way. So a scheme was devised to get round the problem so that we could discover what was going on in the world and the progress of the war, that proved foolproof and was never discovered by the Japanese Guards. Each morning two sweepers from our prisoners would go down to the Guards Office and Common Room to clean and tidy it whilst the guards were in the dining room having their breakfast. A copy of the Japanese Edition of the Mainichi would be “borrowed”, then taken upstairs and the salient points noted, and read by Fred Garner who before the War had been British Vice Consul in Shanghai and who was fluent in reading the main Chinese and Japanese Character Script. He would sit in the lavatory with prisoners on watch reading the news, sometimes tracing a map with the battle fronts, and twenty minutes later the paper would be back in the Common Room ready for the Guards return. The next thing then was to pass the news onto the women’s side, which had been slow and cumbersome at first, and could only be done by whispers at the dividing steel fire doors that were permanently shut.. However once we boys were going back and forth daily, the problem solved itself, and I was detailed to memorise the main facts of the news and relay them verbally, a job that greatly appealed to me. I would have to memorise maps and be able to pinpoint the exact British advances in North Africa and later Sicily and Italy, and together with the Russian re-conquests in the Ukraine etc. as well as the steady island hopping tactics of the Americans as they advanced their airfields across the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean to bring Japan itself within bombing range. Also we followed the RAF’s bombing campaign over Germany. The Geordies with whom I was in such close contact had suffered severely from the Luftwaffe attacks on Tyneside where Newcastle and Northshields had been badly blasted. As our might grew and we heard of 300 bomber raids, they cheered! And as this was slowly increased to 500 bomber raids, they cheered even louder and so on until there were 1,000 bomber raids and later still 2,000 bomber raids! With those simple folk retribution is what they demanded for the unprovoked attacks that had killed their very own loved ones and ruined their poor meagre terraced homes. They had suffered so much, they had been through the depression of the thirties, and now their meagre possessions, their loved ones had all been lost or wrecked, they demanded from their country retribution. It was a message heard loud and clear from everyone in authority. From the King and the Royal family, to the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and all members of the Labour government there was no dissension. After the War many middle class Liberals expressed horror at what we had done, but at that time, with the country in that mood no alternative was politically possible
It was an early social education to learn of these feelings first hand through living and sharing my life with these simple folk, and also to be a small part of the news transmission from one side of the camp to the other, and also to have a real personal interest in the progress of the War as the advances of the Allies meant our confinement and ordeal would soon be over.
As 1943 drew to a close, one morning in the clear cool autumn air of early November, in a bright blue cloudless sky, flying high at probably 20,000 ft or more, was our first view of a B.29 bomber. As it passed slowly overhead across the sky were four vapour trails, a clear sign that this was no Japanese plane, as they did not possess any four engined aircraft. Most probably the plane had flown from a base in China and was on a photography mission as there was no other possible means of a plane reaching Japan from any other direction until Saipan in the Marianna’s was captured and the great naval battle of Leyte Gulf had taken place a year later. That first sight of an American plane though was a wonderful harbinger of things to come