‘Conditions in the camps were appalling’ A
S a war plane roared over their heads, excited cries rippled throughout the civilian internees of the Japanese-run Weihsien camp in 1945. Parachutes filled the skies as 75 American airmen landed to liberate the camp, bringing food and supplies. Finally, after two years and eight months of incarceration, the internees were free. Their war was over. The liberation of the camp was described in this way by Salvation Army officer Major Mary Layton, who wrote a letter to her friends soon after she was freed. Her relief was shared by millions across the globe on 15 August 1945, when Japan officially surrendered to Allied forces and the Second World War came to an end. The day became known as Victory over Japan or VJ Day. While many may have heard the history of soldiers and prisoners of war on the Japanese front, the stories of civilian internees are far less well known. After the Japanese entered the war in December 1941, more than 130,000 civilians, considered enemy aliens, were rounded up and interned in camps within the East Asian nations it occupied. Internees included colonial officials and their families, relatives of servicemen,
Salvation Army officer Mary Layton 10 • War Cry • 15 August 2020
To mark VJ Day, which is commemorated today (15 August), Emily Bright learns how incarcerated Salvation Army officers sought to bring hope and healing in Japanese internment camps during the Second World War employees of European companies and foreign missionaries. Among them were 185 Salvation Army officers and 80 of their children. Salvation Army records reveal that officers were interned at Weihsien in China, at Makassar in modern-day Indonesia and at Changi in Singapore. More than 14,000 civilians died as a result of internment, including 15 officers. However, thanks to The Salvation Army’s International Heritage Centre, the stories of these men, women and children have not been forgotten. Accounts of internment by Salvation Army members are available online from the Cambridge Digital Library Voices of Civilian Internment: Second World War Singapore collection. ‘The conditions in the internment camps for a civilian were appalling,’ explains Steven Spencer of The Salvation Army’s International Heritage Centre. ‘They were all overcrowded, food was in short supply, and sanitary conditions were rudimentary if they existed at all. For instance, Changi camp in Singapore was in a prison that had been built to house 500 inmates, and the camp had 3,000 internees in it. ‘The camps made work compulsory and people had to spend most of the day doing mundane tasks. One Salvation Army officer, Lieut-Colonel Leonard Woodward, who wrote a diary of his internment in an
Indonesian camp, spent a lot of time peeling shallots and picking maggots out of rice.’ To alleviate their hardship, some other internees set up a black market within the camps to source home comforts, as Steven explains. ‘Mary Layton’s letter notes that foodstuffs of all kinds were coming into the camp, and she disapprovingly adds that tobacco and spirits were too. This was all remarkable, because there was an electrified barbed wire fence. ‘She recounts how one of the camp surgeons heard a pig crying and thought
Leonard Woodward with his wife, Margaret