Imprisoned
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Written by David Mathieson--Acknowledgements p. Also available via the Internet on the Human Rights Watch web site. Political prisoners -- Burma. Fergus Anckorn was one of them. We made it out of teak trees — very heavy. At Wampo, the hillside fell sharply into the Kwai Noi river, so a triple-tiered viaduct, metres long, was ordered to be constructed. When it was done we had to creosote it. So that involved climbing up to the top, with five gallons of creosote, and bamboo with a sack on the end of it.
And of course if the creosote landed on you came up in a blister straight away. And a Japanese guard told me to climb up and creosoting underneath the rails. And as a result of the time that I was bombed out in that lorry, I had vertigo. And I climbed up there by lifting my foot up with a rope putting it on one bit, five gallons of creosote on here — very, very heavy. It took me ten minutes to inch my way to the top. And when I got there, there was no way I could do anything, I just shut my eyes and clung to the posts. The whole world was going round. And there was the Jap from the ground shouting at me to get on with it, or words to that effect.
And I said no. And he came up after me and threw the four gallons of creosote over me. I woke up with fellows washing me. And I looked so awful with these blisters that even the Japs decided to send me down country. We heard a noise in the sky and we looked up, and there — you should forgive me — were a dozen bloody great American bombers, flying low over us. By , visible signs that the Japanese were a retreating force became apparent. This was the first sign of our people we had seen since we were taken prisoner. And we went mad with hysteria, we shouted and we screamed.
It was the first attack on the bridge. For the camps in the remote jungle, news of the eventual Japanese surrender was overwhelming and often met with disbelief. We suddenly noticed in the camp that discipline dropped for a couple of days, and we wondered what had happened — here were no working parties.
All men go home, happy, happy. The family were at Aberdeen station. But for those held captive for over three years, adjusting to the seemingly routine surroundings was the beginning of a very different struggle. Stories of POW hardship during captivity had been largely hidden from the public. In a way I can understand why, I mean we were part of a defeated army, you know.
Servicemen were ushered onto military trucks and escorted on trains heading north, east, south or west, where men were demobilised and sent home. For many, adapting to home life was an unusual and difficult period. The physical effects of the harsh regime had taken its toll. The dramatic shift to a high-calorie, starchy diet was problematic after living on tiny rations of unpolished rice. Urquhart was put on a diet of rice pudding to quell the stomach problems he faced. But many of the problems faced by those who returned home were not physical.
I was not able to communicate with people.
Burma's forgotten prisoners
When I landed at Liverpool, I knew everything round me was familiar but the thing that had changed most was me. There was no medical treatment, nothing. You were left on your own. Talking about the experiences of being a prisoner of war was completely frowned upon. Nobody wanted to know about you being a prisoner of war.
Even for those who could talk, those back home had little comprehension of what could have happened. It was as if nothing had happened; the men just had to get on with their lives. Feelings of guilt and shame clouded their experiences. If I ever went to the cinema it was always on an end seat. Harry did manage to get a job at an engineering firm in nearby Warrington. There he met Merle. She was always very, very nice to me. But she could never understand me. And then I had to tell her, I had to really tell her. In , the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was screening former POWs for a type of intestinal threadworm, called Strongyloides , to prevent infection.
You do have two problems: Dr Dion Bell — the consultant studying the former Far East prisoners of war — referred the men to his colleague at the hospital, psychiatrist Kamal Khan.
UNPO: Burma: 2, Forgotten Prisoners Languish in Jail
For the first time they felt there was somebody who was prepared to listen and understand their problems, and that actually really broke the ice. After assessing 65, Khan had begun to see patterns emerging in the problems the men described. The conclusion was in fact that a sizeable number of these people — almost half of these people, actually — had significant psychiatric problems. Khan decided to run a larger study.
Crucially, none of these men had been taken captive during the war. The results showed that high numbers of former POWs had severe cases of anxiety and depression. The ability for the former POWs to speak about their experiences proved invaluable. Harry Hesp recalls talking to Dr Khan. He was a wonderful man, and he spoke to me for over an hour, he was wonderful.
The trouble is you have a lot of nightmares, have an awful lot — I still do. Vivid nightmares of harrowing scenes in the prison camps were a common problem. So they would actually make them cremate them. And when the firewood was lit, quite literally what used to happen was that sometimes these bodies would curl up as though the prisoner was still alive and was sitting and trying to get away.
That was another nightmare that quite a few of them mentioned to me. For the prisoners of World War II, the monsoon season brought with it one horrendous and feared disease. He termed it chronic intermittent depressive illness, believing that the experiences of imprisonment resurfaced in periodic episodes years later. Initially you will try your best to do something to get away from that. But when you realise that whatever you did, you are not really going to escape from that situation, you give up.
Three-and-a-half years in captivity, there was nothing that they could do about it. That actually plays a large part in their psyche. David Arkush returned from the war and opened his own dental practice in north London.
During the recording of his interview, his wife Shirley was present in the room. When we were first married David did have nightmares. And he would — like all the other POWs — would not talk about it. What was it like? It was only when they decided to return to Thailand that his nightmares diminished. We went to the camp about 20 years after we were married. And after that it just poured out of him. And what about reconciliation? Are such atrocities ever forgivable? When we got there it was as if Tokyo had a half-day.
There were Japanese in front, Japanese behind. I just kept my head straight on and Merle held my hand. Suddenly I felt a tap on the shoulder.
INVESTIGATION-Abuses, exploitation rife in Myanmar’s forgotten prison labour camps
I hate the war. Undeniably, the experience left indelible impressions. I became a lot more tolerant, I think, one of the effects of being a prisoner. This story has concentrated on just one area of British imprisonment. Thousands of men were dispersed across regions of Java, Korea, China, the Philippines and Japan itself, with around 37, British prisoners returning home following the end of the war. Just a tiny fraction of their stories and experiences have been captured in this piece.
Many of those who survived look back at the medical officers and orderlies as unsung heroes who battled atrocious conditions to provide them with a level of treatment and care. The struggle to survive continued long into postwar lives. But the fact that so many of them survived I would say is a tribute as much to the skilled craftsmen that were among them as to the medical officers that cared for them, and the medical orderlies that looked after them day-to-day.
The combination of malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, dysentery, malaria and working for 12 hours a day decimated people. If you did that you died. If you gave up you died. David Arkush recalls seeing a friend of his in one of the jungle huts. He collapsed and died on a Tube station in If we did nothing else, we gave that man an extra 40 years. I take some pride at least we did some good. This audio feature was written, produced, narrated and edited by Chris Chapman. The interviews with former prisoners of war were conducted by Meg Parkes, as part of an oral history research project made possible by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
Visit the website captivememories. It left hundreds dead, injured many more and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. As violence raged and tensions mounted, police in the town of Maungdaw turned to Dr Tun Aung for help. As chairman of the local Islamic Religious Affairs Council he had a lot of respect within the community. They asked him to help calm a crowd gathering at the mosque.
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According to eyewitness accounts this is exactly what he tried to do. He tried to stop the bloodshed, but they arrested him anyway - persecuted because of his role as a Muslim community leader. While his story might seem unbelievable, Dr Tun Aung is not alone.
Thousands of people in Burma have been imprisoned for what they believe in, for speaking out or being critical of the government. Since elections in May many have been released but Dr Tun Aung and many others like him remain behind bars, at risk of being forgotten. They are prisoners of conscience and should be released immediately.
There still remain such prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones will be forgotten.