But the farce was not yet over, nor was Japanese munificence quite expended. After again saluting Yanagida we were marched back to the camp, where we were due for an officially interpreted speech. This is what the I.J.A. commander of 2 Group said to the survivors before him: ‘You prisoners of 2 Group started to build this railway in Chungkai. You then went on to Wan Po, where you blasted your way through rocks and made a great bridge. You then came further up with me to Takanun where you completed the sector allotted to us in a satisfactory manner. For one month it was difficult to get vegetable rations in our camp, owing to the bad road, and the ration was reduced. Some of you were sick, and some of you died. But you must acknowledge that you have always been fairly and justly treated by the Imperial Japanese Army. It is now your stern duty to improve your health in order to be able to carry out any further task which may be allocated to our Group.’

Any comment on such a staggeringly, insolently hypocritical speech is superfluous.

After the speech, some Jap-Happy rubber boots were issued and some people got cheap cotton shorts. That evening there was a combined Jap-British show (by order) under an atap roof hastily erected on the square, a show in which British performers were exceedingly few and very reluctant to appear. As with all Nip shows, it went on for hours; the Koreans were all roaring drunk on an issue of a pint of beer a man, and the British audience escaped as early as it could to the huts, where it examined and criticised the characteristics of the Japanese race far into the night.

Before going on to describe the very considerably improved conditions of the camp, which by Christmas became really quite a comparatively pleasant place, it is the right time to set down many of the true stories from above and around us that were for ever coming into our camp – for an H.Q. camp naturally receives news from all sources. Then, once the facts are publicly and faithfully recorded against the short-lived Bamboo Empire of Tojo, we can turn our backs on horrors and atrocities for a good while, and during a better time show how we filled our hours, and through native ingenuity made life more tolerable.

First of all, I wish to insist once again on the unspeakably terrible conditions of the Asiatic workers on the railway, and through stories told me by friends in the Malayan Civil Service and others, their conditions can best be illustrated. These Malayan Civil Servants and planters risked their lives and gave away part of their own meagre rations time and again to help coolies completely abandoned by the Nips, and for whom they, as representatives of the British Government, felt direct responsibility.