Japanese Torture - Cliff Emeny

[Dave Homewood]

JAPANESE TORTURE

NEW ZEALAND AIRMAN

EXPERIENCE IN RANGOON

SYDNEY. July 16

Forced by the Japanese to stand erect for five days and five nights, the only support which Flight-Lieutenant Cliff S. Emeny, of Taranaki, had in that time was when he leaned against the point of a nail protruding from the wall. The Japanese were trying to make him reveal secrets about his unit and Mosquito planes. They dragged him to his feet again if he dropped off to sleep and fell to the ground.

Flight-Lieutenant Emeny, who left with the first Air Force unit five and a-half years ago, was "medicine man" in Rangoon gaol. He is now in Sydney. He said the Japanese used the "stand erect" method of torture after repeated questioning and beatings had failed to loosen his tongue. He was made to stand in the "at ease" position in the broiling sun and at the mercy of flies by day and of cold and mosquitoes by night.

"On the fourth night, with a less sadistic N.C.O. in charge, he said, "I edged toward the building and rested my finger on the point of a nail. It lifted some of the aches from my body. I don't know how long I leaned on the nail, but it was nowhere long enough. After the fifth day I gave in and told a fantastic story about my unit and the performance of the Mosquito planes."

Flight-Lieutenant Emeny said that of 106 prisoners in Rangoon gaol only four died—one from heart failure. Emeny was chosen as a doctor because "I had done a bit of cow doctoring in the country." His remedy for malaria, was to fill the patient with water and cover him with sacks, forcing him to sweat it out in a day, sometimes in a few hours. , "It is an old Maori remedy for colds, he said, "and I had used it on myself when out in the back country."

NEW ZEALAND HERALD, 17 JULY 1945

[Dave Homewood]

WORK AS DOCTOR

AIRMAN IN BURMESE PRISON

EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE

(R.N.Z.A.F. Official News Service.)

EASTERN AIR COMMAND, May 9.

Flight Lieutenant Clifford S. Emeny, Te Kiri, Taranaki, who was posted missing, believed killed, in November last year, was found alive and well in a gaol in Rangoon and has now reached Calcutta.

Flight Lieutenant Emeny must have had one of the most remarkable careers in the R.N.Z.A.F. When he was shot down near Meiktila by Japanese lighters last November, he astounded the other crews of his squadron by calmly giving a running broadcast description as his Mosquito crashed.

When the aircraft hit the ground it burst into flames immediately and Flight Lieutenant Emeny and his Canadian navigator were both reported missing, believed killed, as it was considered most improbable that they could have survived.

Flight Lieutenant Emeny states that he owes his life to his "little tomahawk," which he always carried with him and which was long regarded as a squadron joke. He cut himself out of the aircraft with the tomahawk and the navigator dragged him clear.

The two men crawled to a village, where the Burmese robbed them, and later the Burmese police arrived and held them till the Japanese came. They were kept standing for three days and four nights without food to try 'to make them divulge information, but the Japanese finally gave up and moved them to Rangoon.

Though he had the skin torn off a leg and suffered burns about the head in the crash, the Japanese did not give Flight Lieutenant Emeny any treatment. He was able to use his own first-aid kit. In the Rangoon gaol he took charge of the airmen's hospital, though the Japanese provided no facilities.

By his cast-iron discipline, Flight Lieutenant Emeny forced his patients to maintain the will to live. During his term as doctor, he treated 41 patients, only three of whom died, in spite of the complete Japanese indifference towards the sick. He carefully kept a diary with the case histories of every patient.

"I was thankful for the time I spent in hospital after several 'prangs,'" Flight Lieutenant Emeny stated in an interview. The knowledge I gained there proved invaluable while in prison. Providing adequate nutrition was my main difficulty. The diet mainly consisted of rice with very few vegetables. Once a week we got as much meat as the normal New Zealand family eats in the weekend. That had to be shared among 100 men.

"Later, the Japanese gave us our money back and we pooled it to buy food. The rest of the boys gave me half of it, and I managed to buy enough eggs to keep the worst cases of malnutrition alive."

