Please God, set us free

Church of England Service in the courtyard of Changi Gaol

by Charles Thrale from the FEPOW Website Christmas Wishes

Singapore Botanic Gardens

click for more photos of steps built by Australian POWs

On July 4, 2015, Singapore's Botanic Gardens became an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Established since 1859, the 74-hectare Singapore Botanic Gardens is thrice the age of the Singapore nation-state. It joins the ranks of picturesque, historically valuable sites around the world such as Italy’s Cinque Terre, the UK's Kew Gardens, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and the Great Wall of China.

For this blog, its wartime history is what is fascinating. This history was included, unlike in Japan's UNESCO application, in Singapore's description of the site and its application.

Biography

On February 15, 1942 Singapore fell to Imperial Japanese forces. Within a few days of the Japanese occupation, Professor Hidezo Tanakadate of Tohoku University assumed control of the Gardens and Museums, and asked some of the senior staff who were not in uniform to resume their work in the Gardens. Other staff members were not as fortunate, and were sent to work on the Siam-Burma Railway, where many lost their lives.

The Japanese kept the Gardens as a center of research activity. This was made possible because the Gardens and Japanese staff shared a common goal and belief in preserving the cultural and scientific heritage of Singapore. Their motives were different, but both placed science above animosity. The result was preservation of the Gardens and its invaluable research properties.

Kwan Koriba, Botany Professor from the Imperial University of Kyoto, became Director in December 1942. With a background in the relations between plant behavior and climate, Koriba immersed himself in research on the growth habits of selected Malayan trees using both the Garden’s Rain Forest and the Nature Reserves and produced a scientific paper entitled “Periodicity of Tree-growth in the Tropics”.

During the war, a set of brick steps down to the Plant House were built by Australian POWs. In August 1995, upon the 50th anniversary of the cessation of hostilities, a group of veteran POWs from Australia came to the Gardens to examine the steps they had built with bricks marked with arrows. The POWs had made bricks at a brickworks in Changi Prison.

Marks of defiance 

As an act of rebellion against their Japanese captors, the POWs carved arrows into the bricks to show that the staircases belonged to the state instead of the soldiers. The bricks were state property, they were not.

The Japanese were likely not aware of the meaning of the arrows, and if discovered, the prisoners would probably have been punished severely. Today, the arrows serve as a reminder of their bravery at a time of great hardship.

Merry Christmas, memories of imprisonment linger

Ronald Searle was one of Great Britain's most famous illustrators and cartoonists. His work graced many a cover of the New Yorker. An architectural draftsman for the British Army, Searle was captured by the invading Japanese in Singapore March 1942. For the next three years until September 1945 he endured the horrors of the Changi prison camp and then the building of Thai Burma Death Railroad. Throughout, he continued draw even switching to his right hand when his dominant left hand was covered in ulcers. Above is a Christmas card he sent to a fellow former POW. The tower is the one in Changi. To the Kwai and Back is a collection of Searle's war drawings.

Merry Christmas Past - 1942

By Des Bettany. Reproduced with kind permission of his family.
To see more images, refer to http://www.changipowart.com/

Food was the stuff of dreams for a POW of Japan. Starvation was a Japanese strategy of both intent and error to subdue their Western captives. British Lance Bombardier Bettany captured in Malaya after the fall of Singapore in February 1942 and imprisoned at the infamous Changi used a purloined brush and pen to help transcend the POWs despair to hope.

In contrast to much of the Western POW art which survives from this period, Bettany’s finds uplifting humor in the day-to-day existence of the POW. Much of his POW work is one of light-heartedness, helping keep a sense of optimism in the face of a brutal captor.

Bettany's survival as a POW of Japan was in no small part due to his not being sent to work on the notorious Thai-Burma Death Railway, which claimed the lives of some 16,000 allied POWs and a much greater number of forced labor Asian workers. Des was repatriated to England late September 1945

Other well-know artists of the POW of Japan experience are Ben Steele (United States), Murray Griffin (Australia), Jack Chalker (Australia) and Ronald Searle (United Kingdom).

More on painting the horror.

Christmas on the Thai-Burma Death Railway 1943

Christmas Eve, 1943. Carol Singing, Dysentery Ward. 
Ching_Kai POW Camp, Thai-Burma Railway.


Watercolour on board.
 Copyright Status: artist estate

The above watercolor of POWs singing Christmas carols is by John George Mennie who joined Britain's Royal Artillery in 1940 and was posted in September 1941 to Singapore. He was captured when Singapore surrendered to the Japanese forces in February 1942 and was a prisoner of war untill August 1945. He was held at Changi Singapore 1942, Kanu 1943; Chungtai and Tamawau 1944, and Pratchi Thailand 1945. He was a slave laborer working on the Thail-Burma Death Railway.

Over fifty pieces of his POW work are archived in the Imperial War Museum in London. Recently, a collection of his work surfaced in the shoebox of a friend and former POW. These were featured on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow.