On the fourth afternoon a tired procession of Tamils, Malays and Chinese marched in, despair in their eyes. Like patient creatures they squatted in rows and waited for the cholera-swab to be taken which was the universal welcome to any camp. The Nips clouted us because the camp wasn’t ready, and for about a week small parties continued to go down to rig up more tents as the Tamils were still coming in. An Australian M.O. turned up, too, with two orderlies. He’d only left Singapore last month, where volunteers to help us in our cholera epidemic had been asked for. He had volunteered, and now, not knowing a word of their language, was the solitary M.O. to about 3,000 Asiatics.

The Tamils’ work was just the same as ours, though they seemed to do more of the breaking of stones for ballast than we did. Their rations were worse, likewise their accommodation. Their wages? Well, they saw one dollar a day out of the promised three dollars and could only buy limited supplies from an exorbitantly expensive Nipcontrolled canteen. But the medical side! Poor Dr Andrews was driven almost crazy within a week. The Nips regarded their fellow Asiatics as machines pure and simple, and utterly failed to regard them as men – as human beings. Consequently, when, as was inevitable, cholera hit the camp after only a few days, the Nips forbade the M.O. to waste time treating them. Their way of thinking was that the Tamil who got cholera would die, therefore don’t bother with him, let him die; but just try to keep enough of them fit till the railway was through in that sector, as it should be in a few weeks.

Being a resigned and fatalistic people, and not knowing their doctor’s language, the Tamils unfortunately did little to help themselves. Cholera cases were put in tents just over a stream that supplied the camp’s water; the doctor was flatly forbidden to go near them, and they received no food. When they died, which they did fast, they were put in shallow trenches two feet deep and less than 20 yards from the water supply. In vain did the doctor protest and entreat; nothing was altered in the slightest. By night he and the orderlies used to creep over in the dark to the doomed tents with saline and water; but the survivors were very few. Let it be remembered, too, that mixed in with all these horror camps, the Nips had allowed women and children to come and live.