1:01:57

William Laurence George Bell

Gillian O’Mara

18/04/1995

E0103 – E0106

Disc 1 1:00:29 - Disc 2 45:48 Disc 3 1:01:29 Disc 4 21:47

Robyn Sutherlin

8/10/2015

City of Joondalup

GO: April the 8 1995. I am interviewing William Laurence George Bell who was born on the

23 June 1923. I am interviewing him for Australia Remembers.

GO: Bill would you please tell me how you got into the army?

WB: Well it was a bit of a fight at the start of because dad want didn’t want me to join the

army and I had just turned 18 and so I says well alright you will have to sign a form or I will

have to say that I am a little older otherwise well whatever happens I’m going to get into the

army so eventually I got, I got down to the recruitment area in Royal in the Melbourne Town

Hall and signed up and that was on the 30th day of June in 1941.

GO: What number were you given?

WB: I was well it took a couple of days before I got that but I was BX58668 and we got that

by going down to Royal Park where we went through all the necessary issuing of uniforms

and so forth and then just as we were about to get our photo taken one fella who was in the

line threw a fit so there he is someone says well you’re supposed to fix them up by putting a

rubber something rubber in their mouth so that they don’t grind their teeth, so someone put a

pencil in between his teeth so he bit the end of the pencil off and there he is writhing around

chewing a pencil.

GO: So you signed up in Melbourne and you were shipped out you’re a private at this

stage?

WB: I was a private yes and from there we did a course at Swinburne Technical School as

a motor mechanic MT that’s Motor Transport and that was around about 3 ½ months. I

passed as a Motor Mechanic MT and then we went up from there we were moved from

Caulfield we were at Caulfield Racing Course at that stage or racing ground what would you

call it race course that’s right and from there we went up to Puckapunyal because I was in

the armoured division as a mechanic you see and they gave us all fully five minutes

instruction on how to start a Bren Gun Carrier and then I spent the next week doing washing

dishes as a, on kitchen duty and then at the end of that week we they asked for volunteers

who wished to go away to, to or overseas. So during this period I managed to get time to go

on the rifle range where we fired say that again fired fifteen rounds with this 303 rifle that

was the extent of my firing of a 303 rifle, so I had plenty of training before going overseas as

you can see. Well I was accepted as a driver a driver mechanic into the 2/10th Ordnance

Field Workshops so we were then all transported the ones who had volunteers any how

volunteered we went down to Caulfield Race Course again and from there we got our selves

organised into a unit which was to leave Australia on the 10 January in 1942. Now we left

well after all that rigmarole we managed to get ourselves off and on to a train which took us

up to Sydney and from Sydney we got on to this boat called the Aquitania and that was a

very good boat it was it’s something like 26,000 tons very large vessel and so we got on

there and we sailed away the same days I think. So off we went then all the way back to

Western Australia here where we parked outside Fremantle and took on the 2/4th Machine

Gunners from Perth. They put quite a few fellas on and then after they got themselves

settled down they realized that they had too many reinforcements because they had

something like 4th and 5th reinforcements for the 2/4th Machine Gunners so they took some of

them back off again, one of these fellas was a fella called Jim Bell he was no relation but in

the years to come we were to meet his son who was the boyfriend of our eldest daughter.

With this then we can were now going to say we sail off because Jim doesn’t do anything

more for a while. So we then travelled to Sumatra where we transhipped to three or four

Dutch vessels with Indonesian crews, from there the whole journey to Singapore took three

weeks so we left on the 10 January arrived on the 24 January that’s only two weeks isn’t it

and just maybe I’m getting a little out of focus somewhere but then we had three weeks in

Singapore, one week was trying to find a place where we could camp. We got on a train

which this day that we got on the train was the only day that the Japs hadn’t come down and

bombed Singapore for around about three weeks so we managed to get started off and off

we went up to Johor Bahru when we got up there the situation was a little grim because the

people up there they said ‘What in the heck are you people doing up here, after all were just

getting rid of our people back down to Singapore itself and the Japs are only 50 miles up the

road.’ So the next morning, first of all on the day that we arrived there my vaccination took

effect so I passed out in the chow line you know so there’s me laying down on the ground

there unconscious but off we went then from that we stayed overnight there then we went

back down to Singapore again to a to a valley behind the Ford works where we proceeded to

set up camp. It took us a week to set up camp and then we had a week in the camp settling

ourselves down and generally getting to know what we were doing there and then the Japs

decided to bar to bomb our camp so we spent the next week dodging Japanese bombs all

the way around all the way around Singapore Island. And then the war was over for us as

because we were now guests of the Imperial Japanese army now.

GO: How did that come about?

WB: Well General Percival he was what they call Malayan Command and he surrendered

the all of the people all of the soldiers to the Japanese because he reckons that, that there

wasn’t much room for anyone there to, like there were so many people there in Singapore

and there wasn’t much room for anyone to do any fighting around Singapore town so he

thought well better to get the thing over and done with than to have all the civilians killed off

by the Japanese and so forth. So we were then made a, made guests you see I think we

were at the down near the golf course at this time and that’s where everything was supposed

to sort of finalised there’s more room there for fighting and so forth we had been told around

about one hour before the before it was wrapped up but well the Ordnance Battalion will be

going into action to face the enemy and help to rid him of the shores of Singapore yes it’s

alright to say these things now but those times it was very dramatic. Now you look at it and

you laugh at because you knew darned well that they’d never really been taught any

rudiments of warfare as far as fighting for my life against another person with a rifle using

bayonets and things like that so I was thinking, well it’s going to be a short battle, so then of

course from that we had to we bedded down just about where we were laid down on the

ground and in the morning we had to go down to this area that had been fixed up and we

piled our rifles in a heap and our bayonets in a heap and then we had to march from there

out to Selarang Barracks which was something like about 22 miles from that point it was

fairly good for us because we hadn’t, hadn’t done too much so we hadn’t done like we

weren’t really what you call worn out from battle because all we were worn out from was

dodging, mean Ordnance is a non-combatant unit anyhow. So then we started on our march

at around about 10’clock in the morning and we got to well after our march which was a bit of

a straggle rather than anything else but we landed at this Selarang Barracks which made up

was made up of quite a number of offices, officers’ quarters which each house was

supposed to house one officer and his family but there were about 50 of our unit in the

house that I was at which was house number 47 so you didn’t think that I was going to

remember that did you. So a little bit later on I was moved around to house number 50 I think

it was, but we had to get settled down there all we had to sleep on of course was just plain

straight concrete because all the floors of the, of the house it was all concreted so it wasn’t

quite comfortable because you couldn’t dig a hole and put your hip in so but eventually we

managed to settle ourselves down to something I helped another fella and we built ourselves

a double decker bunker bunk in which we used the palm, palm fronds and pieces of string

and stuff like that which we tied the thing together with and then the trouble was of course

that you get, you get worries and things like mites and things that get in with you. Even the

first night we got there a fella gave a bit of a yell in the middle of the night cause we were

sleeping out on the lawn out front the first night and in the morning we said ‘What are you

yelping around,’ he turned his head around and he had his face was all swollen up because

a centipede had bitten him through the night. So what comes next from that? Our, our time

spent at house number 47 was a matter it was a series of going out on working parties, the

people who had worked as fair dinkum mechanics what they did they is they stripped down

old vehicles which were couldn’t be used anymore as vehicles as because there was no way

of getting petrol or anything like that so they stripped these down so that it was they could

build a platform on top of the chassis, chassis and so what happened then was you had one

man sitting there steering it because they had the steering wheel and one brake had a brake

pedal there and so you’d have around about 10 or 12 fellows and they would push this thing

around to the store area where we would pick up the supplies which we would then take

back to our kitchen so that they could, so that they could feed us, not that there was many

supplies to bring back. But still it was an outing it was around about two miles walk around

about to do, but you didn’t dare ride on the, on the tray because you knew darned well that

the bloke who was driving all he had was a brake and steering and he’d tried to no matter

what the hell was like that was coming at him he tried to get around without using the brake

you see and at one stage they he got to the bottom of the hill and he just couldn’t quite turn

enough. So he spilled himself and everything off on to the side of the road you see because

there was a bit of a downhill and a curve at the bottom so he didn’t make the bend and he

didn’t make anything else for a while because he went into hospital with a fractured skull so

we thought well now it mightn’t be a good idea to travel with him you know push or ride you

know.

GO: What sort of food were you given?

WB: Ah, at that stage we had rice and very little else, so what we had to do to, to make up

for to supplement our diet is some people were doing a little bit of a scrounge around and

they would, they would find a little bit of vegetables from the Chinese because they were

able to get through the fence in a couple of places and barter a bit. But also what we found

was edible, was the Hibiscus leaves so they taste quite good to they you know we’d get a

little bit of that but also another thing you found to was when they cut down a coconut,

coconut palm the top of the palm where the fronds come out there’s a section of it there

which just like almonds. Very nice, they call it coconut cabbage and it’s a delicacy because

you’ve got to kill the coconut tree, palm before anyone can eat any of it and as you can

imagine they would not be very happy chopping down too many coconut palms just to suit,

just to suit the local population. Also what we used to get sometimes if you noticed around

there that there was a very strong smell you knew that there was a Durian tree nearby. Now

Durian’s have a very nice fruit but you’ve got to hold your nose to eat it because they stink

they’re there not served in the best of hotels around Singapore because the odour procures

it you know the chefs though they might like it they know that they don’t want to lose all the

guests in the hotel so they don’t allow those things to be brought in. Also what we ate we

were able to get to a tree where the cashew nuts are or grown. Now the type of fruit is very

similar in appearance to a pear and the cashew nut sort of pens underneath it, you can see

that but they can’t. That’s this we meet a fella there who was a friend of my friend and he

was in the 2/10th Engineers and he had been in Singapore for a couple of months before the

before going into action, so he knew a few of the things what was edible and what could be

found what they looked like and so he was able to lead a couple of us on to these different

things, so we were able to get a couple of fruit that other people would have otherwise have

thought I’m not going to be in with that because that could make a person sick you know.

