planes flying above their heads. Ho Ah Chon had written in his book “Kuching Pictures: 1841 – 1946” that there was great excitement among the occupants of the camp.
“As they recognised the planes, there was great excitement in the camp, and many rushed out to shout and cheer in spite of the danger.”
But whenever the allied planes were flying around Kuching, the occupants were told to take shelter. And when there were no air raids, there was a system of forced labour throughout the camp, and each compound had to produce a given quota of people every day to plant an unappetising vegetable — ubi kayu and others.
Meanwhile, Keith sensed a change in character in the Japanese. “With the Allied Forces over Borneo, the Japanese paper money, known as ‘banana currency’, was decreasing rapidly in value. The guards were anxious to acquire our gold jewellery and diamonds, cotton material of any sort, and men’s clothing, and by this time there was just one thing that mattered to us — food.”
Road to liberation
At the end of March, the prisoners at the camp saw their first flight of hope in the form of allied army planes. On August 27, 1945, letters were dropped on Kuching instructing the Japanese commander to indicate that he agreed to the dropping of supplies for the prisoners of war.
“The Australian army would drop torpedoes, except they weren’t bombs. They were filled with food, clothing, tobacco and other necessities,” said Day.
On September 7, 1945, Dr Julitta Lim wrote in her book “From an Army Camp to a Teachers’ College” that the camp’s Japanese commander, Lieutenant Colonel Tatsuji Suga, had requested the Australian army for a medical check-up of the internees and prisoners.
Liberation Day came on September 11, 1945, when the surrender was signed between the Japanese and the Australians for the former to withhold all activities and that the Pacific War had ended. The signing took place at the Pending port, on board the HMAS Kapunda. Shortly after the event, Brigadier-General Eastick of the Australian 9th Division, assisted by Captain Jennings, moved forward to the Lintang camp to share the good news.
Ho Ah Chon had written that there were about 2,500 prisoners in the camp on Liberation Day. “And only slightly more than half were able to walk out of the different compounds.”
Once the announcement was made, those who were in bad shape were prioritised to fly out to Labuan for care and treatment before repatriation. Meanwhile, those who were able had to wait to be transported back. “But there were people who didn’t make it to Labuan, as there were still people dying right around Liberation Day,” said Day.
According to Day, the surviving prisoners were given the opportunity to report on the guards’ behaviour for potential war crime trials. “But there were a few guards who behaved decently, so the prisoners wanted to make sure that those guards didn’t get punished.”
As for Suga, he had lost hope for himself. After receiving news that his family had perished alongside the atomic bombings at Hiroshima in August 1945, he performed hara-kiri — a ritual suicide practised in Japan by samurai as an honourable alternative to disgrace — on September 17, 1945, with a kitchen knife.
Though nearly eight decades have passed, the stories of the camp continue to haunt many. It wasn’t just the starvation, the brutality, or the torture. It was the silent cries of hopelessness that the prisoners had felt. The feeling of not knowing when freedom would come. Though four years of the Pacific War seem like a short period, to those who experienced it, it felt like a lifetime’s worth.
Part 1: https://www.newsarawaktribune.com.my/reminiscing-the-war-days/
Part 2: https://www.newsarawaktribune.com.my/beyond-the-barbed-wires/
Part 3: https://www.newsarawaktribune.com.my/pushing-through-tough-times/
