Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway: Narratives of History and Memory

192 Pages·2017·14.73 MB·English

by  Lizzie Oliver, Stephen McVeigh

Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway
War, Culture and Society
Series Editor: Stephen McVeigh, Associate Professor, Swansea University, UK
Editorial Board
Paul Preston, LSE, UK
Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Debra Kelly, University of Westminster, UK
Patricia Rae, Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada
James J. Weingartner, Southern Illimois University, USA (Emeritus)
Kurt Piehler, Florida State University, USA
Ian Scott, University of Manchester, UK
War, Culture and Society is a multi- and interdisciplinary series which
encourages the parallel and complementary military historical and
socio- cultural investigation of 20th and 21st- century war and conflict.
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Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War,
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Second World War British Military Camouflage: Designing Deception,
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Women, Warfare and Representation: American Servicewomen in the Twentieth
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The Lost Cause of the Confederacy and American Civil War Memory,
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Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway

Narratives of History and Memory
Lizzie Oliver
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2018
© Lizzie Oliver, 2018
Lizzie Oliver has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting
on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978- 1- 3500- 2412- 0
ePDF: 978- 1- 3500- 2413- 7
eBook: 978- 1- 3500- 2414- 4
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Oliver, Lizzie, author.
Title: Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway : narratives of history and memory / Lizzie Oliver.
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. |
Series: War, culture and society
Identifiers: LCCN 2017021724 | ISBN 9781350024120 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781350024144 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939–1945–Concentration camps–Indonesia–Sumatra. |
Prisoners of war–Indonesia–Sumatra. |
World War, 1939–1945–Personal narratives, British. |
World War, 1939–1945–Prisoners and prisons, British. |
World War, 1939–1945–Prisoners and prisons, Japanese. | Indonesia–History–Japanese
occupation, 1942-1945. | Railroads–Indonesia–Sumatra. | BISAC: HISTORY /
Asia / Japan. | HISTORY / Asia / Southeast Asia. | HISTORY / Military / World War II. |
HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.
Classification: LCC D805.I55 O45 2017 | DDC 940.54/725209232105981–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021724
Series: War, Culture and Society
Series design: Clare Turner
Cover image © Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria
Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India
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To Stanley, John and Rouse
and for all your fellow men
To be clean (really clean), to sleep between sheets, to get enough to eat, to get
medical attention, to be free from louse, to be shaved, and to have a haircut,
and best of all to be free. These things make life . . . an earthly paradise.
Albert Simmonds on release from Sumatra, September 1945
Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Preface: The Man in the Photograph x
Acknowledgements xviii
Note on Text xx
List of Abbreviations xxi
Introduction 1
0.1 Interpreting Memories 3
0.2 Remembering Sumatra 7
1 Building the Sumatra Railway 9
1.1 Shipwreck and Forced Marches: Arriving at the Railway 11
1.1.1 The Atjeh Party 12
1.1.2 POW Transport Ship Sinkings 14
1.2 Building the Railway 22
1.2.1 The Romushas 26
1.3 The ‘Other’ Railway 29
2 Writing the Sumatra Railway 35
2.1 Diaries of Captivity 37
2.1.1 Self- Censorship and Exhaustion: Keeping a
Diary in Camp 40
2.1.2 The ‘Mini- Memoir’ of Captivity 45
2.2 ‘Always Three Months Away’: Memoirs of a Railway Line 49
2.2.1 Authorizing the Memoir 51
2.2.2 Narrating the Non- Narrative 52
2.3 ‘A Life for Every Sleeper’: The Poem of Hell’s Railway 55
2.4 Lists and Libraries: Alternative Imaginaries of the POW 57
2.4.1 Camp Libraries 59
viii Contents
3 Guard Your Tongue 65
3.1 Learning a New Language 68
3.2 Code- Switching in Camp 73
3.3 Control and Resistance 75
3.4 Communicating the Untranslatable 78
3.4.1 The Kongsi 78
3.5 The Camp Interpreter 81
4 The Body of the Prisoner 87
4.1 Medical Treatment on the Sumatra Railway 88
4.1.1 The Hospital at Camp Two: John Wyatt 89
4.1.2 The Medic in Art: Patrick Kirkwood 92
4.2 Accepting the POW Body as One’s Own 97
4.3 ‘Nil Abnormal Detected’: The Haunting of the ‘FEPOW’ Body 100
5 Aftermath 105
5.1 Repatriation and Resettlement 108
5.1.1 The Claim for Compensation 111
5.1.2 Creating ‘the FEPOW’, Continuing the Kongsi 114
5.2 The Postmemory of ‘the FEPOW’ 116
5.2.1 The Charles Thrale Exhibition 119
5.2.2 Post- War Responses 122
5.2.3 Transgenerational Perceptions of ‘the FEPOW’ 123
5.3 The Postmemorial Archive 125
Afterword 131
Appendix: Research Resources 133
Notes 137
Selected Bibliography 159
Index 167
Illustrations

Figures
1 Japanese paratroopers land in Sumatra, 1942. Courtesy of Argus
Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria. 10
2 Portion of the Sumatra Railway built by Allied Prisoners, 1945.
Courtesy of Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State
Library of Victoria. 12
3 SS Junyo Maru, March 1933. Courtesy of Walter E. Frost and City of
Vancouver Archives. 16
4 Huts at Pakan Baroe, 1945. Courtesy of Argus Newspaper Collection
of Photographs, State Library of Victoria. 30
5 Albert Simmonds’s diary. Courtesy of David Burchell. 45
6 Message from H. Q. ALFSEA to all newly released Allied POWs,
1945. Courtesy of Michael Nellis. 66
7 Camp life in Medan, 1942. Stanley Russell. Courtesy of Museon. 93
8 Aerial shot of Pakan Baroe. Courtesy of Argus Newspaper
Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria. 106
9 Inside living quarters at Pakan Baroe, 1945. Courtesy of Argus
Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria. 106
10 Aerial shot of Pakan Baroe as liberated POWs are airlifted from
Sumatra, 1945. Courtesy of Argus Newspaper Collection of
Photographs, State Library of Victoria. 109
Map
1 Location of camps along the Sumatra Railway, 2015. Courtesy of
Phyllis and Tim Pettitt. 23