Well then they had a concert party and of course William Laurence George had to be in that

didn’t he and what I hoped to do was to somehow or another make some sort of a doll. Now

I don’t know how I accomplished that now cause I’ve forgotten but I still managed to get a

doll which was able to be used in the concert so being a ventriloquist you know you look

around for various ways to do things so I managed to get my a doll made up and so I did my

little bit of an act, not that I was very good at anything. It was only it was only a matter of just

a matter of wise cracks where the audience ask the questions and you give them a smart

answer by the doll. So we that, we did a little bit of that to in around Singapore on one the of

the days that we were running around trying to find a place to park. I did have a little doll

there it was only not much bigger that your hand but we had a few bombs flying around us

and aeroplanes and things and so we got underneath the trees and to keep the blokes from

getting too frightened like I was, I had Freddie there and so we had our little bit of a talk and

bit of a go at it and so nobody worried about the Jap planes flying around us that was

another little bit of the you know. Right anyhow were back into Changi now at Selarang

Barracks anyhow it wasn’t known until as Changi until later on when the some of the working

parties had to go out and chop down rubber trees to get, to get fire wood for the kitchen for

the camp kitchens. So at one stage we were right outside the front of Changi Gaol which

was to become the home of the last of the prisoners of war after everyone else had gone on

all these various working parties around the various parts of the of Asia and that’s the only

time I ever saw Changi Gaol was the day that we were there cutting up rubber trees and

splitting them so that we could put them on the on the fire. So this is a bit disjointed but were

getting through somehow or other. How’s it going? That’s right now they after we got

ourselves established in the town then we had to they called up for a working party to go to

the Burma Railway, we didn’t know where it was where it was going to go to and so they

looked at everyone’s boots and they says ‘Well you can’t go because you haven’t got the

right boots your boots are to worn out,’ or something like that and they looked they didn’t like

my boots so they didn’t let me go on that one but my friend the one I had been with called

Ron Plant he went up there and I never did really see him again after he went off there

because he was to go onto the this ship that got sunk later on and he drowned in the Pacific

somewhere up there so I didn’t get to see. We called him Rhubarb because his initials were

RAB you see but RAB Plant has to be a Rhubarb Plant doesn’t it so that’s where he got his

name from.

WB: Now a little later on there was to be another work, working party formed to work on the

on the monument which was to be built at a place where I had been camped down at the

Ford works and there was a hump or a hill there and what was to be done with that was it

was to be levelled off and down so that they had enough area to build a monument to the

fallen in the war. There was also to be a road from that monument down to the main road to

Singapore so that the, anyone who came along the main road would then be able to see this

monument and head straight up to it. So our job was to level this thing off. Now we had an

engineer there who had his theodolite and his level and he would go and he would set a

number of pegs around this top of this mountain or hill or whatever you’d like to call it and

then everyone would have to go there each one or two men with a stick between them on

the shoulders and a rope and a basket hanging down and we would go up and the other

fella would shovel some stuff on this and we would then march over to the edge and tip this

stuff over the edge. Now there were quite a few fellas who were in on this deal and

something like around about 150 men so you could imagine it looked like a centipede with

everyone marching along there and tipping off this stuff. We had been billeted into little

shops down just in Bukit Timah just around about half a mile away from where the Ford

works was and we of course had the usual sleeping arrangements where they gave us a

piece of hessian around about 2 yards of it and we were able to fold this up and that was our

bed, still on concrete of course it was rather awkward trying to sleep sometimes you’d no hip

holes for it so. But still we survived and we used to go up there we were in three, two

different shifts one shift would work from 6 o’clock in the morning to 2 o’clock in the

afternoon and the other shift would then come on at 2 o’clock and they’d work through to 8

o’clock at night and each, each time you got down so that the whole surface was levelled

again they would then check the dimensions and then they’d say ‘It’s got to go down another

2 meters,’ so you’d thought you’d got it all sorted out then the next thing your off again

digging away. Also no matter what the weather, weather was like whenever you set off up

there you could usually bet your boots that it was going to rain as you when you were half

way there and of course when it rains there it’s like Perth’s very heavy rain where no matter

what you’re doing you’re just about swimming on your way there and of course you had no

coat or anything hat or anything like that so by the time you got there you were thoroughly,

thoroughly I can’t even say that thoroughly. Does that sound right? Drenched and we’d one

day I think we actually got there and the guards decided that they were going to get in out of

the rain so we were able to hide in out of the rain to for a while so and then off we went

again and carried on with our levelling off. Then we had to, once it was levelled off to a

certain distance then we had to go and had to go and start chopping down trees. Well then I

was lucky cause I got dengue fever, no I didn’t, I got beriberi which was a bit of a nuisance

anyhow so they.

GO: What is beriberi?

WB: Beriberi is the lack of vitamins and things like that and your legs swell up and if you get

dry beriberi your legs don’t swell up, you just you’re just in pain all over but mine was just

started to fill up with water in the, in the legs so I had go back then to the camp back to the

Changi and then they put me in hospital for a few weeks to try and get this thing sorted out.

The only treatment for it really is a spoonful of marmite three times a day. Sounds silly

doesn’t it? But that’s that was one of the and of course because it was something new to the

doctors they had never had to deal with beriberi, they kept us beri beri patients as long as

they could so they could study the, the effects what it was doing how it affected the nervous

system. I was getting needles and pins stuck in me all of the blooming time and then one

fella came in from the golf course where they had been doing some work I don’t know what

he was actually doing there but he, he had severe, severe trembling fits he couldn’t stop

himself from he, like as though he had some fighters dense dance and he was just shaking

and he was in a bad way and the doctor he was at the head of my bed sort of thing but the

head of my bed was against his the head of his bed and the, the doctors checked him over

and here he is shud, shuddering all the time they he can’t stop it and the in the middle of the

night he called out for the orderly and he says ‘Orderly can you give me something to stop

this so I can get some sleep, I can’t sleep, I can’t stop I can’t stop shaking,’ and the orderly

says ‘Yeah well the doctor said to treat you as a, as a malingerer because that’s what you

are,’ he said ‘Alright I’ll give you something to knock you out,’ so he gave him a needle to put

him to sleep. In the morning I could hear the death rattle in this fella’s throat, so by 9 o’clock

he was dead. Now there’s a fella who’s a malingerer you see.

GO: Who were your doctors, Australians or Americans?

WB: Australians, we didn’t see any Americans until we got up to Manchuria. No that was

one of the leading Melbourne doctors actually. I’m not sure what his name was not Cotter

Harvey something like that you know Colonel Cotter Harvey. Anyhow I can’t say a name

because if I can’t remember a right one I might be slandering the someone else mightn’t I.

So I was glad that, that they decided to let me out of there fairly soon you know because it

was, it was a little bit unnerving because they were getting more and more beriberi cases in

there and so they, they were starting to say ‘Well alright we’ve got so many of them we don’t

need you blokes now because were getting fresh ones in all the time,’ so went back to the, it

wasn’t house number 47 now it was the house 50 because as people were going on various

working parties they were bringing the remainder them up and sort of closing up the ranks

sort of thing. So house number 47, 46 and number 47 and 48 and 49 they were all empty

and so I was back to number 50. Well shortly thereafter I got a another slice of bother this

time it wasn’t beriberi it was dengue fever, that’s you get a very high fever. You ever know

anything about dengue fever? No it’s, it’s a very high fever as they say the way they put it is

when you get dengue fever for the first couple of days your scared you’re going to die

because you’re that sick for the next couple of days your scared you’re not going to die but

not going to get over it you know so that’s dengue. It’s usually around about a 10 day

wonder so I gets into hospital and in the middle of the night I had to get up and go to the

toilet so I get there and the next thing I know I’m flat on the floor with me face on the toilet

floor looking and saying ‘Now why am I being here I should be in bed or something,’ so, so

then they got an orderly to give me a hand back to the bed. So that meant that I was just

about over it by then so a couple more days and back to the camp again then the next thing

to do of course they called for they said that there’s another group starting up which was

going to Japan and it was going to be a group who would be on this ocean, ocean going

liner so we had to all go then like we sorted out who was going and we had to all go and

have our injections and things like that and become vaccinated and all the bits that go for an

ocean voyage forgetting of course that it was only a matter of a couple of months since we’d

had our last ocean voyage so. Alright they set us up and they gave us little slits on the arm

so that they could put the germ the vaccine into it and they gave us other injections and then

off we went to another group another area where we were then sort of all waiting for the day

when we were going to be transported down to Singapore town down to the docks. So came

the fated day and off we went so we get down to Singapore and were all we went on to one

ship which was a fumigating job so we went in there and we put all of our luggage not that

we had much but we put all of that baggage and stuff onto this into this big deep vat thing

and they covered that over and they steamed that so as to kill any germs or anything that

might be in our gear and they sprayed us down by our boots and things then we had to get

undressed and go into a carbolic bath, like it was they had carbolic stuff in it so as to make

sure we didn’t carry any germs with us. Then the put us back on to the blooming wharf again

meant we’d just been disinfected and everything like that so they then put us back on to this

blooming foul wharf outside again and sat down in the nude there to dry off you know, then

they took us onto the Fukkai Maru. That’s Fukkai Maru meaning circle of course that’s the

Maru part and there are a 1,000 of us put onto this thing they tried to put 1,500 on but there

just wasn’t room so they 1,000 of us went, 250 to each hold cause there’s four holds on the

boat you see and I was in the hold at the back so I had very good sleeping quarters

something like about 4ft x 2ft and that was to carry me and all the stuff that I had as baggage

which wasn’t too much but still there’s not much room in and of course it was only 3ft tall to

because you had the 2 layers of them and so everyone was sleeping one end of this

dungeon like area. So we get into there and settle ourselves down for 40 days and 40 nights

of sleep of travelling on the high seas now because we weren’t working we were only

entitled to two meals a day you see but I had managed to develop a blooming ring worm

around about four inches across I suppose on my back and I was very glad to be able to be

travelling and changing the climate because what it meant was that by getting into a different

climate the ring worm died. So off we went we got as far as Taiwan and then we had to

unload all of the rice and stuff that was on board the ship that had to be unloaded so that the

no I’m sorry start again. We had to unload the bauxite that was on the ship and that was so

that they could make aluminium because Taiwan or Formosa was a highly what would you

say industrialised place? Yes so we had to unload the all of the bauxite on to lighters

alongside of the ship. We would shovel this stuff into these great big slings which were made

up of coconut fibres the and around about one and a half to two inches thick and you’d just

shovel on to that it was picked up by the four corners and that would and that’s what they

carted the bauxite out to put it into the, into the lighter. And that took us something like two

weeks I think and what happened was they then gave us they had one crew working on that,

they divided us up and then another like half of us would go out to onto the island itself and

we were able to do a little bit of trading there with what few valuables we had left and we

could trade for food. So I managed to get a packet of dried bananas. How’s about that?

