In spite of all the innate bloodiness of the camp itself, life could have been organised comparatively smoothly and happily had it not been for the Kamburi Group Commander, Captain Nogoochi. Nogoochi lived in a wooden house in the camp and was our supreme boss and also one of the worst Nips any of us had met. Having been nothing in Japan, to exalt himself here he devised endless little pinpricking rules to make our life a misery. He was suspicious and brutal; and he was mad about being saluted, and loved to penalise the whole camp if he or any other Nip officer or N.C.O. was not recognised and saluted. Nobody really knew what the little brute looked like beyond the fact that he was alleged to wear glasses, and he shambled around dressed in ordinary Nip uniform with no sword; but if he was not saluted he used to do the beating up, sullenly, himself, and three officers he hit with a steel ruler across the head and nose, damaging them seriously. This all happened early on and we were told that all Japanese officers, and all Japanese N.C.O.s on duty would at all times be saluted by all British ranks. To salute Nogoochi, we would stand to attention before saluting, and if we had no hats on, we were to bow. This latter we hated doing more than anything else. Nogoochi was always known as ‘Nog’.

His 2nd-in-Command was named Tagasaki, a lieutenant who had no power at all and was just a dumb lick-spittle of his superior, whoever he happened to be. He used to waddle around in field boots and was called ‘The Frog’. The Camp Adjutant, who unfortunately had even less power than ‘The Frog’, was another lieutenant named Matsushita, pronounced Mashusta, and was a thoroughly decent fellow. Whenever he had it in his power to help us or alleviate our conditions, he invariably did so. The Koreans hated Nogoochi, but thought him clever in an evil sort of way; but of the adjutant they said: ‘In Japan, Mashusta gentleman, too.’

There was a Warrant Officer named Namura, a young and sadistic little swine, and below him there were many sergeants, the best of whom was Fuji, an N.C.O. equivalent of Mashusta. The most notorious N.C.O. was Sgt Shimojo, a very evil-looking swiper of faces and a strict disciplinarian who was very generally feared. In spite of the fact that we hated him, though, we had to admit that ‘Shim’, from the Nip point of view, was the most efficient sergeant in the camp and carried out his orders honestly, if too thoroughly. Up country where he’d been in the Dutch Camps, he’d never hit a man, and the British interpreters used to say that he was the politest and most reasonable sergeant to tackle on any problem.