Looking for Mrs. Peel 8: Howling Bloody Murder

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: “Good news” I told Giles, the Head of Entertainment, as he passed me the keys to his Morris before scrambling for the harbour, “My husband has been given permission to come live at the Cathay. Aren’t I lucky?”

I then volunteered as VAD in the 10th Australian General Hospital, which moved into the cinema of Cathay building February 10. A real baptism of fire, as they say. Still, mostly, I held the hands of dying men, sang them songs. Sometimes I shaved their beards or washed their dirty feet.The situation in Singapore City was getting more chaotic by the hour. Many dozens of seriously wounded or burned were being carried in on stretchers, lifted up over the carcasses of crushed automobiles at the hospital entrance. The Cathay building was under constant bombardment: The hospital couldn’t display a Red Cross Flag as the Army Corps Headquarters was installed there. The nurses had been evacuated as it was felt their services could be put to better use in another theatre: as most of the orderlies had scurried off and taken shelter in the basement, to drink and play cards, tensions were at flashpoint.

Scene Twenty-Eight: Flashback. Hospital

SOUND: hospital sounds, chaos, the cries of the wounded

Orderly : growl

Dorothy: What was that you called me. A bloody Pommy?

Orderly: growl

Dorothy.: That’s simply not true. I do not favor the English patients over the Australians. I spent all last night with that Australian private who was trying to tear off this bandages. And the night before I raided surrounding flats for supplies for everyone. Where do you think all these silk bed sheets came from? The Chanel No. 5 I’ve been using to mask the stench of putrifying flesh?

Orderly: Growl

dorothy: How can I? How can I feed that Welshman. His jaw has been blown off. His lips have gone gangrene! There’s nothing but green jelly where his mouth should be! (Crying)

Orderly: Softer Growl

Dorothy: I know. I know. But if you won’t take a break, neither will I.

Scene Twenty-Nine: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: On the Sunday, the Japanese concentrated on bombing the Cathay Building. We we received over a dozen direct hits! Smoke filled the building. On February 15, The British Capitulated. The hospital was given a few days reprieve and then forced to move to Changi. On February 21 I was interned at Katong and then later moved to Changi. I had to walk nine miles to get there carrying my luggage.

Scene Thirty: flashback. Changi

SOUND: enormous din of prisoners

Dorothy: Dr. Jamieson? What is this?

Dr. J: Rules of Conduct for Changi Civilian Internees courtesy of Mr.Asahi the Nipponese Commandant. You can read them out loud for all the newcomers.

Dorothy: Ladies. Ladies please. Doctor Jamieson has asked me to read out the following rules for Internees. One: The behavior and attitude of the internees towards the Nipponese authorities will be obedient and respectful. Two: When the Nipponese come into the room, Internees must bow and stand to attention. Three: No internee shall approach the Nipponese authority directly, communicating only through the Camp leader. Four. NO lights on before 7:30. Lights out 10:30. Five All civilian subjects will do the necessary work inside the camp for their welfare.Six: Communication between the Men’s Camp and the Women’s Camp is strictly forbidden.

Internee: Is that all? Sounds just like me old boarding school.

Scene Thirty-One: Westminster office

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: I first worked in the library and then took a turn as floor Representative. I was elected deputy Women’s Representative in the Women’s Camp from January to June 1943. I had lost out to Dr. Mary Jones, a specialist in tropical pediatrics, for the post of Women’s Representative by three votes. The deputy is a sort of Administrative head, dealing with supplies, budgets, rules and regulations.

Scene Thirty-Two: Committee Meeting Changi

SOUND: women around a table whispering

Dorothy: Expenditures. Central Fund. So far. Food 283,00, Tobacco
and Cigarettes, 52,000, Medical supplies, 30,500; Communication with mens camp executive: One free issue egg per person per week: From now on funds to be spent on rice polishings, ground nuts, pulses and dahls and not on eggs.

Woman: What? Are we to eat like the Hindus now?

Dorothy: The camp doctors assure us these provide better dietary value for the money.

Women: Ridiculous! I can’t believe it.