They were fully inch and a half long I think they had dried up that much that still it was

something extra to eat bit different and while we were working we were allowed to have 3

meals a day, so that was really something it sort of increased our rations.

GO: How big were your meals?

WB: They weren’t what you would call there was sumptuous feasts they were probably a

matter of around half a cup of cooked rice and you would have around about a quarter ,

quarter cup of stew which would be then tipped into this stuff so that you had a well you had

something that sort of a little bit of wet soup you know, it’s good stuff so we, we didn’t like we

weren’t over fed as you could imagine, they after all we were the enemy and we were

defeated so anything was good enough for us. Well then after we had unloaded everything

then of course it had something had to be reloaded back into this place you see because all

of this space underneath there wasn’t going to be any good being empty so they loaded up

with food for Japan and that was a mixture of rice and rolled oats. So what we used to do

there of course was as you were so as you were levelling it all off we had to have they were

only made in like the bags the bags were the same sort of thing as what we had been using

as slings in other words they were made woven I’ve got to think what in the heck it is now

still woven coconut fibres.

GO: Like hessian?

WB: Not as no it’s thicker than hessian but very coarse and of course it had to be. I mean

they didn’t have the necessary materials to make hessian sacks, so it was this coconut fibres

which were woven and the bags themselves were only about 2ft square now as they were

2ft square it was there wasn’t much room in them and of course with the rough handling they

got and the fact that they weren’t very strong they were having trouble with them staying

together and they were getting damaged, damaged and we had three or four ladies in the

hold and what they had to do whenever one of these thing developed a hole you’d say ‘sew,

sew’ and they lady would come rushing madly over and with a piece of string and she’d sew

it all up again you know.

GO: Japanese lady?

WB: No, no, no she was a Formosan you see or a Taiwanese or whatever you’d like to call

them and of course as soon as, as soon as she did vacated that position a fella would go

and empty his bladder where she had been sitting. Usually of course this was straight on to

one of the bags. Now as you are to imagine there were something like about 30 fellas

underneath in this thing and as the stuff came down on the slings each one would be thrown

off and they’d be carted out to various places every one of them had terrible bladders so

every layer was covered in human urine, it was it was one way to get a little bit back cause

we knew that this was going on to Japan. So this of course happened in every hold the four

holds and so you could imagine how many gallons actually finished up in Japan it’s quite

interesting I suppose. So ‘sew, sew’ and so ‘sew, sew’ would go dashing madly over to sew

it up cause otherwise they didn’t want to waste all that grain that was coming out you see

and well anyhow eventually we finished reloading with the with the rice with our cargo house

there and then we went off sailed off and we finished up in Korea. It was rather unsettling on

the China Sea because the China Seas are always noted for being very high seas and as

you’re we were going through a cyclone or as they called them up there because it’s

Chinese is typhoon which is big wind, so we were going through a typhoon and the ship was

pitching forward and backward like that and of course I was right in the back end of it and

every time the front dipped down the back came out of the water and shook itself like blazers

because the, the props, props were going like mad you know. So it was very noisy back

there and a little unsettling you got a little bit worried about it but then you thought well while

it’s a typhoon and the seas this big we’re not going to have to worry about any allied

submarines coming around to try and sink us, so we reckoned that was great you see. So

well we set sail then for Korea from Taiwan and sorry. I’ve got the wrong place aren’t we?

We set sail from Taiwan for Korea, we didn’t know where we were going but well on the way

there the Japs relaxed a little bit on their security on the food which was or had been stored

in some crook places really because some of the tins were damaged and there were a few

fellas who managed to pinch some of these tins of food which had been damaged and they

reckoned they were doing a great job and they were eating up very greatly very well you

know doing a great job feeling real well, until they opened up one which was suspect and so

I think it was the fella called Reg Heyter he ate unwisely because when we by the time we

got to Korea he was taken off on a stretcher with ptomaine poison and they took him straight

to the hospital and we never did see Reg anymore he, he died in the hospital from food

poisoning. There were a couple of others who were, who were bad off but not as bad as Reg

so they, they later on were to come up and see us and join us in Manchuria no in, in Keijo in

Korea. But we when we arrived there we had to be searched, all of our gear had to be

spread out on the docks and the Japs came around and inspected every body’s gear to see

what they had to and then we had to march around the town all of us until we got to the

railway station and it took something like about two hours to get to the railway station

because everyone in town had to see these the result of the superior race and how they had

defeated all of these white people. So after around about two hours of marching, marching

around the town eventually we got to the railway station which was possibly only around

about a 10 minutes’ walk away but still we got there now then we went off on our train trip to

two different camps half of us went to Keijo and half went to Jinsen. That will do for now.

End of Disc 1

Start of Disc 2

WB: When we got on the train from, from the camp from the dock we, we were then

transported up to a town called Keijo and another town called Jinsen. I think Seoul is actually

the capital that we went to and these were the two suburbs that we were divided into now we

have to say that we were what they called the British group because there were 100

Australians and there were something like 900 English so we went to this camp and we were

then sub divided into 500 in each camp. We had to go out on working parties around, around

Seoul and we did various jobs for the various people like we were working at one stage a bit

more levelling off they were levelling off a very large undulating paddock to make to build a

factory so we had to go there and because we were supposed to be diggers and things like

that that’s what they had us doing digging and we had Korean guards of course. We didn’t

see any Japs around there but there were Korean guards around the on the works force and

for us they weren’t too bad there was I mean any guards usually they have to show how

tough they are to the opposition which was us, otherwise the Japs would say well you’re

being too lenient and probably shoot them so they had to say well alright we’re, we’re tough

guys and we’re going to show you that you’ve got to work for us. So what we did then is just

to make sure that they didn’t get to cocky we would then sit down one by one and say I’m

sick I’m biyoki, biyoki is Japanese for sick you know I’m sick I can’t work, I haven’t had

enough food and you wouldn’t need too many but every now and again you’d get one man

who’s allowed to do that. I got the job myself at one stage and so I was able to sit down in

the shade and say how sick I was because we had to we had to load this from what when

we had levelled off this thing we then had to pick up this stuff and shovel it into this, into

these little truck things and then we had to push them up over the edge of the thing and tip it

out and come back again and say well look so I would get I got a bit of a go at it as I found

out later on when I had my bypass operation on my heart the reason why I never did have

too much stamina is because one half of my heart was underdeveloped so that’s why I was

never any good at sports and things like that because I didn’t have the heart for it so to

speak. Well anyhow we, we worked there on the various jobs went out to one place it might

be a warehouse and stack stuff around there or there’s this other bit were we were levelling

off an area and then of course I got sick again. I mean I always got sick you had to get sick

sometimes this time I had some fairly constant diarrhoea so they put me in a hospital then,

we had our own little hospital it had around about three beds in it so I was one of them so

spent around about, about a week in the hospital I think and the weather was starting to cool

down I mean it’s not too bad in nice warm weather but when it starts to cool down and in the

morning there’s frost half an inch thick on the ground you know that’s it’s been a cold night

we were in, in this place we were in a building which had been a factory four floors and of

course always William Laurence George had to finish up on the top floor, so that when I had

to go to the toilet when I was when the I had the onset I had to come down three floors to go

to the toilet and then I had to climb back up three floors, four floors and by that time I had to

go back down again so that’s why I jacked up and I went on sick parade and I gave me this a

bit of a rest up in the hospital where I didn’t have quite so far to go but that’s when I first saw

snow. My first glimpse of snow was in Korea in Keijo camp in Seoul and that’s when we

really knew that it was starting to get cold because by the time we well we were there for six

weeks before I and another 49 blokes went off up to Manchuria. We what happened was

that they, they took 50 from that camp and 50 from Jinsen and we got on a train again this

time when we were standing on the station the train pulled in and it was full of Americans,

jumping wheel barrows, where have all these fellas come from and so they we eventually got

ourselves a carriage we all fit on their very tight squeeze but we got our 100 people on to

this carriage and we found out that these were Americans who had come just come from

direct from the Philippines and of course they we had, had a little bit of seasoning in Korea

cause we had six weeks of cooling down before it got before we got the snow there, but

these fellas had just come direct from constant 80 and 90 degrees straight up and they were

heading up further to Manchuria with us. So we had another two or three days or so on the

train going up there and by the time we got there was we arrived on the 11 November at 12

o’clock. We found out it was the 11 November we knew it was that date but the reason we

knew that it was 12 o’clock is because the sirens were going but we didn’t realize that every

day at 12 o’clock there was one minutes silence was necessary and that was to honour the

war dead. So we thought it was because it was Armistice Day, 11 November, but it wasn’t so

we sort of fell in the fat didn’t we. So we had to then all line up and we look and there on the

side of the track is around about a dozen stretchers and on the stretchers are dead bodies

because the Americans had all deceased. A dozen Americans died on the, on the trip up

cause they’d been through some fairly stiff privations and so forth and they were in worse

condition than what we were really because they’d had an extra couple of months in the

actually in action so that was them and some of them looked real crook you know they were

very in very bad condition. Anyhow we because we’d already had our problems they put us

on trucks this time and took us to this camp which was on the other side of town and there

we are in a camp which was originally a camp for Japanese, so it wasn’t really built for us

this our camp was yet to be built but this was a camp of quite a number of huts which were

sunk, sunk into the ground around about 3ft you had to go down three steps or four steps

down to get to them where they were the sleeping quarters were and then you walked

between, well you walked down a little passage way on a each side then was a, a mat just

and that was where we were going to be sleeping. We had around about 3ft each of space

to sleep on and there were as I said there were our 100 of the British section 50 from Keijo

50 from Jinsen so there were 100 of us were in this hut and I can’t think yet like at the

moment I can’t think what the number of our hut was but our numbers where we were, were

from 1156-1200 and1200 and 50 and a couple may be something like that I’m not quite sure

not quite sure exactly how the numbers were now, but it was something like 1156 that they

started and a fella that I was to eventually meet up with and become friends with he was at

