Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 14, 2020 15:11:14 GMT 12
FIRST ARRIVAL
RELEASED FROM JAPAN
NAVAL AIRMAN'S STORY
The first arrival in Wellington from a prisoner-of-war camp on the home islands of Japan was a Blenheim naval airman, Lieutenant J. G. Godwin, R.N.Z.N.V.R., who was captured in the Indian Ocean in March, 1944, when the ship on which he was a passenger to Ceylon after furlough was sunk by three Japanese cruisers. Lieutenant Godwin arrived at Auckland on Thursday and met his parents in Wellington yesterday.
His lot as a prisoner on the Japanese cruiser which picked them up, in Java, on a ship to Japan, and in two camps there was of a pattern with the stories of other prisoners of the Japanese. Beatings for reasons trivial or non-existent were common, food was barely sufficient to sustain life, and clothing was at a minimum. The main object of the Japanese seemed to be the degradation of the prisoners and the destruction of their morale, and no opportunity to humiliate them was overlooked.
On the cruiser the prisoners — naval flyers, merchant officers, and civilians, including two women — were kept mainly below deck and in the sweltering heat of close quarters in tropic seas, suffered tortures from thirst. On the cruiser they were beaten as soon as they stepped aboard, which led them to believe that the Japanese meant to kill them, and below deck their hands were tied behind their backs with a rope across the throat, which forced them to sit upright and allowed a minimum of movement. The captives were so thirsty that when they were taken on deck and given a small quantity of fresh water in which to wash, all immediately drank it, earning another beating with broom handles and the flats of bayonets.
ATTACK ON MORALE.
In Batavia they were confined in bare-floored rooms in the K.P.M. building and their first interrogation was made. The Japanese did not seem to be short of military information, and the only thing they wanted to know from the flyers was information regarding the "grasshopper" plane, a light aircraft used by the American forces for landings in restricted places and short communication flights. As the men had not heard of this machine at the time, they were quite unable to supply the information, and a Japanese guard informed Lieutenant Godwin that he was to be executed for failing to supply it.
The remainder of the "interrogation" seemed to be an attempt to break morale by lurid stories of the actions of American servicemen in New Zealand and Australia. Their most telling blow, however, came when six prisoners—three Fleet Air Arm pilots, a merchant captain, a radio operator, and a civilian—were transferred to Sourabaya. They were told by the Japanese that they were going to be exchanged for Japanese prisoners, and their exhausted condition made them only too eager to believe the story. They then found that they had been placed on a ship to take them to Japan.
During the whole of the voyage to Japan eating, sleeping, washing, and all other actions were performed while the prisoners were handcuffed. The Japanese shackled them with ratchet-type handcuffs and delighted to squeeze them as tightly as possible over the wrists. Godwin's cuffs were so tight and so rusted when he arrived at the prison camp that there was considerable difficulty in removing them.
Two Japanese sailor guards were particularly Sadistic and delighted to force the prisoners to hold weights over their heads for long periods and to kneel upright with all their weight on their shinbones. Godwin received a cut on one temple from a beating with a broom handle, and for a time he lost the use of his left leg from another beating.
He was taken to a camp at Niigata, which held 14 officers and about 300 men. These included Major Boyington, of the United States Marine Corps. who, with 27 victories in air combat to his credit, was the top-ranking American ace at the time of his capture. He received special attention in the matter of beatings from the guards, but the other officers and men in the camp received quite enough.
MISERABLE FOOD.
The best of the food the prisoners received was soya beans, nutritious but not particularly palatable, and the Japanese menu also contained grasshoppers, snails, edible grass, seaweed, a very few vegetables on occasions, and rare rations of flour. Meat, which comprised offal, appeared about once a month and fish made into soup rather more rarely.
The Japanese stole about 40 per cent of the few Red Cross parcels which got through, and men incurred fantastic debts by "buying" half a bowl of rice for immediate delivery from a fellow prisoner to repay a full bowl at some future time. Non-smokers traded their tobacco for food because the smokers found that smoking helped them to forget hunger. Smoking, however, was permitted only twice a day, and one of Major Boyington's worst beatings witnessed by Godwin came when he was caught smoking in the latrine at a forbidden time. The tobacco issue was called "hair tobacco" by the prisoners and seemed like finely-cut straw dipped into a nicotine solution. They smoked it in little steel pipes a pinch at a time.
Food further depended on the state of mind of the Japanese cooks, who were allowed to increase or reduce their rations as they saw fit, and the prisoners also suffered from thieving from stores by the Japanese.
The prisoners feared that a massacre by the Japanese might follow a landing, and indeed were assured by their guards that it would. Lieutenant Godwin said he was not sure that 200,000 occupation troops would be sufficient for the job of policing Japan, and feared that the fact that a large portion of Japan's army was undefeated in the field might lay the seeds for further trouble in years to come. When he left Japan 15 days ago. prisoners in isolated camp? had not all yet been freed, and he thought that a big reason for the apparent "kid-glove" treatment of the Japanese by the Allies might be fear for the safety of these men.
