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you with these sets - Boy! Did they give you hell!
'Then the Americans came over and bombed Bangkok. It was great. You'd look up and see
these big B29 flying fortresses - we'd never seen them before. And they were magnificent. We
cheered. The Japs were scared stiff of the bombing. The first night we were bombed there
wasn't a Jap guard in the camp. They took off. They just disappeared.
479
'My last camp was at Ubon [on the border with Laos], In 1945. That was the easiest time of
the whole three and a half years. We worked on an aerodrome, levelling off the ground for an
aerodrome on the Indo-China border. During the Vietnam war it was used by the Americans as
a base.
'One of our blokes was shot there. He used to go out at night, through the bamboo fence.
Somebody told the Japs. He was seeing a local girl, I think. It was crass stupidity, because it
was getting near the end, and we knew it. We were in bed one night, and the Japs ordered us
out onto the parade ground. They counted us, found one was missing, and said: "Where is he?"
We didn't know. So they said: "You'll stay here till he comes back. Or until somebody tells us
where he is." I think we were there for four or five hours, after which the Japs said we would go
back to our huts. Somebody said: "1 just saw Bluey go into the hut." He'd come in while this
was going on and gone back into his hut. And we went back, and he said: "What will I do!"
And he was told: "Well, it's up to you. You either go, get out of here, or tell them you're back."
And he said: "Well, I don't know if I'll go, as there's nowhere to go." Which was right. He said:
"I'll take my chance." So he gave himself up. Early in the morning we saw him walking out of the
front gate with three guards, and we asked a Jap guard what was going on. And he told us
Bluey was going to show the Japs where he got out through the fence. And it was only three or
four minutes later we heard a shot. The guards came back, and we had to go over and get him.
And we wanted to know why. And they said he'd tried to escape. This was ridiculous. He had
nowhere to go.
'We heard that the war was over from the Thais. We were out on a working party, a dozen of
us. We were out overnight. And in the morning a Jap motorcycle raced in and we heard a great
jabbering in Japanese, and they rushed us into a truck and took us back to the camp. And as
we were going into the camp there were some Thais bringing in some rice. And they said: "War
finish." Nothing more was said until the next day.
The next day the Japanese commander came out after getting us all out on the parade ground.
He said, through an interpreter, that the great East Asia war was finished - 'You are now free
men, and you will be going back to your families." Blah, blah, blah. There wasn't a sound. I
reckon that camp must have held about 1,000 men. And there wasn't a sound. It was stunning -
eerie. You'd think there would have been raucous laughter, or catcalls, or cheers. There was
nothing. Not a sound. And everybody broke away and wandered back to their huts.
'But then it started. And we sat there and said: "God!"
We went out of the camp and sank a lot of grog in the town, which was a six or seven kilometre
walk away. Rice wine. We were out of our minds. We couldn't really take it, and afterwards
were a lot sicker. But that's when we started to enjoy it - being free.
"We didn't hear about the atom bombs until later on.'
480
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