Dorothy: As for the request for kennels for our dogs, the Men’s Camp believes this to be unimportant. Timber is scarce and needed for building projects like the Men’s Sanitorium. On a disturbing note, books have been disappearing from the reference library. It is believed that the paper is being used to make cigarettes. Please remind the women under you that the sign of a civilized society is how it treats its books.Lastly, a cable has been sent to the Canadian Prime Minister, acknowledging his Christmas greetings and asking for assistance from the Canadian Red Cross.

Woman: If the Americans would share their baskets we wouldn’t have
to go begging from the Canadians!

Communication with the Nipponese Command. They have agreed to have
toilet paper and kotex added to the list of essentials for new internees.They have agreed to have a piano tuner come into the camp. They have allowed one lecture a week from the Men’s camp. : the Lecture Series commences on February 1st with “The Lighter Side of the Law” by Timothy Morgan, and on the 7th there will be a talk on Television. Most welcome news of all, they have permitted us sea bathing excursions, once a month. Now to address the complaints about women spending too long in the showers. Shower time will remain the same,two and one half hours in the morningn and the same in the afternoon. If anyone feels that some are abusing their
privileges the official channel for making a complaint is through their floor representative.

Woman 2: If you ask me some women seem to enjoy exposing themselves
in public.

Dorothy: Well, the long queue lines for meals and showers and the like are only going to get worse, I’m afraid. The Nipponese have warned us to expect a rush of new internees.

Group: No. How many. Impossible

Woman Two: How many?

Dorothy: As many as 900. Including 72 children. That will mean three
to a cell.

Woman one: Intolerable.

Dorothy Procedure as follows: New internees are to be registered in the school room by the office secretaries aided by some volunteers. They will be asked basic information only. Where are you from? Husband? Children? Any utensils. Bedding? Women with children will go to E Upper and Women with girls over 13 to the Carpenter’s shop to be claimed as cellmates. New arrivals who remain unclaimed will be assigned cellmates by the housing committee.

Women: I’m going to sleep in the Rose Garden. I have dibs on the Chapel.

Scene 32 1/2 Schoolroom. Murmur of voices

Dorothy: Name?

Woman: Mrs. J.P. Smithy

Dorothy: Born?

Woman: Kuala Lumpur

Dorothy: Education?

Woman:. St. Margaret’s Harrow and Pension at Lucerne Switzerland

Dorothy: Children?

Woman: Yes

Dorothy: Ages?

Woman: One Year Nine Months

Dorothy:Husband?

Woman:In POW camp. Gordon’s Corporal

Dorothy: Are you happy here?

Woman: No!

Dorothy:Why?

WOman: Husband not here and I do not like prison

Dorothy: What about food?

Woman: I am not ill, but not good food and not enough.

Dorothy: What about child?

Woman: Better food than us. But not enough. Could do with more food. Are you a doctor?

Dorothy: No, I am merely the Women’s Deputy Representative.

But I do not wish to be interviewed. So good day.

Scene Thirty-Three: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: I was elected Women’s Representative, in June 1943, responsible to the Nipponese for the conduct of all 300 or so women at Changi Internment Camp. I had the freedom to leave the women’s camp for daily visits to Tominaga, the new Nipponese Commandant, a round-faced toad of a man. Unlike the Men’s Camp Representative, who chose to avoid confrontations with the Nipponese Command,I made a point of making a daily visit to Tominaga’s office. It was the only way to face my fear. Every day I would demand insulin and other medicines for the sick women. And every day I would be denied, with a sharp slap to the face. One day he punished me for my persistence by having me to fill up a giant blackboard with tiny “N”‘s and “O” s. On my walk back from Tominaga’s office I would usually stop by the Men’s Camp, on official camp business, of course.

Scene Thirty-Four: Flashback. Men’s Camp Office. Changi

SOUND: Radio being tuned

Dorothy: Let’s see, I have GRH 9.81 mc/s 30.53 m or try GSL 6.11
mc/s 49.10 meters.

announcer: This is World Affairs on the BBC Overseas Service. A Talk with Wickham Steed. A few days ago our Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in a speech to the American Congress, assured the American people that the British will be fighting the war with Japan until the conclusion. One wonders why he had to make such a speech. Could it be that the average American (fading) is unaware that we are fighting …

Scene Thirty-Five: Changi

SOUND: Background din of crowd, paper being torn from typewriter

Man: Grumph

Dorothy: Thank you, Norris, but I need only one copy

Man: GRump

Dorothy: I have decided that this News will be passed on in the Women’s Camp orally. I will have my distributors memorize the basic facts from this news sheet and then I will destroy it.

man: ??