697 and another fella whose name was Livio Olivotti he was 1380 so I was 1217 and so

that’s why I quite often use that on bank card or something like that as my as my number

you know yeah well I there’s got to be a little bit extra to go with it before you get the right

number you know. Yes so the days started to get colder and colder and we had a fireplace in

the middle two fireplaces in each half of the hut so we had our two, two fireplaces and then

you had a gap and on the other side the, there was one fireplace for the other ranks and of

course we had around about five officers there as well and so they got the other fireplace for

the five of them you know which was fairly you know I mean fair deal isn’t it I mean five men,

five men one stove and 75 men three so it sort of equals out doesn’t it well. We had a

hospital there which was not far away from where we were and one of the fellas in the in our

part of it he was working there and every night when he came back in I forget what his name

was now but he was a every night he’d come back in again ‘that’s another three of the

buggers are gone’ well what was happening was but the Americans were dying and in the

first three months of our being in Manchuria feel a bit so in the first three months in

Manchuria there were 350 Americans died from beriberi, dysentery you name it they got it

and they died from it and because the weather was that cold they couldn’t bury them so what

they had to do was to stack them in a shed. Of course there was no worries about smell

because the weather had already got down to about 20 below zero, so there they were piled

up, they filled one of the blooming it was a warehouse you know must have been about 50

yards square something like that and it was full of coffins of Americans that had died. Well

were by passing the fact that of course we had to go working too, we didn’t we weren’t there

for a rest cure or anything like that so every morning there was a gang had to be lined up

and go marching off to the Manchu Kosaku Kikai Kabushiki which means of course the

Manchu Tool & Die Company, nice name really isn’t it? So that was around about four miles

away so every morning you’d go out there and you’d line up and off you’d go then you’d

march off after you’d been counted three times you know then you had to march off and on

the half way mark there was a comfort stop cause the fact that it was right alongside of

around about 50 houses didn’t make any difference did it because here you are with

something like 750 men in a row all straining the potatoes all urinating you know then of

course there was snow all along on either side so there’s each side you can divide by two so

you’ve got 375 holes on each side along through there. When we stopped there I we

noticed the first time that on the side of the road there was a sort of ditch like that and there

was a building there I think it was a gaol or something but in this ditch there was a dead

body of a Chinaman, Chinese gentleman whatever you like to call them and he was fully

clothed. The next day when we went past someone had stolen his pants and his jacket, it

was very difficult to get it off him because he was frozen stiff that was a he was in this crouch

position so it was a very big job to get him out of it and within a week all that was left was

just a thing like a football and the the crows were finishing that off. So we noticed that on a

couple of other trips we, because they knew but there was no way they were going to be

able to bury anyone that would die and they didn’t have enough money to, to, to organise a

funeral or anything like that what they used to do was just throw the death’s in this in this

ditch and there they were leave them to the dogs. Yes well I started off in the factory in a

group which was stacking timber and it was it wasn’t a bad sort of job I suppose yeah what

they had to do was they had a great stack of timber that had been thrown there higgledy

piggledy so we, we had to straighten it up and put it into stacks in uniform stacks of such and

such a size you know it’s progress in sizes and we had something like about three months of

work straightening that up during the winter and then when the summer came around we

had to put a fence up in certain places which actually it got a little bit, a little bit later on I

think we were putting the fence up cause it was back in winter again cause we had three

winters there as you could imagine I saw it three times the coldest days we ever got there

were something like 60 yeah it’s not quite that cold you know not it’s 60 degrees below zero

Fahrenheit which is very cold. I mean it’s hard to express just how cold it is to someone who

has never seen anything colder say than a Perth winter though you have seen colder

weather but it’s hard to explain to people that you could dig a hole with a, with a crow bar,

well we had to dig a hole with a crow bar at one stage and we got something like three

inches deep and were got to go and do the right thing and call it in metric hadn’t we well

three inches deep and around about 1ft x 3ft long and that was two men working doing that

in two hours because as fast as you chipped a little bit of ice out of the way or you got to

anything that might be just the action of the crow bar digging in warmed it up a little bit, but

as fast as it did that as you warmed it up sort of thing it froze again. The ground was frozen

during winter for a depth of 6ft it’s what they call the perma frost so Manchuria was the home

of perma frost but it never actually thawed out even though summer got as high as 120

degrees it was still never if you wanted to dig a hole 3ft deep in Manchuria at the 3ft mark

you start getting in to the frozen ground again. So it was a sort of a chilly old place to be in

you know good place to be from though. Anyhow Manchuria there we are marching

backwards and forwards three miles each way around about three it might have been you

know it was a long way to go anyhow and before long though we were able to say whacko

were going to move into our new camp which was built around about half a mile away from

the factory so we weren’t going to have to march so far and eventually we move over to

there and of course we have to go through all this blooming sterilising and of all of our gear

again and the killing of bugs and fleas and things and cooties the Americans called them

which were body lice. They were actually you could see a grey form moving across the floor

that was the body lice so, so we had to put them into a steam room and they sprayed

everything as well we, otherwise we didn’t want to take any of these things into, into the new

building you see and then we had to get ourselves a little straw mattress thing actually we

had they gave us a piece of this sort of envelope thing and we had to go and fill it up and of

course some people they reckon that once it’s that thick all the way along that’s the right way

to be but other people say well you build it like that you know but it never does quite get

down far enough to for you to sleep comfortably on it. But anyhow after a while you settle

down got settled into it and cause we used to have our worries at the factory too at times if

you well we were sitting in this shed at one stage, it’s just after lunch and the Jap came in

and asked us to turn around ordered us to turn around and show our backs now we had

been sitting on a thing which was a car seat with no cover on the springs so you sit down

there and he looks at your back and saw that you had marks on your back as though you’d

been there for five minutes or something like that so he took all our numbers and that night

when we got back to camp they say’s ‘All these fellas fall out,’ so we had to fall out and I

could speak a little bit of Japanese but just enough to get yourself into trouble you know and

there we were standing up there and the guard say’s ‘On the hands down into the push up

position,’ and so here we are in the push up position there for around about it’s about half an

hour by this time you know and it was getting a little bit tiring and the Jap say’s ‘Tarti’ but he

was talking to the Sergeant you see not to everyone to our Sergeant and of course I heard

him say ‘Tarti’ and I stood up too so I got promptly knocked back down again because I

stood up too soon. So after he had finished talking then to the Sergeant he, he say’s ‘Alright

you can, now you’ve got to behave yourself you’ve got to work all full time,’ and all that sort

of thing so yeah so he let us go back into the barracks so for a cold tea of course. There’s

nothing worse than getting in a push up position and staying down there for or by when we

got up it was around about three-quarters to one hour or something and your arms do get a

bit tired. Another time we I don’t know what happened but we got ourselves into trouble

again and we had to do the same thing. They called us all out and instead of us going with

everyone back into the barracks we had to go into the guard house. Now the temperature

was then it was then starting to cool, warm up a bit I think it was something down to around

about zero and so you had to stand to attention from the time you got there until your meal

arrived then you had your meal you were allowed to sit down for you meal then you had to

stand to attention until they say’s ‘Righto lights out, out’ then you could spread out your

blanket on the, on the concrete and so this sort of went on for around about 10 days, where

you stood to attention from the time you woke up in the morning until your breakfast arrived

and then you sat down and then after you finished your meal you stood up, stayed to

attention then for the next until the next meal came around and that sort of thing went on and

on, on for 10 days. But it’s you weren’t allowed to talk or anything like that and of course you

could always tell when were the guard was because his footsteps was marching up and

down the blooming corridor.

WB: Yeah, well our cell bars were three inches square soft wood three inches square. Now

as you could imagine now if you’ve got a stack of three inch square things and there are only

past your cell he couldn’t see if you were standing to attention, attention or what you were

doing you see now because it was difficult to make a noise there without getting caught I

taught the bloke opposite me and the bloke there and that bloke there how to talk deaf

language on their hands you see and then of course they passed it on to the ones on either

side of us. So if I want to pass a message along I could they could say it on the hands to this

bloke here and he could go opposite him and down through to the end we had around about

awe there were 12 or 14 of us in there this time you know and we didn’t miss out on any

news or anything that might come around or if we wanted to tell stories we could tell stories

on our hands and it kept us from getting to blooming worried about being in the clink there

you know. So there was one the other fellas he knew Morse code and he was trying to teach

ways of saying teaching Morse code but well I was never any good at picking up things like

that whereas I could speak on my hands that was alright so we were able to speak deaf and

dumb language all the way through there and we had a slight space at one stage where you

know a bit of humour in there. One bloke down the end he defecated and it was absolutely

enormous the noise so the guard dashed up there and he was spoken Chinese and he said

‘See de for kep’ in other words who broke wind and the bloke at the end was a Sergeant and

he say’s ‘Not me,’ he says ‘You smell sniff, sniff is it sweet inhale, you know very nice,’ and

the guard say’s ‘No.’ he says ‘Well I’m a Sergeant when I do that it smells sweet.’ And the

Jap say’s ‘Come out here,’ because he was a private, so he got him out through the whole

area and then he belted him up and say’s ‘I’m a private Sargt’s smell too.’ So he had to get

back in because. So that was a little bit of relief from our from the monotony but you hear

things like that so then every now and then something had to happen like we got a break

when we had to go and empty our toilet boxes out. Oh dear oh dear you don’t realize

because everyone even no matter even if you’re in gaol like that you’re still got to go to the

toilet.

GO: What did they look like?

WB: The toilets were it was a box which was about 2ft long and around about nine inches

square and what you had to do was to squat semi squat cause you couldn’t get down far

enough for so it was definitely it was a, it was a chore just using the toilets because, well

cause it was such a blooming you couldn’t go down or up you get to high and you made a

mess some ways or other you know get down to low and you made a mess on you backside.

But after we had been there for a week we had to then go and empty our toilet boxes out so

they we had to take them and they where we emptied it was into a, into a big sort of a bin

and what they had to do then from that bin is when that was picked up and put into a cart

which was then taken around the garden where they, the garden where the food was grown

and this was ladled along into the channels between the vegetables. It was the they

managed to get something like three crops of, of onions in there short growing season which

was only about the ground started to thaw out about, about April start of the thaw not it didn’t

really thaw but you always they always planted their seeds just before winter really set in

and as soon as the heat hit the ground then the onions came up. I don’t know about the

other crops because onions are about the only thing we saw around there you know and it

was they managed out of the short growing season from, from actually about May really to

September, three crops of onions and whatever else they were growing. And but any how

that’s digressing isn’t it? Eventually came the day when we were told well were going to let

you out of the guard house and you’re going be, they asked us why we had done what we

had done you know and we didn’t still didn’t know what in the bloody hell we had done you

know for us to be in the guard house for 10 days but still we told him we were very sorry we

wouldn’t do it again that’s very good and they let us go back into the, into the barracks. So

there was one fella called George Harris now the first, the first prisoner to go into the guard

house in, in the old camp as we called it the barracks the army barracks that were, was a

fella called George Harris and he in the time that he had been there in this in Manchuria he

spent something like 59 days on and off in the guard house. He was the first one in and

when the time came for the wrap up of the war and things like that he was the last one out

because he had so many so much experience in there we at one stage poor George he was

drunk as a lord he was absolutely rotten because he had been drinking medicinal alcohol at

the factory he managed to steal some down there. So here we are at the factory were all

going home this night and waiting, waiting counted everyone up there’s one man missing.

