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Jap sadism on Mergui Road
Allied POWs Called It "Valley of Death"
260 POWs Died In Last Twelve Weeks
VX39152 Sgt. F. F. Foster, an Australian who was captured in Java, exposes
the recent Mergui Road POW tragedy in the following story written specially
for the "Rangoon Liberator" dated
16th September 1945
Six weeks ago another N.C.0. and I were digging graves at the rate of
five daily in a camp of 300 Australian, English, American and Dutch prisoners
of war, on a new jungle road, which we constructed from Kerikan on the
Gulf of Siam to Mergui, Burma. Our comrades worn out by the work of construction
of this road, a few weeks earlier, were dying through lack of quinine
and other drugs as well as food. The Japs were quite indifferent to our
plight, their official attitude being that such requirements were wasted
on heavy sick men who would be of no further use to them as workers.
In fact, in one camp on the Mergui Road, the heavy sick received only
a cup of watery rice three times a day, and no quinine. Out of 1,000 men
engaged on this work from April to August we lost 250 the majority dying
in July and August. But for the surrender of the Japanese we would have
lost another 100 at least this month.
Although on a smaller scale this work was even more arduous and results
more tragic than the railway construction job on which we lost 1,000 in
1943.
Early this year the Japanese were frantically trying to make this short
cut road to enable their troops to get out of Burma, their main lines
of communication having been blasted by R.A.F. This was about 40 miles
long, and the natives walked out on the Japs even though they were receiving
the equivalent to ten shillings per day. Disease reduced their numbers
and supplies were impossible to obtain in the remote camps in the dense
jungle. The Japs then took 1,000 light sick and injured from our base
hospital and put them on a camp in the jungle and set to the task of finishing
the job at four pence a day, a starvation ration of rice and dried vegetable
resembling seaweed, and unroofed huts. The working hours were from the
crack of dawn to ten o'clock at night, working throughout torrential rains
with fires and flares in almost a naked state. Footwear was out of the
question.
If our captors had taken us out of this dense jungle when we finished
the job in June, few lives would have been lost, but they would provide
no transport and the men were too weak to walk 30 odd miles as they had
walked in. We were left to rot with no medicine or supplies, and in one
camp we found some of our own Red Cross supplies in a Jap store. Men slept
on the damp jungle ground with vermin infested rice sacks for covering.
At the base camp for heavy sick, ten miles from the nearest town of Kerikan,
we lost 160 men in June, July and last month through the callous indifference
of our captors. After their surrender we found huge supplies of quinine
and other medical needs in a store only a few hundred yards from this
camp known to-day by P.O.W.s as "Death
Valley". There were also big dumps of blankets and rolls of cloth
suitable for making clothes. The Jap Sergeant in charge named Hiroia was
later taken to the cemetery and warned that he would be held responsible
for this crime. What made us more bitter, was the fact that the Jap soldiers
were offering to sell us quinine unofficially.
Out of 300 men only ten were able to set about to do the cooking and maintain
some sort of sanitation. We managed to give every man a Christian internment
but it was almost a superhuman task and eventually the medical officers
had to raise the pick and shovel for grave digging as late as early last
month. Thank God for freedom and the extrication of these P.O.W.s in the
nick of time. Our British rescuers have done a great job and are now restoring
health to the victims.
A tribute must be paid to MZ13293 Major D. B. Dewe of the Indian Medical
Service, who was a senior officer along the road. In addition to medical
work, he was burdened with administration because our field officers had
been separated from us by the Japs early this year. Senior N.C.O.s assisted
in a creditable manner and the British spirit of endurance was kept going
at all times. Major Dewe worked day and night in the work of alleviation
of distress and was almost exhausted at the end but would not have been
able to rest until the last man had been brought out of the jungle. To
make sure he searched the road in a staff car and found a few stray men
a week later. He was forced to board a plane for India last week, but
not before he had prepared a full report of atrocities for the British
Government.
As recently as July the Japs continued their brutal assault on our men.
Staff Sergeant Clive Tilibrook, who distinguished himself in "Death
Valley" as a buffer between Jap Officials and sick men was brutally
hit across the face for ten minutes in front of PO.W.s for insisting that
he had no more fit men to move ammunition for the retreating Jap Army.
His spectacles were damaged and he was indisposed for days. This method
of attacking the head and face was the most popular form of punishment,
and permanent head injuries have been sustained in many cases, as well
as facial disfigurement.
It is just like a dream to be transplanted from "Death Valley"
in Thailand to such comfort in Rangoon in two or three weeks, and the
three out of four men on the Mergui Road who survived can consider themselves
very lucky.
16/9/45
Rangoon Liberator
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