DOROTHY: They can draw pictures as a memory aid. For instance, in this case, a picture of a boat.

Man: HMMM

Dorothy: Yes, I am convinced this is for the best. Some internees have been too cavalier when it comes to distributing news. They think it’s a sort of schoolyard game. I am taking no chances. Man: HHHMMM??

Dorothy: I’ve chosen four of the most sensible woman in the camp to be my distributors. All reliable married women. No power hungry spinsters among them.

Man: ??

Dorothy: Sorry,I will not give you their names. They don’t even know who the others are.

Man: Growl

Dorothy: I can’t be bullied into revealing who they are. And, yes, I am well aware that Mary will object to the secrecy. But I once caught her reading a newssheet to Lady Drew, out in the open. Mary is a dear but she can be quite scatterbrained at times.

Scene Thirty-Six: Changi Women’s Camp

SOUND: Loud din of prisoners

Dr Jones: Mrs. Nixon. I’ve heard from Dr. Geeson that BBC broadcasts are coming into the Men’s Camp. Such good news for us. With the tensions here at such a fever pitch. I hear you were involved with the scuffle between the ladies in the Carpenter’s Shop.

Dorothy: Yes, Mary I never thought I’d need a Sikh guard to protect me from one of our own.

Dr. Jones: Were you hurt?

Dorothy: No. Kicked and bitten on the arm. That’s all. Rather droll in retrospect. Mrs.Maloney had a vicious disagreement with another of the Eurasians, Mrs. Dock, over a morsel of chicken she’d scrounged, and Mrs. Dock ran of to complain directly to Tominaga. I chased her down but arrived too late. She had already flung open the door of his quarters and caught him taking a shower. I wrestled her to the floor in the doorway. Tominaga’s guard arrived and joined us on the ground for a group grapple. All this with our esteemed Commandant howling bloody murder in the background. I was blamed for the incident of course. Spent two days in the lavatory with the two women. Lucky I was there, otherwise they would have killed each other.

Jones: Well, hopefully this BBC business will raise morale. I volunteer of course to be one of our distributors.

Dorothy: Mary, I’ve already chosen my distributors.

Jones: Who are they?

Dorothy: Only I will have that information. No doctors among them

Jones: No doctors? But we are the natural leaders here.. The Nipponese respect us. Where would you be without our expertise in nutrition and tropical disease. We are ideally placed to pass on information to the camp population.

dorothy: I’m sorry Mary.

Jones: You were my deputy. We worked together. You know you can trust me.

Dorothy: Mary. You are busy enough with your statistic-taking and caregiving to the newborns. Don’t be offended. I wouldn’t divulge this information to Timothy,either.

Jones: You wouldn’t tell the Men’s Camp Rep? He must have been livid. He believes the women’s camp is under the jurisdiction of the Men’s Camp.

Dorothy: Well,men never think women can do anything. They don’t understand how we women are better practiced at making do under
confinement.What did Maugham write? The soul of man wanders through infinite reaches of the universe and she, woman, seeks to imprison it?

Jones: You are obsessed about secrecy! Still upset about the incident
with Lady Drew and the News.

Dorothy: These are BBC Broadcasts.

Jones: I am able to be discreet. You know that! Tominaga told Mrs. Rose he loved her poems, by the by. Finds them amusing.

Dorothy: He’s only impressed with her Ivy League credentials. The Japanese are such snobs.

Jones: Well,that’s one step better than the average colonial, wouldn’t you say? Who judges a woman’s worth by her husband’s social standing. As the wife of a mere rubber planter you surely can appreciate…

Dorothy: Well,And Mrs. Rose has no business going over my head either to talk to Tominaga. Typical American. Wanting all the perks of power without the responsibility.