Where is the one man, so the guard went around to the back behind the guard house and

there’s a toilet there you see and there’s a bloke sitting on the toilet. He hasn’t got the lid

open or anything like that and they don’t very often sit on toilets in Manchuria because

outside toilets are usually made so that you have a slot only and you stand on to two boards

and you squat there because otherwise if you sat on anything and it happened to be slightly

damp you would be immediately stuck to that seat for the rest of winter. I mean there’s no

two ways about it once you’re there you’re there for keeps, so George was I think he was

sitting in the corner and they picked him up and carted him out and because he was rotten

drunk and he couldn’t walk they put him in one of the ration boxes and here’s George sitting

in a ration box it’s just like I suppose about 3ft long about 2ft wide and about 18 inches deep

and he’s got his hands hanging over the sides his feet over the front and a big silly grin on

his face and they had to carry him back to camp, straight into the guard house and there he

stayed for the next month. But once he got there because he had enough sense in his mind

he knew that he couldn’t just sort of go to sleep there what he had to do is all night he was

pacing up and down and around and around because if he stopped or stood still he would

have frozen to a block of ice. Now we spoke to him later on about that how did you feel

about that, he say’s he said it was terrible cause you didn’t have your shoes on neither you

had to take your shoes off so that was Georges little episode. What comes next? We had

our moments of being sick you know I didn’t get into the hospital there except when I went in

on a concert party and I had to get a fella to make another, make Freddie you see so he had

another Freddie made up and also in this thing we had a play something like the what was

it? What the pirates, it must have been to do with the pirates or something like that.

GO: The Pirates of Penzance?

WB: It could have been something like that and they I was some I was a to be the wife of

the blooming Colonel or something or rather cause we never got to put that one on because

you see we were rehearsing in the boiler room. Now the only way they could get the, the

boilers to burn was with force feeding it with the forced draught you know because the cold

was shocking stuff and it wouldn’t burn and while we were there of course someone had to

throw cigarette butts, cigarette butts on the floor and of course throwing cigarette butts on

the floor was a no no because that’s the worst thing for Japanese, they don’t like fires so

they cancelled the concert party. I think I’ll have a rest need a rest.

End of Disc 2

Start of Disc 3

GO: Interview tape 3 continued with Lauren sorry William Laurence George Bell 14 April

1995.

WB: Yes well after the concert was cancelled they realized that I still had something which

was possible to be used as a concert item so they took Freddie and put him in the guard

house. You see while he was with me he was capable of speech but while he was in the

guard house he couldn’t get himself into trouble and couldn’t get me into trouble neither but

what we, what we found out later on was that they had decided to relent somewhat and they

allowed us to put part of the concert on in the hospital. So I was given Freddie and told that I

could go through the wards with Freddie and have a go at the inmates of the hospital the

patients and then after I had been through well then we had our sort of concert there with the

Japs sitting up there in their position the officers of the camp they were sitting up there

watching and listening to see what in the heck the concert was going to look like. It was only

a small auditorium but still we managed to get it over alright and Freddie was able to throw a

few cracks at the chaps as well and everyone enjoyed it even the Japs. But I never did get

Freddie back after that they sort of after I had put on that show then they took him and put

him back in the guard house in case anything else ever developed about it so. Awe this was

in the middle of winter too cause it was around about 40 to 60 degrees below zero in the

mornings, it warmed up to about 35 through the day that’s 35 below you know. So that’s why

you could stick a bucket of water out, outside and within 10 minutes that bucket of water was

a bucket of ice, so that was that situation. Well we used to have a number of officers there in

the camp, Japanese officers and they were sort of duty officers in turn, one of them was

Lieutenant Miki another was Ishikawa, Captain Ishikawa which meant stony river but we

called him the Bull. One day he asked one of the interpreters what he asked one of the

English officers he say’s ‘What does my nick name really mean,’ and because he didn’t want

to get himself into too much trouble this bloke say’s ‘Lord of the Meadow.’ Which sounds

about reasonable doesn’t it? Well the Bull he used to reckon that we were his family and as

a result he would whenever we had visitors he would take them around to see his boys. Now

one fella there we used to call him Virgin cause he always had pimples all over his face you

know and so we reckoned well he’s still too young to got rid of any pimples yet and he had a

bad case of cold sores all over his mouth. And we all had to sit up to attention if he come in,

if the Bull came into the room and there’s Virgin, Virgin sitting up there with his mouth all

covered in cold sores feeling very uncomfortable and he decided while the Bull was in the

room to lick his lips. The Bull thought he was poking his tongue out at him so he unhitched

his sword and scabbard and belted him over the head a couple of times just to make sure

that he didn’t stick his tongue out to anyone else anymore. But the Bull was funny like that

he would do things like that he one day in the ranks when we were lined up to go to the

factory there was something occurred that he didn’t like and we had a fella there an

Australian from Western Australia named Jim Clancy and for some reason or other the Bull

didn’t like Jim. Jim Clancy because Jim Clancy was around about 6ft 2 and the Bull was only

about 5ft 4 you see so he unhooked his scabbard and his sword and there he was chasing

Jim all the way through the ranks try to catch him so he could whack him. Eventually I think

he did catch him and whacked him once and then told him to get back into line but of course

Jim Clancy he wasn’t very happy with that. Still that was only just the Bull he used to do that

quite regularly. Then there was Miki when, when we were working in the factory there was

quite often a chance to bring stuff out, you had to take a chance mind you, if you got caught

you’d be in trouble so one bloke was caught out one day coming bringing something out and

Miki had himself a little dais built, a little stand where he could be up and looking at everyone

that was there and he say’s ‘In future there will be no more guard house while I am officer of

the day.’ So what he did is he had a piece of 4 x 2 no piece 2 x 1 around about 3ft long, so

he called this fella out and lined him up in front of him and he say’s ‘This will teach you that

you must not steal things from the factory.’ So he gave him a round house swipe and

knocked, knocked him out you see, hit him on the head and down he went like a poleaxe

bullock. So then he jumped off his, off his dais and he gave him a couple more whacks

around the body as well and cause being unconscious he didn’t even feel that, but he wasn’t

allowed to go on sick parade because of the whack over the head because that was done

through being a naughty boy you see. Another fella next time Miki was on duty another fella

lined up in front of him to get a whack over the head but he drove rode the blow a bit you see

so that as a result he didn’t knock him out. So down he went and Miki jumped down after him

and started belting him around and he was yelling out at the same time there because he

was feeling it you see. But Miki only did that about half a dozen times I think half a dozen

different blokes and then he got tired of it so he sort of gave away that little bit of punishment

and so fellas were allowed to go back into the guard house if they bought any stuff out. But

that was that situation. We used to have a little bit of fun sometimes but it was tempered a

little bit you know. Right now what happened latter on was in December the 8 1944 we had

an air raid. Now this air raid was the Americans come over to bomb, bomb Mukden which

was the area where we were camped and one fella was one of the pilots apparently had a

couple of bombs stuck in his bomb bay and he sort of rolled out a little bit and shock himself

and went back into the group again and from that shake we were able to watch two silver

objects come hurtling straight down towards the camp. Now one of these things landed

around about say about 30ft, 30ft away from my feet and of course were all laying there on

frozen ground and it did quite some damage because there were 21 Americans got blown to

pieces and one pom got so badly wounded that he, that he died of wounds. And then there

was yes well one of the poms he had a leg, a leg blown off, another one had an arm blown

off and there was a yank sitting up saluting when the bomb was coming towards us, the arm

that was saluting got blown right off at the shoulder so there wasn’t enough left for him to, to

have a, to have a false arm made later on cause the arm the stump was too short. But his

name was Baumgarner now and he also had a bit of his brains taken out could, not that he

didn’t need much anyhow cause he didn’t use it, but it landed on the piece of shrapnel that

took the piece of his head out also took the brim of his cap off and that thing landed right in

front of my nose and there it was with his brains on it and just pinkie stuff you know. And that

was we called him Baum for short and so he had to do his little bit of a walk around one arm

from there on. Another bloke was I’m not sure but Chapman was the one bloke the one that

lost his leg I’m not sure now what the other blokes name was now that was the pommy bloke

who lost his arm but cause I didn’t know anything about a lot of these things straight away.

What when the bomb landed or after it had sorted of settled down people were yelling out for

stretcher bearers and things like that and I was a bit too frightened I was scared stiff as you

could imagine you’re a bomb comes from 10,000ft penetrates 18 inches into the ground

because the grounds frozen, frozen and wipes out so many bodies. We looked up and

there’s a great big hole in the prison wall and a chap from outside one of the outside guards

he was poking his head through the hole in the wall you know to make sure no one tried to

escape in the confusion. A lot of bodies to were sort of thrown up and hanging on the barb

wire fence which was around about 30 or 40 yards away from the fence. So anyhow we

didn’t know what in the heck they were at the time but I got as far away from that area as I

possibly could and selected another point for when the next wave, wave of bombers come

over. But while we were over there we saw a all these blokes walking along with the

stretchers now I, I was a bit naive I suppose cause I didn’t realize that there was anyone

been killed, all I could see was a great big hole in the ground over there, not such a big hole

but a great mess of, of crumpled clothes and stuff. But then bodies started being carted back

to the, to the morgue that we had there and one fella Americans between two pommy’s

cause he was there mate so they you know and the bomb took his head right off and gave

them both a scratch on the shoulder so that was that one. Another fella was around about,

about 100 yards away from where the bomb landed and when the all clear was given he just

lay there so one fella went over and say’s ‘What’s the matter with you? You, you can move

now,’ still no answer so he turned him over and the shrapnel had gone straight through at

the back like the shrapnel had gone straight through his back through and buried itself into

the ground and his stomach was sitting on top of the blooming pile of on where the hole

where the shrapnel had gone in. So I think he must have died on the attack something or

other you know so actually the, the bombing was quite a thing. We, we had managed to get

a an issue of clothing American clothing and so forth come with the Red Cross, Red Cross

parcels and when I had closed my eyes when the bomb landed and opened them up again

there in front of me was, was the brim of this hat all the pink stuff on it and I was thinking

now that, that hat looks too old we only had those issued around about 3 or 4 weeks ago.