EVENING POST, 22 SEPTEMBER 1945
RELEASED FROM JAPAN
NAVAL AIRMAN'S STORY
The first arrival in Wellington from a prisoner-of-war camp on the home islands of Japan was a Blenheim naval airman, Lieutenant J. G. Godwin, R.N.Z.N.V.R., who was captured in the Indian Ocean in March, 1944, when the ship on which he was a passenger to Ceylon after furlough was sunk by three Japanese cruisers. Lieutenant Godwin arrived at Auckland on Thursday and met his parents in Wellington yesterday.
His lot as a prisoner on the Japanese cruiser which picked them up, in Java, on a ship to Japan, and in two camps there was of a pattern with the stories of other prisoners of the Japanese. Beatings for reasons trivial or non-existent were common, food was barely sufficient to sustain life, and clothing was at a minimum. The main object of the Japanese seemed to be the degradation of the prisoners and the destruction of their morale, and no opportunity to humiliate them was overlooked.
On the cruiser the prisoners — naval flyers, merchant officers, and civilians, including two women — were kept mainly below deck and in the sweltering heat of close quarters in tropic seas, suffered tortures from thirst. On the cruiser they were beaten as soon as they stepped aboard, which led them to believe that the Japanese meant to kill them, and below deck their hands were tied behind their backs with a rope across the throat, which forced them to sit upright and allowed a minimum of movement. The captives were so thirsty that when they were taken on deck and given a small quantity of fresh water in which to wash, all immediately drank it, earning another beating with broom handles and the flats of bayonets.
ATTACK ON MORALE.
In Batavia they were confined in bare-floored rooms in the K.P.M. building and their first interrogation was made. The Japanese did not seem to be short of military information, and the only thing they wanted to know from the flyers was information regarding the "grasshopper" plane, a light aircraft used by the American forces for landings in restricted places and short communication flights. As the men had not heard of this machine at the time, they were quite unable to supply the information, and a Japanese guard informed Lieutenant Godwin that he was to be executed for failing to supply it.
The remainder of the "interrogation" seemed to be an attempt to break morale by lurid stories of the actions of American servicemen in New Zealand and Australia. Their most telling blow, however, came when six prisoners—three Fleet Air Arm pilots, a merchant captain, a radio operator, and a civilian—were transferred to Sourabaya. They were told by the Japanese that they were going to be exchanged for Japanese prisoners, and their exhausted condition made them only too eager to believe the story. They then found that they had been placed on a ship to take them to Japan.
During the whole of the voyage to Japan eating, sleeping, washing, and all other actions were performed while the prisoners were handcuffed. The Japanese shackled them with ratchet-type handcuffs and delighted to squeeze them as tightly as possible over the wrists. Godwin's cuffs were so tight and so rusted when he arrived at the prison camp that there was considerable difficulty in removing them.
Two Japanese sailor guards were particularly Sadistic and delighted to force the prisoners to hold weights over their heads for long periods and to kneel upright with all their weight on their shinbones. Godwin received a cut on one temple from a beating with a broom handle, and for a time he lost the use of his left leg from another beating.
He was taken to a camp at Niigata, which held 14 officers and about 300 men. These included Major Boyington, of the United States Marine Corps. who, with 27 victories in air combat to his credit, was the top-ranking American ace at the time of his capture. He received special attention in the matter of beatings from the guards, but the other officers and men in the camp received quite enough.
MISERABLE FOOD.
The best of the food the prisoners received was soya beans, nutritious but not particularly palatable, and the Japanese menu also contained grasshoppers, snails, edible grass, seaweed, a very few vegetables on occasions, and rare rations of flour. Meat, which comprised offal, appeared about once a month and fish made into soup rather more rarely.
The Japanese stole about 40 per cent of the few Red Cross parcels which got through, and men incurred fantastic debts by "buying" half a bowl of rice for immediate delivery from a fellow prisoner to repay a full bowl at some future time. Non-smokers traded their tobacco for food because the smokers found that smoking helped them to forget hunger. Smoking, however, was permitted only twice a day, and one of Major Boyington's worst beatings witnessed by Godwin came when he was caught smoking in the latrine at a forbidden time. The tobacco issue was called "hair tobacco" by the prisoners and seemed like finely-cut straw dipped into a nicotine solution. They smoked it in little steel pipes a pinch at a time.
Food further depended on the state of mind of the Japanese cooks, who were allowed to increase or reduce their rations as they saw fit, and the prisoners also suffered from thieving from stores by the Japanese.
The prisoners feared that a massacre by the Japanese might follow a landing, and indeed were assured by their guards that it would. Lieutenant Godwin said he was not sure that 200,000 occupation troops would be sufficient for the job of policing Japan, and feared that the fact that a large portion of Japan's army was undefeated in the field might lay the seeds for further trouble in years to come. When he left Japan 15 days ago. prisoners in isolated camp? had not all yet been freed, and he thought that a big reason for the apparent "kid-glove" treatment of the Japanese by the Allies might be fear for the safety of these men.
EVENING POST, 22 SEPTEMBER 1945
