Gunner Maurice Naylor, CBE

	The fall of Singapore.
	This page: captivity in Thailand.

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On the 17 February 1942 we marched to Changi Prisoner of War Camp, prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army. We arrived at Changi at dusk after a very gruelling march of some fifteen miles during the hottest part of the day, and we were absolutely dead beat. We were too tired to eat the good meal prepared for us by the advance party, and we went to bed and slept soundly. The next day we went into Roberts Hospital and started cleaning the place out. The barracks were not too bad; I managed to scrounge a bed and make myself reasonably comfortable, but the worst trouble was water both for drinking and washing. For several days we washed in one of the malarial drains in, to say the least of it, very dubious water. The food also was practically non-existent and we more or less starved for the first ten days until the Japanese sent us in some rice and a little meat. This was eked out by a very meagre supply of tinned foods we had managed to carry with us. It was obvious that the food was quite inadequate to maintain us in good health. The change of diet soon resulted in outbreaks of diarrhoea and a little later an epidemic of dysentery swept the camp. This was followed by diseases due to vitamin deficiency, particularly beri-beri.

A letter sent by Maurice's father.

Transcript

On March 8^th we moved out of Roberts Hospital and went under canvas opposite Changi Post Office. All the principal buildings were taken over as a hospital to house the hundreds of wounded who were being moved from the military hospitals in Singapore and to cope with the rapidly increasing cases of dysentery. The cemetery began to fill rapidly.

Meanwhile we had seen very little of the Japanese. Early on we had several parades and reviews by Japanese generals and photographs and film was taken, but after that they did not trouble us for some time. We began to think POW life might turn out to be better than we had expected, though we were very bored by the monotony and idleness. Classes of all sorts were started and a University opened, at which I agreed to lecture on local government and allied subjects. Then towards the end of April the Japanese asked for daily working parties to go down to Singapore. I went twice and had quite a good time. The Japs seemed quite reasonable, though they did not pay us for the work, and the future did not seem so bad. Then at the beginning of May the bomb burst; parties started moving out to different camps in Singapore as working parties, and on May 5^th the 135^th marched out of Changi. Our dreams were shattered.

We marched all day in terrific heat to Bukit Timah Golf Course, a distance of about twenty-two miles and we were very tired when we at last arrived at the camp.

The billets, formerly occupied by the RAF, were not too bad, with wooden floors. We had no beds or water for a while, but this was soon laid on as electrical lights and showers. Compared with later days it was palatial.

The work we had to do consisted of building a shrine to the fallen Japanese warriors and to construct an elaborate system of roads to reach it, and several bridges. We were mainly occupied on the roads.

The Japanese in charge here were not too bad; they kept us working but there were so few of them that they could not supervise us all the time, and we of course did not work when they were not about. Everything was very slack at that time but they were very quick to resent any laughing or ridiculing of themselves.

The first serious incident arose as the result of this inferiority complex. A party of the 135^th was digging earth and loading it onto trucks and one of the British drivers had a slight dispute with a guard who alleged he had threatened him. The driver was taken along to the officer in charge named Aoki and another officer in charge who was supposed to be the Welfare Officer. They set upon him, knocked him on the ground, then one held him while the other kicked him in the face and body and eventually knocked him unconscious. He was later taken to hospital with a leg and two ribs broken and other injuries. Meanwhile the working party, because they had witnessed the "humiliation of a Japanese soldier" were stood to attention for six and a half hours in the blazing sun, being beaten and kicked if they dared to move an inch. Several fainted and were pulled to their feet again and beaten. When they were eventually released they were too stiff to move and it took some time before they were well enough to stagger back to camp.

Towards the end of September it was obvious that the work was coming to an end and there were many rumours of a move into Malaya. Parties had already left Changi for an unknown destination.

About this time the Japanese forced us to sign a declaration that we would not attempt to escape. They did this by herding all the troops at Changi on the square at Selerang and kept them there until disease broke out. They threatened to turn all the patients out of hospital as well, and in view of this we were instructed to sign the declaration which, signed under compulsion, had no moral obligations attached to it. The Japanese however were quite satisfied.