Then it dawned on me and I that, that was the result of the bomb you see. At the other bomb

the other silver one that was coming down it landed on our toilet and blew the whole flaming

wall out now that was very unthinking of them but you see one chappie, Chapman who had

lost his leg when he was well enough to come out of hospital it was just the thing for him

because it meant that they had to build a wooden wall inside the brick wall for the, well to

man the wall up you know cause it you couldn’t go sitting out squatting in the, in these cold

conditions of 40 below 60 below zero. You couldn’t be straight out in the open otherwise

you’d get bloody frost bite on your back side you know and when he come in he was able to

use one of these one of the stalls where this was cause he had to squat on only one leg and

so he was able to rest lean up against the new wall that had been put in there. So that’s the

only thing that really good came out of it was the fact that he, he could have comfortable

squat. Now when, when there’s going to be an air raid we had to leave a bucket of water

outside the door of the barracks so that if a fire occurred inside someone could grab that

bucket and race inside madly and throw it on the fire. Well when the bomb blew the wall out

it also set fire to stuff around there, so Major a New Zealand bloke this Major he goes grabs

the bucket races up to throw the water on the blooming fire, but it wasn’t a bucket of water

anymore was it and so instead of easing the weight as he went through forward like as he

lunged forward to get rid of it, it dragged him with him, with it you see and there he is straight

into the blooming toilet where there was still some fresh ones in there and all the way up to

his blooming up to his waist I think he finished up in there and he sprained an ankle. So he

was as he was walking around the camp from then on for quite some while he it was like that

he sooty foot he put you know so we, he was we were able to talk to him and, and he was

just a normal Australian type of bloke you know. I forget what his blooming name is now isn’t

that terrible after doing that to his blooming ankle still I don’t know. Now I haven’t mentioned

that we got some Red Cross parcels only that about the bombing and the fellas hat but what

they did they gave us some civilian clothes that the Americans had sent over and people

were walking around with golf hats, golf hats on and all that sort of thing and fair dinkum

overcoats but also they gave us some Red Cross, Red Cross parcels. Now this sounds as

though it’s going to be good but you see the Japs were very frightened that we someone

was going to escape, so whenever they gave you or whenever they issued out anything from

these parcels the first thing they did is to poke a hole in the tin that contained this stuff. So

people were getting well we would get one small can of butter that was around about 2

inches across and about ¾ inch deep and that would be between two so that we could use

that to spread on the buns that we were issued with each meal we got one bun. So

whenever we got a can of say bully beef that already had a hole in it so that no one could

store it and keep it for escaping you know and of course if we got a can of salmon it was

between two and it had a hole in it so you had to hope that it hadn’t gone bad by the time

you got around to using it because we could remember back on when Reg Hather died from

food poisoning in Korea. So we weren’t really happy about that so we never really got much

out of it except we got some American cigarettes. There’s one Pom he said ‘Hey, hey say

how are we supposed to smoke it, it’s already been smoked, because it’s toasted someone’s

been at it before us,’ you know that was the Chesterfields. I think were toasted tobacco or

something tasted awful that did but anyhow the Yanks used to love them so we use to trade

them the our share of Chesterfields for maybe a bun or something like that so supplement

our diet. They didn’t care the Yanks as long as they had a GI cigarette you know. Yes well

right now we are at the same time we had of all things a mail issue and I got something like

ten letters, five of them were from Lorna and five of them were from a Mrs Bell from Geelong

and they were for W F Bell. I was W L Bell in the army so they were for Frank Bell, the only

problem was that he had already died on the, on the Burma Railway. They were building a

bridge and the Japs didn’t treat him too well they belted him up and he drowned in the during

construction. So I had the unhappy, unhappy task then of trying to get these letters back but

I mean there was nothing I could do except to sort of keep them and when the time came

when I got home I wrote to Mrs Bell and told her that I had received these letters. She’s in 22

Kilgour Street in Geelong, I never did get to see her. Yeah well we open up the mail and it

was absolutely magnificent there were something like 12 words which were on each letter

because they were only allowed to use 25 words in letter and that included all of the

address. So by the time you got a message it was ‘How are you? I am well. Your dad.’ That

was it but it wasn’t until later on actually that we managed to it was what around about

another six months that we got another batch of letters and these were pretty much the

same thing, because as Lorna said she had been told she could write one letter per month

and she just wrote the whole darned lot in one session cause she was a typist so she was

able to sit down and type out all these letters and then being smug she was able to put them

into an envelope and post them off you see. So that was quite interesting you know cause

you got the same blooming message every, every time. I think I did get one letter I got the

one from dad and all the rest were from Lorna so and then later on about 12 months later

yeah. So I got one letter from my sister who had been married since I left Australia and she I

knew the bloke that she had married because I had known him for quite some time and then

she sent this photograph of her child who is now 50, 50 years old. She lives in Mt Eliza and

she has a daughter named Eliza so must be something to do with the district I think. But

there’s not much really in the mind cause things are a little bit fuzzy for the last 12 months of

the camp.

GO: Why is that?

WB: Well I don’t know it’s just maybe I was in a bit of a dream of thinking maybe the wars

seems to be going to come to an end and then we, we used to get well we had a fella down

at the factory who was a an American. American born Japanese and he used to his father

had a grocers shop and he used to deliver to this friend of mine Frank Driver who comes

from Oregon and so whenever he used to come like he was an interpreter at the camp at the

factory and he used to come up and see Frank and give him little tit bits of information that

cause he had his own radio and he was able to pick up little bits of war news and stuff like

that.

GO: Was he a prisoner or was he on the Japs side?

WB: No he was it all came from he was in Hong Kong in the Hong Kong police and when

the Japs went into Hong Kong they said ‘Well you’re a Japanese National so we need

interpreters to, interpret for us with the English speaking prisoners,’ so he had free reign of

the factory see as how he was like that. So he’d be on one day and then there was another

fella who had come from Louisiana something like that you know or one of he had a real

southern drawl the way or the southern way of speaking anyhow and you could hear him

talking to one of the other fellas, one of the prisoners from the same area and you didn’t

know who was talking. So that was quite interesting with this bloke cause he at one stage we

were sitting in the, we were goofing off at these yanks call it so we were having a bit of a rest

up and this Jap soldier came in he was a guard and he said ‘What are you all doing in here

your supposed to be out working,’ and we had a sign there that told him what in the heck we

were supposed to be doing. The only problem was he couldn’t read Japanese so we had to

call this guard this interpreter in to get us out of the problem. So down he come and he say’s

‘What’s the problem here what’s going on.’ say’s ‘This dull nip doesn’t know anything about

what in the heck the sign means.’ He says ‘It’s quite plain even I can read it.’ So he then

proceeded to tell him that ‘We were doing the right thing we were on our blooming break.’ so

that left him off…

WB: Our Jap guard was quite happy after the interpreter had explained to him what it’s all

about and why we were in the shed at this particular time of the day and so he went happily

on his way. Now we had a system in there, it was really cold as I’ve explained a couple of

times and what we had to do was to put up this barb wire fence around the timber so that so

that the Chinese couldn’t get in and steal it from them and so we had to put a post up about

every 8ft and how do you put a post up to make it stand there when you can’t dig into the

ground. So what we did is we managed to dig around about six inches deep and we pilled

the stones around the around the pole bashed it in as much as we could with the, the end of

our crow bars and then we all had a leak around it and of course within around about 2

minutes that pole was frozen into place no worries what so ever. So because we didn’t have

enough spare urine to make to do another pole that meant that we could knock off and go

back to the shed and get out of the way you see so that was very well done. Of course when

summer came the fence fell over but then we it wasn’t our problem we’d put it up but we

went up to their store to get the barb wire to put on this fence and it looked very good

galvanised wiring until you took two layers off the top you unwound two layers off this reel of

barb wire and the rest was all rusty which means that someone was making a quid on the,

on the barb wire and duping, duping the Japs at the same time now so. Then we had a truck

load of food came into the camp actually it was accidental it came into the factory it was

accidental and what happened was that this thing pulled into the siding and they didn’t know

what to do with it. There they are with a great big blooming what would you great big

blooming truck covered in one and it was chock-a-block with, with stuff like chitlings, that’s,

that’s what the Americans call pigs innards and there was lots of stuff like salami and things

like that and we were able to well I didn’t get anywhere near it but now some of me mates

were up around there and they when it came in and so they were able to get into that truck

and grab, grab themselves a few things and they well we actually ate well for a while there,

because even managed to smuggle some of it down to the kitchen. Cause we had our own

cooks in there to prepare our, our lunch menu which was usually watery soup you see so we

got our lunch down there but because they managed to get this stuff we got blooming our

soup was no longer watery for a couple of days it was full bodied stew it was pigs stew.

These Southerners from the American Southerners used to reckon that they really used to

love this chitlings, chitlings yeah and we got to like it to a couple of times we actually ate it so

that was another thing. Then we had a fella that we used to call him the Bongo kid. Now we

used to see him, he was an interpreter and he came into the factory and what he used to do

is he’d look and he’d watch people and we used to think well now if he’s watching we’re got

to pretend were working hard and that’s what he was watching for you see, to see who was

working hard and who was working just ordinary now. If anyone was working real hard they

got a red number to wear at the factory and if they were just an ordinary worker they only got

a blue number but if they played up while they were working there they got a yellow number.

Yellow because the Americans all used to talk about gold bricks, they were people who

sponged off their mates you see, all came from during the early gold rushes way back when.

What they’d get is an ingot, ingot of lead and cover it with a very thin layer of gold so they

were cheating on their mates instead of giving them a gold brick they were only giving them

a blooming lead brick. So if you went into the guard house though no matter how good a

worker you had been then you automatically got a gold brick you see got a golden number.

We used to reckon that was great you know the gold number that was more valuable than a

blooming red or a blue one but that was the Bongo kid and that thing went quite well for quite

a long time you know. So we used to wear the well we had to wear the numbers that they

were issued at the factory we had to wear those in the camp as well you see.

GO: Where abouts on?

