[Excerpts] ...

[...]

I was continually surprised at the relatively minor role our Japanese rulers played in our lives.

We were, of course, always conscious that they were there. Military guards strolled through the compound at regular intervals to take up their positions on the walls. Any young man, out with his girl friend after 10 P.M. when the lights were turned off, had to dodge guards on his way home in the dark.

Men in committee work had daily to deal with the Japanese civilian officials, for all our supplies and equipment came from them, and most of our major decisions had to be negotiated with them. But on the whole, they left us alone to do our work and solve our problems in our own way. Except for the 7 A.M. roll call, and later on, one in the afternoon as well, the average internee, unless he were a black marketeer, seldom had any contact with the Japanese.

[excerpt]

We had not been long in camp before it seemed an ordinary thing to wake up in a room with twenty men, to hear Joe Jones talking to Maitland about his lumbago, or Sas Sloan griping at the extra long line at the hot-water boiler where we took turns to get our shaving water in a pail. Then we would stand yawning and sleepy for a half hour to an hour waiting for roll call, talking together about our girl friends, the dance coming up next week, or the baseball game that afternoon. And soon I would go to the kitchen for breakfast and hear another man saying, “The old lady was sick last night, but a spot of hot tea fixed her up,” or another complaining that, “It’s always those people next door that give us the most trouble.” And when I would arrive at the quarters office about 9 A.M., I might hear Shields sighing as he came in, clean-shaven for the day and natty in his army khakis, “If only this bloody weather would stop and the sun would come out again, I would feel a hundred per cent better about life— God, did we have a bunch of lousy hands at bridge last night!”

[excerpt]

The much more serious consequence of this escape was that roll call was henceforth a serious matter. Instead of being a perfunctory check in our rooms in the early morning, as it was before the escape, it was now held both morning and afternoon. The camp was divided into four “roll call groups,” and twice a day each group had to line up on its designated parade ground. Since each mustering required from forty minutes to an hour of patient standing while the entire camp was counted, roll call became a crushing bore for us younger folk and a source of real discomfort for the families and the elderly.

[excerpt]

As was mentioned earlier, after the two men escaped from the camp in April 1944, every internee had twice each day to gather with his group at a set spot and to stand in designated rows for about an hour while the camp was counted.

Since the Japanese were now very strict about this whole matter, if any individual in a group was late, the whole group had to remain an extra three quarters of an hour. Most people came to their place in roll call as soon as the great bell began to ring, and waited for the guards to arrive.

Not so Mrs. Witherspoon.

Unfortunately for her section, her back window overlooked the ball field where they were gathered. Thus she would stay in her room, “combing her hair” as she explained, until she saw the guard run up. Then she would leave her room, and stride as quickly as she could down her row and onto the ball field. Like some great rhino seeking to be unnoticed, she would attempt to squeeze her wide bulk invisibly into her place in the line at the last minute. Naturally, since she was hardly designed by age or bulk to be a sprinter, she was late time and time again.

The guard would get to her place before she did, or he would see her wallowing in that direction, and each time he was infuriated and made the entire four hundred people remain overtime.

Her neighbors were thus daily enraged with her, and did not attempt to hide the fact. The internee warden repeatedly pleaded with her, begged her, and tried to order her to appear with the rest when the bell sounded. She always refused. In desperation, the warden and the Discipline Committee called on the chief of police. They told him that the community had sought in vain to get this woman to cooperate. Since the community was unable to control her, it should not be held responsible for her, said they. Therefore the section should not be punished for her stubbornness. Having watched her antics once from a distance, the chief agreed. In broken English, he put the point quite well, “Group have not responsibility for her; she has none for them.” If moral pressure could affect the antisocial, this thick-skinned lady would have wilted quickly enough.

[excerpt]

Life was much more than daily chores, fun, and games for these men, however. They had a strange power as a group when they wanted to exert it.

In the early days, when the black market was flourishing mightily, the guards caught two Chinese farmers and shot them. Using them as an example, they tried to frighten us out of trading over the wall.

The day after the incident—the whole camp had heard those fatal shots, and was pretty fearful of what might happen next—the Japanese lined us up outside our rooms for a special roll call.

