Mercia Grant
Mercia Grant, a former journalist, lived in China where her father worked in the Stock Exchange. During WW2 the family was imprisoned by the Japanese for two and a half years. Mercia recently settled in Netanya.
We were first ordered by the Japanese to surrender our cars and radios, and then told to gather on a certain date, at a certain place near the river, leaving everything behind except what we could each take in a large suitcase, plus our beds and bedding. We feared it was going to be a great hardship for the sixty or so British Jewish residents among us who were, on the whole, strictly orthodox. So we squirrelled away tins of food that might one day tide us over a bad patch.
When the day came for our departure we were taken to a jetty and loaded with all our luggage into pig boats normally used to transport live pigs and cattle up river. It was a humiliating experience, and meant to be so. All day we sailed up river to Yangchow and arrived at sundown, cold, weary and very thirsty. They hustled us out of the boats and into a "prison" compound; this was the first time we experienced a roll-call and a lecture in Japanese! We didn't have to know what the Commandant said as we could very well guess from his tone and gestures: he was exhorting us to behave, and not try to escape, in which case we would be well treated. With an imperious wave of the hand he dismissed us. Hurriedly, we unpacked our six beds and bedding which just about squeezed into a tiny room. Eventually we reduced this to three beds and doubled up to allow ourselves space to move. To us youngsters it was all a bit of excitement, but father knew what the consequences could be. We were four daughters and he had heard stories... At 5.30 the next morning there was a lot of noise in the corridors and much shouting, calling on us to prepare for roll-call. In the parade ground we had to stand erect and declare our number in Japanese. The spokesman on our side was a tall Englishman of proud bearing. However, this contrasted strangely with his true character: he did everything he was told with a certain abject humility which enraged some of the prisoners. The Japanese, like the Germans. admired courage, and had he stood up to them occasionally, we may have had an easier time. However, unlike the Germans they were always correct and gentle with the children, giving them little gifts and sweets at times.
Each able-bodied man and woman was allotted work. There was the kitchen to attend to, a tiny bake-house, a little hospital and ample grounds to tend and sweep. Three large huts housed primitive toilets: these were simply holes in the ground with huge buckets to take the excrement which was collected now and then by the local farmers. The stench and flies were unbearable. We were lucky, however, to have a built-in artesian well in one of the buildings which provided clean water to drink and wash. This may all sound luxurious, apart from the toilets, but we rarely had enough medicines to cope with our needs and our one and only dentist had his instruments with him, but lacked materials to deal with numerous fillings and often had to extract teeth unnecessarily.
When provisions arrived for the kitchen, large hunks of pork and vegetables were delivered daily. It was barely enough for 300, let alone 650 people, so the meat had to be cut up small and stewed in "kongs" (enormous woks). The Jews were aghast. Pork came in daily without respite. So we sent a delegation to the Japanese commandant to allow us to receive an extra allotment of vegetables and perhaps eggs or fish to compensate. Strangely, they did not refuse; we received about an egg each a week. Sometimes smelly smoked fish and beef was sent in about once a month. We just had to make do with extra vegetables daily. At first, the "other kitchen" looked on us with pity. They had their daily bowl of pork stew with tiny bits of pork floating in it. We tried to be creative with our vegetables and eventually, with their monotonous diet, they came to envy us and demand why, in such difficult times, we could not get dispensation from our religious leaders to eat pork.
At night bed bugs ate us alive. They streamed down our mosquito nets and burrowed into our bed springs. We had occasionally to douse the springs with boiling water. After a couple of years our clothes were very shabby. I remember stripping and remaking a winter coat. Eventually we received parcels from the Red Cross which eased our food problems, as we were always hungry. Despite this some prisoners would trade their daily loaf of bread for cigarettes. We arranged cultural activities - lectures, debates, musical events and language classes: also a little school for the children. My youngest sister still remembers with fondness her English missionary teacher who grounded them well in English language and literature.This all stood her in good stead when she later entered a grammar school in London. The Japanese guards behaved correctly. There were few incidents although they did make advances to some of the women. But no one was forced. Misdemeanours on our part, like trying to escape, were severely punished and I remember being slapped twice at roll-call for not standing to attention on a bitterly cold morning.
Then came the day of the bomb. A guard came into our workroom looking very chastened and said that the Americans had bombed Hiroshima and devasted the city. He said it was a bomb like no other. Then came the second. Then the capitulation. We were lucky they took it so well: they could have murdered us all before they left. Soon after that parcels arrived by parachute from American planes flying overhead. The parachutes were of pure silk and of many hues and those who could, sewed new garments out of them. The food parcels were sheer luxury-coffee, tea, biscuits, corned beef and cigarettes among other things. Eventually, we were packed into trains and sent home. Many found homes completely looted. We were lucky: a Japanese official of high rank had lived in ours and our Chinese neighbours prevented any looting after the Japanese and his family departed.
This brief resume may come as a surprise to most people who know only of Japanese brutality during the war, but the fact is that we ourselves never took up arms against the Japanese and this they took into account. Time has also done its work and the effect of the daily grind, the petty disciplines and the occasional punishments, severe though they were, have really faded into memory.