Looking For Mrs. Peel Complete play pdf

Torture Tales

Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com wrote about the inhuman conditions of Bradley Manning’s Detention asking whether being put in solitary is torture. Greenwald provided evidence that it is. Of course Julian Assange is also currently in solitary, allowed out for a walk with four guards for a few minutes a day.

My grandmother was a survivor of Changi Torture in WWII. She spent a month in a small room at the Singapore YMCA with 17 men who were insane with pain and starvation and sleep deprivation (giving up half her daily handful of rice to the starving men) and then 7 months in solitary and she certainly thought the solitary confinement was worse than than being with the abused and miserable men.

Here’s a little bit from by play, looking for Mrs. Peel Scene Forty-Nine: Cell Outram

SOUND: None

Dorothy: Oh, the screams. The screams. I shall go mad. Why won’t they go away. Why can’t I be back at the YMCA with my friends. What day is it? I must keep track. I must find something to do. Why won’t they give me a book to read? I’ll write a novel in my head. To keep me busy. I’ll make it a love story…”Susan North gasped as she walked out of the YMCA building into the sunlight.

The entire play is at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html.

At the war crimes trial they prosecutors pooh poohed her solitary confinement, and suggested the worst thing that happened to her was having to go to the bathroom in front of the men. Propriety, Propriety.

Of Goose and Gander and War Crimes Torture

My grandmother, civilian internee at Changi Prison, Singapore during WWII, was tortured during the infamous Double Tenth Incident

Hmm. The New York Times has a scathing (as they say) editorial re Omar Khadr’s sentence.

Warped Justice

Last week Salon.com had an article claiming that Khadr’s treatment at the hands of the Americans was just typical of their treatment of ‘young offenders’ in general. Why Gitmo Justice Shouldn’t Shock us

In a recent blog, right here, I wrote about Winnipeg in 1910, how the social elite were desperate to ‘civilize’ those crude and rowdy new immigrants from Northern Europe, who worked the land during the week, but who went berzerk when they had down time, so to speak.

They decided that for the children of these immigrants who broke the law, youth courts were the way to go. Rehabilitation instead of punishment. After all, a child would only learn to be a better criminal if imprisoned and Manitoba was desperately in need of citizens to work the land and breed future citizens. They didn’t need a prison industry. (How times have changed.)

Here in Canada, the population appears divided on Khadr. I think the general idea is, if he wasn’t a full-blown terrorist before, he certainly is now.

Well, Khadr has certainly become a ‘symbol’ – because ordinary lives do not matter in the big scheme of things, and in war, they matter even less.

I believe in one over-riding principle: In a democracy, it isn’t about ‘one vote per every man’ (or woman) it’s about ONE LAW for every man and woman. Once you start making exceptions, it’s that slippery slope and no one is safe anymore.

But this is a war crime, isn’t it?

Well, we have laws for war, too. Those Child-Soldier Laws. Those Geneva Conventions. Even if they are window dressing, for the most part. Let’s face it.

My grandmother was interned at Changi Prison (made infamous by various books, including King Rat) but she was also one of only three women tortured in the Double Tenth Incident. I wrote a play (from her memoirs) about at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html. I was hoping to get it produced on BBC Radio Four, but that’s not an easy process.

The War in the East was not a big issue in the UK, although they love their WWII stories. It was a big issue in Australia, and I get lots of hits from there. And in Singapore.

The fact is, the Allies put the perpetrators of the Double Tenth Torture on trial in 1946 and excuted many of them. (My grandmother’s post war testimony, which is the crux of the play, helped put the evil Sumida Haruzo and his henchmen away.)

The war crimes tribunal accused the Japanese men in question, Gestapo types and their minions, of performing acts of ‘unspeakable horror, stark and naked.’

But the Japanese who did this were just people, no different from the Americans who stripped, humiliated and tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib or the British soldiers accused of doing the same in Iraq. As my play shows, these Japanese soldiers were made up of good eggs and bad eggs and eggs just blindly doing their job, just like now. (When the war was going well for them, they could be indifferent, even kind, but when the pressure was on, they turned evil.)

But the British won WWII and that’s the difference.

If you want to read a first hand account of how it feels to be tortured during war, read my play.

