This was the period when many of us sold our last valuables, largely to feed ourselves and to give ourselves preventive reserves; we could also, then, help our own troops a little. Much valuable assistance in this way, too, came from an N.C.O. of my battalion working as a truck driver in the adjoining Ration Camp. He was a Medical Sergeant and used to steal bottles of ‘Vit. B’ tablets which were part of the Nips’ daily ration; these we used to distribute round to all the worst cases – rather than give one or two a day to the many, we chose the sickest men and gave them a proper dose, hoping thus really to achieve something.

Everything though that was bad in our camp was worse in 206; and above 206 it was still more desperate. There was one very notorious story about a certain well-fed person going breezily in to a very sick tent and saying fatuously, ‘Well, how are we?’ and one very ill man, cold loathing and reproach in his eyes, growling at him: ‘If I die, I’ll f . . . ing ’aunt you!’ Those higher up camps got far less I.J.A. rations and much more expensive canteen supplies than we did, and God alone knows how they existed.

Well the Nips did two things to remedy the labour problem. First they sent out to work every officer they could lay their hands on, and even most of the administrative officers had to go out daily for a token hour. Some of the Nips themselves, including Colonel Yanagida, joined in this hour of work; other Nips from the big camp up the road were formed into a platoon and worked alongside us.

And secondly they brought up, under the Greater East Asia Co- Prosperity scheme, tens of thousands of Tamils, Javanese, Malays and Chinese. At the Burma end tens of thousands of Indians and Burmese. None of these Asiatics knew what they were in for; collected over the length and breadth of Malaysia and attracted by the offered wage of three dollars a day, they signed a three month contract for ‘engineering work’ in Thailand. They marched through us in long queues of hundreds a day, carrying their little possessions in bundles over their shoulders. Some of the Tamils had their women with them and there was even a small sprinkling of young Tamil and Chinese children.