Macalester College DigitalCommons@Macalester College Book Chapters Captive Audiences/Captive Performers 2014 Chapter 2. "Jungle Shows" Thailand Sears Eldredge Macalester College Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks Recommended Citation Eldredge, Sears, "Chapter 2. "Jungle Shows" Thailand" (2014). Book Chapters. Book 20. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks/20 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Captive Audiences/Captive Performers at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 48 Chapter 2: “Jungle Shows” Thailand Those jungle shows striving to create laughter amid exhaustion and cruelty. Jimmy Walker, Of Rice and Men 1942 Up Country The first POWs from Changi POW Camp, Singapore, were sent Up Country to Thailand during the monsoon season in mid-June 1942 as “Mainland No. 1 Work Party”—an advance group whose job was to assist the I. J. A. engineers in surveying the route of the projected railway and to build the supply depot at Nong Pladuk/000 Kilo, the transit camp at Ban Pong/003 Kilo, and the first leg of the railway to the Kanchanaburi area. It wasn’t until October, when the monsoon season was drawing to a close, that thousands of POWs followed, crammed into steel boxcars like so much chattel for the train trip north. FIGURE 2.1. “SINGAPORE—BANGKOK.” JACK CHALKER. COURTESY OF JACK CHALKER. “The next stage of our journey, to be repeated every day,” Laurie Allisoni remembered, “was sheer hell with shortage of water, shortage of food, jammed stinking bodies and short tempers.