On September 1^st Major Peacock spoke to the Regiment telling them that the worst time was over and that in the near future we would receive better food, clothes and medical supplies. This information was received from the Japanese Commander who had recently taken over the administration of Prisoners of War.

At Bukit Timah we received pay at the rate of 10¢ per day. We had a canteen where we could buy eggs, fruit and sometimes cigarettes. Obviously the money did not go very far. A black market sprang up and prices were exorbitant.

While at Bukit Timah I started the first of a series of attacks of chronic diarrhoea and I was still in hospital when orders were received to move. We had just received our first consignment of Red Cross supplies from South Africa and they were very welcome. Unfortunately a lot had to be left behind when we moved, as the Japanese would not give us transport to move it.

It is almost impossible to describe adequately the conditions on a journey of this sort. The trucks were less than six feet wide and about eighteen feet long. Consequently thirty men had hardly room to sit down hunched up, still less to stretch their legs. The trucks were made of steel so that the heat was terrific inside during the day-time. The Japs allowed the prisoners to get out about three times a day; otherwise we had to remain in the truck.

We were actually in the train for four nights and three days. We travelled about 1000 miles into Thailand. At dawn on October 26^th we detrained at Ban Pong station. Here we learned that we were going to build a railway from Ban Pong into Burma; that conditions were very bad and there had already been several deaths.

We sampled the conditions at once. We marched about one mile to a most filthy camp, inhabited by about a hundred sick men. The camp was practically under water and the sanitary arrangements were deplorable. Food was scarce and badly cooked, the huts, made of bamboo and thatched with leaves, were broken down and overrun with rats. Refuse was scattered everywhere, in fact the place literally stank.

Fortunately we only remained there one day. We cleaned the camp as well as we could and the next day moved about thirty miles up country to Tamakan by truck. The camp was close to the River Mekron and the task was to build embankments and dig cuttings for about a mile each side of the bridge. The bridge had to be finished in six months.

We started work the day after we arrived, carrying huge baulks of timber. It was the heaviest work I have ever known; the Japs drove us on and by nightfall I was so tired and sore that I could not eat my dinner and just crawled onto the bed and fell asleep. The next day was spent carrying stretchers of earth, also heavy work and incredibly monotonous.

The Japanese on the work site were hard taskmasters; there were several beatings up, particularly of officers and there was always tension in the air. On New Years Day 1943 we stood to attention all morning on the parade ground due to some trouble the previous night.

Tamaken was quite a good camp compared with camps up country. Only six died in the first six months though illness mounted steadily. In April I became ill with malaria and diarrhoea and I was in hospital until June. During this time several parties left to go up country and I tried hard to get my discharge in order to go with the rest of regiment. Finally I let Fate decide and on June 6^th the last party went. I was discharged on the 8^th and was immediately employed in camp HQ as a clerk. A large percentage of the party I had wanted to go with never returned.

The next six months were the easiest I had as a POW. The food improved slightly though rations were cut as the camp was turned into a hospital. Sick men poured into the camp; they were horrible to see - mere skeletons - and they were soon dying three and four a day. Colonel Toosey and the administrative staff worked unceasingly to improve conditions and it speaks well of their work when it is realised that the proportion of deaths in the camp were less than any other camp in Thailand.

In September the Japanese began to split the Camp and in December it was taken over by a Burma group. On December 14^th the last party moved to Nong Pladuk, near Ben Pong and on Christmas Eve I went into No 1 Camp there.

A letter to Maurice from home.

Transcript

Next day I started work at Hamishotos sidings and from then until the end of February 1944 with a brief interval of malaria, I worked steadily. The work was hard and often very heavy, mostly loading rails, sleepers, cement and so forth, but the hours were regular and rest days fairly frequent. Between February and July I had several attacks of diarrhoea and at the beginning of July I contracted bacillary dysentery. Although serious, it responded to treatment but when the MO detected tachycardia, I was kept off work for several weeks.

Meanwhile activity by the RAF had been increasing. After several recs, bombers came over practically every moonlit night but we remained confident that they knew our whereabouts. The Japs would not permit us to dig slit trenches nor mark the camp in any way. We were right besides the junction of the Burma railway and the Bangkok-Singapore railway and other military objectives were all around.

