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Chapter 3

OPENING OF HOSTILITIES

On 8 December 1941 I was at the HQ’s lines-of-communication hotel in a corner of Rue Catenar, Saigon. At the hotel entrance an Imperial Guard Division sentry stood on guard. In the garden red canna flowers basked in the morning sun, blooming in a blaze of colour. I went into the hotel lobby and listened to a radio broadcast in Japanese. It was nine o’clock in the morning. The broadcast was serious.

The source was an IJA GHQ communiqué. What we heard was that the Imperial Japanese Empire was involved at midnight in a state of war following the joint American-English proclamation of war on Japan, and in an instant our feelings became taut and tense. The successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was reported. As I stood there in the lobby, I heard the news repeated, that the American-British declaration marked the start of the war for Japan. When the negotiations with America were broken off, this had meant war. This news came as a shock. Since our departure from the homeland the unit had been reorganized and up to embarcation was under strict orders to keep secret that it was an undercover transport unit and so we made a showy departure for the front and each individual was furnished with a copy of a meaningful label: but we really knew it meant war. On the Cambodia frontier the circumstances made everyone tense. One began to unravel that mysterious order of a few days ago. One renews his decision to give selfless patriotic service and even if one became a victim there’s nothing he can do about it but resign himself to the thought that in the end he returns as a hero to the Yasukuni Shrine. We had tended so far to lose our bearings, got needlessly worried. The unit commander addressed us and boosted our morale.

We soon became front-line troops at Phnom Penh. At the crossing-point on the Mekong river our trucks had to await their turn on the ferry. At Phnom Penh was the royal palace and the streets of this Cambodian capital were newly completed. At city centre there was a star-shaped market where they sold big spiny-lobsters and big crabs, an impressive sight, but we had no time for sightseeing. News came that in the offing at Kuantan on the Malayan Peninsula the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse of the British Far East Squadron had been attacked and sunk by Japanese naval aircraft.⁹⁵ There came also a report that the Japanese Army was making a lightning conquest of Malaya. That Japan at the start of hostilities should win such victories delighted me, it was a heartening thing, but thereafter one did not expect anything quite so dramatic.

On 12 December I went from the unit to the Bangkok HQ in advance, having been given responsibility for liaison and for fixing up billets. More and more joining in warlike activities unilaterally, I became unexpectedly cool in what really was audacious activity. Because my duty lay in the rear echelon, where there was no fighting, I did not give a thought to the risk of being killed. For some days before leaving for the front I had been excessively busy. I had even begun to get acclimatized to the heat of the southern regions and, sleeping at night, I recalled winters at home. I waited for seventeen days and then left Phnom Penh HQ, riding in Lt-Colonel Mayama’s car. We went North along the River Mekong, passed over the frontier and broke into Thailand. On the highway into Bangkok the traffic was congested with Japanese Army lorries. The rule of the road varied in Indo-China, Cambodia and Thailand and across the frontier traffic accidents occurred, even a head-on collision. But the highway on both sides was broad, with no ups-and-downs, and essentially ran straight ahead. Apart from low scrub and coconut palms, it was an unpopulated stretch. That evening we passed a hamlet called Don Muang,⁹⁶ a resort in the northern suburbs, and in the distance could see pagodas in the sunset sky. This was Bangkok. I felt deep emotion as my war ensued from that point. I recall the triumphal entry into the streets of Bangkok, at the crossroads with the Anung Sawari Pagoda bathed in the setting sunlight. In Bangkok there were then several hundred Japanese expatriates – and what can such an event, the outbreak of war on 8 December, have meant for them! Originally in business in the commercial district and later with 9 Railway Regiment’s Sakamoto Battalion, there was, I recall, Mr Chikawa Saburo – who was an experienced interpreter: he wrote:

We broke in and through the Japanese embassy opened negotiations with the Thai Government following what might be called a peaceful occupation. In other parts of Thailand occupation forces bided their time, fully prepared for a show of force if that became necessary. The planned outbreak of war on 8 December being imminent, Prime Minister Phibun of Thailand initially concealed his view that a weakness showed up in the Japanese Government’s high-handed demands. Our ambassador tried to probe Phibun’s real views. In fact, to the Japanese embassy the decisive issue came when a signal had been put out in the embassy garden for the reconnaissance aircraft sent over quite soon from Main Southern Army HQ. On 7 December the embassy had got ready, against a show of force, a vessel standing by at a Bangkok wharf into which our women and children were put on board. Civilians in the prime of life were concentrated in the embassy to resist their adversaries, the Thai Army, when the Japanese Army moved in. On the vessel light machine-guns and other weapons were put on board in secret, and at the embassy itself the entrance had barbed-wire entanglements set up as a barricade. All this was completed by midnight. So on 8 December our occupation force began their assault, the landing campaign was put into execution, there was spasmodic resistance from the Thai Army at its bases on the southern waterfront of Bangkok, at Chumphon in the South and elsewhere. Phibun called a conference, consented to a peaceful occupation, called off the Thai forces’ resistance, the embassy and our compatriots were safe and the Japanese Army of Occupation welcomed.