WB: Used to wear it on your chest as a where you wear your ordinary number plate when

you go to WAGS or something like that Western Australian Genealogical Society for those

who don’t know and so we, we had to show that we were good workers and of course

anyone who goes back to the camp and he’s got a yellow number. You know the guards

were a little bit more strict on them and of course we had to bow to the Japs the guards but

usually we got away with not doing anything for them we would just sort of you wouldn’t even

look at them just sort of walk past as they went past or something like that. But then what

happened we got an influx of people from, from Formosa because when we were coming

over they had dropped off a team of people, senior officers and so forth on to Formosa for

the so that was going to be their, their camp. So we got all these senior officers, generals

and you know anything from a Colonel a full Colonel up had been left down there. Now they

came up there and what do they do, the first thing they did is got us into trouble. Whereas

we had always, well we had distained the blooming the one star privates who were, who

were nothing, we wouldn’t even look at them, but these blokes Generals mind you were

never a blooming, it’s just an insignificant little blooming one star private walked past they’d

come to attention bow and say boss you know and then of course we were told if it’s got

enough for a General to salute a Japanese soldier then it’s good enough for you other

blokes. So from then on we had to go around and whenever we saw a Jap soldier we had to

salute him. If we had a hat on we had to salute him otherwise we had to bow now that wasn’t

too good you know but one of them of course was this blooming bloke who used to be a

politician here Kent Hughes. He was a no good that bloke. I mean here we are where been

in this camp for so long got no clothes really to wear during summer or anything like that and

I had a button missing on a blooming shirt you know ‘Get a button put back on that shirt

there Bell.’ I say’s ‘You got any?’ so I he wasn’t amused at that you know. Kent Hughes he

later became a member of parliament for Kooyong in Victoria. That was just one of the little

things that you had to put up with which put up with from your own people. During the time

there I also learnt to speak Spanish because there was a there was a fella from Texas who

was a Lieutenant, or a Lieutenant as my mate Frank Driver used to say. Now this bloke

because he come from Texas and he had a text book he taught us both how to speak

Spanish and we used to babble away there quite comfortably between ourselves in Spanish

and of course there was about say about 100 Mexicans in the American group that was

there, so we’d have a talk, talk with them to cause ours would be a little bit halting our

speech, but they wouldn’t give a damn and they’d answer back just as fast as if they were

talking to their mates. Well things just sort of went on just ordinary day by day stuff. The

winter finished and the ground started to thaw out again around about May, the normal crops

were going along we were doing our bits and pieces at the factory or back at the camp. If

you got in trouble of course you had to work in the camp cause they didn’t trust you outside

of the camp. So then one day during about the beginning of August something was a bit

different the, the Japs had a different idea about what in the heck and they just didn’t seem

to care what in the heck we were doing and no more beatings or anything like that no more

belts over the ear or anything and we thought gee the war must be getting close and we

used to get a, a paper issued to the officers and it was an English, it was in English and the

officers used to read through it and they would put their interpretation of events that were

occurring. One time the, the interpretation was that through the paper saying that Mussolini

was a great bloke but the Italians must have been doing great and then all of a sudden he

was a no good hound he was definitely a heel, so we realized that it must have been Italy

must have surrendered or something and of course that was all in the officers interpretation

and then Hitler was a great bloke he was going to continue this war and of course it was 100

years war the Japs explained that to us. That we would possibly win the first battle but they

would win by the time the 100 years were up and, and then of course they started saying

that Hitler was no good, so we reckoned that may be something’s happened around in

Germany that maybe, maybe the place is wrapping up there to and then we heard about the

that there were Russians coming into the north of Manchuria and next thing we knew the

guards didn’t come out at all. They were sort of in hiding or something and, an aeroplane

landed or an aeroplane came over and it was a magnificent great thing we had never seen

an aeroplane that size before, it was a great big B29 bomber and fellas came down in the

parachutes and were taken up to the to the leaders of our the Japanese business and said

we’ve come to take over the camp. You Japs have all surrendered so now it’s our turn.

GO: What nationality were they?

WB: Yanks of course yes. Who would have a B29 bomber? So, actually we were lucky

that no sooner had they got in there then the Russians finished their little bit of a campaign

and they decided to enter the place too, because if they got in first there might have been a

little bit of a little bit of fun. But as it turns out the Yanks got into the camp first so we, we

used to get from there we got movies, we were given shown movies of the stages of the war

and how the fellas had been shot up and blown up and things like that and the and the Mash

teams had got in there and healed them up. That’s the Mobile Army Service Hospitals you

know like as the movies. We used to see here the series Mash so you see the bloke having

an operation where they just sort of pick his innards up and shove them back in there and

then sew him back up again it, it a little bit gory but lucky it wasn’t in colour. But after a lot of

fiddling around there we got to write home and get our letters off but we didn’t have much in

the way of paper and we were able somehow or other to scrounge up little bits of something

here and there I had some rice paper which was so thin that you couldn’t write both sides of

it no matter what you did and Lorna has still got some of those letters that I wrote and very,

very thin they were you know if you press too hard with your pencil because we didn’t have

ball point pens or anything then, but when you press to hard with your pencil you just poked

a hole through it so you had to be very gentle otherwise you just didn’t get a message across

you know. So we got all our mail then able to write out but we didn’t get to much back in for a

while though there was a little bit that had been left in the for the Japs to give us a big treat

one time you know so they were able to empty out their blooming Post Office at last. We’re

still going, now what we had there was a rations officer. Now with rations what happened

was that we used to eat a lot of corn meal mush. Now as fresh rations came in instead of

using up the old stuff first, what they used to do was to stack the new stuff straight on top of

the old stuff so that eventually you got to a stage where the stuff that was underneath there

was all rotten and mouldy but they had to use it, so whenever you got a smell of horrible

smell of mould and it absolutely it was absolutely shocking smell you, you knew what had

happened. But a last they had got down to the bottom part of it this used to happen around

about twice a year where they would get down to the bottom bit and even it was blue. I mean

can you imagine corn meal mush beautiful golden stuff only it’s turned blue with the mould, it

wasn’t as good as mouldy cheese which you could eat no matter what but anyhow this, this

rations officer, when the American came in he says one of the blokes came in he says ‘Hey

you’re in charge of the rations are you?’ and he say’s ‘Yes.’ this is good ‘Now I want you to

supply me with 50 bags of potatoes immediately,’ and the, the Jap says ‘I can do that,’ and

the officer looked at the American looked around he said ‘I can’t see it where is it? I said

immediately and I’m not waiting,’ so he gave him a belt over the ear he say’s ‘Now you used

to do that to the fellas out there if they didn’t do something immediately so it’s your turn.

Right now, you’ve been punished now get those potatoes in here.’ So that was just one little

thing we heard about you know. There was one bloke who was a Japanese national had

been anyhow but now in the, in the American army and he was going all over the place and

he was abusing the blooming Japs all over the place you know for because of what they had

been doing and so what they did then they say’s ‘Right oh you fellas now you can go for a

walk around the town.’ And of course we had to look after the guard house too and being an

Australian I had to be a guard at the blooming gate at one stage and in comes this colonel I

think it was and he’s no it was a general, one I had already met one other time. A general,

American one tried to sell a watch at one stage without a minute hand on it or without a

second hand on it and the Chinese looked at it and said ‘You can’t expect me to buy a

blooming watch like that where’s the second hand it doesn’t work? No good.’ So I took it

back to this general and told him ‘Well they didn’t want to buy it because it was damaged,’ so

he didn’t get his money for it. But anyhow this general, but his general is coming back into

the camp after having his walk around the town and I threw him an American salute with the

rifle you know kapow, like that here I am with present arms I did it all American style cause I

didn’t know how to do it our style and he got such a shock he saluted back you know and he

went in there he and he looked up the bloke that used to be in charge the one who got

himself in the blooming in the pooh that time with the bombing and he say’s ‘You’d never

guess he said but I just had and Australian presented arms to me,’ and he say’s ‘Yeah that

would be Dingle Bell, he’d do that’ so then it came our turn to go around the camp to go for a

walk around the town and I, I used to during the days at the factory there was a little Chinese

boy there with red hair and I’d always every time I saw him I would say ‘G’day red’ and I’d

wave you know and he’d wave back and then when we were walking around the town I

heard this voice say ‘G’day red’ so I turned around and there’s me red headed Chinese mate

so I waved back to them to and off we went. But we had a look around town there was we

went into a couple of places a couple of Japanese homes and we were a bit wary of going

into Japanese homes cause we didn’t know what sort of a reception we would get because

everything there was Chinese. But we went into a French consulate even had our photo

taken and I think somewhere around the house I’ve got a photo of me standing alongside of

the French Consul in Manchuria. But I don’t know whether I can find the darn thing but

maybe Lorna’s got it hiding. But it was quite interesting they gave us a, a cup of coffee and

had a bit of a chat, his daughter was a gorgeous young sheila you know who spoke English

very well, but typical French girl to look at who had lithesome lithe and luscious, and so we

left there and headed back to the camp. Well after a little while we, we were told that we

would be on our way and would be going and catching a train and heading off for home at

last. But I don’t know we went, eventually we got ourselves stuck on this train, it was sort of

we felt a bit flat sort of felt let down because you’re after being captive for so long you, you

sort of you didn’t feel it, it that you belonged anywhere. Sitting on the train there watching the

blooming scenery go past this Russian came up and he had a one pint pannikin, you know

the ones with the wire sides on where you grab hold of the wire and you drink it and he half

filled it with a clear watery looking liquid which was, it was either vodka or rice wine or

whatever and he say’s ‘Have a drink,’ it wasn’t in English of course but that was the action,

so I had a sip of it and it was powerful ’Yut, yut,’ he says ‘You don’t do it like that, the whole

lot go down in one hit.’ So he have the gestures and I put the whole lot down one hit handed

him back the thing and say’s ‘Goberdin’ or something which means g’day and promptly went

to sleep. I woke up about eight hours latter still in that position and bathed in perspiration, so

next thing we get to the wharf we get to the end of the station we all then we’ve got to move

into this, into this hospital ship. I’m not sure of the name of it now but we each had our bunk

with sheets on it. How’s about that? Jumping wheel barrows, sheets haven’t slept between

sheets since we left Australia so we, we all got settled down into there and the next thing we

travel there for two weeks to, it mightn’t been two it might’ve been one week. We go to

Okinawa, now Okinawa is a nice little island and that’s where were all going to correct collect

so that we could go off then to the Philippines. Walking along the beach at Okinawa I see a

bloke there got an Australia hat on so I say’s ‘Hey what’s your name?’ and he say’s ‘My

name is Albert Bell,’ and I’m say’s, I said ‘Well I’m Bill Bell. I said where do you come from?’

and he say’s ‘I come from West Melbourne. Where do you come from?’ I say’s ‘I come from

North Melbourne’ so he said ‘What school did you go to?’ and I said ‘I went down to

Boundary Road State School number 2566’ and he say’s ‘My sister went to that school.’ I

said ‘Her name was Mabel’ and he says ‘Yeah that’s right.’ I said ‘Yes she was in my grade.’

