Surviving the Japanese Onslaught by William Tate

Author:William Tate [Tate, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Aviation, Biography & Autobiography, World War II
ISBN: 9781473880757
Google: yIUTDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2016-11-30T22:11:43+00:00

Chapter 6

1945: Liberation

On the morning of Sunday 29 April, we stopped at a village on the Pegu-Wau Road. O’Hari San, one of the senior Nippon Officers who had marched with us from Rangoon Gaol, was asked to provide assistance to Doctor MacKenzie. O’Hari San walked away and a short time later Brigadier Hobson came out from the village hut he had been in. With an ecstatic voice, and standing in front of us, our Brigadier asked for our attention and then spoke with a clear, firm and emotional voice; ‘Men, we are free, we are free; or words to that effect.’ The silver lining was at hand.

It is hard to describe and recall my innermost feelings at this precise moment. Here we sat, crouched, or stood, some of us slightly perplexed and huddled together like cattle in a yard. We were approximately 400 men and now ex-prisoners of the Japanese; most overwhelmingly exhausted, generally skeletal and of a ragged and dirty appearance. Our march had been another punishing experience. Dressed in filthy pieces of clothing, starving and in dire need of fluids, many men required urgent medical attendance if they were going to live. In this circumstance, we were told we were emancipated men. Not prisoners, but men of liberty. While we all understood these words, it seemed to me, given our condition, as though the absolutely unexpected and opposite situation was outside my orbit of punishment, pain and suffering that mingled hazily with my exhausted thinking. As Hobson repeated these words many men were in tears, others inwardly contemplating and gazing in a blank, deep hush while some were hollering with ecstatic cries of rapture. The feeling of being physically and emotionally liberated would take some time to come to terms with.

It was not until we witnessed the last of the Nip guards actually walking out of the village, and then out of our sight, which was remarkably soon after our Brigadier’s announcement, that for the first time since our capture we were possibly now alone. Our immediate morale and elation rose significantly. Can you imagine the jubilation of this news and the sight of watching the backs of our despised tyrants leave without physically harming us? At the very least many of us expected to be either executed or severely beaten prior to the Nips retreat. O’Hari San and the Commandant had been informed by Hobson that his men were to return to Rangoon immediately. Obviously things were going very badly for the Japanese war machine. As soon as the Nips had left the area, some of our physically able ex-PoWs set out to locate a nearby village, one of dozens along our long march, to try and obtain food and basic medical supplies. This did not take long and the Burmese locals who were relatively close by in the next village were helpful to some extent. This first meal we were able to eat without the presence of any Japanese guard lurking nearby was one of the most enjoyable moments of our lives since incarceration.

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