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  • 2015.01.28 Wednesday

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    SPECIAL PRISONER

    • 2009.06.21 Sunday
    • 21:07
    I suppose I should have felt quite important on that journey from Niigata to Ueno. For I had no less than fifteen guards. People were standing in the aisles' but I was occupying four seats, and when I offered the three vacant places to standing passengers, they were prohibited from taking them.

    It was interesting to listen to the speculations among the passengers as to my identity.

    "Yes, he is an American submarine captain."

    "No, he is an American airmen, shot down over the Japan Sea."

    "He's an American spy who was dropped by parachute."

    None ventured the thought that I might be other than an officer of the United States Forces.

    The young doctor and I chatted about all manner of things. He came from near Chichibu, in Saitama Prefecture, where his father was a dentist, and I took a great liking to him. It appeared I was to be taken to Omori, between Tokyo and Yokohama.

    I did not sleep all the way to Ueno. It was a slow train and a succession of travellers took part in a sort of guessing game about my rank, nationality, and the diabolical crimes I had committed. One thing that probably perplexed them was the wavy stripe of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve - the "Wavy Navy."

    But the crown on my cap badge should have given them a clue that I was not an American.

    The same old Tokyo Ueno Station, but drab and dreary, "mompei" and uniforms everywhere, and not a gaily dressed girl to be seen.

    We sat outside the station awaiting a truck. I asked a soldier if I might go to the toilet. He said, "yes", but that he did not know where it was situated. I replied that I knew and would show him. "Interesting," he said, "for a prisoner from Hongkong to have to direct me to the toilet at Ueno Station."

    Tokyo looked terrible. Dreary and unkempt; the shops seemed deserted, and here and there were pitiful attempts to construct air-raid shelters.

    A crowd of people had now gathered. On this occasion one man spat at me and was promptly punched by Doctor Fuji. Another man shouted: "Why don't you bring your aeroplanes to Tokyo. We are ready for you. But you can't, can you?" "You poor ignorant lout" I thought, "They will come soon enough, and when they do, heaven help this great city of yours."

    When the truck arrived, I said jokingly to Doctor Fuji: "What about taking me through the Ginza, or down past the Imperial Hotel?"

    We 'passed through the Ginza, turned at Owaricho, up to Hibiya Park and then turned right straight down to Shinagawa. It was most pleasant to see the old spots which I had known so well.

    But it was such a different Tokyo. It was a tired and shoddy city - a great metropolis which appeared to have lost its energy and seemed just like a tired old man who neglects to shave and wets the bed, and just waits for something which he cannot prevent, much as he boasts that he can. I almost wept when I thought of all the stupidity which had brought things to such a pass.

    Shinagawa, Oimachi, the restaurants of Omori, and then we stopped in a side turning and there before me was the "Bamboo Bridge" which I was to come to know and hate so much.

    Omori Prisoner of War Camp, headquarters camp of the Tokyo area, was built on a piece of land reclaimed from the waters of Tokyo Bay, most of the work being done by the first prisoners to arrive from Hongkong early in the spring of 1943. It presented a foul prospect. A piece of sand connected to the mainland by a flimsy bridge which carried a water pipe of very small dimensions.

    And so I trudged, pack and kitbag on my back, over the bamboo bridge, into Omori Camp, where I was to find great and good friends of many nationalities; hunger, dirt, humiliation, and where I almost lost the will to live.