For an hour we were kept waiting, wondering what the next move would be. I looked up and down the row of about a hundred men standing there with me. I thought to myself that it would be hard to find a tougher-looking bunch anywhere.

Many of them were ex-British army men and ex-American marines; they looked as ready as any to have it out with the guards if need be. At last a Japanese officer appeared. He walked up and down in front of us screaming, stamping his foot, waving his sword—and then coming right up within six inches of one immobile internee’s face and screaming all the louder. Quite frightened, the internee translator, a likeable half-Japanese, half-British boy from Tientsin, said that the officer was telling us that if anyone was caught on the wall, he would be shot like the farmer.

During this harangue, not one of these tough men moved a muscle or uttered a sound. We were impressed that the officer meant what he said. No one fancied himself looking down the barrel of that officer’s revolver by reacting in any unseemly way to his outburst.

After five minutes of this torrent of howls, yells, and shrieks, we were all dismissed. The officer and his two guards moved off to the hospital to give the same lecture to the Catholic fathers assembled there.

For about fifteen minutes, we sat on our beds talking quietly and soberly about this new turn.

Suddenly we heard a deep roar from over near the hospital. It had a sound like laughter—laughter from hundreds of male throats. As we ran out the door, the cascade of sound mounted steadily in volume.

Then, to our complete puzzlement, we saw the officer and his guards fleeing past us in obvious panic.

Consumed with curiosity, we ran over to learn what had transpired.

We found the fathers stretched out on the ground, literally holding their sides, gasping and weak from laughter. Soon one of the American fathers got enough breath to tell us about it. “That squirt was yelling and carrying on,” he said, “when suddenly we noticed that the Belgian Dominicans over to the right were slowly moving toward him.

So, as though it was a signal, we all started slowly to surround him. Before the little guy realized it, he was enveloped by a crowd of big, bearded monks. We were all staring down at him with popping eyes and laughing. We kept moving closer and closer in massed ranks, laughing louder than ever.

We must have frightened the daylights out of him—you know the way they are about ‘holy men.’

Anyway, just about the time he was engulfed to the point where he could hardly see the sky any more, he lost his nerve. I saw him push his way out frantically, and flee in your direction. It was beautiful!”

After this event, even the most anticlerical looked on the fathers with new respect. What difference a deep sense of unity, a sort of subconscious common consent, can make! Had any one of our line of “single men” started to move toward the officer or to laugh, we others would merely have looked at him admiringly. With a pang of sympathy, we would no doubt have asked ourselves, “What will the Japs do to him?” When the same thought crossed a father’s mind and he began to act on it, every one of the others acted with him in concert—and the enemy was routed!

[excerpt] > August 17, 1945 ...

The next morning was all that a practical joker’s soul might desire.

Sharp at six, the quiet air of the camp was rent by the blare of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!”

As soon as I realized what was happening, I went out on the balcony of our dorm to enjoy the fun. The camp was a chaos of furious inmates.

After three years of rising at seven for roll call, in rain, sleet, or snow, on Sundays, Christmas, and weekdays alike, everyone had luxuriated in lazy risings since August 17. Everywhere I looked, angry people were rushing about. Enraged fathers poured out of the little rows of family rooms; elderly women in curlers, hurriedly putting on their bathrobes, stumbled from their dorms. Each of them charged out looking for blood! Then, some of them, realizing they hadn’t the least idea where the music was coming from, began, each in a dazed and blind sort of way, to go off in different directions. Some kicked the loudspeakers in helpless fury. Still others stood there holding their heads and trying to think out calmly where the ultimate source of the blare might be. Soon, stopping up their ears, all marched off to the section commandeered by the army.

I laughed as I imagined the scene when that irate throng of bath-robed internees finally located the good-hearted G.I. in charge of the record player.

He said to me later with some awe, “It was a strange experience to face so many really crazy people, all mad at you! My gosh, hadn’t I played the latest popular tune, one they hadn’t even had the chance to hear before? You know I honestly think all of you must be a little touched in the head by all your troubles. I hope you can get back to normal again all right.”

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/Gilkey/p_Gilkey.htm

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