Shortly after I entered Bangkok an attempt was made to find residences of British subjects within the City limits: they had all evacuated pell-mell, inside their houses no furniture, clothing, etc. was to be found, not even a single sheet of paper! At the residence of Ambassador Crosby was found his signed notice ordering them to evacuate with each individual’s life and property his own personal responsibility. England, without any sort of previous notice, in an unexpected coup had declared war. Allowing for the time difference, the Japanese Army, with a previously announced declaration of war, made landings and surprise assaults on Singora and Kota Bharu in the northern part of the Malayan Peninsula. In fact, in an article in the Singapore special edition (October 1979) of the British magazine, After the Battle,⁹⁷ Prime Minister Churchill, in the opening paragraph of his diplomatic document, transmitted to the Japanese Government what amounted to an ultimatum. The passage runs: ‘To have opened hostilities without giving any previous notice is a matter of regret. Here, England declares a break-off of diplomatic relations with Japan.’ Former prisoner-of-war, Mr Adams, in his recollections states: ‘England was involved in an endless war.’

Whether one likes war or finds it repugnant, a situation in which one was inevitably drawn into is clearly what happened to England. Japan, post-war, in the context of the New Constitution of 1946, declared she abandoned war, but there is no guarantee that she would not withdraw her declaration. Settlement of a dispute between two nations ought to be done by peaceful negotiation: as for the use of armed might, steering clear of it would be the right course. Formerly naturalized Japanese, one found in travelling around Malaya, were employed as guides, and one, living in Kota Bharu, waiting for the outbreak of hostilities, is said to have been plastered in the early hours by a Japanese projectile. His girlfriend had moved back into Singapore and in the end when Japan suffered defeat in 1945, she had difficulty supporting herself. Here is an example of how a Japanese who held office on a battle-front reacted to the realities of battle.

It was on 25 December when our bridging unit was moving to Bangkok that there was an intelligence report that a car accident en route had caused casualties. Without even entering the front line one wonders whether one can be rated as a battle-casualty. The unit was concentrated at the Macassar Railway Workshops. We gunzoku were expecting to be in the front line, we were quite busy, but we felt a certain amount of tension.

On 30 December the unit travelled in a goods train which had been got ready at Bansoe station and went South on the South Thailand Line. It crossed a high steel bridge over the River Menam and moved on from Bangkok. It passed through Banpong and in the Peburi district crossed over the River Mae Khlaung which runs South into the Gulf of Siam. We passed Chumphon, Prachuab Khiri Khan and other places and went on through a station, whose name escapes me, into a plain which had much cactus and one wondered whether it was really an extensive paddy-field. It was dotted with coconut palms and water buffaloes were at work.

On 31 December the train continued South and in the afternoon entered a ravine in the hills where it came to a complete halt. The train-driver said the planned haulage limit for rolling stock had been grossly exceeded and in this section of track the engine failed to take the incline. The unit commander ordered everyone to alight and ‘Shove the train!’ was his command. It was a novel, an unheard-of situation. That night was New Year’s Eve, 1941.

When the train stopped at a small station the buildings shone cheerfully in the moonlight, and was that not a moment to see the New Year in? The melody was heard, ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which one used to hear as if ‘the fire-fly’s light was on the window-pane’. In the battle-zone we were homesick at the thought of ringing out the Old Year, and the sound of instrumental music evoked in us sentimental feelings. At first light it was New Year’s Day, 1942. The train pulled into Hat Yai, the station at the junction in southern Thailand.

We were ordered to alight, and everyone set about assembling machine-parts when the sound of an explosion was heard. ‘Enemy planes!’ was the alarm and we got out of the place, scattering like little spiders out of a cocoon. In a flash we heard the noise of sweeping machine-gun fire. We all felt more and more we were riding into the battle-line, that our lives were in danger.

The sky was clear on New Year’s Day. We greeted a very hot New Year but there was no time for rest. We had to push on.