The Kempetai! My spine froze. Jumping up, I dropped my night sarong and started to pull my dress over my head. Then I ran to the door, on which the pounding had risen to a crescendo.

Two Japanese officers stepped quickly out of the shadows. They marched in, holding themselves stiffly erect, and without a word of explanation began to search the living room. I scurried into the bedroom to finish dressing.

‘Come on outside and get in the car.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, my voice quivering with fear.

‘For a ride. You’ll find out soon enough.’

We drove away. After an eternity of two, three, perhaps four hours, the car slowed. We stopped beside a grim, gray structure – a prison, I knew, by the look and feel of it. A guard led me into a cell – a cage, really, closed on three sides, with the fourth side an iron grille looking onto a narrow hall where Japanese sentries paraded back and forth. On the floor of my cell was a filthy mat of palm and another mat rolled around a handful of straw. The only other feature to be seen was a hole in the earthen floor – the toilet, I discovered later.

For five or six days or maybe a week – it was hard to keep count – nothing much happened. Twice a day a banana leaf of rice was handed to me through the bars; little better than a starvation diet.

At daylight each morning the guard came down the corridor, down the line of tiny cells just like mine, each with its occupant. We had orders always in the daytime to kneel, with hands clasped in front of us. The guard carried a long pole, with which he prodded us like beasts if we were not already on our knees. All day long we were required to remain on our knees, never allowed to sit no matter how sharply our muscles pained.

There had been no charge against me. But a day came when I was called out of my cell and taken to an interrogation room around which were seated several Japanese officers. For some minutes, questions were put to me, based obviously on my papers which they had seized.

My replies gave them no satisfaction. ‘Of what am I accused?’ I cried. ‘Why are you holding me here?’

‘You are an American spy! You must give us your FBI number.’

I almost laughed. ‘That is ridiculous, and quite untrue.’

The seated Japanese officer showed impatience at my responses. My chief questioner scowled fiercely.

‘Take off your clothes,’ he ordered. I stiffened, paralyzed with shame, and a young lieutenant tore off my one garment.

‘Stand on one leg!’ the interrogator barked. ‘Now raise the other with the knee bent.’