My grandmother went to her grave despising the Japanese with every ounce of her being, so that pretty much tells you what torture does to people. My grandfather, who also interned at Changi Internment Camp, but not tortured, visited Japan once a year during his retirement. He clearly did not hate the Japanese for what they did to him (and he worked on the Thai Burma Railroad of Bridge on the River Kwai fame).

I see that George W. Bush, out promoting his memoirs, is being quoted in the news today saying that “waterboarding’ saved American and British lives. Well, waterboarding figured at Changi, and in the war crimes trial in 1946, it was described by the British as the worse kind of torture, worse than the beatings, the burnings, and even the electric shock.

A Guardian article today seems to concur with me: Bush’s Torture admission a dismal day for democracy

Looking for Mrs. Peel Part 1

Me at 12. In the Kitchen on Coolbrook,which I call Lemon Creek Road in my story, in homage to the Japanese Canadians who were interned unjustly during WWII in the interior of British Columbia. Dig those 60′s curtains.

I’m going to interrupt Flo in the City (since I’m struggling to figure out where to go from here) to bring you Looking for Mrs. Peel, my play about the 60′s, WWII, and waterboarding. I spent years researching the background to this play and I do believe I nailed it. The complete play is at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html

LOOKING FOR MRS. PEEL: Script of a play for radio about The Fall of Singapore and Changi POW Life and The Double Tenth Incident at Changi Prisoner of War Civilian Internment Camp from a first hand account INTRODUCTION:”All Things are Connected” Chief Seattle The year 1967 has been described as The Last Good Year, by Canadian historian Pierre Berton, also as The Year That Changed Cinema, by Time Magazine, as well as the Best Year Ever in Pop Music by, well, just about everyone. In and around anglo Montreal,that memorable year, radio was the communications medium of choice for young people. Kids listened to the likes of Buddy Gee on CKGM, Dave Boxer on CFCF and CFOX’s Charles P Rodney Chandler on their chintzy transistor radios and kept track of the respective weekly hit lists. One of the most popular new DJ’s was an import, a former British merchant marine sailor named Roger Scott also on CFOX. In late May of 1967 Scott aired ‘pirated’ tapes of the Beatle’s Srgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Album,before it was officially released. My older brother was mightily impressed.

. In the US it was the Summer of Love and the Summer of Race Riots -two facts I couldn’t ignore because my British father preferred getting his news from American Walter Cronkite, on the CBS television station WCAX Montpelier Vermont – and as was the norm, we had but one black and white tv. But these same heady Expo months were also a time of tension in the Middle East with Six Day War where we came close to nuclear war ….again… and ‘the tipping point’ for Vietnam and a time when decisions were made that ‘signaled the end of Britain’s’ imperial adventure’.* According to Historian Matthew Jones, in 1967 the British wanted to pull out of ‘East of Suez’(Singapore, Malaysia and the MIddle East) entirely. While school children from Victoria to Gander were learning the words to CA NA DA, Bobby Gimby’s giddy centennial year signature song , the Americans were putting pressure on the British to stay. President Lyndon Johnson even bribed them, offering to back the pound sterling and “solve all your financial problems.”*

So, if Lyndon Baines Johnson appeared to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, as he rode that long long escalator up past the kitschy photographs of Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart in the American Pavilion at Expo 67 on his official visit, that’s because he did. (* Matthew Jones’ Decision Delayed Historical Review.)

Malaysia, the 15th country to sign up for the World’s Fair – in July ’64 (plot 3320 Ste Helene’s Island) didn’t have a pavilion in the end. They had pulled out; perhaps because Singapore had been expelled from the Malaysian Federation in 1965 ( to quell the unrest between the Chinese and the Malays) and couldn’t come up with the money.

Tunku Abdul Rahman Malaysia’s first PM had visited the Expo site in ’64. One wonders what Bobby Gimby felt about all this: the so called Pied Piper of Canada, a former CBC musician and bandleader, and a Canadian cultural icon, is reported to have composed them an unofficial anthem, Malaysia Forever, and earned his whimsical moniker, on a visit to Singapore in ’62. The song itself is steeped in mystery; no former colonial or expert in Malaysian studies I have reached has ever heard of it. Negara Ku has been Malaya’s (Malaysia’s) national anthem since 1957