THE geography of the Takanun area is important, so before getting down to details of 203 Camp, I will repeat the lay-out of the various places of interest. Takanun, the town, was a good sized place with shops and houses, connected by a metalled road to some nearby wolfram mines, and at just about the 200 km mark. As you walked northwards up the road, the river lay well below and to the left of you; and generally speaking, the railway trace, cut nearly straight through the jungle, lay on the right hand side of the road. Of course, because the road and river both twisted, the trace frequently cut across the road and then back again. On the far side of the river was jungle and high, craggy limestone hills; and on the other side, immediately beyond the railway trace, were steep hills, again covered with a mixture of tall forest and bamboo with patches of teak and other very hard trees. Briefly, the chain of camps, together with the river, road and railway, lay in a long, narrow valley enclosed on either side by steep afforested hills. The clearings for the camps had only been made roughly, and about a month before. Above 203 Camp, at the 206 K mark, was the new Group H.O. camp, where Colonel Yanagida was again in administrative command, and where Colonel Featherstonhaugh with his staff represented the British. Above 206 was another camp at 211, and there were others spread further up.

Now to consider our own camp on the afternoon of May 14th 1943: The area cleared had rapidly dried out and inches of dust lay everywhere. Nearest the river bank was a straight row of huge trees and below them was a little wooden house for the Nip commander and a row of neat, new Nip tents with wooden floors raised about a foot above the ground, carpeted with matting. Half way down the river bank was their cookhouse. Separating the Nip area from us was about an acre of level ground to be dug up and made a vegetable garden; and on another flank of our area was a fair-sized Thai house surrounded by a small piece of cultivated land. Under the house, which was precisely on top of the river bank, were two or three small, light canoes.

Our own area was roughly a square of open dusty land covering an acre of sloping ground. In a camp for about 1,200 men, there was tent accommodation for just over half – bad tents – and for the rest there was precisely nothing.