Flight Lieutenant Emeny has been overseas since March, 1940, and he has refused three opportunities of returning home. He did his first tour as an air-gunner in Defiants and scored two kills. Later he became a radio-observer, and finally was trained as a pilot.

EVENING POST,  11 MAY 1945

[alisonsmith]

I recently read Cliff's biography The 3 Wings by Tom Woods which was an excellent book if you can lay your hands on it. Cliff had some very interesting things to say about Lord Mountbatten's role in the capturing of Rangoon. He later met Mountbatten in Calcutta and was assured that the part that the prisoners had played in the capture of Rangoon would be recognised once the war was over but this never happened.

[errolmartyn]

Jun 26, 2020 16:38:48 GMT 12 alisonsmith said:

I recently read Cliff's biography The 3 Wings by Tom Woods which was an excellent book if you can lay your hands on it. Cliff had some very interesting things to say about Lord Mountbatten's role in the capturing of Rangoon. He later met Mountbatten in Calcutta and was assured that the part that the prisoners had played in the capture of Rangoon would be recognised once the war was over but this never happened.

Regarding the claim that Tom Woods' biography of Cliff Emeny is 'an excellent book', In August 2005 I sent the following letter about a review of this work to the editor of Pacific Wings, who for reasons I will not comment on here declined to publish same:

Sir,

Reviewer Janic Geelen in your August issue describes Tom Woods’ recently published biography of Cliff Emeny, The Three Wings, as ‘a magnificent job in telling it as it was’ and that it ‘excels in the little details about the people cliff met’, and endorses it unconditionally as being ‘highly recommended’.

To the contrary, this work regrettably contains copious errors and promotes many old and long ago discredited myths, such as the claim that the RAF’s daytime Defiant operations on one occasion shot down 37 ‘enemy bombers [sic]’ without losing a plane’. Most of the photographs are poorly reproduced and some strangely captioned - e.g. Vilderbeeste 111 [sic], while Blenheims are described as Beauforts (ironically pictured on a Valentine’s ‘aircraft recognition’ card).

Woods’ account appears to be little more than a verbatim record of interviews conducted when his subject was in his 80th year. As historians well know, reliance on such ancient though sincerely held memories is always fraught with danger, especially when an author fails to carry out elementary research and cross checking.

Of particular concern to me, as compiler of volumes on casualties, is an entry on page 179 where Emeny tells of the death in a Mosquito training accident of ‘a young New Zealand pilot’ of 45 Squadron who ‘hadn’t been very well trained’. Albeit unnamed in the book, the man referred to is easily identified as Flight Lieutenant John Harper Reeves of Hororata. Though ‘young’, Reeves was in fact only six weeks Emeny’s junior and prior to enlistment had been nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship. He was a very experienced pilot with over 1500hrs to his credit (including almost a year as flying instructor), some 160 being on the Mosquito, including a long ferry flight out from the UK to India. Emeny’s memory further played him false in stating Reeves came from Rakaia and that he crashed ‘on his first run’ (it was the second) and ‘into the target’ (he didn’t).

There is a similar account earlier on regarding the accidental death of 45 Squadron’s CO, Wing Commander Stumm, also in a Mosquito; again the implication (and again the pilot unnamed) is that pilot error was solely to blame. No mention is made of the fact that Stumm’s aircraft was observed both from the air and on the ground to suffer catastrophic structural failure. The Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Far East, no less, in his remarks upon the Court of Inquiry’s findings of pilot error regarding Reeves’ crash, was of the view that in light of more recent investigations into Mosquito losses the possibility of structural failure also could not be completely disregarded as its cause.

Woods, though listing in his bibliography ‘Jeff’ Jefford’s splendid RAF Squadrons, is apparently not only unaware of that author’s 546-page masterful history of 45 Squadron (with which Emeny served for some nine months) but also his authoritative survey therein of the wooden Mosquito’s tragic history of structural failure in the testing tropical conditions prevailing in the Far East. Reeves’ family, in particular, would have every right to feel aggrieved here at the author’s lack of checking the facts regarding the loss of their loved one.

Cliff Emeny was undoubtedly a courageous and determined airman who had a remarkable and exciting wartime career – indeed a life that should be the subject of a worthy biography. Sadly, The Three Wings falls far short of this.

Errol W. Martyn