I mean fancy having to go through all that to finish up with the brother of a girl I used to go to

school with you know. It’s surprising who and what you can meet in the in a different country

isn’t it?

End of E0105 William Bell

Start of E0106 William Bell

WB: Yeah so there was Albie Bell, fancy that after all these blooming all these travels you

see a bloke who’s from your district and same name and you went to school with his sister. It

was remarkable really I suppose that what would be the odds against doing that probably in

the millions. So anyhow the next thing we had to do was to we were in the camp there they

had a camp set up so that they could settle us down and give us a bit extra clothing and stuff

like that, so we were re-equipped with clothes to a degree not completely because that was

yet to come. But then we had to line up and climb aboard this B24, now a B24 is a bomber

which has only a wall of aluminium around about a 16th of an inch thick and the engines,

these aircraft engines were up level with your ears so that when you were when they started

the engines up we were deafened immediately and we were sitting in the bomb bays and the

bomb bay floor was open around about, about 12 inches. It has been said a few times that a

few of them got into a little bit of trouble because at one stage they opened the bomb bays

all the way up while they were up in the air and they lost a few passengers, which we were

lucky it didn’t happen to us. But we had a space where we could watch the ocean that’s

about all that’s the only thing the only light we had in the bomb bays and deaf as a post for

hours and hours after it because we had a, a four hour trip in this in this bomb bay and we

had to have all our gear with us in there and a parachute as well just in case we managed to

find our way out through the bomb bay because the first ones didn’t have parachutes the

second ones the ones following on they gave them parachutes in case of accidents. So then

we got to, we got to Clark Field in the Philippines after about a four hour flight and they said

this ‘It’s only another ½ an hour flight now down to Manila.’ So we reckoned that’s great now

we were in a we were in one of those DC3’s now we transferred into one of those things and

as we were taking off one engine kept cutting out and coming good again and cutting out

and coming good again and as we were rising one wing kept dipping and then they’d catch

up again and they’d cut out and they’d catch up again and eventually we got far enough off

the ground that if it was going to cut out at least we’d be able to glide in. Anyhow and then

we saw Manila and we were going around in a circle so that we could see Manila and we

thought gee isn’t it wonderful of the pilot to be able to give us a look around here and see so

we could see what’s going on around the town and what the damage been done by the

booming and things like that. We were for 4 ½ hours going around and around in a circle

because we had we were in a landing pattern and we had to wait our turn because there

were so many planes waiting to land at Manila Airport. But our turn didn’t come for 4 ½ hours

now that we cause as still thinking of that blooming of that problem with the engine and

wondering whether it was going to cut out again. But luckily it didn’t cut out we were able to

we were able to do our little bit and we got down on the ground and got carted into our, we

got carted into a, into a camp which was a big place. Well after our 4 ½ hour trip circling and

circling eventually we got down on the ground and everyone just felt as though wouldn’t it be

lovely to just kiss the ground because we’ve never been so frightened in all our lives you

know. So we then got put into trucks and off we went to this camp where the they had

doctors and dentists and everything like that and they took specimens of every darn thing

and everyone had to be dewormed and debugged from other diseases and things that we

were carrying from, from way back in Manchuria and so forth. So we got our bits and pieces

the dentist looked at me and he say’s ‘You’ve got a tooth that you’ve been hanging on to for

four years there.’ he says ‘I’ll hook that out for you.’ I say’s ‘Not only that I got a little piece of

shell that’s been never actually come down out of me blooming because me plates always

pushed it back, it’s always causing me a lot of trouble.’ he says ‘Where is it?’ and I says ‘You

feel that there,’ and he says ‘Yeah’ I says ‘That’s it.’ So he says ‘Well there it is,’ and he

showed it to me then because he took it straight off the, straight out of my mouth

immediately. He, he’d taken the tooth out, took a little bit longer time and he took that out.

Anyhow though then we were allowed to after we had been debugged and everything like

that and we’d been there for a week we were then allowed to do the town and you walked

down the street, we managed to get a bit of money too, we drew a bit of cash from the been

building up for the last three years in the blooming pay book and they say’s ‘Right oh you

can do the town.’ So we went down there and you could buy a for ten Philippine dollars you

could buy a bottle of what they called Scotch but I think it must have been the same sort of

thing as the going back to the dim dark past where people used to have methylated spirits

and shoe polish. I think that must have been something like that but everyone got drunk on it

anyhow and managed to find your way back into, back into the camp and the next day we

went out again and the one of me WA mates says ‘Hey’ he says ‘What about we go down to

a brothel.’ So I says ‘Well yeah I’ll come with you and see what it’s all about and what they

look like,’ you know so we went in there and, there was another couple of blokes with us and

two of them decided that they were going to do business with the that they were going to join

the cliental. So they went off while we sat and chatted for a while with a couple of other girls

that were sitting around doing nothing so that it was an experience to go in and view this

thing you know it was an experience that they weren’t likely to forget because later on when

we saw them both of them had managed to get a little bit of VD out of there joy out of their

trip. So, so I suppose they, they come to they mightn’t of regretted it because after all it was

something different wasn’t it. So after we’d finished all our fiddling around and travelling

around in, in Manila, we went into a café at one stage and I because of my limited

knowledge of Spanish I was able to order a meal in Spanish because most of the most of the

restaurants have someone in there who speaks Spanish because that is one of the

languages which is spoken throughout the Philippines. They spoke they speak three

languages usually that’s Tagalog that’s if you look at it it’s Tagalog but Tanalog is how you

pronounce it, Spanish and English. So I managed to get enough of my limited vocabulary out

and order ourself a meal and after that we went back to the camp again. Then we got some

mail in, we were able to write out again but a friend of mine another bloke from WA. Andy

Anderson I think, he got a Dear John letter. Now he, he said that his in the letter his wife said

to him ‘There’s no sense in you coming home. I have a Dutch boy friend and I am living with

him so I don’t need you here.’ Now they had been married for over 20 years so. It mightn’t

been Andy Anderson that’s another bloke that was in another situation all together this was

Uncle Jack. I forget what his second name is I bet wouldn’t want to be telling any how he

might be embarrassed but Uncle Jack he was most upset about that. Well who wouldn’t be

upset when a guest of the Japanese for the last 3 ½ years and you get home and find

you’re, well you don’t even get home your told don’t come home. But fortunately there

weren’t too many that actually got like that. Well then we got on the, on the Formidable,

Formidable the aircraft carrier and we had a two weeks trip on that which nothing really

spectacular occurred, no one died no one got them self into trouble no body visited a brothel

or anything like that so there were there wasn’t much really happening so at that stage. I, I

was once again meeting up with Albie Bell because been in amongst the B’s we were pretty

well one or two beds apart that’s about it and we get to Sydney had a bit of a drive through

the town there. Everyone cheering and waving and we went out to Ingleburn camp and that’s

when I made a phone call I got a phone call to Lorna then it was a, it was a first time I’ve

ever made a trunk call in my life. But anyhow we were there for a couple of days and then

we moved off once again, we caught a train at Ingleburn Station. It was a just an ordinary

carriage and then we once we got in to Albury we changed into a sleeper and we were able

to sleep our way back to, to Melbourne. We went to the station in the, no we went to the

station at Spencer Street and we got on to buses again and everyone was waving flags and

banners saying who they were looking for and I saw a lass there on the waving her business

and I looked at her and I says ‘G’day Thelma,’ it was Thelma Shinkfield. Her father had a

dairy in Carnegie and we used to go up to her place play cards or whatever play monopoly

or something like that of an evening when I was in camp at Caulfield so she was never a

matrimonial suitor or whatever you like to call it yeah, never considered to be a matrimonial

material. She wasn’t really a pretty girl awe she was quite nice why she you know we got on

alright and I don’t she ever married anyhow Thelma. One of her brothers became a minister

another one he worked as a at the Caulfield Race cause later on as a blacksmith, blacksmith

and he was shoeing race horses I forget what his name was now that’s going back a bit.

Anyhow we get out to from there after passing with all these people we got to the show

grounds. I had a sword hanging from my waist still got it in there that’s actually it was a

Chinese sword cause it’s got the, it’s got crossed flags look like their got stripes on it and so

forth on the, on the part of the scabbard of it but I think it came from one of the Chinese

campaigns or something like that. And that’s where I meet the family saw dad and Lorna and

a couple of others. Well I don’t know there’s not much I can say about my war experiences.

Lorna could probably sort out I had to go to hospital and had EBI treatment that’s Emetine

and Iodine to get rid of hook worm and worm and stuff which was in the system. And at one

stage someone came around the hospital and wanted to know if we if anyone wanted to

donate blood to the Red Cross. And I says ‘Yeah I’ll give you some of mine,’ and they says

‘You. The muck that you’ve got in you, you couldn’t give it to a blooming to a butcher shop,’

so they wouldn’t take it. One of Lorna’s friends was one of the nurses there and every time

she tried to give me a needle it bent cause they, they were they weren’t doing any recycling

at they were all recycling at that stage where everything had to be boiled up and reused and

reused and reused and most of the time the needles were that dull that they sometimes

they’d go in and they look like a blooming like a blooming safety pin the way they curl back

on themselves. But well I stayed in there a month then they gave me leave and I had to go

back in again after the leave was up to get a bit more treatment in there. So it was quite

some time before I eventually got around to being discharged from the army and even then I

had a great big carbuncle on the back of my neck and the doctor say’s ‘Well I’m not letting

you out with that darned thing in there,’ so kept me going for another, another two days till

that thing healed up a little bit. At the time you could see the carbuncle was big enough you

could have put a blooming you couldn’t covered it with a wrist watch you know, such a big

hole in the neck now it’s cut down to around about threepence.

WB: Yes well I hoped that helped you with your project.

GO: Bill thank you very, very much for sharing your time your experiences and everything

else with me. I really feel very privileged to have heard it and to have interviewed you.

Thanks for putting up with me.

WB: Yeah it’s a pleasure.

End of recording

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