The inevitable happened. On the night of September 6^th/7^th planes bombed the sidings down the road, several bombs fell in the camp, killing 92 and seriously injuring 200. Most of the casualties could have been avoided had slit trenches been available. I escaped injury, though shrapnel burst all round. After this raid everybody was very jumpy and nervous.

The work caused by the air raid casualties became so heavy that I was called into the office to help them out and there I remained until October 1^st.

On December 3^rd, about 6pm, twelve planes were observed heading towards the camp and we took cover in the trenches that had been dug. I was in the hospital at the time. The planes bombed the sidings outside and about a dozen bombs hit the camp, practically destroying the hospitals and killing about seven. The nearest bomb landed about ten yards from me but I escaped with a shaking.

That of course was only the preliminary. I believed at the time, with smoke and wrecked buildings all around, that the camp was the target and when I saw another two waves of ten planes approaching I thought my last hour had come. I crouched in the trench listening to the bombs screaming down and it seemed hours before the last one had exploded. I looked up to see everything blazing fiercely, with an incendiary bomb about eighteen inches from my head with others scattered all around. I hurriedly moved myself from the vicinity of the bomb, seized buckets of water and tried to put some of the fires out. It was a hopeless job, bamboo and leaves burn at a terrific rate, and most of the hospital buildings and medical supplies were destroyed. By putting out several incendiaries under the main hospital block I managed to save two of the main wards.

Several huts were also blazing and as it was now dark we worked against time to put the flames out before further planes arrived that night. In spite of this raid the Japanese authorities still refused to move the camp away from the military objectives.

On Boxing Day I was sent to Nakom Pathom POW Hospital. This camp was the show camp of Thailand. Any visiting Red Cross officials were shown round here as an example of the care the Japanese Army took of their prisoners, though they were only shown selected wards in which there were proper beds and plenty of medical supplies.

The rest of the wards were acutely short of drugs particularly quinine, and while I was there several patients died of malaria. Surgical treatment was fairly good, as we had some very good surgeons, but medical treatment was very poor. While I was there I got no treatment at all except rest and for a month I felt rather ill but I picked up gradually. On February 28^th 1945 I left Nakom Pathom en route for Ubon via Bangkok.

(from a recorded interview with Dr Peter Liddle):

We couldn't get to Ubon because the railways were bombed and they couldn't get any transport for us. We went into some warehouses on the banks of the River Chao Phraya, the river at Bangkok, and we were there for another two months. A lot of bombing went on at that time. Eventually they got transport and we went from Bangkok to Ubon which is about 400, 500 miles further east and the final camp I was in was at Ubon. There we were building an airstrip, an airfield and defence works of various kinds. Life had become easier then.

We were all pretty jumpy by now but the Japs were even worse. They ceased bragging and treated us with a bit more respect. They knew they were beaten six months before the end. The complete air superiority of the Allied Air Force convinced them we were right.

On the August 16^th there were no working parties and rumours began to fly around that the war was over. On the 17^th, the Major in charge of the prisoners in that area announced the war was over and we were free to go, and everybody cheered of course. But there were no recriminations. Some of the Korean guards had deserted by then and we just locked up the Japanese in their guardroom and took over the camp. We had to wait until September before we were actually able to start on the way home.

A recent (2003) photograph of Maurice Naylor CBE

Planes continued to drop supplies for us and it was very exciting. We were bewildered at the speedy methods of supplying whole armies, which had been developed in the Burma campaigns.

We at last received orders to move and on the 25^th September we left Ubon and arrived at Bangkok Airport on 26^th September at 9am. Some of the party immediately left by plane for Rangoon but we went into billets for the night.

The next day at 11.20am we left Bangkok and arrived at Rangoon two hours later. We touched down at Mingaladon Aerodrome at 1.10pm after a very comfortable trip.

Physically I was impaired, there were one or two things like stomach problems, but mentally, psychologically, (my experiences) had a very considerable effect I think. I became much more introspective. When I got home I couldn't talk to anybody, and it took weeks to be able to even have any conversation with anybody, I just wanted to go off on my own. I think it to some extent ruined my social skills and social abilities.

	The fall of Singapore.
	This page: captivity in Thailand.