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MY MEMORIES OF BEING A CHILD CIVILIAN
INTERNEE
by Eileen Page (nee Harris)
Member of COFEPOW
One of the most prominent dates recorded in recent history was the 15th February 1942, the Fall of Singapore to the Imperial Japanese Army.
That date marked the end of our family life as we had always known it, I was at the tender age of eleven years. A happy place where my father, Tom Harris and my mother Clara, had settled when he arrived in Singapore to take up his job as a Prison Warden in Outram Road Jail.
When their worst fears were realised and the Japs arrived in Singapore, I remember my mother dressing myself, and my three brothers and four sisters, in our best clothes to have our photograph taken - a much treasured photograph that I still have to this day.
Eileen (standing 2nd from left) with her brothers & sisters
My father was British and my mother Malayan. Shortly before the Japanese arrived in our home, my father told my mother to leave the house and take the children and pretend to be local people. This she did and in the beginning we were mostly ignored for we had inherited our mother's dark eyes and black hair and easily passed as Singaporeans. Two or three times my mother crept back into our house, now thoroughly wrecked and pilfered and managed to find some of our clothing which she threw into the middle of a table cloth and made a bundle. Food was very scarce and we were always foraging for food.
My mother was expecting her eighth child at this time and gave birth to a little boy shortly after the capitulation, but the baby died in tragic circumstances followed by my mother and us children being thrown into Changi Jail on the day that he died. The chain of events around that time had a very detrimental effect upon my mother who was never to recover to her normal self.
My father was kept in a separate part of the prison to ourselves, so we never saw him and after 18 months the women and children were moved to another camp called Sime Road Camp. We children thought it was much nicer as we lived in huts, about 90 people in one hut, and there was a lot of open space to play in.
Every morning we were all put to work, cutting grass, cleaning drains
and knitting socks for the Jap soldiers. We had no schooling, so played
amongst ourselves most of the time.
The food was awful, rice boiled until it looked like wallpaper paste,
a bit of salt, fish and plants were added to make it interesting. Hiding
and exploring one day, a friend and myself realised that a nearby underground
sewer ran past the Japanese quarters and right beside their food store.
At great risk, while she kept guard, I crawled along the sewer tunnel,
out of a drain cover and into the food store. There, I stuffed what I
could into my flimsy clothes and crawled back again. I made this journey
more than once and although being in great danger, if caught, the reward
of a bit extra food was worth it. Most of the food I managed to get back
was given to those who were really very ill.
Many prisoners fell ill through not having enough food or the right medicines and most never recovered.
The men, of course, worked in the fields and were very badly treated. My father was very badly beaten and he never forgave them. Like all my sisters and brothers, it took many years to recover from not having the right food.
When the war finished in 1945, we were too ill to start living a normal life, so all my family were sent to India to Red Cross hospitals to recuperate and then spent about a year in England still recovering from our ordeal. We then returned to Singapore and my father returned to work again, but he was far from a fit man due to his ill-treatment and the appalling hardships and privations. My mother, never fully well during the whole time of her captivity, was very ill and becoming weaker and sadly they both died on the same day, due to their terrible treatment, in 1949.
My sisters and brothers were then sent home to my father's family in England and were fostered out.
I can honestly say that from 1942 my family was torn apart and my whole life, as I had known it, was completely destroyed when the Japanese invaded Singapore and commenced their regime of barbaric brutality.
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