The forgotten Irish of the Burma Railway

Two brothers from Cork lie buried at opposite ends of the Burma Railway. The eldest, Lieutenant Richard Duke, died of a heart attack in May 1943, at Kannyu River Camp.

He was only 44 years old, and not the most obvious candidate for a heart attack. But this was a common occurrence amongst World War 11 allied prisoners of war suffering from cardiac beri-beri.

Richard's younger brother, Private Basil Duke, died three months later from tropical ulcers, at Sonkurai Camp.

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Richard and Basil Duke died implementing the Imperial Japanese Army's scheme to build a railway linking Nong Pladuk in Thailand to Moulmein in Burma. Construction had started in October 1942. When the railway was finished a year later over thirteen thousand allied POWs, and 100,000 Asian forced laborers, were dead.

But the infamous Burma Railway was only one of the horrors facing the 650 Irish men and women serving with the British forces who were imprisoned by the Japanese Army in 1942.

They were captured when Japan invaded British, Dutch, and American territories in the Far East. And by the time they were liberated in 1945 over 23 percent of the Irish POWs had died in captivity.

The Burmese end of the railway was started by POWs transported from Java and Sumatra. They traveled inside the holds of dilapidated merchant vessels in conditions akin to eighteenth century slave ships. Many POWs died from heatstroke in the unventilated cargo holds, their situation worsened by the deliberate withholding of water, food, and medical care.

The men who commenced work in Thailand were transported up from Singapore, and through Malaya, in cattle trucks. They were packed into unventilated wagons, without adequate water supplies, or even toilet facilities, during a four day journey in equatorial heat and humidity.

On arrival in Thailand, the men had to march to their section of the railway. As the railway progressed, the journey proved longer and longer. Each work party usually had to construct their own camp in the jungle, and build huts made of bamboo where they slept at night.

The farther away from the railhead the groups were, the worse the conditions became. It was harder to get rations to the more remote jungle camps. So the death rate from starvation and tropical diseases increased, whilst all the time the POWs were beaten and brutalized by the guards overseeing their work.

Life truly was hell for the POWs building the Burma Railway. And a small group of Irish and English prisoners tried to escape through hundreds of miles of jungle, despite the near impossibility of success.

In March 1943, Fusilier Timothy Kenneally, from Bishopstown, and Private Patrick Fitzgerald, from Kilmeadon, broke out of their work camp, along with Sergeant Francis Joseph Kelly, and Sergeant Edward Reay from England.

Around two weeks later they were recaptured after being betrayed by Thais supposedly guiding them. The four soldiers were taken back to their POW camp, interrogated, tortured, and then taken away to be executed. Witnesses later saw the men being led away from camp by three Japanese officers and thirty-two Korean guards.

No one, except the executioners, witnessed the actual moment of death. Japanese documentation claims that the four men were shot whilst trying to escape. A more compelling account was given by another POW, Sergeant Priestman, who was one of a work detail sent from the main camp about an hour after the execution.

Sergeant Priestman did not use the words crucifixion when he later gave evidence for a post-war war crimes tribunal. But perhaps his description speaks for itself.

"In the undergrowth nearby we found three bamboo crosses, about seven feet by four feet. We also saw another bamboo cross jutting out of the ground. We uncovered it and found the dead body of a British soldier, tied to the cross with his arms outstretched."

All of the POWs suffered an incarceration marked by starvation, disease, and the denial of medical treatment. Beatings were routine, torture was commonplace, and executions far from rare.

But survival was often a lottery. Men who remained in the infamous Changi camp (Singapore) throughout captivity, were far more likely to survive than those sent to the Burma Railway. And others, who were sent to Rabaul, or Ballale, though they didn't know it when they went, received a death sentence.

In October 1942, six hundred men from the Royal Artillery were loaded onto a former coal ship in Singapore docks. Conditions onboard were horrendous. They were crammed below in the hold, without food, water, ventilation, or any sanitary arrangements, suffering from heat exhaustion, dehydration, and dysentery. And during the voyage Japanese troops entertained themselves by pouring buckets of urine through the hatches onto the POWs below.

The gunners were destined for the Solomon Islands. But eighty-two men were disembarked en route, at Rabaul, on November 6 1942. These included Lance Bombardier Patrick Ahern, from Fermoy, County Cork, and Lance Sergeant Patrick (Nobby) Nolan from Wexford.

They were put to work unloading cargo from a Japanese ship. One of the gunners had a wound on his back which broke open. Regardless, he was ordered to continue carrying sacks of rice. When he objected, he was tied to a tree and tortured. The Japanese soldiers tried to make him drink urine - the only fluids they would allow him to have.

When he refused they beat him and poured a bucket of urine over his head. Then they stripped him, rubbed animal manure over his genitals, and left him (tied to the tree) to be tormented by hordes of tropical biting insects. The following morning he was taken away and murdered.

Patrick Ahern fought back in the only way he could, by ripping holes in the rice sacks destined for Japanese troops, whilst working in Wide Bay unloading ships. Meanwhile, malaria took its toll and ten of his mates died within the first two months. This was an unnecessary tragedy caused by the Japanese refusal to allow the POWs to use any of the ample stocks of quinine.

Then food rations, never plentiful, were cut even further. Boiled rice, augmented with a little (stolen) dried fish, was insufficient in quality or quantity to maintain life. So by the time they were liberated in 1945, only eighteen of the eighty-two men left on Rabaul were still alive.

This is just one of many atrocities visited on the Far East POWs. No wonder then that survivors came home after the war traumatized by their experiences. But the long term effects of the Japanese slave labor camps reached beyond the POWs, to their families.

Christopher Brooks, an English soldier in the Royal Artillery, died in 1942 during the Lisbon Maru massacre. His wife, a girl from County Cork, was left to struggle on alone looking after two small children until she died herself in 1949. According to their son, Ron, "my father's

death and all the events of that time affected and shortened my mother's life."

For many of the Far East POWs themselves, the war never really finished. Some met an early death after the war from illnesses linked to their former captivity. Ill health dogged the remaining years of those who made it to old age. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome left others spiraling into alcoholism, unemployment, homelessness, and in some cases suicide.

And in Ireland, the POWs faced the added problem of returning to a society ambivalent, and sometimes hostile, about the actions of men who had traveled abroad to serve with the British army and fight fascism.

For the veterans themselves, nothing that happened in later life could be worse than the traumas they had experienced in the prison camps. But neither could the comradeship and loyalty, forged in the face of death, be readily replaced.

During the war. John Wyatt, a POW from London, bedded down in a bamboo prison hut in Ban Pong (Thailand). The man next to him, Michael Shiels, from Dublin, was shivering and shaking, semi-conscious, with a bad bout of malaria.

Wyatt found a piece of sacking, wrapped it around him, and then lay down beside him. The two men remained friends throughout their captivity, sharing scraps of food, caring for each other when they were ill.

After the war, the two men remained close friends. When Michael Shiels eventually died, Wyatt, distraught with grief, described the day of his friend's passing as the worst day of his life.

Yes, the story of the Far East prisoners of war is often horrific. But the altruism and comradeship these men displayed in the face of adversity is also inspirational and uplifting.

The POWs experienced the best and the worst, the courage and the depravity, that mankind is capable of. Yet one veteran said recently that his biggest fear is that the sacrifice that they made, and all the horrors they experienced, will soon be forgotten. "The Emperor's Irish Slaves" was written to ensure this does not happen.

"The Emperor's Irish Slaves," by Robert Widders (www.robert widders. co.uk) is published by The History Press Ireland, is available via bookshops, on www.amazon.com, or (post free) from the publishers at www.thehistorypress.ie.

 

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